If I were to formulate my opinions upon style, I should say: "Imitations
of other men's styles are bad, but a man's own style is good."
There is a store of common literary finery, almost all of which is in
constant use and has become familiar.
When a writer lays hands on any of this finery spontaneously, he makes
it his own, and the familiar flower blossoms as it does in Nature.
When an author's inspiration does not proceed from within out, but
rather from without in, then he becomes at once a bad rhetorician.
I am one of those writers who employ the least possible amount of this
common store of rhetoric. There are various reasons for my being
anti-rhetorical. In the first place I do not believe that the pages of
a bad writer can be improved by following general rules; if they do gain
in one respect, they lose inevitably in another.
So much for one reason; but I have others.
Languages display a tendency to follow established forms. Thus Spanish
tends toward Castilian. But why should I, a Basque, who never hears
Castilian spoken in my daily life in the accents of Avila or of Toledo,
endeavour to imitate it? Why should I cease to be a Basque in order to
appear Castilian, when I am not? Not that I cherish sectional pride, far
from it; but every man should be what he is, and if he can be content
with what he is, let him be held fortunate.
For this reason, among others, I reject Castilian turns and idioms when
they suggest themselves to my mind. Thus if it occurs to me to write
something that is distinctively Castilian, I cast about for a phrase by
means of which I may express myself in what to me is a more natural way,
without suggestion of our traditional literature.
On the other hand, if the pure rhetoricians, of the national school, who
are _castizo_--the Mariano de Cavias, the Ricardo Leóns--should
happen to write something simply, logically and with modern directness,
they would cast about immediately for a roundabout way of saying it,
which might appear elaborate and out of date.