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Where and when that was written, we cannot tell. After his imprisonment all trace of Cervantes in his official capacity disappears, from which it may be inferred that he was not reinstated. That he was still in Seville in November 1598 appears from a satirical sonnet of his on the elaborate catafalque erected to testify the grief of the city at the death of Philip II, but from this up to 1603 we have no clue to his movements. The words in the preface to the First Part of "Don Quixote" are generally held to be conclusive that he conceived the idea of the book, and wrote the beginning of it at least, in a prison, and that he may have done so is extremely likely.
There is a tradition that Cervantes read some portions of his work to a select audience at the Duke of Bejar's, which may have helped to make the book known; but the obvious conclusion is that the First Part of "Don Quixote" lay on his hands some time before he could find a publisher bold enough to undertake a venture of so novel a character; and so little faith in it had Francisco Robles of Madrid, to whom at last he sold it, that he did not care to incur the expense of securing the copyright for Aragon or Portugal, contenting himself with that for Castile.
The printing was finished in December, and the book came out with the new year, 1605. It is often said that "Don Quixote" was at first received coldly.
The facts show just the contrary.
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No sooner was it in the hands of the public than preparations were made to issue pirated editions at Lisbon and Valencia, and to bring out a second edition with the additional copyrights for Aragon and Portugal, which he secured in February. No doubt it was received with something more than coldness by certain sections of the community.
Men of wit, taste, and discrimination among the aristocracy gave it a hearty welcome, but thearistocracy in general were not likely to relish a book that turnedtheir favourite reading into ridicule and laughed at so many of their favourite ideas. The dramatists who gathered round Lope as theirleader regarded Cervantes as their common enemy, and it is plainthat he was equally obnoxious to the other clique, the culto poets whohad Gongora for their chief.
Navarrete, who knew nothing of the letterabove mentioned, tries hard to show that the relations betweenCervantes and Lope were of a very friendly sort, as indeed they wereuntil "Don Quixote" was written. Cervantes, indeed, to the lastgenerously and manfully declared his admiration of Lope's powers, his unfailing invention, and his marvellous fertility; but in thepreface of the First Part of "Don Quixote" and in the verses of"Urganda the Unknown," and one or two other places, there are, if weread between the lines, sly hits at Lope's vanities and affectationsthat argue no personal good-will; and Lope openly sneers at "Don Quixote" and Cervantes, and fourteen years after his death gives himonly a few lines of cold commonplace in the "Laurel de Apolo," thatseem all the colder for the eulogies of a host of nonentities whose names are found nowhere else.
In 1601 Valladolid was made the seat of the Court, and at thebeginning of 1603 Cervantes had been summoned thither in connectionwith the balance due by him to the Treasury, which was stilloutstanding. He remained at Valladolid, apparently supportinghimself by agencies and scrivener's work of some sort; probablydrafting petitions and drawing up statements of claims to be presentedto the Council, and the like. So, at least, we gather from thedepositions taken on the occasion of the death of a gentleman, thevictim of a street brawl, who had been carried into the house in whichhe lived.
In these he himself is described as a man who wrote andtransacted business, and it appears that his household then consisted of his wife, the natural daughter Isabel de Saavedra alreadymentioned, his sister Andrea, now a widow, her daughter Constanza, amysterious Magdalena de Sotomayor calling herself his sister, for whomhis biographers cannot account, and a servant-maid. Meanwhile "Don Quixote" had been growing in favour, and its author's name was now known beyond the Pyrenees.
In 1607 an edition was printedat Brussels. Robles, the Madrid publisher, found it necessary tomeet the demand by a third edition, the seventh in all, in 1608. Thepopularity of the book in Italy was such that a Milan bookseller wasled to bring out an edition in 1610; and another was called for inBrussels in 1611. It might naturally have been expected that, withsuch proofs before him that he had hit the taste of the public, Cervantes would have at once set about redeeming his rather vaguepromise of a second volume.
But, to all appearance, nothing was farther from his thoughts. Hehad still by him one or two short tales of the same vintage as thosehe had inserted in "Don Quixote" and instead of continuing theadventures of Don Quixote, he set to work to write more of these"Novelas Exemplares" as he afterwards called them, with a view tomaking a book of them. The novels were published in the summer of 1613, with a dedicationto the Conde de Lemos, the Maecenas of the day, and with one ofthose chatty confidential prefaces Cervantes was so fond of.
