The following article summarizes the poetic activity in Venezuela in the 1960s. It traces the evolution of poetic codes by examining two groups, Sardio and “El Techo de la Ballena,” and focuses on two poets belonging to the latter group, Juan Calzadilla and Caupolicán Ovalles. The city and its impact on the groups and these two poets are the main focus of the essay.

Unamuno ve a Sarmiento como un hombre de contradicciones, al estilo español, situado entre la adulación a Europa y Estados Unidos – la llamada civilización – y la realidad latinoamericana de raíz española. Bajo el lema de cultura, Sarmiento desea superar la supuesta barbarie latinoamericana con la importación de ideas y personas civilizadas. Sin embargo, Unamuno ve que Sarmiento defiende al partido de la civilización con la energía, violencia, tumulto, agresiones e intemperancias del partido de la barbarie. Pero, igual que Unamuno, su pluma toma el lugar de las lanzas.

Aún a años de distancia, los dos hombres son literatos y políticos, valientes y patriotas. Traen a España y a América en la pluma, la sangre, la vida y el corazón. A los que creemos en la fuerza de la razón contra la razón de la fuerza, nos animan a seguir convenciendo y testimoniando a las futuras generaciones.

This dissertation is a comparative study of both writers from a historical-critical perspective. Our aim is to suggest that the heroic defenses of conscience by both Newman and Unamuno towards the end of their lives are a logical corollary to a succession of actions and writings from their youth onwards in the affirmation of the principles of free examination and personal choice against censorship, control and coercion.

In our research on Newman's and Unamuno's thought on truth and life, religion and ideology, conscience and authority, we therefore pursue that living and developing intelligence by which they wrote, argued and acted. Hence, we chronologically apply their own literary and philosophical thought over a life-time of writings to their own actions in freedom of conscience in academic, religious and political settings. Academics and activists in defense of conscience, they bear witness to its deeper meaning as related in their books, poems and letters. Both were poets, polemicists, and philosophers. Above all, both were people, willing to pay the price of expulsion, exile and loneliness, in their search for truth in life and life in truth.

Therefore, our approach is both literary and philosophical. In Newman and Unamuno, we respectfully shadow the development of their own autobiographical writings. Our focus is to analyze key periods of their lives in chronological order, combining principal writings and crucial decisions. Seeking out their views on conscience from childhood memories throughout philosophical classics, the agony of personal polemics, analyses of historical Christianity, poems in exile and heroic defense of conscience against authority, we find a consistency unto death.

Conclusively, we wish to deduce a theory of freedom of conscience in Newman and Unamuno vis-à-vis, churches, states and universities, as applicable to all human beings independent, but inclusive, of their religious, political and academic convictions.