CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, MIGUEL de. – Spanish writer, born in 1547 (perhaps on 29 September) at Alcalá de Henares, died in Madrid on 23 April 1616. It is probable that the future author of the Quijote studied in Seville with the Jesuits (1564–65) and at Salamanca between 1582 and 1584, and then in Madrid at the school of Juan López de Hoyos. In Italy, where he arrived in the retinue of Cardinal Acquaviva, he was fascinated by the «libre vida», and in particular Rome, «señora del mundo», impressed itself upon his admiration; and in Catholic Rome, «la autoridad del colegio de los cardinales, la majestad del sumo pontifice, el concurso y variedad de gentes y naciones»: and the mirage of Rome would shine once more in his final romantic dream, the adventures of Persiles and Segismunda. A man of action and culture, he is found in 1571 fighting heroically at the battle of Lepanto, where an arquebus shot takes away his left hand; after a stay in Messina, he is again found at Corfu, at the siege of Navarino, and in the expedition to Tunis (1573). Garrisoned the following year in Naples and Palermo, on the return journey to Spain he is captured by the Saracens and transported to Algiers, where for five long years he must learn to «tener paciencia en las adversidades», until Friar Juan Gil can complete the sum offered by C. ’s family and reach the 500 scudi demanded by the pirates
for his ransom (September 1580). But hardship and bitterness await him in Spain: he successively holds modest posts, and his marriage to Catalina de Salazar y Palacios (1584) ends by adding new disappointments to his troubled life. Appointed commissioner for the collection of provisions intended for the «Armada invencible» and for ships bound for the Indies, he loses his position following its disaster; further sad experiences, obscure years of toil and misery, follow one another, until he becomes involved with his family in a homicide trial. In 1607 he is in Madrid, where, although his masterpiece has already been published, he remains lost among the masses, the object more of satire than of praise: Lope would in fact go so far as to claim that there was no poet as bad as C. and «tan necio que alabe a don Quijote». On 23 April 1616 his arduous earthly day comes to an end: a few days earlier, «puesto ya el pie en el estribo», he had written the dedication of his book to the Count of Lemos.
Desolate and heroic, C. ’s life coincides with the early period of Spain’s decline and appears as a synthesis of that dual world, picaresque and heroic, between whose extremes national life was by then oscillating. A poet of scant virtues, as he himself laments («me desvelo-por parecer que tengo de poeta-la gracia que no quiso darme el cielo»), whose models were chiefly Garcilaso, his lyric work proves uneven and only rarely illuminated by happy moments (the «Canto de Caliope» in the Galatea, inspired by Gil Polo; several compositions inserted in the novellas; the dignified and noble epistle to Matteo Vázquez; a few sonnets, especially the one inspired by the funeral rites of Philip II; two songs in the manner of Herrera to the «Invencible Armada», etc.). His major poem is the Viaje del Purnaro (1614), inspired by the work of the same name by Cesare Caporali, in which the motif of the fantastic journey permits a mordant criticism of contemporary poets, while a breath of emotion is conveyed only by the autobiographical memories that surface here and there.
As a dramatist, in addition to eight interludes, he left us ten comedies, which he seems to have composed in two distinct periods, namely around 1590 and, with less success, in the decade preceding the publication of the Novelas (1613); in 1615, in fact, he published 8 comedies and 8 interludes, whose precise chronology it is impossible to establish. To the first period belong, instead, the Numancia and the Trato de Argel (as well as comedies that have been lost), in which he reveals little interest in dramatic structure, but a pronounced psychological concern and fervent passion. Only later would he attempt to imitate Lope, hoping to achieve through the accumulation of episodes and characters what the latter achieved through dramatic talent and expert theatrical technique. The subjects are varied, ranging from those of the «comedia de santos» (El rufidín dichoso) to those «de cautivos» (La gran Sultana), to picaresque motifs (Pedro de Urdemalas), etc. The finest of all are Los baños de Argel, an intensely pathetic drama, and Pedro de Urdemalas, rich in poetry and highly diverse situations. Yet all of them make it evident that C. keenly grasped the essence of the future national comedy, both through the knowledge they display of the society from which it arose and through his anticipation of the forms and conceptions of Lope and Calderón. In the interludes (he left eight), C. is unsurpassed, nor could he be equalled even by Quiñones de Benavente or Ramón de la Cruz. In them, the realism of the pasos of the great Lope de Rueda (as he himself declares), whom he had known in his early youth in Valladolid and Madrid, is applied to subjects drawn from every source—from the Italian Renaissance, from the life of the hampa, and from the most evocative folklore—creating scenes of everyday life that are almost etchings of extraordinary precision and penetrating psychology. There stand out not popular types, but characters and indeed sharply defined individuals, emphasized by witty satirical touches.