In this, eight years and a half after the First Part of "Don Quixote" hadappeared, we get the first hint of a forthcoming Second Part. "Youshall see shortly," he says, "the further exploits of Don Quixoteand humours of Sancho Panza." His idea of "shortly" was a somewhatelastic one, for, as we know by the date to Sancho's letter, he hadbarely one-half of the book completed that time twelvemonth. But more than poems, or pastorals, or novels, it was his dramatic ambition that engrossed his thoughts. The same indomitable spirit thatkept him from despair in the bagnios of Algiers, and prompted him to attempt the escape of himself and his comrades again and again, madehim persevere in spite of failure and discouragement in his efforts towin the ear of the public as a dramatist.
The temperament of Cervanteswas essentially sanguine. The portrait he draws in the preface to the novels, with the aquiline features, chestnut hair, smooth untroubled forehead, and bright cheerful eyes, is the very portrait ofa sanguine man. Nothing that the managers might say could persuade himthat the merits of his plays would not be recognised at last if theywere only given a fair chance.
The old soldier of the SpanishSalamis was bent on being the Aeschylus of Spain. He was to found agreat national drama, based on the true principles of art, that was tobe the envy of all nations; he was to drive from the stage thesilly, childish plays, the "mirrors of nonsense and models of folly"that were in vogue through the cupidity of the managers andshortsightedness of the authors; he was to correct and educate thepublic taste until it was ripe for tragedies on the model of the Greekdrama- like the "Numancia" for instance- and comedies that would notonly amuse but improve and instruct. All this he was to do, could heonce get a hearing: there was the initial difficulty.
He shows plainly enough, too, that "Don Quixote" and thedemolition of the chivalry romances was not the work that lay next hisheart. He was, indeed, as he says himself in his preface, more astepfather than a father to "Don Quixote." Never was great work soneglected by its author. That it was written carelessly, hastily, and by fits and starts, was not always his fault, but it seems clearhe never read what he sent to the press. He knew how the printershad blundered, but he never took the trouble to correct them whenthe third edition was in progress, as a man who really cared for thechild of his brain would have done. He appears to have regarded the book as little more than a mere libro de entretenimiento, an amusingbook, a thing, as he says in the "Viaje," "to divert the melancholymoody heart at any time or season."
No doubt he had an affection forhis hero, and was very proud of Sancho Panza. It would have beenstrange indeed if he had not been proud of the most humorouscreation in all fiction. He was proud, too, of the popularity and success of the book, and beyond measure delightful is the naivete withwhich he shows his pride in a dozen passages in the Second Part. Butit was not the success he coveted. In
all probability he would havegiven all the success of "Don Quixote," nay, would have seen everycopy of "Don Quixote" burned in the Plaza Mayor, for one suchsuccess as Lope de Vega was enjoying on an average once a week. And so he went on, dawdling over "Don Quixote," adding a chapternow and again, and putting it aside to turn to "Persiles andSigismunda" -which, as we know, was to be the most entertaining bookin the language, and the rival of "Theagenes and Chariclea"- orfinishing off one of his darling comedies; and if Robles asked when"Don Quixote" would be ready, the answer no doubt was: En breve-shortly, there was time enough for that.
At sixty-eight he was as fullof life and hope and plans for the future as a boy of eighteen. Nemesis was coming, however. He had got as far as Chapter LIX, whichat his leisurely pace he could hardly have reached before October orNovember 1614, when there was put into his hand a small octavelately printed at Tarragona, and calling itself "Second Volume ofthe Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha: by the LicentiateAlonso Fernandez de Avellaneda of Tordesillas." The last half of Chapter LIX and most of the following chapters of the Second Part giveus some idea of the effect produced upon him, and his irritation wasnot likely to be lessened by the reflection that he had no one toblame but himself.
