CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, MIGUEL de. - Spanish writer, b. in 1547 (perhaps on 29 Sept.) at Alcalá de Henares, d. in Madrid on 23 Apr. 1616. It is likely that the future author of Don Quixote studied at S. Vigilia with the Jesuits (1564-65) and at Salamanca between 1582 and 1584, then in Madrid at the school of Juan López de Hoyos. In Italy, whither he came in the retinue of Cardinal Acquaviva, he was fascinated by the “libre vida” and in particular by Rome, which he admired as “señora del mundo,” and, in Catholic Rome, “the authority of the college of cardinals, the majesty of the supreme pontiff, the gathering and variety of peoples and nations”: and the mirage of Rome still shines in his last romantic dream, the adventures of Persiles and Sigismunda. A man of action and culture, in 1571 he is found fighting heroically at the Battle of Lepanto, where a musket shot takes away his left hand; he is later found, after a stay in Messina, in Corfu, at the siege of Navarino and in the expedition to Tunis (1573). On garrison duty the following year in Naples and Palermo, during his return journey to Spain he is taken prisoner by the Saracens and transported to Algiers, where for five whole years he must learn “paciencia en las adversidades,” until Friar Juan Gil can complete the sum offered by his family and reach the 500 escudos demanded by the pirates for his ransom (Sept. 1580). But in Spain he faces hardship and bitterness: he successively holds various posts, and his marriage to Catalina de Salazar y Palacios (1584) ends by adding new disappointments to his troubled life. Appointed commissioner for the requisition of provisions destined for the “Invincible Armada” and for ships bound for the Indies, he loses his position following the disaster of the former: new sad experiences, dark years of struggle and misery follow one another, until he is involved with his own in a murder trial. In 1607 he is in Madrid, where, although his masterpiece has already been published, he remains lost in the crowd, more the object of satire than of praise: Lope will indeed go so far as to assert that there is no poet as bad as C. and “so foolish as to praise Don Quixote.” On 23 Apr. 1616 his laborious earthly life comes to a close: a few days earlier, “puesto ya el pie en el estribo,” he wrote the dedication of his book to the Count of Lemos.
Sorrowful and heroic, C.’s life coincides with the early days of Spain’s decline and appears as a synthesis of that dual world, pleasant and heroic, between whose extremes national life was now oscillating. A poet of modest gifts, as he himself laments, “me desvelo” to seem to have a day of peace, the grace that heaven cannot give me,” he is above all an imitator of Garcilaso, and his lyrical work proves uneven and only rarely illuminated by happy moments (the “Canto de Calíope” in La Galatea, inspired by Gil Polo, some compositions inserted in the Novelas, the dignified and noble epistle to Mateo Vázquez, a few sonnets and in particular one inspired by the obsequies of Philip II, two songs in the Herrerian style for the “Invincible Armada,” etc.): his major poem is the Viaje del Parnaso (1614), inspired by the homonymous work of Cesare Caporali, in which the motif of the fantastic journey allows for a biting critique of contemporary poets and only a breath of emotion is carried by poignant autobiographical recollections.
As a dramatist, he has left us, besides eight interludes, ten comedies which it seems he composed in two distinct periods, namely c. 1590 and, with less success, in the decade before the publication of the Novelas (1613), which in 1615 he published eight comedies and eight interludes, though it is impossible to fix a precise chronology: to the first period belong, instead, Numancia and El trato de Argel (besides lost comedies), in which he reveals little interest in dramatic structure and, instead, a marked psychological concern and fervent passion. Only later will he attempt to imitate Lope, hoping to achieve with the accumulation of episodes and characters what the latter attained through dramatic talent and expert theatrical technique. The subjects are varied, ranging from those of the “comedia de santos” (El rufián dichoso) to those of “de cautivos” (La gran sultana), to picaresque motifs (Pedro de Urdemalas), etc.; the best of all are Los baños de Argel, a drama intensely moving, and Pedro de Urdemalas, rich in poetry and in the most varied situations; but from all of them it is evident that C. finely intuited the essence of the future national comedy, both for the knowledge he demonstrates of the society from which it springs and for having presented forms and conceptions of Lope and Calderón. In the interludes (he left eight), C. is unsurpassed, nor can he be equaled even by Quijano de Benavente or Ramón de la Cruz: in them the realism of the pasos of the great Lope de Rueda (as he himself proclaims), which he had known in his early youth in Valladolid and Madrid, is treated in themes drawn from every source, from Italian Renaissance, to the life of the underworld, to the most suggestive folklore, achieving pictures of environment that are almost etchings of extraordinary precision and penetrating psychology, in which not popular types but characters and indeed decisive individualities stand out, underscored by witty satirical touches.
