The beginner in letters makes his way up, as a rule, amid a literary
environment which is distinguished by reputations and hierarchies,
all respected by him. But this was not the case with the young writers
of my day. During the years 1898 to 1900, a number of young men suddenly
found themselves thrown together in Madrid, whose only rule was the
principle that the immediate past did not exist for them.
This aggregation of authors and artists might have seemed to have been
brought together under some leadership, and to have been directed to
some purpose; yet one who entertained such an assumption would have been
mistaken.
Chance brought us together for a moment, a very brief moment, to be
followed by a general dispersal. There were days when thirty or forty
young men, apprentices in the art of writing, sat around the tables in
the old Café de Madrid.
Doubtless such gatherings of new men, eager to interfere in and to
influence the operations of the social system, yet without either the
warrant of tradition or any proved ability to do so, are common upon a
larger scale in all revolutions.
As we neither had, nor could have had, in the nature of the case, a task
to perform, we soon found that we were divided into small groups, and
finally broke up altogether.