Had Avellaneda, in fact, been content with merelybringing out a continuation to "Don Quixote," Cervantes would have hadno reasonable grievance. His own intentions were expressed in the veryvaguest language at the end of the book; nay, in his last words, "forse altro cantera con miglior plettro," he seems actually to invitesome one else to continue the work, and he made no sign until eightyears and a half had gone by; by which time Avellaneda's volume was nodoubt written.
In fact Cervantes had no case, or a very bad one, as far as the merecontinuation was concerned. But Avellaneda chose to write a preface toit, full of such coarse personal abuse as only an ill-conditionedman could pour out. He taunts Cervantes with being old, with havinglost his hand, with having been in prison, with being poor, with being friendless, accuses him of envy of Lope's success, of petulance and querulousness, and so on; and it was in this that the sting lay.
Avellaneda's reason for this personal attack is obvious enough.Whoever he may have been, it is clear that he was one of thedramatists of Lope's school, for he has the impudence to chargeCervantes with attacking him as well as Lope in his criticism on thedrama. His identification has exercised the best critics and baffledall the ingenuity and research that has been brought to bear on it.
Navarrete and Ticknor both incline to the belief that Cervantes knewwho he was; but I must say I think the anger he shows suggests aninvisible assailant; it is like the irritation of a man stung by amosquito in the dark. Cervantes from certain solecisms of languagepronounces him to be an Aragonese, and Pellicer, an Aragonese him self,supports this view and believes him, moreover, to have been an ecclesiastic, a Dominican probably. Any merit Avellaneda has is reflected from Cervantes, and he istoo dull to reflect much.
"Dull and dirty" will always be, limagine, the verdict of the vast majority of unprejudiced readers. He is, at best, a poor plagiarist; all he can do is to followslavishly the lead given him by Cervantes; his only humour lies inmaking Don Quixote take inns for castles and fancy himself somelegendary or historical personage, and Sancho mistake words, invertproverbs, and display his gluttony; all through he shows a proclivity to coarseness and dirt, and he has contrived to introducetwo tales filthier than anything by the sixteenth century novellieriand without their sprightliness. But whatever Avellaneda and his book may be, we must not forget the debt we owe them.
But for them, there can be no doubt, "Don Quixote" would have come to us a mere torso instead of a completework. Even if Cervantes had finished the volume he had in hand, mostassuredly he would have left off with a promise of a Third Part, giving the further adventures of Don Quixote and humours of Sancho Panza as shepherds. It is plain that he had at one time an intention of dealing with the pastoral romances as he had dealt with the booksof chivalry, and but for Avellaneda he would have tried to carry itout. But it is more likely that, with his plans, and projects, and hopefulness, the volume would have remained unfinished till his death, and that we should have never made the acquaintance of the Duke and Duchess, or gone with Sancho to Barataria.
From the moment the book came into his hands he seems to have beenhaunted by the fear that there might be more Avellanedas in the field, and putting everything else aside, he set himself to finish off histask and protect Don Quixote in the only way he could, by killing him. The conclusion is no doubt a hasty and in some places clumsy pieceof work and the frequent repetition of the scolding administered toAvellaneda becomes in the end rather wearisome; but it is, at any rate, a conclusion and for that we must thank Avellaneda.
The new volume was ready for the press in February, but was notprinted till the very end of 1615, and during the interval Cervantesput together the comedies and interludes he had written within thelast few years, and, as he adds plaintively, found no demand for amongthe managers, and published them with a preface, worth the book it introduces tenfold, in which he gives an account of the earlySpanish stage, and of his own attempts as a dramatist. It isneedless to say they were put forward by Cervantes in all good faithand full confidence in their merits.
The reader, however, was not tosuppose they were his last word or final effort in the drama, for hehad in hand a comedy called "Engano a los ojos," about which, if hemistook not, there would be no question. Of this dramatic masterpiece the world has no opportunity ofjudging; his health had been failing for some time, and he died, apparently of dropsy, on the 23rd of April, 1616, the day on which England lost Shakespeare, nominally at least, for the English calendarhad not yet been reformed. He died as he had lived, accepting hislot bravely and cheerfully. Was it an unhappy life, that of Cervantes? His biographers alltell us that it was; but I must say I doubt it.
