Who hasn’t heard of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza? Spotting a young man reading a book while slapping his forehead and laughing, Spanish King Philip III said in the 17th century, “This guy is either crazy or reading Don Quixote.” A courtier went to ask the young man about the book and hurriedly informed the king that it was indeed Don Quixote.
They say that every work reflects its creator. We will try to narrate the life of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, hoping that we may thus understand what he wanted to convey with his literary work.
Beginning
Cervantes was born on October 9, 1547, in the family of a impoverished Spanish nobleman in the town of Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid. It was a time when wealth flowed into Spain, the most powerful country in the world, from its colonies in America. However, the social differences began to reach drastic levels and slowly led the mighty Spain to collapse.
Cervantes’ father, a nobleman from a famous family In the past, with a family coat of arms on the wall and holes in his noble cloak, he was a physician with seven children whose family struggled with perpetual poverty. But the memory of the glorious exploits of heroic ancestors filled him and his family with pride and arrogance that often bordered on self-destruction; it was not fitting for a member of a noble lineage to engage in the affairs of common citizens and peasants. Even death was preferable to that.
The family moved throughout Spain in search of employment, there was no money even for basic necessities, so the father took care of the first education of his children himself. However, he couldn’t teach them much because he had to provide for the large family and often found himself in debtors’ prisons. Miguel studied with teachers in the places where the family resided. In 1569, when he was twenty years old, he learned Latin, rhetoric, and Roman history in Madrid from an educated teacher who apparently introduced him to leading humanistic ideas. Like A gifted student with a knack for literature, who started delving into poetry at a young age, quickly becomes involved in the artistic circle close to the royal court. There, he meets young Cardinal Giulio Acquaviva, an Italian ambassador who is impressed by the talented, impoverished young man and offers him a job as a chancellor, thus saving him from ten years of imprisonment and the amputation of his right hand, a sentence imposed for injuring a nobleman in a duel. The sentence was pronounced in absentia, as Cervantes was already on his way to Rome.
In Italy, at the very source of the Renaissance, he comes into contact with the original works of great contemporary and ancient thinkers. As a self-taught and thirsty for knowledge, Cervantes will remember many details from the books he read at that time, especially Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, which he greatly admired.
“Real House”
However, poverty, the “blessed gift whose value man is unable to assess,” forces him to decide how he will earn a living. The choice was not great: church, maritime and trade, or military service.
Spanish King Philip II was preparing a military campaign against the Turks at that time. Thirsty for heroism and glory he had heard about his whole life, our hero enthusiastically boarded a Spanish galley at the age of twenty-four, which was part of a Christian alliance fleet composed of Genoese, Venetian, and Spanish ships anchored in the Mediterranean. The entire Spanish fleet, known as the “Invincible Armada”, was made up of such fiery young men, fearless in battle, longing for great and honorable deeds. They were led by the king’s half-brother, Don Juan of Austria, “beautiful as Apollo”, then the most capable Spanish military commander and the adored knight of young fighters from the galleys. Miguel immediately impressed his commanders with his extraordinary bravery and steadfastness.
Battle of Lepanto, 1571
On October 7, 1571, the allied galleys encountered the Turkish fleet in the bay near Lepanto and engaged in an uncertain and difficult battle. with the superior Turkish navy. Cervantes found himself below deck, sick with fever, so his comrades urged him to stay there. Later he would write about it: “What would they say about me? That I am not performing my duty. I would rather die fighting for my God and king than hide below deck.”
He fought among the first, leading a squad of twelve men. In battle, he lost his left arm “for the greater glory of the right”: “Just as the trumpets were heralding the victory with joyful sounds, I still held my sword in my right hand while blood was flowing from the left. I felt a deep wound in my chest, and the left arm was completely crushed.” This battle was perhaps the most important event in Cervantes’ life. Towards the end, he would write: “The wounds that a soldier carries on his face and chest are the stars that guide others to the sky of honor.”
He spent the winter after the battle resting and healing, but soon after that, he returned to the fight. His brother Rodrigo joined him, and both became the best fighters under Don Juan of Austria. ije. However, a series of great achievements by the “Invincible Army” was suddenly interrupted by Philip II out of fear that Don Juan of Austria would seize the throne from him. The fleet anchored in Italian ports, and the growing influence of the Turks in the Mediterranean caused resentment, first among the soldiers and then throughout the country. Because of the king’s actions, the famous Battle of Lepanto loses its significance.
Cervantes leaves the fleet and spends some time in leisure and reading in Italy, enjoying the pleasant Italian sky, and then returns to his homeland. He carries two recommendation letters from his supreme commanders, which were meant to be given to the king and become a captain in the Spanish army.
Algiers
However, his homeland was not as close as it seemed. The ship El Sol, on which Cervantes dreamt of a happy future, was suddenly captured by pirates, and the captives were taken to Algiers. The captives were treated the same way Christians treated Jews and Muslims in Europe, and for the slightest offense Mistreatment or disobedience resulted in the maiming or killing of prisoners.
Cervantes’ time in captivity resembles an adventure novel and reveals a lot about the character of the future writer of Don Quixote. Having found letters with splendid recommendations, the pirates demanded a high ransom, thinking he was a wealthy nobleman. As the ransom never arrived, he spent five years in captivity, during which he attempted to escape four times. None of these attempts succeeded. However, his fellow prisoners never stopped believing in him and blindly followed his advice, hoping he would free them from slavery. Every time an escape attempt failed, he made no attempt to hide anything and solely assumed the responsibility, defying death.