La Galatea, the first work published by C. (1584), is a pastoral novel of little interest in its plot, but of great value as a document of the author’s aesthetic: though lacking that background
The pastoral novel, which adorns the creations of Montemayor and Gil Polo, oriented around the principles of Neoplatonic philosophy from the dialogues of Leone Ebreo, blending prose and verse (better in the latter), occasionally presents pages that are clear and brilliant: and yet the pastoral element (for *La Galatea* Cervantes will always nurture a particular tenderness) will penetrate, and not sparingly, even into his greatest episodic novel, such as that of Marcella and Grisostomo. The twelve *Novelas ejemplares* (published in 1613), whose very title betrays the intention of paying homage to the Council of Trent (the prologue indeed states, «no hay ninguna de quien se se pueda sacar algun ejemplo provechoso», though only occasionally does the didactic-moral intent shine through), while always revealing the author’s naturalistic moral stance, embrace various influences and tendencies—some intensely realistic, others idealistic, some deriving from typically Spanish origins, others inspired by the Italian Renaissance. Not profound but narrated with great artistry, sober and elegant, and harmonious, they would become a model for the short narrative of the 18th century; and through the adventures of *La Gitanilla*, the passionate and sentimental tone of *El celoso extremo*, or the humor of *Coloquio de los perros* and *El licenciado Vidriera*—which seems to encapsulate the essence of the author’s moral experience—or the depictions of the life of the *hampa* as seen in *Rinconete y Cortadillo*, they offer scenes of intense plastic force and high beauty.
In 1605, *Don Quijote* was published, later reprinted many times and immediately translated into English in 1612, into French two years later, and into Italian in 1622; a novel that, arising from original literary criticism («poner en aborrecimiento de los hombres las fingidas y disparadas historias de los libros de caballerías»), acquired, in its progressive development, the significance of a symbol. A synthesis of the most varied models of contemporary narrative literature (pastoral novel, Italian novella, chivalric romance), the various motifs intertwine around the adventures of the knight and his squire, giving the work a sense of prodigious life, unmatched in the history of any literature. Don Quixote, whose first *salida* is entirely a satire against chivalric romances, is presented from the very first words in all his humanity: driven to madness by excessive reading of such books, he remains a man, the one who on a hot July day sets out across the plains of Montiel as Sancho Panza, a folk soul but also one of human and yet primitive psychology, a jumble of selfishness and goodness, admiration for his lord, skepticism and faith, measures his step beside him. Around the two wanderers unfolds a landscape seen with faithful eyes, and a multifaceted world of characters emerges. Not static symbols—one of idealism, the other of practical common sense—Don Quixote and Sancho, through their long fraternal companionship, draw closer spiritually to one another, so that on the decline of life the former regains reason and good sense, while the latter gradually rises toward a higher world. Created at the crossroads of two centuries, by an artist who saw the glory of Lepanto submerged in the tragedy of the Armada and in the wave of the English landing at Cádiz, the work is a painful parody of that heroism and sense of justice which crumbles before the low and petty fraud of picaresque daily life, in which ideal and reality fail to harmonize. The two heroes are symbols of the spirit of the age, one embodying the false path that leads to the delirium of illusion, the other that which leads to materialism, both ruinous for the Spanish people. Yet the need to point to a light of salvation amid such desolation is the reason for the splendid duality of Don Quixote’s personality, in whom incurable madness is tempered by a prudent chivalric spirit, just as Sancho’s ignorant selfishness is illuminated by genuine good sense. Setting out to defend his humanitarian ideal, the author himself defines the qualities of the true knight: «canto en los pensamientos, honesto en las palabras, liberal en las obras, valiente en los hechos, sufrido en los trabajos, caritativo en los menesterosos, y finalmente mantenedor de la verdad, aunque le cueste la vida el defenderla». Animated by the same heroic spirit as St. Ignatius or St. Teresa (the acute comparison is L. Pfandl’s), Cervantes endured persecution and scorn for his ideal, unable to surrender to continual disillusionment until the hour of death, when he finally recognized the tragic vanity of his actions.
All the literary motifs of the 16th century, both narrative and critical, are contained in the work, which at the same time shares points of contact with 17th-century literature, chiefly through that sense of contrast from which the entire work springs, and which resolves the great dichotomy between the ideal and human planes in a humorous solution.
The publication (1614) of an apocryphal continuation by the «licenciado Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda» preceded by only a year the second part of the novel, perhaps superior to the first, as a most human emotion, almost a transcendence of the characters themselves, gradually intensifies until the hero’s death.
But Cervantes’ drama, which identifies with his hero—as he himself openly declares («por mí solo nacio don Quijote y yo para él: él su obrar y yo escribir: solos los dos somos para en uno»)—finds a worthy conclusion in *Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda* (1617), a final synthesis where all the author’s aspirations, dreams and romantic enterprises of youth, fantasy and sentiment, triumph in magnificent adventures unfolding against ever-changing backdrops, from the mysterious northern lands to the sunlit soils of Spain and Italy, narrated in the richest, most colorful, elegant, and polished style. It seems that in this work, subject to the most varied and contrasting judgments, Cervantes truly wished to dream (as has been aptly said) his last romantic dream.