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MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,
Spanish novelist, playwright and
poet, was born at Alcalá de
Henares in 1547. The attempts of
biographers to provide him with
an illustrious genealogy are
unsuccessful. The family history
begins with the author's
grandfather, Juan de Cervantes
(b. 1490), a lawyer who at one
time (1545-6) administered the
estates of the duke de Osuna,
and resided later at Cordova,
where he died about 1555.
Cervantes' father was Rodrigo de
Cervantes, an
apothecary-surgeon, who married
Leonor de Cortinas in 1540 or
1541. The children of this
marriage were Andrés, Andrea,
Luisa, Miguel, Rodrigo,
Magdalena, and Juan (of whom
nothing is known beyond the
mention of him in his father's
will).
The exact date of Cervantes'
birth is not recorded: he was
baptized on the 9th of October
1547, in the church of Santa
María la Mayor at Alcalá. There
are indications that Rodrigo de
Cervantes resided at Valladolid
in 1554, at Madrid in 1561, at
Seville in 1564-65, and at
Madrid from 1566 onwards. It may
be assumed that his family
accompanied him, and it seems
likely that either at Valladolid
or at Madrid Cervantes saw the
famous actor-manager and
dramatist, Lope de Rueda, of
whose performances he speaks
enthusiastically in the preface
to his plays. In 1569 a Madrid
schoolmaster, Juan Lopez de
Hoyos, issued a work
commemorative of Phillip's third
wife, Isabel de Valois, who had
died on the 3rd of October 1568.
This volume, entitled
Historia y relación verdadera de
la enfermedad, felicisimo
tránsito y sumptuosas exequias
fúnebres de la Serenísima Reyna
de España Doña Isabel de Valoys,
contains six contributions by
Cervantes: a sonnet, four
redondillas, and an elegy.
Lopez de Hoyos introduces
Cervantes as "our dear and
beloved pupil", and the elegy is
dedicated to Cardinal Espinosa
"in the name of the whole
school." It has been inferred
that Cervantes was educated by
Lopez de Hoyos, but this
conclusion is untenable, for
Lopez de Hoyos' school was not
opened until 1567. On the 13th
of October 1568, Giulio
Acquaviva reached Madrid charged
with a special mission to Philip
II; he left for Rome on the 2nd
of December, and Cervantes is
supposed to have accompanied
him. This conjecture is based
solely on a passage in the
dedication of the Galatea,
where the writer speaks of
having been "camarero to
Cardinal Acquaviva at Rome."
There is, however, no reason to
think that Cervantes met
Acquaviva in Madrid; the
probability is that he enlisted
as a supernumerary towards the
end of 1568, that he served in
Italy, and there entered the
household of Acquaviva, who had
been raised to the cardinalate
on the 17th of May 1570. There
exists a warrant (dated
September 15, 1569) for the
arrest of one Miguel de
Cervantes, who had wounded
Antonio de Sigura, and had been
condemned in absence to have his
right hand cut off and to be
exiled from the capital for ten
years; and it has been sought to
identify the offender with the
future author of Don Quixote.
No evidence is available. All
that is known with certainty is
that Cervantes was in Rome at
the end of 1569, for on the 22nd
of December of that year the
fact was recorded in an official
information lodged by Rodrigo de
Cervantes with a view to proving
his son's legitimacy and
untainted Christian descent.
