About Miguel de Cervantes
by David Kennedy and Liam Lonegan
Born outside of Madrid in 1547, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, considered by many to be the inventor of the modern novel, is regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language. His most famous work, Don Quixote, has been translated into more languages than any other book except the Bible. While the adventures of the novel’s protagonist are many, Cervantes’ real-life adventures give the title character a run for his money. In 1570 Cervantes enlisted in a regiment of the Spanish Navy Marines, and was wounded three times in October 1571 in the victory over the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto. After his recovery, he was based mainly in Naples for the following three years, making expeditions from there to places throughout the Mediterranean. It was in 1575, while sailing from Italy to Barcelona, that his ship was attacked, and he was captured by Barbary pirates.
[This] five-year captivity left an indelible impression… the traumatic experience continuously speaks through [Cervantes’] work.
MARIA ANTONIA GARCÉS
Imprisoned in North Africa and kept as a slave, he made four unsuccessful escape attempts before he was ransomed by his parents in 1580 and sent back to Spain. According to Cervantes scholar Maria Antonia Garcés, this “five-year captivity in Algiers left an indelible impression on his fiction. From the first works written after his liberation…this traumatic experience continuously speaks through his work.”
That was not the last time Cervantes was imprisoned. Returning to Spain, he attempted to live a fairly modest life as a tax collector in the Kingdom of Granada. But, after successfully gathering funds owed the Crown, he deposited the money with a Sevillian banker who went bankrupt soon thereafter, leaving Cervantes’ accounts unpaid. Though he was sent to jail for only several months, it proved to be a turning point in his life. Cervantes later remarked that it was at this time he had the idea to write Don Quixote, which follows the adventures of a country nobleman named Alonso Quixano who, exhilarated by romantic stories of old, adopts the name Don Quixote de la Mancha and sets out to revive chivalry, right wrongs, and restore justice to the world. The musical Man of La Mancha draws from this period of Cervantes’ life, staging his invention of the Quixote legend while he is imprisoned in Seville.
Though Cervantes is known primarily for Don Quixote, it is said that, above all, he wanted to be a dramatist. He penned sixteen dramatic works: eight full-length plays and eight short farces. Most of them are lost to history, but two survive. El Trato de Argel details his experiences in pirate captivity and La Numancia depicts the tragic and violent events of the siege of Numantia by the Romans.
During his later years, Cervantes did not tire of his literary pursuits. In the last three years of his life, he published two novels and a collection of tales. He had just finished a final adventure novel entitled Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda when he died in Madrid in 1616 of what modern scholars believe was type-2 diabetes. Despite the fact that Don Quixote was a success in his lifetime, and he was hard at work until the day he died, his financial issues never ceased. Cervantes died penniless, but his imagination will live on forever.
TOP: The cast of Man of La Mancha (2018). Photo by Carol Rosegg.
