Intersubjectivity in Miguel de Unamuno’s novel How to Make a Novel

Miguel de Unamuno’s novel How to Make a Novel challenges traditional narrative conventions and literary structure. Combining fiction and philosophical essay, Unamuno explores the limits of literary creation and the relationship between author, character, and reader. The narrative centers on an individual confronted with the realization of his inevitable mortality, both in reality and in fiction. The work explores intersubjectivity through the depiction of life as the making of selves in a constant process of construction and dissolution, where the distinction between the intimate Self and the social Self is blurred. Miguel de Unamuno explores life not as a fixed entity, but as a process of the creation and death of thoughts, where writing, as a form of consumption, can bring «death» to the living while allowing other readers to relive these lives. For Unamuno, life is a series of Selves, the tension between the personal Self projecting itself outward and the Other necessary for this projection. The novel, by imitating this experience, seeks to capture this constant transformation of identities. Thus, for a philosopher, literary creativity is a process that imitates life not in its continuity, but in its development and constant interaction of subjectivities.