If it is difficult to say
precisely when Cervantes was in
Acquaviva's service, it is no
less difficult to say when he
left it to join the regular
army. There is evidence, more or
less satisfactory, that his
enlistment took place in 1570;
in 1571 he was serving as a
private in the company commanded
by Captain Diego de Urbina which
formed part of Miguel de
Moncada's famous regiment, and
on the 16th of September he
sailed from Messina on board the
"Marquesa", which formed part of
the armada under Don Juan de
Austria. At the battle of
Lepanto (October 7, 1571) the "Marquesa"
was in the thickest of the
conflict. As the fleet came into
action Cervantes lay below, ill
with fever; but, despite the
remonstrances of his comrades,
he vehemently insisted on rising
to take his share in the
fighting, and was posted with
twelve men under him in a boat
by the galley's side. He
received three gunshot wounds,
two in the chest, and one which
permanently maimed his right
hand -- "for the greater glory
of the right", in his own
phrase. On the 30th of October
the fleet returned to Messina,
where Cervantes went into
hospital, and during his
convalescence received
grants-in-aid amounting to
eighty-two ducats. On the 29th
of April 1572 he was transferred
to Captain Manuel Ponce de
Léon's company in Lope de
Figueroa's regiment; he shared
in the indecisive naval
engagement off Navarino on the
7th of October 1572, in the
capture of Tunis on the 10th of
October 1573, and in the
unsuccessful expedition to
relieve the Goletta in the
autumn of 1574. The rest of his
military service was spent in
garrison at Palermo and Naples,
and shortly after the arrival of
Don John at Naples on the 18th
of June 1575, Cervantes was
granted leave to return to
Spain; he received a
recommendatory letter from Don
John to Philip II, and a similar
testimonial from the duke de
Sessa, viceroy of Sicily. Armed
with these credentials,
Cervantes embarked on the "Sol"
to push his claim for promotion
in Spain.
On the 26th of September 1575,
near Les Trois Maries off the
coast of Marseilles, the "Sol"
and its companion ships the
"Mendoza" and the "Higuera"
encountered a squadron of
Barbary corsairs under Arnaut
Mami; Cervantes, his brother
Rodrigo and other Spaniards were
captured, and were taken as
prisoners to Algiers. Cervantes
became the slave of a Greek
renegade named Dali Mami, and,
as the letters found on him were
taken to prove that he was a man
of importance in a position to
pay a high ransom, he was put
under special surveillance. With
undaunted courage and
persistence he organized plans
of escape. In 1576 he induced a
Moor to guide him and other
Christian captives to Oran; the
Moor deserted them on the road,
the baffled fugitives returned
to Algiers, and Cervantes was
treated with additional
severity. In the spring of 1577
two priests of the Order of
Mercy arrived in Algiers with a
sum of three hundred crowns
entrusted to them by Cervantes'
parents; the amount was
insufficient to free him, and
was spent in ransoming his
brother Rodrigo. Cervantes made
another attempt to escape in
September 1577, but was betrayed
by the renegade whose services
he had enlisted. On being
brought before Hassan Pasha, the
viceroy of Algiers, he took the
blame on himself, and was
threatened with death; struck,
however, by the heroic bearing
of the prisoner, Hassan remitted
the sentence, and bought
Cervantes from Dali Mami for
five hundred crowns. In 1577 the
captive addressed to the Spanish
secretary of state, Mateo
Vazquez, a versified letter
suggesting that an expedition
should be fitted out to seize
Algiers; the project, though
practicable, was not
entertained. In 1578 Cervantes
was sentenced to two thousand
strokes for sending a letter
begging help from Martin de
Córdoba, governor of Oran; the
punishment was not, however,
inflicted on him. Meanwhile his
family were not idle. In March
1578 his father presented a
petition to the king setting
forth Cervantes' services; the
duke de Sessa repeated his
testimony to the captive's
merits; in the spring of 1579
Cervantes' mother applied for
leave to export two thousand
ducats worth of goods from
Valencia to Algiers, and on the
31st of July 1579 she gave the
Trinitarian monks, Juan Gil and
Antón de la Bella, a sum of two
hundred and fifty ducats to be
applied to her son's ransom. On
his side Cervantes was
indefatigable, and towards the
end of 1579 he arranged to
secure a frigate; but the plot
was revealed to Hassan by Juan
Blanco de Paz, a Dominican monk,
who appears to have conceived an
unaccountable hatred of
Cervantes. Once more the
conspirator's life was spared by
Hassan who, it is recorded,
declared that "so long as he had
the maimed Spaniard in safe
keeping, his Christians, ships
and city were secure." On the
29th of May 1580 the two
Trinitarians arrived in Algiers:
they were barely in time, for
Hassan's term of office was
drawing to a close, and the
arrangement of any ransom was a
slow process, involving much
patient bargaining. Hassan
refused to accept less than five
hundred gold ducats for his
slave; the available funds fell
short of this amount, and the
balance was collected from the
Christian traders of Algiers.
