"Antonio was known as the 'good' Machado, in contrast to his not-so-good brother Manuel, a writer of less distinction and an official propagandist for the Falangist party. But Antonio was also known as the 'good' because that was the mock-heroic epithet he assigned to himself in his triumphantly modest self-portrait of 1908, 'Retrato.' Literally, the line reads, 'I am, in the best sense of the word, good' ('soy, en el buen sentido de la palabra, bueno')" Stephen Akey • Open Letters Monthly

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