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 MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA was born October
9th, 1547, at Alcala de Henares, near Madrid, of an old Castilian
family. He studied for two years at the University of Salamanca,
afterwards at Madrid. Here he entered the household of Bishop
(afterwards Cardinal) Acquaviva, with whom he went to Rome. In
1569 he joined the expedition then forming under Marc Antonio
Colonna to resist Selim II, who had seized Cyprus and was threatening
the Mediterranean. In the great sea-fight of Lepanto (1571) Cervantes
distinguished himself and was severely wounded. He continued
in active service in Italy and elsewhere till 1576, when the
vessel in which he was returning to Spain was captured by the
Moors. For nearly five years he remained a prisoner and slave
at Algiers, making numerous but fruitless attempts to escape,
till at last he was ransomed by his friends for 500 gold ducats.
He rejoined the navy, and served there till his marriage in 1584.
From this time he devoted himself to literature in Valladolid
and Madrid.
His first attempts were dramatic. But the brilliant genius
of Lope
de Vega was in the ascendant, and the sombre tragedies of
Cervantes were neglected. Being very poor, he sought and obtained
the post of assistant purveyor to the fleet. This brought him
to Seville, where he lived for many years, and wrote some of
the Novelas Ejemplares, published long afterwards. In
1596 he was involved in difficulties connected with the bankruptcy
of a friend. Between 1598 and 1602 he appears to have been in
a debtor's prison in a small town of La Mancha. Here, being then
past middle life, he wrote the first part of Don Quixote,
published in 1605. It gained instant popularity: 4 editions were
published in that year; but it brought little profit to the author.
The last 10 years of his life were spent at Madrid. Not till
1615 was the second part of Don Quixote completed and
published--an unusual instance of prolonged vigour, for the end
of this great work equals the beginning. Cervantes died April
23, 1616; the same day of the same year and month as Shakespeare:
though really ten days earlier, as the English calendar was not
yet reformed. He was buried in the Convent of the Trinity, but
without a monument. The convent, with its tombs, was removed
fourteen years afterwards, and no one knew where he lay.
His great work is full of wisdom, apart from the delight which
it has given many generations of old and young. A poet is not
a moralist clothing sermon in allegory. But if he is really great
he will not fail, while doing his proper work, to throw side-lights
on difficult problems of life and character. Thus it is that
the two characters in this masterpiece illustrate the two types
of mental disease. The balance between the inward workings of
the mind and outward impressions, which constitutes mental health,
is shown as distributed in two opposite ways. In Don Quixote
thought tyrannises over sensation; in Sancho sensation overwhelms
thought. Thus two insane states, could they be combined, would
result in sanity. Each in his own way is swayed by the logic
of Feeling: the knight by eager desire for the restoration of
the imagined ideal of chivalry; the squire by greed for gain
and power. Each, apart from his craze, has admirable qualities:
the one is an accomplished gentleman, brave, well read, generous,
and courteous; the other is affectionate and shrewd. Deep insight
is shown in the effect of long intercourse with the master on
the dull wit of the man; and in the means taken by his friends
to dissipate the knight's delusions. The varied incidents of
the story, full of local colour, are of interest as enduring
as the Iliad. Cervantes announced his purpose to be ridicule
of the old books of chivalry. By these he meant not the simple
and heroic ballads of the Cid and of Roland, but
the turgid, unreal prose romances of the 15th and 16th centuries,
which bore no relation to human life and deadened the feeling
for noble art. He sought to revive the poetic spirit by bringing
it from cloudland to earth. The story of the Algerian captive,
inserted with consummate skill into his narrative, brings the
fantastic unrealities of the romances into admirable contrast
with the tragic struggles of actual life, which Cervantes knew
so well.
Purchase books
by Cervantes
| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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