Cervantes was already embarked
for Constantinople when the
money was paid on the 19th of
September 1580. The first use
that he made of his liberty was
to cause affidavits of his
proceedings at Algiers to be
drawn up; he sailed for Spain
towards the end of October,
landed at Denia in November, and
made his way to Madrid. He
signed an information before a
notary in that city on the 18th
of December 1580.
These dates prove that he
cannot, as is often alleged,
have served under Alva in the
Portuguese campaign of 1580:
that campaign ended with the
battle of Alcántara on the 25th
of August 1580. It seems
certain, however, that he
visited Portugal soon after his
return from Algiers, and in May
1581 he was sent from Thomar on
a mission to Oran. Construed
literally, a formal statement of
his services, signed by
Cervantes on the 21st of May
1590, makes it appear that he
served in the Azores campaigns
of 1582-83; but the wording of
the document is involved, the
claims of Cervantes are confused
with those of his brother
Rodrigo (who was promoted ensign
at the Azores), and on the whole
it is doubtful if he took part
in either of the expeditions
under Santa Cruz. In any case,
the stories of his residence in
Portugal, and of his love
affairs with a noble Portuguese
lady who bore him a daughter,
are simple inventions. From
1582-3 to 1587 Cervantes seems
to have written copiously for
the stage, and in the Adjunta
al Parnaso he mentions
several of his plays as "worthy
of praise"; these were Los
Tratos de Argel, La
Numancia, La Gran
Turquesa, La Batalla
naval, La Jerusalem,
La Amaranta ó la de Mayo,
El Bosque amoroso, La
Unica y Bizarra Ársinda --
"and many others which I do not
remember, but that which I most
prize and pique myself on was,
and is, one called La Confusa
which, with all respect to as
many sword-and-cloak plays as
have been staged up to the
present, may take a prominent
place as being good among the
best." Of these only Los
Tratos de Argel (or El
Trato de Argel) and La
Numancia have survived, and,
though La Numancia
contains many fine rhetorical
passages, both plays go to prove
that the author's genius was not
essentially dramatic. In
February 1584 he obtained a
license to print a pastoral
novel entitled Primera parte
de la Galatea, the copyright
of which he sold on the 14th of
June to Blas de Robles, a
bookseller at Alcalá de Henares,
for 1336 reales. On the 12th of
December he married Catalina de
Palacios Salazar y Vozmediano of
Esquivias, eighteen years his
junior. The Galatea was
published in the spring of 1585,
and is frequently said to relate
the story of Cervantes'
courtship, and to introduce
various distinguished writers
under pastoral names. These
assertions must be received with
great reserve. The birth of an
illegitimate daughter, borne to
Cervantes by a certain Ana
Francisca de Rojas, is referred
to 1584, and earlier in that
same year the Galatea had
passed the censor; with few
exceptions, the identifications
of the characters in the book
with personages in real life are
purely conjectural. These
circumstances, together with the
internal evidence of the work,
point to the conclusion that the
Galatea was begun and
completed before 1583. It was
only twice reprinted -- once at
Lisbon (1590), and once at Paris
(1611) -- during the author's
lifetime; but it won him a
measure of repute, it was his
favorite among his books, and
during the thirty years that
remained to him he repeatedly
announced the second part which
is promised conditionally in the
text. However, it is not greatly
to be regretted that the
continuation was never
published; though the Galatea
is interesting as the first
deliberate bid for fame on the
part of a great genius, it is an
exercise in the pseudo-classic
literature introduced into Italy
by Sannazaro, and transplanted
to Spain by the Portuguese
Montemor; and, ingenious or
eloquent as the Renaissance
prose-pastoral may be, its
innate artificiality stifles
Cervantes' rich and glowing
realism. He himself recognized
its defects; with all his
weakness for the Galatea,
he ruefully allows that it
"proposes something and
concludes nothing." Its
comparative failure was a
serious matter for Cervantes who
had no other resource but his
pen; his plays were probably
less successful than his account
of them would imply, and at any
rate play-writing was not at
this time a lucrative occupation
in Spain. No doubt the death of
his father on the 13th of June
1585 increased the burden of
Cervantes' responsibilities; and
the dowry of his wife, as
appears from a document dated
the 9th of August 1586,
consisted of nothing more
valuable than five vines, an
orchard, some household
furniture, four beehives,
forty-five hens and chickens,
one cock and a crucible.
