Dr N. Fernandez Medina is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Philosophy..

• INTRODUCTION Beyond the Lyrical and the Proverbial: Antonio Machado's Poetic Thinking I. THE PROBLEM OF SUBJECTIVITY: HOW TO KNOW THE SELF AND OTHER Kantian Metaphysics and the Need for Realness The Rise of Individualism Reading the Fragment, Reading the Whole: Poetry's Becoming The 'proverbio' and 'cantar': A Brief Genealogy II. TOWARDS CONCEIVING THE OTHER: THE FORMATIVE YEARS The Machado Family The Institucion Libre de Ensenanza and the Krausist 'hombre' The Madrid Years: Folk Poetry in the Age of Romantic Exhaustion The Influence of Eduardo Benot Early Poetic Symbolism: The Soledades III. FROM ART TO LIFE: CRITICAL INQUIRIES AND A NEW POETRY The Machado-Unamuno Correspondence 1903-1905 The modernismo Question Cain, Abel and the Thirsting Brother Poetic Inspiration: The Honey Bee IV. THE GOD OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY Spain's Spiritual Crisis and Unamuno's Lessons on God The Janus-faced God: Presence and Absence The Divine Light Within: Machado's Critique of Organized Religion Jesus as Symbol V. THE DOUBLE BIND OF KNOWLEDGE AND IGNORANCE Ignorance and Spain's 'problema de cultura' The Problem of Empty-Headedness Cucana Logic The Collective Meaning of 'saber' The Infinity of Knowledge and Ignorance CONCLUSION The Infinite Inquiry Machado's Trajectory Toward Otherness From Machado to Levinas

'Fernandez-Medina's book, with its decent bibliography and helpful index, shows that the finite inquiry into the works of Antonio Machado is far from being exhausted. This text is a serious and welcome contribution to that process.' - Philip G. Johnston, Bulletin of Spanish Studies August 2013