Cervantes’ life and times
Elmo Fonseka
Spanish novelist, playwright, and poet, the creator of Don Quixote,
the most famous figure in Spanish literature. Although Cervantes’
reputation rests almost entirely on his portrait of the knight of La
Mancha, El ingenioso hidalgo, his literary production was considerable.
William Shakespeare, Cervantes’ great contemporary, had evidently read
Don Quixote, but it is most unlike that Cervantes had ever heard of
Shakespeare. In spite of his fame, Cervantes remained a poor man.
For if he like a madman lived,
At least he like wise old died.
(Don Quixote epitaph)
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra lived an unsettled life of hardship and
adventure. He was born in Alcalá de Henares, a small town near Madrid,
into a family of the minor nobility. His mother was Leonor de Cortinas;
she gave birth to seven children, Cervantes was the fourth. Rodrigo de
Cervantes, his father, was an apothecary-surgeon.
 |
|
Miguel de
Cervantes |
It has been argued that the family members were of converso origin,
Jews who had converted to Christianity. Jews also appear as characters
in several of Cervantes’ plays and novelas.
Much of his childhood Cervantes spent moving from town to town while
his father sought work. After studying in Madrid (1568-69), where his
teacher was the humanist Juan López de Hoyos, he went to Rome in the
service of Guilio Acquavita, who became a cardinal in 1570. In the same
year Cervantes joined a Spanish regiment in Naples. He took part in the
sea battle at Lepanto (1571), during which he received a wound that
permanently maimed his left hand. Cervantes was extremely proud of his
role in the famous victory and of the nickname he earned, el manco de
Lepanto (the cripple of Lepanto). After recuperation in Messina, Sicily,
he continued his military career.
In 1575 he set out with his brother Rodrigo on the galley El Sol for
Spain. The ship was captured by pirates under Arnaute Mami and the
brothers were taken to Algiers as slaves. Rodrigo was ransomed in 1577.
The Moors though that Cervantes was more valuable captive because he had
carried letters written by important persons. Cervantes spent five years
as a slave until his family could raise enough money to pay his ransom.
During this period he tried to escape several times without success.
Cervantes was released in 1580, with the payment of 500 escudos raised
by his family and the Trinitarian order. He returned to Madrid where he
held several temporary, ill-paid administrative post. His first play,
LOS TRATOS DE ARGEL (1580), was based on his experiences as a Moorish
captive. In 1584 he married 18 years younger Catalina de Salazar y
Palacios, the daughter of a well-to-do peasant.
The marriage was childless. He had also a daughter, Isabel de
Saavedra, from an affair he had with an actress, Ana Franca de Rojas (or
Ana de Villafranca). Isabel worked as a servant in the family but her
way of life caused him much worries. The other members of the household
included his mother and two unmarried sisters. In the late 1580s
Cervantes left his wife. During the next 20 years he led a nomadic
existence, also working as a purchasing agent for the Spanish Armada and
a tax collector. He suffered a bankruptcy and was imprisoned at least
twice (1597 and 1602) because of fiscal irregularities. It is generally
believed that Cervantes was honest, but a victim of a thankless task.
For a period he was excummunicated for expropriating grain from Church
stores.
Between the years 1596 and 1600 he lived primarily in Seville, and by
1604 he had moved to Valladolid, where Philip III had established his
court. In 1606 Cervantes settled permanently in Madrid, where he spent
the rest of his life. His economic situation remained difficult.
When a nobleman, Gaspar de Ezpeleta, was mortally wounded on the
street in front of Cervantes’ house, and died there, Cervantes and the
women in his household were jailed on suspicion of having had something
to do with his death. After one Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda published
a poor sequel to Don Quixote, Cervantes answered to the challenge and
produced the second part, which appeared in 1615. He died on April 23,
1616. Three days before he had finished his novel The Exploits of
Persiles and Sigismunda, dedicated to the Count of Lemos.
“The truth lies in a man’s dreams... perhaps in this unhappy world of
ours whose madness is better than a foolish sanity.”
Cervantes started his literary career in Andalusia in 1580. Accroding
to Cervantes, he wrote 20-30 plays, but only two copies have survived.
His first major work was the GALATEA (1585), a pastoral romance. It
received little contemporary notice and Cervantes never wrote the
continuation for it, which he repeatedly promised. He also mentions the
book in Don Quixote, where the priest says to the barber: “His book
exhibits some faculty of invention, but it proposes things and arrives
at no conclusion. In the meanwhile let us wait for the continuation
which he promises us; with better luck he may give us something that his
wretched circumstances have hitherto denied him.”
In his play EL TRATO DE ARGEL, printed in 1784, Cervantes dealt with
the life of Christian slaves in Algiers. Aside from his plays, his most
ambitious work in verse was VIAJE DEL PARNASO (1614), an allegory which
consists largely of a rather tedious though good-natured reviews of
contemporary poets. Cervantes himself realized that he was deficient in
poetic gifts. Later generations have considered him one of the world’s
worst poets. NOVELAS EJEMPLARES (1613, Exemplary Novels), a collection
of tales, contained some of his best prose work about love, idealism,
gypsy life, madmen, and talking dogs. At the time he wrote the work, the
Spanish Moriscos (Muslims) were expelled from Spain.
Tradition maintains, that he wrote Don Quixote in prison at
Argamasilla in La Mancha. Cervantes’ idea was to give a picture of real
life and manners and to express himself in clear language, “in simple,
honest, and well-measured words,” as he stated in the prologue to Part I
of Don Quixote. The intrusion of everyday speech into a literary context
was acclaimed by the reading public.
The author stayed poor until 1605, when the first part of Don Quixote
appeared. Although it did not make Cervantes rich, it brought him
international appreciation as a man of letters. |
