Meet Spain’s great author Miguel de Cervantes and his masterpiece Don Quixote. Discover the charm of this work blending satire and humanity through a brief commentary!
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born in 1547 in Alcalá de Henares, east of Madrid, the capital of Spain. He was baptized in the Gothic-style Church of Santa María la Mayor in Alcalá de Henares. While a baptismal record exists stating October 9, 1547, as the date, there is no specific record detailing Cervantes’ actual birth date.
His family lineage was said to trace back to the purest Castilian blood, from the Christian kingdom established on the Iberian Peninsula around the 11th century to resist the Islamic states. Cervantes was born during this historical era, when Spain enjoyed its most glorious period.
His father was a surgeon. However, he was not a true physician but rather a practitioner who treated only minor injuries. Compounded by his deafness, he is believed to have lived in poverty throughout his life. Cervantes grew up without a formal school education, moving frequently from Alcalá to Valladolid, Madrid, and Seville during his boyhood and youth.
In 1569, he served as a page to Cardinal Aquaviva in Italy. The following year, he enlisted in the army. He participated in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, where he was wounded in the chest and lost the use of his left hand. He also fought in the Siege of Tunis in 1573. These experiences in Italy profoundly influenced his literature. After the war ended, Cervantes returned to his longed-for homeland aboard a repatriation ship with his brother, who was also a soldier.
However, during the voyage home, Cervantes and his companions were attacked by Algerian pirates, who captured them. He spent the next five years as a prisoner.
In 1580, he was finally ransomed and freed through the efforts of a friar named Juan Gil of the Order of the Redemption. Upon returning to his homeland, he resolved to make his fortune through literature. At the age of thirty-seven, he married Catalina de Palacios, the daughter of a wealthy farmer. After the marriage, he lived off his wife’s dowry and devoted himself to writing. The result was La Galatea (1585). This brought him some success and a little income, but it was insufficient to make his name famous.
It is said he wrote dozens of plays by 1615, but only two survive today: Life in Algiers and La Mancia. That he achieved little success as a playwright during this period is evident from the fact that in 1594, Cervantes abandoned playwriting and became a low-paid grain procurement clerk.
Don Quixote was published in 1605. Before its publication, he worked as a naval grain requisitioner but was imprisoned for misconduct. In 1594, he became a tax collector in Granada but was jailed again when the bank holding public funds went bankrupt. For several years thereafter, he lived in poverty in Seville. It was during these difficult times that he wrote the entire first volume of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha.
Despite the success of Don Quixote, Cervantes remained in poverty. This was because he became implicated in an incident shortly after publication, was accused, and detained. Even after his release, he spent several years doing almost no creative work. The sequel to Don Quixote was published in 1615. This was a work far superior to the first part, published ten years after the original and about six months before Cervantes’ death.
In 1609, he joined one of the religious orders that were flourishing in Madrid at the time. Subsequently, when his patron, the Count of Remos, was appointed Governor of Naples, Cervantes intended to follow him to Italy but was unable to do so. The following year, he appears to have devoted himself to scholarly pursuits for a time, joining the Silva Academy founded by Francisco de la Silva.
After that, until his death, he published the Exemplary Novels (1613), containing twelve medium-length and short stories, and The Journey to Parnassus (1614). In 1615, he published eight comedies and eight interludes.
On April 2, 1616, Cervantes took to his sickbed. Yet, facing death, he was at peace. On April 23, having lived an eventful life and left behind the immortal masterpiece Don Quixote, he finally closed his eyes at the age of 69.
‘The essential proposition that fiction pursues lies in how to create the most beautiful human form……. Yet Don Quixote can be said to be the work that comes closest to that very beauty among the myriad forms of beauty literature has given birth to. I believe Don Quixote reaches the realm of beauty precisely because of its humor, which even evokes pity in the reader.’
The great Russian writer Dostoevsky said this about Don Quixote: ‘This work is adorned with paradoxes that scorch preconceived notions, and with humor and wit that oil the wheels of life.’ Therefore, even if one doesn’t know the author’s name, Cervantes, the name Don Quixote is probably known to everyone.
However, despite this fame, very few people have actually read the entire work. Even in its homeland, Spain, most people only recall the plot introduced in elementary school textbooks or picture books.
Cervantes stated his purpose in writing Don Quixote was “to overthrow the power and fame that chivalric tales held in the world.” By the time Don Quixote was published, chivalric tales had already become outdated. Yet they still enjoyed enduring popularity among the common people. Shortly after Don Quixote’s release, however, chivalric tales virtually vanished. Nevertheless, the work’s success can be attributed to the fact that Don Quixote originated as a parody of the literature of the preceding era.
One of the literary historical values of Cervantes’ novel lies in its breaking away from the old, established forms that had persisted until then. In any case, Cervantes emerged as a great literary figure during the Golden Age of Spanish literature. Though not personally acquainted with each other at the time, he shared the same era with such illustrious contemporaries as Shakespeare in England, Tasso in Italy, and Montaigne in France.
Against this backdrop, Don Quixote, born in Spain, will be cherished as a spiritual treasure of human history, embodying the truth yearning for realization within the work’s goodness and overflowing with wit.
