Explore "Youth and Egolatry" by Pio Baroja on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Making our entrance into the world of letters hurling contradictions right and left, the young men of our generation were received by the writers of established reputation with unfriendly demonstrations. As was natural, this was not only the attitude of the older writers, but it extended to our contemporaries in years as well, even to those who were most modern.
Among those who cherished a deadly hatred of me was Dicenta. It was an antipathy which had its origin in the realm of ideas, and it was accentuated subsequently by an article which I contributed to _El Globo_ upon his drama _Aurora_, in which I maintained that Dicenta was not a man of new or broad ideas, but completely preoccupied with the ancient conceptions of honesty and honour. One night in the Cafe Fornos -- I am able to vouch for the truth of this incident because, years afterwards, he told me the story himself -- Dicenta accosted a young man who was sitting at an adjacent table taking supper, and attempted to draw him into discussion, under the impression that it was I. The young man was so frightened that he never dared to open his mouth.