CERVANTES' MASTERPIECE A BOOK FOR ALL TIME--INTENSELY
SPANISH, IT STILL APPEALS TO ALL NATIONS BY ITS DEEP
HUMAN INTEREST.
Among the great books of the world no contrast could be greater than
that between St. Augustine's _Confessions_ and _Don Quixote_ by
Cervantes, yet each in its way has influenced unnumbered thousands and
will continue to influence other thousands so long as this world shall
endure. Few great books have been so widely quoted as this masterpiece
of the great Spaniard; few have contributed so many apt stories and
pungent epigrams. Of the great imaginary characters of fiction none is
more strongly or clearly defined than the sad-faced Knight of La Mancha
and his squire, Sancho Panza. The grammar school pupil in his reading
finds constant allusions to Don Quixote and his adventures, and the
world's greatest writers have drawn upon this romance by Cervantes for
material to point their own remarks.
In this respect the only great author Spain has produced resembles
Shakespeare. His appeal is universal because the man behind the romance
had tasted to the bitter dregs all that life can offer, yet his nature
had remained sweet and wholesome. Byron in _Childe Harold_, with his
cunning trick of epigram, said that Cervantes "smiled Spain's chivalry
away," but chivalry was as dead in the days of Cervantes as it is now.
What the creator of _Don Quixote_ did was to ridicule the high-flown
talk, the absurd sentimentality that marked chivalry, while at the same
time he brought out, as no one else has ever done, the splendid
qualities that made chivalry immortal.
Don Quixote is a man who is absolutely out of touch with the world in
which he moves, but while you laugh at his absurd misconceptions you
feel for him the deepest respect; you would no more laugh at the man
himself than you would at poor unfortunate Lear. The idealistic quality
of Don Quixote himself is enhanced by the swinish nature of Sancho
Panza, who cannot understand any of his master's raptures. Into this
character of the sorrowful-faced knight Cervantes put all the results of
his own hard experience. The old knight is often pessimistic, but it is
a genial pessimism that makes one smile; while running through the whole
book is a modern note that can be found in no other book written in the
early days of the seventeenth century.
That Cervantes himself was unconscious that he had produced a book that
would live for centuries after he was gone is the best proof of the
genius of the writer. The plays and romances which he liked the best are
now forgotten, as are most of the works of Lope de Vega, the popular
literary idol of his day. The book is intensely Spanish, yet its appeal
is limited to no race, no creed and no age.
[Illustration:
PORTRAIT OF CERVANTES
FROM AN OLD STEEL ENGRAVING IN A
RARE FRENCH EDITION OF
"DON QUIXOTE"]
We have far more data in regard to the life of Cervantes than we have
concerning Shakespeare, yet the Spanish author died on the same day.
Cervantes came of noble family, but its fortune had vanished when he
entered on life. He spent his boyhood in Valladolid and at twenty went
up to Madrid, where he soon joined the train of the Papal Ambassador,
Monsignor Acquaviva, and with him went to Rome, then the literary center
of the world. There he learned Italian and absorbed culture as well as
the prevailing enthusiasm for the crusades against the Turks, who were
then menacing Venice and all the cities along the northern shore of the
Mediterranean.
The leader of the Christian host was Don John of Austria, one of the
great leaders of the world, who had the power of arousing the passionate
devotion of his followers. Cervantes joined the Christian troops and at
the battle of Lepanto, one of the great sea fights of all history, he
was captain of a company of soldiers on deck and came out of the battle
with two gun-shot wounds in his body and with his left hand so mutilated
that it had to be cut off. Despite the fact that he was crippled, his
enthusiasm still burned brightly and he saw service for the next five
years.
