Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

A Spanish author, born at Alcála de Henares, Spain, in 1547; died at Madrid, 23

April, 1616. Of Cervantes it may be most truly said that the narrative of his life is

no less fraught with interest than the most exciting novel of adventure. He

received the best part of his early training in a school at Madrid conducted by the

cleric, Juan Lopez de Hoyos. Despite sundry affirmations to the contrary effect

by this or that biographer he does not seem to have attended any of the

universities then flourishing in Spain. However, as was the case with many of the

leading Spanish spirits of the age, he had early an opportunity to perfect his

training by a sojourn in the land where the movement of the Renaissance had

begun, for when but twenty-one years of age, he became attached to the suite of

an Italian prelate who was on a mission to the Spanish Courts. With this

eccelesiastic, later Cardinal Acquaviva, he went to Rome. Once in Italy he

doubtless began straightway to familiarize himself with Italian literature, a

knowledge of which is so readily discernible in his own productions. He did not

find the service of the cardinal to his liking, for in a short time he was figuring as

a simple volunteer among the Spanish troops that played a part in the campaign

against the Turks. He fought bravely on board a vessel in the great battle of

Lepanto in 1571, and was shot through the left hand in such a way that he never

after had the entire use of it.

When his wound was healed he engaged in another campaign, one directed

against the Moslem in Northern Africa, and then after living a while longer in Italy

he finally determined to return home. But the ship on which he was making the

trip back to Spain was captured by Corsairs, who took him, with his fellow

captives, to Algiers. There he spent five years, undergoing great sufferings, some

of which seem to be reflected in the episode of the "Captive" in "Don Quixote",

and in scenes of the play, "El trato de Argel". Unsuccessful in several attempts

at an escape, he was at last ransomed just when he was in great danger of being

sent to Constantinople. Had he really been taken there the world would probably

be now without its greatest novel, the imperishable story of the Knight of La

Mancha. Back once more in Spain Cervantes is said but on no too certain

evidence, to have spent a year or two in military service. However that may be,

he was certainly engaged in literary pursuits from 1582 on; for about this time, a

love affair--his attachment to Catalina de Palacios whom he soon made his

wife--gave the impulse to the first literary work to bring him public notice. This

was the "Galatea" a pastoral romance after the manner already established in

the peninsula by the "Menina e moca" in Portuguese of Bernardim Ribeiro and

the "Diana enamorada" of Jorge de Montemayor. It is inferior to the "Diana" and

as artificial as most works of its kind, still it exhibits a certain power of

inventiveness and some depth of real emotion on the part of its author.

Cervantes next turned his attention to the drama, hoping to derive an income

from that source, but the plays which he composed failed to achieve their

purpose. In the main they show that he was out of his element in purveying for

the stage, that he lacked dramatic instinct, and had never mastered the details of

the technic of dramatic art. He is least infelicitous in two of his plays, the "Trato

de Argel", already mentioned, and impassioned tragedy, "Numancia". This latter

is the best of all his dramas and yet, correctly appreciated, it is rather a powerful

patriotic declamation than a piece of real scenic excellence. It was not printed

until 1784.

What he did in the years directly following the time when he renounced the hope

of becoming a great dramatic poet is hardly clear. It is safe to assume that he

was in sore straits, or he would not have been content to earn his livelihood as a

collector of taxes in the province of Granada. An irregularity in his accounts, one

due rather to some subordinate than to himself, led to his incarceration for a

while during 1597 at Seville. If a remark which Cervantes himself makes in the

prologue of "Don Quixote" is to be taken literally, the idea of the work, though

hardly the writing of its "First Part", as some have maintained, occurred to him in

prison. At all events, during this period of tribulation he must have been evolving

in his mind the great work of fiction soon to be published as "El ingenioso hidalgo

Don Quijote de La Mancha", whereof the first part was printed in 1605. (The

English spelling, "Quixote" transliterates an early Spanish spelling with "x",

current at a time when "x" and "j" were still frequently interchanged. On

etymological grounds the "x" represents the original sound.)