“I never lost hope of regaining my freedom. And whenever my plans, dreams, and initiatives didn’t meet my expectations, I didn’t lose courage, but to sustain it, I invented a new hope, however fragile and weak it may have been.” nessom i ratničkim podvizima Cervantesove mladosti zamijenila je svakodnevna borba za egzistenciju. Tako je veliki pisac, koji je bio svjedok velikih vojnih uspjeha Španjolske, morao se suočiti s realnošću siromaštva i odbačenosti. Njegovi planovi za obnovu karijere pisca i osvajanje poštovanja u književnim krugovima bili su označeni teškoćama i nepopustljivom sudbinom.
Ipak, Cervantes je odlučio ne odustati. S nepokolebljivim karakterom i nepresušnom kreativnošću, upustio se u pisanje svog remek-djela, “Don Quijote”. Njegova imaginacija i duhovitost pomogle su mu stvoriti jedno od najvažnijih djela u svjetskoj književnosti, koje je postalo simbol borbe za pravdu i snagu mašte.
Dok je njegova vojna prošlost možda bila zaboravljena, Cervantes je svojom genijalnošću osvojio srca čitatelja diljem svijeta. Njegov “Mancha” postao je mjesto susreta snova i stvarnosti, a Don Quijote i Sancho Panza simboli su vječnih vrijednosti hrabrosti, prijateljstva i neumorne borbe za ideal.
Cervantes je dokazao da se pravi junak ne odlikuje samo ratničkim podvizima, već i snom, maštom i hrabrošću da se suoči s izazovima života.
The knight had to leave behind the battle and engage in a different kind of fight. He was forced to confront a world that knew neither bravery nor honor, heroism nor dignity, a world that was cowardly and narrow-minded. He encountered people who had given up on high ideals, resigned to poverty as the only possible reality, and they treated him, who was carried away by the long-gone glory of past wars, with ridicule and contempt. There were already too many officers in the royal army, and the court service with its intrigues and flattery did not suit him at all. So he decided to try his hand at literature.
and he had no inclination for such a thing.
He tried to make a name for himself in the Spanish theater, which he may have succeeded in if he hadn’t lived at the same time as Lope de Vega, the greatest Spanish playwright, who attacked his writing. He struggled in life, often mocked as a cripple who, well, writes some plays to make a living.
Exhausted by poverty, he accepted the only job offered to him, which was collecting oil and grain for the army. Tired of this job, he sent a letter to the king in which he spoke for the last time about Lepanto and the suffering of Christians in slavery, begging for a position as an official in the Americas, “the general refuge of all desperate souls.” Soon he received a response from Philip II: he should seek gratitude in Spain, not in the colonies.
When the “Invincible Armada” was finally defeated, the grain collector was no longer needed by anyone. Debts piled up and creditors did not leave him alone. They constantly found new faults in his work. He lost his job and, pressured by poverty, continued to struggle. He is trying to write, but his writing lacks enthusiasm and brings him little profit. He withdraws into solitude and occasionally presents himself with a sonnet, as if to say that he is still alive.
When King Philip II died in 1598, a magnificent altar was erected in the cathedral in Seville, adorned with inscriptions about the king’s great deeds, including a mention of the victory at Lepanto. They say that a mad poet suddenly entered the church and recited a sonnet full of bitter irony about the king’s altar. It was Cervantes. This public appearance marked a turning point in his writing.
Don Quixote
When the first part of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha was published in 1605, Cervantes was fifty-six years old. The book was a phenomenal success (it had six editions in one year) and its manuscript was read even before its publication.
It is a story about an aging nobleman who, while reading chivalrous novels, one day decides to become a wandering knight, much to the surprise of people and the despair of his relatives. om “to defend the poor and earn name and fame in heroic adventures”. Simple-minded Sancho Panza, attracted by Don Quixote’s nobility, becomes his squire and accompanies him in all his endeavors. And so the two of them together go through countless adventures, often coming out on the losing end.
Since every knight had a lady whose name he invoked while charging at the enemy, Don Quixote also had his lady: she was a young and beautiful beauty, and the mere thought of her gave him strength in every danger. Her name was Dulcinea of Toboso. Admittedly, he had never seen her as a lady, only as a plain peasant girl, but he knew that beneath that appearance lay the ideal of beauty and nobility.
Don Quixote does not accept a world without ideals, just like Cervantes after experiencing glory at Lepanto. The novel about Don Quixote conveys the old truth about the power of ideals. Although knightly courage and nobility may seem ridiculous to most people today, anyone who dares to embody them in everyday life knows that they hold a special kind of magic. This person seems like a weirdo who charges at windmills, but that’s not a reason to give up on them.
After the first part of Don Quixote, Cervantes writes Exemplary Novels, the first Spanish collection of novellas that will later serve as a model and inspiration for many writers. At that time, the second part of Don Quixote appears, however, Cervantes did not write that book. When in 1614 Cervantes actually wrote the second part of his book, in the preface he confronted the author of the fake “Don Quixote”, not mentioning his name anywhere.
The second part differs greatly from the first. While the first part describes the adventures of a wandering knight, in the second part Cervantes puts in Don Quixote’s mouth the wisdom he gained in his arduous journey through life: “…if I know about the countless sorrows that are connected to chivalry, I also know about the countless treasures that can be achieved through it, and I know that the path of virtue is very narrow, while the path of vice is broad and comfortable, because the broad and comfortable path of vice leads to death, while the narrow and arduous path of virtue leads to life.” At the end of this second part, we see Don Quixote leaving his knight errant life, repenting to himself that he was crazy. As soon as he stops searching for his star, he dies: the author obviously wanted to tell us that without such “madness,” life no longer has any goals or meaning.
A few days before his death, Cervantes finishes another work, Persiles and Sigismunda, and dies on April 23, 1616, in Madrid, forgotten and poor. He received more blows than praise in his life, but there is no bitterness in his works. Someone once said that artistic works do not arise from difficulties but in spite of them.