Galatea, C. ’s first published work (1584), is a pastoral novel of little interest in its action, but of great value as a document of the author’s aesthetics. Although it lacks the background and the typical elements that embellish the creations of Montemayor and Gil Polo, and is oriented toward the principles of Neoplatonic philosophy found in the dialogues of Leone Ebreo, it mixes prose and verse (the latter being better) and at times presents clear and dazzling pages. The pastoral element, however (C. would always feel a particular tenderness for Galatea), would penetrate, and not inconsiderably, even into the major novel itself, in episodes such as that of Marcella and Grisostomo. The twelve Novella esemplari (published in 1613), whose title already reveals the desire to pay homage to the Council of Trent (the prologue indeed says « no hay ninguna de quien ne se pueda sacar algún ejemplo provechoso », although the didactic and moral intention emerges only in some of them and only occasionally), while always displaying the author’s naturalistic morality, embrace various influences and tendencies. Some are intensely realistic, others idealistic; their origins are at times typically Spanish, at times instead inspired by the Italian Renaissance. Not profound, but narrated with great artistry, sober and elegant, agile and harmonious, they would become models for the short narrative of the eighteenth century. Through the adventures of the Gitanilla, the passionate and sentimental coloring of the Celoso extremeño, the humor of the Coloquio de los perros and the Licenciado Vidriera—which seems to sum up the essence of the author’s moral experience—or the scenes of life among the hompa as it appears in Rinconete y Cortadillo, they offer episodes of intense plastic force and high beauty.
In 1605 Don Quijote was published, subsequently reprinted several times and promptly translated into English in 1612, into French two years later, and into Italian in 1622; a novel which, arising from original motives of literary criticism (« poner en aborrecimiento de los hombres las fingidas y disparadas historias de los libros de caballerías »), acquired, in the course of its development, a symbolic significance. A synthesis of the most varied models of contemporary narrative literature (the pastoral novel, the Italian novella, the chivalric romance), its various motifs are interwoven around the adventures of the knight and his squire and give the work an extraordinary sense of life, unparalleled in the history of any literature. Don Chisciotte, whose first salida is wholly a satire of chivalric romances, is presented from the very first words in all his humanity: driven mad by excessive reading of those books, he nevertheless always remains a man, the man who on a hot July day sets out across the countryside of Montiel, while beside him Sancio Panza keeps pace, a commoner’s soul, but one possessing an equally human and indeed primitive psychology, a jumble of selfishness and goodness, of admiration for his master, of scepticism and faith. Around the two wanderers unfolds a landscape seen through faithful eyes, and a manifold world of characters springs into view. Not motionless symbols, one of the ideal and the other of practical common sense, Don Chisciotte and Sancio, through their long fraternal association, will draw spiritually closer to one another, so that one, as life declines, will regain reason and good sense, while the other will gradually rise towards a higher world. Created at the crossroads of two centuries, by an artist who saw the glory of Lepanto engulfed in the tragedy of the Armada and in the disgrace of the English landing at Cadiz, the work is a painful parody of that heroism and that sense of justice which are collapsing before the low and petty fraudulence of picaresque everyday life, in which ideal and reality fail to harmonize. The two heroes are each symbols of the spirit of the age, one embodying the false path leading to the delirium of illusion, the other the path leading to materialism, both ruinous for the Spanish people. But the need to point to a light of salvation amid such desolation is the motive behind Don Chisciotte’s splendid duality of personality, in whom incurable madness is tempered by a prudent chivalric spirit, just as Sancio’s ignorant selfishness is illumined by genuine good sense. Taking the field in defence of his humanitarian ideal, the author himself defines the qualities of the true knight: « casto 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 s. Ignazio or s. Teresa (the acute comparison is L. Pfandl’s), C. endures persecutions and mockery for his ideal, incapable of surrendering to continual disillusionment except at the hour of death, when he must finally acknowledge the tragic futility of his action.
All the literary motifs of the 16th century, narrative and critical, are contained in the work, which nevertheless also has points of contact with the literature of the 17th century, chiefly in that sense of contrast from which the entire work springs, and which recomposes in a humorous solution the great conflict between the ideal and the human planes.
The publication (1614) of an apocryphal continuation by the « licenciado Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda » preceded by only one year that of the second part of the novel, perhaps superior to the first, since an intensely human emotion, almost a transcendence of the characters themselves, gradually becomes more pronounced until the hero’s death.
