> My characterization was in terms of moral sensibility.
This reminds me of my old Cuban teacher José Luis Galbe Loshuertos, who used to distinguish between "smart" (listo) and "intelligent" (inteligente). He used to say that smart is just a brain function, but "intelligent" comes from the Latin, "intus" (inside) and "legere" (to read). Intelligence is the ability to read inside. It has an ethical dimension, since you cannot really *read inside* if you are on the wrong side of the divide.
Galbe was originally from Zaragoza, Spain. Born in 1904, he became a lawyer -- the youngest fiscal (district attorney) of Madrid's Tribunal Popular during the Republic. Also the youngest prosecutor before the Spanish Supreme Court. Exiled in France after the defeat of the Republic, he and his wife (Rita Berta, a Parisian) later moved to Santiago de Cuba, where he joined the M-26 rebels in the mid 1950s. After the triumph, Galbe joined the foreign service. When he retired, he became a professor at the Universidad de La Habana. He had been close to Che and remained close friends with Raúl Castro. Raúl visited him every now and then in his apartment in Vedado, Havana. Mauricio Vincent, a Spanish student (he works now with Spain's El País), and I used to hang out with Galbe. I had long arguments with him over Stalin and the Soviet Union. In spite of the age difference, he was never condescending. When he fell ill, they took him to the military hospital. He put up a good fight, doctors and nurses said. That was in February 1985, I believe. Raúl, Vilma, and their children attended the funeral. Raúl gave a short speech. Rita kept working as a hair stylist for a state-owned joint until very late in her life. She gave us some of Galbe's manuscripts and books. I kept his annotated Alejo Carpentier's Consagración de la Primavera. He wasn't very fond of Carpentier.
I memorized a few verses from one of Galbe's unpublished poems, dedicated to his hometown:
[...]
A fuerza de dureza y aspereza, ganó el baturro fama de ser bravo, hombre que clava en la pared un clavo, con la cabeza
Y quien nadó en el Ebro de muchacho, en su agua espesa, turbia, indescriptible, será como madera de quebracho, hombre inflexible
[...]
En la Guerra Civil, mal de los males, se olvidaron de ser civilizados, y fueron como locos criminales, desenfrenados