Then, on his way home by sea, he was captured and taken to Algiers as a
slave. There he fell to the share of an Albanian renegade and afterward
he was sold to the Dey of Algiers. During all the five years of his
Moorish captivity Cervantes was the life and soul of his fellow slaves,
and he was constantly planning to free himself and his companions. The
personal force of the man may be seen from the fact that the Dey
declared he "should consider captives, and barks and the whole city of
Algiers in perfect safety could he but be sure of that handless
Spaniard." Finally Cervantes was ransomed and returned to his home at
the age of thirty-five. There he married and became a naval commissary
and later a tax collector. His mind soon turned to literature, and for
twenty years he wrote a great variety of verses and dramas, all in the
prevailing sentimental spirit of the age. At last he produced the first
part of _Don Quixote_ at the age of fifty-eight, and he lacked only two
years of seventy when the second and final part of the great romance was
given to the world.
Comment has often been made on the ripe age of Cervantes when he
produced his masterpiece, but Lockhart, who wrote an excellent short
introduction to _Don Quixote_, points out that of all the great English
novelists Smollett was the only one who did first-rate work while young.
_Humphrey Clinker_ and _Roderick Random_ are little read in these days,
but we have a noteworthy instance of the great success of a new English
novelist when past sixty years of age in William de Morgan, whose
_Joseph Vance_ made him famous, and who has followed this with no less
than three great novels: _Alice for Short_, _Somehow Good_ and _It Never
Can Happen Again_. And the marvel of it is that Mr. de Morgan actually
took up authorship at sixty, without any previous experience in writing.
Dickens and Kipling are about the only exceptions to the rule that a
novelist does his best work in mature years, but they are in a class by
themselves.
_Don Quixote_ reflects all the varying fortunes of Cervantes. The book
was begun in prison, where Cervantes was cast, probably for attempting
to collect debts. All his remarkable experiences in the wars against the
Turks and in captivity among the Moors are embodied in the interpolated
tales. The philosophy put into the mouth of the Knight of La Mancha is
the fruit of Cervantes' hard experience and mature thought. He was a
Spaniard with the sentiments and the prejudices of his century; but by
the gift of genius he looked beyond his age and his country and, like
Shakespeare, he wrote for all time and all peoples.
Nationality in literature never had a more striking example than is
furnished by _Don Quixote_. It is Spanish through and through; an
open-air romance, much of the action of which takes place on the road or
in the wayside inns where the Knight and his squire tarry for the night.
It swarms with characters that were common in the Spain of the close of
the sixteenth and the early days of the seventeenth centuries. Cervantes
never attempts to paint the life of the court or the church; he never
introduces any great dignitaries, but he is thoroughly at home with the
common people, and he tells his story apparently without any effort, yet
with a keen appreciation of the natural humor that seasons every scene.
And yet through it all Don Quixote moves a perfect figure of gentle
knighthood, a man without fear and without reproach. You laugh at him
but at the same time he holds your respect. Genius can no further go
than to produce a miracle like this: the creation of a character that
compels your respect in the face of childish follies and
hallucinations.
[Illustration:
DON QUIXOTE DISCOURSING
TO SANCHO PANZA IN THE YARD OF THE INN WHICH
THE KNIGHT IMAGINED WAS A LORDLY CASTLE
FROM GUSTAVE DORE'S ILLUSTRATIONS
IN THE CLARK EDITION]
No one can read _Don Quixote_ carefully without getting rich returns
from it in entertainment and culture. The humor is often coarse, but it
is hearty and wholesome, and underlying all the fun is the sober
conviction that the hero of all these adventures is a man whom it would
have been good to know. It is difficult for any one of Anglo-Saxon
strain to understand those of Latin blood, but it seems to me that the
American of New England ancestry is nearer to the Spaniard than to the
Frenchman or the Italian.
Underneath the surface there is a lust for adventure and an element of
enduring stubbornness in the Spaniard which made him in the heyday of
his nation the greatest of explorers and conquerors. And as a basis of
character is his love of truth and his sterling honesty, traits that
have survived through centuries of decay and degeneracy, and that may
yet restore Spain to something of her old prestige among the nations of
Europe. So, in reading _Don Quixote_ one may see in it an epitome of
that old Spain which has so glorious a history in adventures that stir
the blood, as in the conquests of Cortez and Pizarro, and in that higher
realm of splendid sacrifice for an ideal, which witnessed the sale of
Isabella's jewels to aid Columbus in his plans to discover a new world.