It was a hard life, a life of poverty, of incessant struggle, of toil ill paid, ofdisappointment, but Cervantes carried within himself the antidote toall these evils. His was not one of those light natures that riseabove adversity merely by virtue of their own buoyancy; it was inthe fortitude of a high spirit that he was proof against it. It is impossible to conceive Cervantes giving way to despondency orprostrated by dejection. As for poverty, it was with him a thing to belaughed over, and the only sigh he ever allows to escape him is whenhe says, "Happy he to whom Heaven has given a piece of bread for whichhe is not bound to give thanks to any but Heaven itself."
Add to all this his vital energy and mental activity, his restless inventionand his sanguine temperament, and there will be reason enough to doubt whether his could have been a very unhappy life. He who could takeCervantes' distresses together with his apparatus for enduring themwould not make so bad a bargain, perhaps, as far as happiness in life is concerned. Of his burial-place nothing is known except that he was buried, inaccordance with his will, in the neighbouring convent of Trinitariannuns, of which it is supposed his daughter, Isabel de Saavedra, was aninmate, and that a few years afterwards the nuns removed to another convent, carrying their dead with them. But whether the remains ofCervantes were included in the removal or not no one knows, and the clue to their resting-place is now lost beyond all hope.
This furnishes perhaps the least defensible of the items in the charge ofneglect brought against his contemporaries. In some of the othersthere is a good deal of exaggeration. To listen to most of hisbiographers one would suppose that all Spain was in league not onlyagainst the man but against his memory, or at least that it was insensible to his merits, and left him to live in misery and die ofwant. To talk of his hard life and unworthy employments in Andalusiais absurd. What had he done to distinguish him from thousands of otherstruggling men earning a precarious livelihood?
True, he was a gallantsoldier, who had been wounded and had undergone captivity andsuffering in his country's cause, but there were hundreds of others inthe same case. He had written a mediocre specimen of an insipidclass of romance, and some plays which manifestly did not complywith the primary condition of pleasing: were the playgoers topatronise plays that did not amuse them, because the author was toproduce "Don Quixote" twenty years afterwards? The scramble for copies which, as we have seen, followed immediatelyon the appearance of the book, does not look like general insensibility to its merits.
No doubt it was received coldly bysome, but if a man writes a book in ridicule of periwigs he mustmake his account with being coldly received by the periwig wearers andhated by the whole tribe of wigmakers. If Cervantes had thechivalry-romance readers, the sentimentalists, the dramatists, and thepoets of the period all against him, it was because "Don Quixote"was what it was; and if the general public did not come forward to make him comfortable for the rest of his days, it is no more to becharged with neglect and ingratitude than the English-speakingpublic that did not pay off Scott's liabilities. It did the best itcould; it read his book and liked it and bought it, and encouraged thebookseller to pay him well for others.
It has been also made a reproach to Spain that she has erected nomonument to the man she is proudest of; no monument, that is to say,of him; for the bronze statue in the little garden of the Plaza de lasCortes, a fair work of art no doubt, and unexceptionable had it beenset up to the local poet in the market-place of some provincialtown, is not worthy of Cervantes or of Madrid. But what need has Cervantes of "such weak witness of his name;" or what could a monument do in his case except testify to the self-glorification of those whohad put it up? Si monumentum quoeris, circumspice.
The nearestbookseller's shop will show what bathos there would be in a monumentto the author of "Don Quixote." Nine editions of the First Part of "Don Quixote" had alreadyappeared before Cervantes died, thirty thousand copies in all, according to his own estimate, and a tenth was printed at Barcelonathe year after his death. So large a number naturally supplied thedemand for some time, but by 1634 it appears to have been exhausted; and from that time down to the present day the stream of editions has continued to flow rapidly and regularly. The translations showstill more clearly in what request the book has been from the veryoutset.
In seven years from the completion of the work it had beentranslated into the four leading languages of Europe. Except the Bible, in fact, no book has been so widely diffused as "DonQuixote." The "Imitatio Christi" may have been translated into as manydifferent languages, and perhaps "Robinson Crusoe" and the "Vicar ofWakefield" into nearly as many, but in multiplicity of translationsand editions "Don Quixote" leaves them all far behind. Still more remarkable is the character of this wide diffusion.
