Walking in the head with a common deficit in the literary genre of the Basque essay, Anjel Lertxundi offered us in his corner of Berria the column entitled Inexistentzia on February 8: “Most of the academic papers here on Chillida, Oteiza or the most significant plastic initiatives do not take into account what is written in Basque.” “It would seem that the Basque doesn’t know anything about Basque art.” These are attempts in Spanish, bitter and reasonable.

It immediately seemed to me that, although indirectly, this idea had some connection with what was in the head: how rarely are the essays in Euskera mentioned among our agents, at least in the rest of those who do not deal with linguistics or literature: anthropology, ethics, philosophy, ethnology, political philosophy, environment, globalization, economy… in a wide range of areas. At the moment, the production of essays in Basque in these universal areas is scarce, a reflection of the diglosic situation of our language. But in his October, we have a lot of experimenters in many areas. It strikes me that, by bringing to each one of us the words of other thinkers or writers, the citations of writers of other languages appear very much, whether they are from gods or assets, and with great difficulty those of those who have written something in Basque on the subject or topic that belongs to them. And in those few, or are the quotes of the dead, or those of the two or three that have become among us icons of this kind, or those of a friend of the narrow surroundings of each of the essayists. It would seem that the Basque country has not known any of these universal themes until each essayist has made their contribution. There are exceptions, and I would like to refer to one of my previous readings: It is the culture of the Auzolan of Jasone Mitxelena, in which there is talk of many traitors both in Spanish and in Basque.

Why will it be? Why not read each other? Amazing. Or perhaps for what Hernández Abaitua says in his Storytelling workshop: “What has Bernardo Atxaga, the best-known Basque writer in the world, added to universal literature? Nothing […]. Has it changed to the history of Basque literature, but not to the history of Universal Literature?” In other words, when we go to our area, is there no one who has made his own contribution to the world in the Basque essayists? For the most part, Zierbena has only translated into Basque the ideas of other thinkers or writers from all over the world, more or less beautiful. We can say that this is the case, but without shame: it is not a work of underestimation, and that is what we need.

Or was it better to think about it? Will that narcissus be so great that the essayists have inside them? I mean, is it because you want to caress yourself, as if you were the first one who brought the corresponding ideas from the earth to us?
However, I can only regret this conduct for two reasons. One, as a reader of essays in Euskera, because I'm interested in whether others have written something related to the issue that I have in Euskera. And second, because if we want to build a Basque community, in addition to that of the speakers, they should also make us the thinkers, the essayists, the writers themselves in their works: Why not make visible the community of Basque thinkers who are forming with their sympathies, envy, loves, hatred or grudges?