It had become evident that
Cervantes could not gain his
bread by literature, and in 1587
he went to Seville to seek
employment in connection with
the provisioning of the
invincible Armada. He was placed
under the orders of Antonio de
Guevara, and before the 24th of
February was excommunicated for
excessive zeal in collecting
wheat at Écija. During the next
few months he was engaged in
gathering stores at Seville and
the adjacent district, and after
the defeat of the Armada he was
retained as commissary to the
galleys. Tired of the drudgery,
and without any prospect of
advancement, on the 21st of May
1590 Cervantes drew up a
petition to the king, recording
his services and applying for
one of four posts then vacant in
the American colonies: a place
in the department of public
accounts in New Granada, the
governorship of Soconusco in
Guatemala, the position of
auditor to the galleys at
Cartagena, or that of
corregidor in the city of La
Paz. The petition was referred
to the Council of the Indies,
and was annotated with the
words: "Let him look for
something nearer home."
Cervantes perforce remained at
his post; the work was hard,
uncongenial and ill-paid, and
the salary was in constant
arrears. In November 1590 he was
in such straits that he borrowed
money to buy himself a suit of
clothes, and in August 1592 his
sureties were called upon to
make good a deficiency of 795
reales in his accounts. His
thoughts turned to literature
once more, and on the 5th of
September 1592, he signed a
contract with Rodrigo Osorio
undertaking to write six plays
at fifty ducats each, no payment
to be made unless Osorio
considered that each of these
pieces was one of the best ever
produced in Spain. Nothing came
of this agreement, and it
appears that, between the date
of signing it and the 19th of
September, Cervantes was
imprisoned (for reasons unknown
to us) at Castro del Río. He was
speedily released, and continued
to perquisition as before in
Andalusia; but his literary
ambitions were not dead, and in
May 1595 he won the first prize
-- three silver spoons -- at a
poetical tourney held in honor
of St. Hyacinth at Saragossa.
Shortly afterwards Cervantes
found himself in difficulties
with the exchequer officials. He
entrusted a sum of 7400 reales
to a merchant named Simón Freire
de Lima with instructions to pay
the amount into the treasury at
Madrid; the agent became
bankrupt and absconded, leaving
Cervantes responsible for the
deficit. By some means the money
was raised, and the debt was
liquidated on the 21st of
January 1597. But Cervantes'
position was shaken, and his
unbusinesslike habits lent
themselves to misinterpretation.
On the 6th of September 1597 he
was ordered to find sureties
that he would present himself at
Madrid within twenty days, and
there submit to the exchequer
vouchers for all official moneys
collected by him in Granada and
elsewhere. No such sureties
being available, he was
committed to Seville jail, but
was released on the 1st of
December on condition that he
complied with the original order
of the court within thirty days.
He was apparently unable to find
bail, was dismissed from the
public service, and sank into
extreme poverty. During a
momentary absence from Seville
in February 1599, he was again
summoned to Madrid by the
treasury, but does not appear to
have obeyed: it is only too
likely that he had not the money
to pay for the journey. There is
some reason to think that he was
imprisoned at Seville in 1602,
but nothing positive is known of
his existence between 1600 and
the 8th of February 1603: at the
latter date he seems to have
been at Valladolid, to which
city Phillip III had removed
the court in 1601.
Since the publication of the
Galatea in 1585 Cervantes'
contributions to literature had
been limited to occasional
poems. In 1591 he published a
ballad in Andrés de Villalta's
Flor de varios y nuevos
romances; in 1595 he
composed a poem, already
mentioned, to celebrate the
canonization of St. Hyacinth; in
1596 he wrote a sonnet
ridiculing Medina Sidonia's
tardy entry into Cadiz after the
English invaders had retired,
and in the same year his sonnet
lauding Santa Cruz was printed
in Cristóbal. Mosquera de
Figueroa's Comentario en
breve compendio de disciplina
militar; to 1597 is assigned
a sonnet (the authenticity of
which is disputed) commemorative
of the poet Herrera; in 1598 he
wrote two sonnets and a copy of
quintillas on the death
of Philip II; and in 1602 a
complimentary sonnet from his
pen appeared in the second
edition of Lope de Vega’s
Dragontea. Curiously enough,
it is by Lope de Vega that
Don Quixote is first
mentioned. Writing to an unknown
correspondent (apparently a
physician) on the 14th of August
1604, Lope de Vega says that "no
poet is as bad as Cervantes, nor
so foolish as to praise Don
Quixote", and he goes on to
speak of his own plays as being
odious to Cervantes. It is
obvious that the two men had
quarrelled since 1602, and that
Lope de Vega smarted under the
satire of himself and his works
in Cervantes' forthcoming book;
Don Quixote may have been
circulated in manuscript, or may
even have been printed before
the official license was granted
on the 26th of September 1604.