"Don Quixote" has been thoroughly naturalised among people whose ideas about knight- errantry, if they had any at all, were of the vaguest, who had never seen or heard of a book of chivalry, who could notpossibly feel the humour of the burlesque or sympathise with theauthor's purpose. Another curious fact is that this, the mostcosmopolitan book in the world, is one of the most intensely national.
"Manon Lescaut" is not more thoroughly French, "Tom Jones" not more English, "Rob Roy" not more Scotch, than "Don Quixote" is Spanish, in character, in ideas, in sentiment, in local colour, ineverything. What, then, is the secret of this unparalleled popularity, increasing year by year for well-nigh three centuries? Oneexplanation, no doubt, is that of all the books in the world, "Don Quixote" is the most catholic. There is something in it for every sortof reader, young or old, sage or simple, high or low.
As Cervantes himself says with a touch of pride, "It is thumbed and read and got byheart by people of all sorts; the children turn its leaves, theyoung people read it, the grown men understand it, the old folk praiseit." But it would be idle to deny that the ingredient which, more thanits humour, or its wisdom, or the fertility of invention orknowledge of human nature it displays, has insured its success withthe multitude, is the vein of farce that runs through it. It was theattack upon the sheep, the battle with the wine-skins, Mambrino'shelmet, the balsam of Fierabras, Don Quixote knocked over by the sailsof the windmill, Sancho tossed in the blanket, the mishaps and misadventures of master and man, that were originally the greatattraction, and perhaps are so still to some extent with themajority of readers.
It is plain that "Don Quixote" was generallyregarded at first, and indeed in Spain for a long time, as little morethan a queer droll book, full of laughable incidents and absurdsituations, very amusing, but not entitled to much consideration orcare. All the editions printed in Spain from 1637 to 1771, when thefamous printer Ibarra took it up, were mere trade editions, badlyand carelessly printed on vile paper and got up in the style ofchap-books intended only for popular use, with, in most instances, uncouth illustrations and clap-trap additions by the publisher. To England belongs the credit of having been the first country torecognise the right of "Don Quixote" to better treatment than this.
The London edition of 1738, commonly called Lord Carteret's fromhaving been suggested by him, was not a mere edition de luxe. It produced "Don Quixote" in becoming form as regards paper and type, and embellished with plates which, if not particularly happy asillustrations, were at least well intentioned and well executed, butit also aimed at correctness of text, a matter to which nobodyexcept the editors of the Valencia and Brussels editions had giveneven a passing thought; and for a first attempt it was fairly successful, for though some of its emendations are inadmissible, agood many of them have been adopted by all subsequent editors.
The zeal of publishers, editors, and annotators brought about aremarkable change of sentiment with regard to "Don Quixote." A vastnumber of its admirers began to grow ashamed of laughing over it. Itbecame almost a crime to treat it as a humorous book. The humour wasnot entirely denied, but, according to the new view, it was rated asan altogether secondary quality, a mere accessory, nothing more thanthe stalking-horse under the presentation of which Cervantes shothis philosophy or his satire, or whatever it was he meant to shoot;for on this point opinions varied. All were agreed, however, thatthe object he aimed at was not the books of chivalry.
He said emphatically in the preface to the First Part and in the last sentence of the Second, that he had no other object in view than to discreditthese books, and this, to advanced criticism, made it clear that his object must have been something else. One theory was that the book was a kind of allegory, setting forththe eternal struggle between the ideal and the real, between thespirit of poetry and the spirit of prose; and perhaps German philosophy never evolved a more ungainly or unlikely camel out ofthe depths of its inner consciousness.
Something of the antagonism, nodoubt, is to be found in "Don Quixote," because it is to be foundeverywhere in life, and Cervantes drew from life. It is difficult toimagine a community in which the never-ceasing game ofcross-purposes between Sancho Panza and Don Quixote would not berecognized as true to nature. In the stone age, among the lakedwellers, among the cave men, there were Don Quixotes and Sancho Panzas; there must have been the troglodyte who never could see thefacts before his eyes, and the troglodyte who could see nothingelse. But to suppose Cervantes deliberately setting himself to expoundany such idea in two stout quarto volumes is to suppose somethingnot only very unlike the age in which he lived, but altogether unlike Cervantes himself, who would have been the first to laugh at anattempt of the sort made by anyone else.
