Entre «hablar» y «callarse» parece haberse debatido Quevedo, obedeciendo ya a uno, ya a otro impulso, pero no por vacilación ni irresolución. Dicha postura retórica y las decisiones que tomó al respecto entre 1603 y 1631, si no más tarde, eran de índole personal y política; personal porque se trataba del impulso por expresarse que siente profundamente cualquier escritor, y política porque en la España del siglo XVII «hablar» traía a colación el riego de la intervención del Estado y de la Inquisición («callar»). Caught between «speaking out» and «silencing himself», Quevedo seems to have complied with now one and now the other of these two impulses, but not in vacillation nor irresolution. This rhetorical posture and the decisions that he took in this respect between 1603 and 1631, if not later on, were of a personal and political character. Personal because they involved the impulse to express oneself which every writer feels in a profound way, and political because in seventeenth-century Spain, «speaking out» carried the risk of intervention by the State or the Inquisition («silencing himself»)