It was published early in 1605,
and was dedicated to the seventh
duke de Béjar in phrases largely
borrowed from the dedication in
Herrera's edition (1580) of
Garcilaso de la Vega, and from
Francisco de Medina's preface to
that work.
The mention of Bernardo de la
Vega's Pastor de Iberia
shows that the sixth chapter of
Don Quixote cannot have
been written before 1591. In the
prologue Cervantes describes his
masterpiece as being "just what
might be begotten in a jail"; on
the strength of this passage, it
has been thought that he
conceived the story, and perhaps
began writing it, during one of
his terms of imprisonment at
Seville between 1597 and 1602.
Within a few weeks of its
publication at Madrid, three
pirated editions of Don
Quixote were issued at
Lisbon; a second authorized
edition, imperfectly revised,
was hurried out at Madrid; and
another reprint appeared at
Valencia with an aprobación
dated 18th July 1605. With the
exception of Alemán's Guzmán
de Alfarache, no Spanish
book of the period was more
successful. Modern criticism is
prone to regard Don Quixote
as a symbolic, didactic or
controversial work intended to
bring about radical reforms in
church and state. Such
interpretations did not occur to
Cervantes' contemporaries, nor
to Cervantes himself. There is
no reason for rejecting his
plain statement that his main
object was to ridicule the
romances of chivalry, which in
their latest developments had
become a tissue of tiresome
absurdities. It seems clear that
his first intention was merely
to parody these extravagances in
a short story; but as he
proceeded the immense
possibilities of the subject
became more evident to him, and
he ended by expanding his work
into a brilliant panorama of
Spanish society as it existed
during the 16th century. Nobles,
knights, poets, courtly
gentlemen, priests, traders,
farmers, barbers, muleteers,
scullions and convicts;
accomplished ladies, impassioned
damsels, Moorish beauties,
simple-hearted country-girls and
kindly kitchen-wenches of
questionable morals -- all these
are presented with the genial
fidelity which comes of
sympathetic insight. The
immediate vogue of Don
Quixote was due chiefly to
its variety of incident, to its
wealth of comedy bordering on
farce, and perhaps also to its
keen thrusts at eminent
contemporaries; its reticent
pathos, its large humanity, and
its penetrating criticism of
life were less speedily
appreciated.
Meanwhile, on the 12th of April
1605, Cervantes authorized his
publisher to proceed against the
Lisbon booksellers who
threatened to introduce their
piratical reprints into Castile.
By June the citizens of
Valladolid already regarded Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza as
proverbial types. Less
gratifying experiences awaited
the popular author. On the 27th
of June 1605 Gaspar de Ezpeleta,
a Navarrese gentleman of
dissolute life, was wounded
outside the lodging-house in
which Cervantes and his family
lived; he was taken indoors, was
nursed by Cervantes' sister
Magdalena, and died on the 29th
of June. That same day
Cervantes, his natural daughter
(Isabel de Saavedra), his sister
Andrea and her daughter were
lodged in jail on suspicion of
being indirectly concerned in
Ezpeleta's death; one of the
witnesses made damaging charges
against Cervantes' daughter, but
no substantial evidence was
produced, and the prisoners were
released. Little is known of
Cervantes' life between 1605 and
1608. A Relación of the
festivities held to celebrate
the birth of Phillip IV, and a
certain Carta á don Diego
Astudillo Carrillo have been
erroneously ascribed to him;
during these three years he
apparently wrote nothing beyond
three sonnets, and one of these
is of doubtful authenticity. The
depositions of the Valladolid
enquiry show that he was living
in poverty five months after the
appearance of Don Quixote,
and the fact that he borrowed
450 reales from his publisher
before November 1607 would
convey the idea that his
position improved slowly, if at
all. But it is difficult to
reconcile this view of his
circumstances with the details
concerning his illegitimate
daughter revealed in documents
discovered centuries later.
