Meet the great Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes and his masterpiece, Don Quixote. Here’s a brief explanation of what makes this work so fascinating with its blend of satire and humanity!
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born in 1547 in Alcárdenares, east of Madrid, the capital of Spain. He was baptized in the Gothic church of Santa Maria Ramayor in Alcárdenares, and the baptismal record states that it took place on October 9, 1547, but there is no record that specifies the day Cervantes was born.
His family is said to have descended from the purest Castilian blood, a Christian state founded in the Iberian Peninsula in the 11th century against the Muslims. Cervantes was born in the midst of this history, at the height of Spain’s glory.
His father was a surgeon. However, he wasn’t a real doctor, treating only minor injuries, and he was deaf, which is why he is believed to have lived in poverty throughout his life. Cervantes grew up without a formal schooling because he moved from Alcara to Valladolid, Madrid, and Seville from boyhood to young manhood.
He traveled to Italy in 1569 as a servant of Cardinal Akebia, and the following year joined the army, participating in the naval battle of Lepanto in 1571, where he was wounded in the chest and his left hand was crippled, and the battle of Junís in 1573. These experiences in Italy would have a profound influence on his literature. At the end of the war, Cervantes traveled back to his homeland on a homeward bound ship with his brother, who was also a soldier.
On the return voyage, however, the group was attacked by Algerian pirates and Cervantes was kidnapped and held captive for five years.
He was finally freed in 1580 after a ransom was paid by a monk named Juan Hill of the Order of Friars Minor. Upon his return to his homeland, he resolved to pursue a literary career. At the age of thirty-seven, he married Catalina de Palacios, the daughter of a wealthy farmer. After his marriage, he lived on his wife’s dowry and devoted himself to writing. The result was La Galatea (1585), which saw the light of day. It brought him some success and a modest income, but not enough to make a name for himself.
He is said to have written dozens of plays by 1615, but only two survive today, Life in Algeria and Ranumancia. His lack of success as a playwright is evidenced by the fact that in 1594, Cervantes gave up writing and became a lowly grain buyer, a job that paid little.
Don Quixote was published in 1605. Before the publication of Don Quixote, he worked as a food collector for the navy, but was imprisoned for cheating, and in 1594, he became a tax collector in Granada, but was imprisoned again due to the bankruptcy of the bank where he deposited public money. After that, he lived in poverty in Seville for several years, and it was during this difficult life that he wrote the entire Don Quixote story of the witty country nobleman La Mancha.
Despite the success of Don Quixote, Cervantes remained impoverished. Shortly after its publication, he was accused of being involved in an incident and imprisoned, and even after his release, he spent several years with little creative activity. The sequel to Don Quixote was published in 1615. It is a great work, far surpassing its predecessor, and was published ten years after its publication and about half a year before Cervantes’ death.
In 1609, he joined one of the many religious orders that were flourishing in Madrid at the time. When his patron, the Count of Lemos, was appointed viceroy of Naples, Cervantes attempted to follow him to Italy, but was unsuccessful, and the following year he joined the Silva Society, founded by Francisco de la Silva, where he seems to have been engaged in scholarship for some time.
Between then and his death, he published a collection of twelve short and medium-length novels, The Model Novel (1613) and An Excursion to Mount Parnassus (1614), and in 1615 he published eight comedies and eight interludes.
On April 2, 1616, Cervantes became ill. But in the face of death, his mind was at peace. On April 23, at the age of 69, he finally closed his eyes, having lived a tumultuous life and left behind the immortal work of Don Quixote.
“The essential question of the novel is how to create the most beautiful human form.”……. However, “Don Quixote” (Don euixote) is the closest thing to beauty that literature has ever given birth to. I think Don Quixote reaches the heights of beauty because of the very humor that makes the reader feel compassion.
Dostoevsky, Russia’s greatest writer, said of Don Quixote: ‘It is a work that is perceived a priori. ‘This work is adorned with paradoxes, such as the degradation of a priori perceived stereotypes, and with humor and wit that fuels life.’ So even if you don’t know the name Cervantes, you’re probably familiar with Don Quixote.
However, despite its fame, very few people have actually read the entire work. Most of us can only remember seeing the story in elementary school textbooks or picture books, let alone in his native Spain.
Cervantes said that his purpose in writing Don Quixote was to “overthrow the power and prestige of chivalric tales in the world. By the time Don Quixote was published, chivalric tales had already become outdated, but they were still very popular among the common people, and by the time Don Quixote was published, chivalric tales had all but disappeared. Nevertheless, the success of this work can be attributed to the fact that Don Quixote is a parody of the literature of the previous era.
Part of the literary history value of Cervantes’s novel is that it broke with the old formats that had been followed up to that point. In any case, Cervantes was a major figure in the golden age of Spanish literature, and although they didn’t know each other at the time, they were contemporaries of Shakespeare in England, Tasso in Italy, and Montaigne in France.
“Don Quixote,” born in Spain under such a background, will be kept as a spiritual treasure of human history with its truth and overflowing wit that longs to be realized in the goodness contained in the work.