The vogue obtained by Cervantes's story led to the publication of a continuation

of it by an unknown who masquerades under the name of Fernandez Avellaneda.

In self-defence Cervantes produced his own continuation, or "Second Part", of

"Don Quixote", which made its appearance some ten years after the first part.

Two years before this event, that is, in 1613, he put forth a collection of tales, the

"Novelas ejemplares", some of which had been written earlier. Not included in the

original form of the "Exemplary Tales" is the novelette, "La tía fingida" (The

Fictitious Aunt), now often printed with them. Some critics would deny it to

Cervantes, and it appears not to have been printed until 1814. On the whole, the

"Novelas ejemplares" are worthy of the fame of Cervantes; they bear the same

stamp of genius as the "Don Quixote". The picaroon strain, already made familiar

in Spain by the "Lazarillo de Tormes" and its successors, appears in one or

another of them especially in the "Rinconete y Cortadillo", which is the best of

all. The remaining works of our author embrace his "Entremeses" (Interludes),

little dramatic trifles not wholly negligible; the "Viaje del Parnaso", a rhymed

review of contemporary poets written terza rima; and the "Persiles y

Sigismunda", a novel of adventurous travel completed just before his death.

For the world at large interest in Cervantes centres particularly in "Don Quixote",

and this has been regarded chiefly as a novel of purpose. It is stated again and

again that he wrote it in order to ridicule the romances of chivalry and to destroy

the popularity of a form of literature which for much more than a century had

engrossed the attention of a large proportion of those who could read among his

countrymen and which had been communicated by them to the ignorant. Byron

has taken a very tragic view of the results wrought by the Spanish romancer,

according to him:

Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away,

And therefore have his volumes done such harm

That all their glory, as a composition

Was dearly purchased by his land's perdition. (Don Juan, XIII, 11.)

There is a grain of truth, and much exeggeration in Byron's statement. It is true

that the Spanish writer set out with the purpose of assailing the books of chivalry;

the friend whom he introduces into the prologue of the work asserts that from the

beginning to end it is an attack upon them. Moreover, these works had long

called for attack. The countless novels of knightly daring which had followed in

the wake of the very worthy "Amadis de Gaula" had obtained an unwonted vogue

and had created an air of false idealism which tended to leave Spain unduly in

the rear of advancing civilization, for, cherishing them, she clung too closely to

the medieval past. Serious historians had cried out against them, so had

scholars, theologians, preachers and mystics, and yet many, even the greatest

in the land, continued to be no less ardent admirers of them than the innkeeper

in the first part of "Don Quixote". For administrative reasons, the Emperor

Charles V felt compelled in 1553 to forbid the introduction of the chivalrous

romances into the American Indies, and this law the Spanish Parliament would

fain have extended to Spain itself in 1558, in order to penalize the further

publication of works of the class. But, up to 1602, the novels of knight-errantry

continued to appear in constantly new although weaker forms, for this was the

date of the "Don Policisne de Beocia" of Juan de Silva. Three years later,

Cervantes's book was published, and it instantly accomplished what all previous

agitation had failed to achieve, for after its appearance no new chivalresque

romance was issued, and the reprinting of the old ones practically ceased.

Now, granting that Cervantes gave the coup de grace to the books of chivalry, we

must not overlook the consideration that the lasting value of "Don Quixote" is not

to be sought in the fact that it killed the taste for the medieval stories of

chivalrous adventure, which parodied with fatal efficiency, but rather in the fact

that the author achieved something immeasurably greater than what he had

premeditated. He wrote a novel which as a social document has never been

surpassed in the annals of narrative fiction, one in which the main interest is

found in the behaviour of the two contrasting yet mutually complementary, figures

of Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza, thrown by their creator into

contact with a world of materialism, where but scanty respect is entertained for

the idealistic past. To say that the decline of Spain is in any way attributable to

the success of "Don Quixote" is only Byronic hyperbole; independently of the

existence of this marvellous product of the fancy of the genius named Miguel de

Cervantes, Spain's loss of its former power is amply explained by political,

social, and moral phenomena of various kinds.