Isabel de Saavedra was stated to
be a spinster when arrested at
Valladolid in June 1605; the
settlement of her marriage with
Luis de Molina in 1608 describes
her as the widow of Diego Sanz,
as the mother of a daughter
eight months old, and as owning
house-property of some value.
These particulars are
perplexing, and the situation is
further complicated by the
publication of a deed in which
Cervantes declares that he
himself is the real owner of
this house-property, and that
his daughter has merely a
life-interest in it. This claim
may be regarded as a legal
fiction; it cannot easily be
reconciled with Cervantes'
statement towards the end of his
life, that he was dependent on
the bounty of the count de Lemos
and of Bernardo de Sandoval,
cardinal-archbishop of Toledo.
In 1609 he joined the newly
founded confraternity of the
Slaves of the Most Blessed
Sacrament; in 1610 Lemos was
appointed viceroy of Naples, and
Cervantes was keenly
disappointed at not being chosen
to accompany his patron. In 1611
he lost his sister Magdalena,
who was buried by the charity of
the Tertiaries of Saint Francis;
in 1612, he joined the Academia
Selvaje, and there appears to
have renewed his former friendly
relations with Lope de Vega; in
1613 he dedicated his Novelas
exemplares to the count de
Lemos, and disposed of his
rights for 1600 reales and
twenty-four copies of the book.
The twelve tales in this volume,
some of them written very much
later than others, are of
unequal merit, but they contain
some of the writer's best work,
and the two picaresque stories
-- Rinconete y Cortadillo
and the Coloquio de los
perros -- are superb
examples of their kind, and
would alone entitle Cervantes to
take rank with the greatest
masters of Spanish prose. In
1614 he published the Viage
del Parnaso, a burlesque
poem suggested by the Viaggio
in Parnaso (1582) of the
Perugian poet Cesare Caporali.
It contains some interesting
autobiographical passages, much
flattery of contemporary
poetasters, and a few happy
satirical touches; but, though
it is Cervantes' most serious
bid for fame as a poet, it has
seldom been reprinted, and would
probably have been forgotten but
for an admirably humorous
postscript in prose which is
worthy of the author at his
best. In the preface to his
Ocho comedies y echo entremeses
nuevos (1615) he
good-humoredly admits that his
dramatic works found no favor
with managers, and, when this
collection was first reprinted
(1749), the editor advanced the
fantastic theory that the
comedias were deliberate
exercises in absurdity, intended
to parody the popular dramas of
the day. This view cannot be
maintained, but a sharp
distinction must be drawn
between the eight set plays and
the eight interludes; with one
or two exceptions, the
comedias or set plays are
unsuccessful experiments in Lope
de Vega's manner, while the
entremeses or interludes,
particularly those in prose, are
models of spontaneous gaiety and
ingenious wit.
In the preface to the Novelas
exemplares Cervantes had
announced the speedy appearance
of the sequel to Don Quixote
which he had vaguely promised at
the end of the first part. He
was at work on the fifty-ninth
chapter of his continuation when
he learned that he had been
anticipated by Alonso Fernandez
de Avellaneda of Tordesillas,
whose Segundo tomo del
ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de
la Mancha was published at
Tarragona in 1614. On the
assumption that Fernandez de
Avellaneda is a pseudonym, this
spurious sequel has been
ascribed to the king's
confessor, Luis de Aliaga, to
Cervantes' old enemy, Blanco de
Paz, to his old friend,
Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola,
to the three great dramatists,
Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina
and Ruiz de Alarcón, to Alonso
Fernandez, to Juan José Martí,
to Alfonso Lamberto, to Luis de
Granada, and probably to others.
Some of these attributions are
manifestly absurd -- for
example, Luis de Granada died
seventeen years before the first
part of Don Quixote was
published -- and all of them are
improbable conjectures; if
Avellaneda be not the real name
of the author, his identity is
still undiscovered. His book is
not devoid of literary talent
and robust humor, and possibly
he began it under the impression
that Cervantes was no more
likely to finish Don Quixote
than to finish the Galatea.