But the drama of C., who identifies himself with his hero, as he openly states (« para mi solo nació don Quijote y yo para él: él supo obrar y yo escribir: solos los dos somos para en uno »), finds a worthy conclusion in the work Los trabajos de Persiles y Segismunda (1617), an ultimate synthesis in which all the author’s aspirations—dreams and romantic exploits of youth, imagination and feeling—triumph in magnificent adventures unfolding against an ever-changing backdrop, from the mysterious lands of the north to the sun-drenched regions of Spain and Italy, and narrated in the richest and most colourful, most elegant and limpid style. It seems that in this work, about which the most varied and contradictory judgments have been formulated, C. truly wished to dream—as has been aptly expressed—his final romantic dream.
BIBLI.: Texts: among the many complete editions of Cervantes’ works, at least the following should be mentioned for the more recent period: those edited by J. E. Hartzenbusch, 12 vols., Madrid 1863; that of R. Schevill and A. Bonilla y San Martín, 14 vols., there, 1914 ff.; that of F. Rodríguez Martín, 8 vols., there, 1911–13; that of A. Hämel, 5 vols., Halle 1924 ff.; in addition to innumerable editions of individual works edited by N. Alonso Cortés, L. Pfandl, L. Sorrento, A. Kressner, etc. In the exceedingly rich field of Cervantine bibliography, one must not fail to mention the Bibliografia critica de las obras de C. by L. Ins, 3 vols., Madrid 1895–1904; the Bibliografia critica de ediciones del Quijote impresas desde 1605 hasta 1917 by J. S. Benages and J. S. Fonbuena, Barcelona 1917; and, at the very least, the highly important work by J. D. M. Ford, C. A tentative bibliography of his works and of biographical and critical material concerning him, Cambridge 1931. Literature: in the no less rich and varied field of Cervantine criticism, at least the following must be mentioned: A. Morel-Fatio, Le dos Quichotte envisagé comme peinture de la société..., in Etudes sur l'Espagne, I, Paris 1895, p. 297 ff.; J. Apraiz, Estudio histórico-crítico sobre las novelas ejemplares de C., Madrid 1901; F. A. de Icaza, Las novelas ejemplares de C., there, 1901; F. Rodríguez Martín, El Loayza de « El celoso extremeño », Seville 1901; M. de Unamuno, Vida de don Quijote y Sancho, Madrid 1905; J. Cejador y Frauca, La lengua de C., there, 1905; E. Mele, La novella « El celoso extremeño » de C., in Nueva Antol., 1906, 7, pp. 475–90; R. Schevill, Studies in C., I, Persiles y Segismunda, in Mod. Phil., 4 (1906), pp. 677–704; P. Savi-Lopez, C., Naples 1913; M. A. Buchanan, C. and the books of chivalry, in Mod. Lang. Notes, 29 (1914), pp. 242–43; A. Speziale, Il C. e le imitazioni della novella italiana, Messina 1914; A. Cotarello y Valledor, El teatro de C., Madrid 1915; A. Bonilla y San Martín, C. y su obra, there, 1916; R. Schevill, C., New York 1919; C. de Lollis, C. reazionario, Rome 1924; A. Castro, El pensamiento de C., Madrid 1925; R. de Maeztu, Don Quijote, don Juan y la Celestina, there, 1926; R. Flaccomio, La fortuna del Don Quijote in Italia nel secc. XVII e XVIII, Palermo 1928; J. Brickermann, Don Quijote und Faust. Die Helden und die Werke, Berlin 1929; E. J. Crooks, The influence of C. in France in the XVIIth Century, Paris 1931; M. de Montoliu, Lo que España debe a un libro, Barcelona 1931; P. Hazard, Don Quichotte de C., étude et analyse, Paris 1931; A. Castro, C., there, 1931; S. E. Trachman, C. women of literary tradition, New York 1932; B. Sanvisenti, Ariosto, C., Manzoni, in Curriculum, 4 (1932), pp. 641–74; R. Schevill, The education and culture of C., in Hispanic Review, 1 (1933), p. 24 ff.; L. Pfandl, Historia de la literatura nacional española en la edad de oro (Spanish translation by J. Rubió Balaguer), Barcelona 1933, passim and especially pp. 321–39; J. Cassou, C., Paris 1936; B. Frank, Una vita più interessante di un romanzo (Italian translation by L. Mazzucchetti), Milan 1936; A. Suarès, Trois grands vivants, C., Tolstoi, Baudelaire, Paris 1937; M. Casella, C.: il Chisciotte (Publ. dell'Università di Firenze, Facoltà di lettere e filos., 3rd series, 7, I–II), Florence 1938; M. Romero Navarro, Interpretación pictórica del Quijote por Doré, Madrid 1946; J. Babelon, C., Paris 1947. Jole Scudieri Ruggieri