From time to time there come forward those who persist in believing that "Don

Quixote" was intended to satirize certain important noble personages of the time.

It was aimed at the Duke of Lerma, say some; at the Duke of Medina Sidonia,

say others. This latter idea was echoed in England by Defoe in the Preface to his

"Serious Reflections during the Life, and Surprising Adventures of Robinson

Crusoe" (1720). The sober fact is that no foundation exists for any such

interpretations of the author's purpose. In the episodical by-plays, in one or

another intercalated tale such as that of Lucinda and Cardenio there may be

veiled references, satirical or not, to noted characters of the time but we have no

reason to suppose that underlying "Don Quixote" as awhole there is any serious

satirical purpose other than to attack the pseudo-chivalry. The book was probably

intended by Cervantes chiefly as a work of entertainment; as such it succeeded

in his time and as such it still elicits the enthusiatic interest of constantly

increasing generations of readers. The many attempts that have been made to

detect didactic purposes of different kinds in this or that by-factor of the novel

may be regarded as futile. Those persons are far astray who suppose that

Cervantes meant to assail the Inquisition, to attack the firmly rooted devotion to

the Blessed Virgin, or to deride the clergy as a class.

During its author's lifetime, the first part of the novel passed through at least nine

editions in Spanish. The edition of Brussels, 1607, went all over Northern Europe.

By that date it was known in England, and it was promptly placed under

contribution by the English playwrights. Thus Middleton utilized it, Ben Jonson

and Fletcher drew matter from it, and there is even a tradition that Shakespere

collaborated with Fletcher in the composition of a play based on tale of its

episodes. That a stranger should, in view of the success achieved by the book,

conceive the idea of writing a sequel to it is not surprising; Cervantes, in fact,

invited a continuation of it in the closing words of his first part. Notwithstanding

this, he became indignant when the so-called "Avellaneda" published his

prolongation of the adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and he

bestirred himself to furnish his own rounding out of the story and to make all

other spurious sequels impossible by killing off his hero. As to the personality

back of the pseudonym "Avellaneda" many surmises have been made Lope de

Vega has been suggested, so have Tirso de Molina and Juan Ruiz de Alarcon,

but all proposed identifications have to be rejected. Whoever in "Avellaneda" was,

it must be said in simple justice to him that his literary merits are not slight, and

that those critics err who seek to minimize them. He certainly reveals much

narrative power, considerable humour, a mastery of dialogue, and a forcible style.

Of the two parts written by Cervantes, the first has ever remained the favourite.

The second part is inferior to it in humorous effect; but, nevertheless, the second

part shows more constructive insight, better delineation of character, an improved

style, and more realism and probability in its action. The influence exerted by the

glorious work has been enormous, for what modern man of genius has not read

it? Among the more immediately imitative writings may be mentioned: in French

Charles Sorel's "Berger extravagant" and Marivaux's "Phasimond"; in English,

Butler's "Hudibras", Mrs. Charlotte Lennox's "The Female Quixote", and

Smollett's "Sir Launcelot Greaves"; in German, Wieland's "Don Silvio Rosala".

English and French playwrights have borrowed liberally also from the "Exemplary

Tales", Hardy, Fletcher, Massinger, and Rowley, to mention but a few, are much

indebted to them.

As a story, the "Persiles y Sigismunda", just completed at the time of

Cervantes's death, and published posthumously, is less interesting than his other

narrative works. The element of adventurous travel by sea and land, of which

much is made in the late Greek romances, is prominent here; it contains a

bewildering entanglement of love episodes, and the characters are always

narrating interminable tales which delay the progress of the action. As a result

the work is too prolix and becomes somewhat tedious despite the exuberance of

fancy and fertility of resource that characterize it. Its rhetoric is more pompous,

and in general there is in it greater elaboration of style than Cervantes was wont

to show in his compositions.

J.D.M. FORD

Transcribed by Joseph P. Thomas

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume III

Nihil Obstat, November 1, 1908. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor

Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

The Catholic Encyclopedia: NewAdvent.org