He should, however, have
abandoned his project on reading
the announcement in the preface
to the Novelas exemplares;
what he actually did was to
disgrace himself by writing an
insolent preface taunting
Cervantes with his physical
defects, his moral infirmities,
his age, loneliness and
experiences in jail. He was too
intelligent to imagine that his
continuation could hold its own
against the authentic sequel,
and malignantly avowed his
intention of being first in the
field and so spoiling Cervantes'
market. It is quite possible
that Don Quixote might
have been left incomplete but
for this insulting intrusion;
Cervantes was a leisurely writer
and was, as he states, engaged
on El Engaño à los ojos,
Las Semanas del Jardín
and El Famoso Bernardo,
none of which have been
preserved. Avellaneda forced him
to concentrate his attention on
his masterpiece, and the
authentic second part of Don
Quixote appeared towards the
end of 1615. No book more
signally contradicts the maxim,
quoted by the Bachelor Carrasco,
that "no second part was ever
good." It is true that the last
fourteen chapters are damaged by
undignified denunciations of
Avellaneda; but, apart from
this, the second part of Don
Quixote is an improvement on
the first. The humor is more
subtle and mature; the style is
of more even excellence; and the
characters of the bachelor and
of the physician, Pedro Recio de
Agüero, are presented with a
more vivid effect than any of
the secondary characters in the
first part. Cervantes had
clearly profited by the
criticism of those who objected
to "the countless cudgellings
inflicted on Señor Don Quixote",
and to the irrelevant
interpolation of extraneous
stories in the text. Don Quixote
moves through the second part
with unruffled dignity; Sancho
Panza loses something of his
rustic cunning, but he gains in
wit, sense and manners. The
original conception is unchanged
in essentials, but it is more
logically developed, and there
is a notable progress in
construction. Cervantes had
grown to love his knight and
squire, and he understood his
own creations better than at the
outset; more completely master
of his craft, he wrote his
sequel with the unfaltering
confidence of a renowned artist
bent on sustaining his
reputation.
The first part of Don Quixote
had been reprinted at Madrid in
1608; it had been produced at
Brussels in 1607 and 1611, and
at Milan in 1610; it had been
translated into English in 1612
and into French in 1614.
Corvantes was celebrated in and
out of Spain, but his celebrity
had not brought him wealth. The
members of the French special
embassy, sent to Madrid in
February 1615, under the
Commandeur de Sillery, heard
with amazement that the author
of the Galatea, the
Novelas exemplares and
Don Quixote was "old, a
soldier, a gentleman and poor."
But his trials were almost at an
end. Though failing in health,
he worked assiduously at Los
Trabajos de Persiles y
Sigismunda, which, as he had
jocosely prophesied in the
preface to the second part of
Don Quixote, would be
"either the worst or the best
book ever written in our
tongue." It is the most
carefully written of his prose
works, and the least animated or
attractive of them; signs of
fatigue and of waning powers are
unmistakably visible. Cervantes
was not destined to see it in
print. He was attacked by
dropsy, and, on the 18th of
April 1616, received the
sacrament of extreme unction;
next day he wrote the dedication
of Persiles y Sigismunda
to the count de Lemos -- the
most moving and gallant of
farewells. He died at Madrid in
the Calle del León on the 23rd
of April; he was borne from his
house "with his face uncovered",
according to the rule of the
Tertiaries of St. Francis, and
on the 24th of April was buried
in the church attached to the
convent of the Trinitarian nuns
in the Calle de Cantarranas.
There he rests -- the story of
his remains being removed in
1633 to the Calle del
Humilladero has no foundation in
fact -- but the exact position
of his grave is unknown. Early
in 1617 Persiles y Sigismunda
was published, and passed
through eight editions within
two years; but the interest in
it soon died away, and it was
not reprinted between 1625 and
1719. Cervantes' wife died
without issue on the 31st of
October 1626; his natural
daughter, who survived both the
child of her first marriage and
her second husband, died on the
20th of September 1652.
Cervantes is represented solely
by his works. The Novelas
exemplares alone would give
him the foremost place among
Spanish novelists; Don
Quixote entitles him to rank
with the greatest writers of all
time: "children turn its leaves,
young people read it, grown men
understand it, old folk praise
it." It has outlived all changes
of literary taste, and is even
more popular today than it was
centuries ago.
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