The extraordinary influence of the romances of chivalry in his dayis quite enough to account for the genesis of the book. Some idea ofthe prodigious development of this branch of literature in thesixteenth century may be obtained from the scrutiny of Chapter VII, ifthe reader bears in mind that only a portion of the romances belongingto by far the largest group are enumerated. As to its effect uponthe nation, there is abundant evidence. From the time when theAmadises and Palmerins began to grow popular down to the very end ofthe century, there is a steady stream of invective, from men whose character and position lend weight to their words, against theromances of chivalry and the infatuation of their readers. Ridiculewas the only besom to sweep away that dust.
That this was the task Cervantes set himself, and that he hadample provocation to urge him to it, will be sufficiently clear tothose who look into the evidence; as it will be also that it was notchivalry itself that he attacked and swept away. Of all theabsurdities that, thanks to poetry, will be repeated to the end oftime, there is no greater one than saying that "Cervantes smiledSpain's chivalry away." In the first place there was no chivalry forhim to smile away. Spain's chivalry had been dead for more than a century.
Its work was done when Granada fell, and as chivalry wasessentially republican in its nature, it could not live under the rulethat Ferdinand substituted for the free institutions of mediaeval Spain. What he did smile away was not chivalry but a degrading mockeryof it. The true nature of the "right arm" and the "bright array," beforewhich, according to the poet, "the world gave ground," and whichCervantes' single laugh demolished, may be gathered from the wordsof one of his own countrymen, Don Felix Pacheco, as reported byCaptain George Carleton, in his "Military Memoirs from 1672 to1713." "Before the appearance in the world of that labour of Cervantes," he said, "it was next to an impossibility for a man towalk the streets with any delight or without danger.
There were seen so many cavaliers prancing and curvetting before the windows of their mistresses, that a stranger would have imagined the whole nationto have been nothing less than a race of knight-errants. But after the world became a little acquainted with that notable history, the manthat was seen in that once celebrated drapery was pointed at as aDon Quixote, and found himself the jest of high and low.
And Iverily believe that to this, and this only, we owe that dampness and poverty of spirit which has run through all our councils for a centurypast, so little agreeable to those nobler actions of our famousancestors." To call "Don Quixote" a sad book, preaching a pessimist view oflife, argues a total misconception of its drift. It would be so if itsmoral were that, in this world, true enthusiasm naturally leads toridicule and discomfiture. But it preaches nothing of the sort; itsmoral, so far as it can be said to have one, is that the spuriousenthusiasm that is born of vanity and self-conceit, that is made anend in itself, not a means to an end, that acts on mere impulse, regardless of circumstances and consequences, is mischievous to itsowner, and a very considerable nuisance to the community at large.
To those who cannot distinguish between the one kind and the other, nodoubt "Don Quixote" is a sad book; no doubt to some minds it is verysad that a man who had just uttered so beautiful a sentiment as that"it is a hard case to make slaves of those whom God and Nature madefree," should be ungratefully pelted by the scoundrels his crazyphilanthropy had let loose on society; but to others of a morejudicial cast it will be a matter of regret that recklessself- sufficient enthusiasm is not oftener requited in some such wayfor all the mischief it does in the world.
A very slight examination of the structure of "Don Quixote" willsuffice to show that Cervantes had no deep design or elaborate plan inhis mind when he began the book. When he wrote those lines in which "with a few strokes of a great master he sets before us the pauper gentleman," he had no idea of the goal to which his imagination wasleading him. There can be little doubt that all he contemplated wasa short tale to range with those he had already written, a talesetting forth the ludicrous results that might be expected to followthe attempt of a crazy gentleman to act the part of a knight-errant inmodern life.
It is plain, for one thing, that Sancho Panza did not enter into theoriginal scheme, for had Cervantes thought of him he certainly wouldnot have omitted him in his hero's outfit, which he obviously meant tobe complete. Him we owe to the landlord's chance remark in Chapter III that knights seldom travelled without squires.
Don Quixote, a Novel by Miguel de Cervantes. (2023, Mar 19). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/don-quixote-a-novel-by-miguel-de-cervantes-essay
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