2 October: Boreham on Miguel Cervantes

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Warring With Windmills
It was on October 2, 1547, that Miguel Cervantes, the author of "Don Quixote" was born; and, although four centuries have passed, the world retains its sense of admiration. "Don Quixote" is a lonely book. Even in a library of a million volumes it would stand by itself.

It has no natural kith or kin.There are no other books that can be fittingly grouped around it. There is no other volume to be classified with it; there is none of the same kind. Moreover, this one never seems to be twice in the same mood. Sometimes, as we glance at it, it appears to have donned the motley; its clownish antics compel a smile. At other times, it stares at us austerely, reproachfully, angrily.

What are we to make of it? Not so very long ago, "Don Quixote" was generally regarded as one of the supreme triumphs of literary achievement. Dr. Johnson sat up to all hours of the morning to devour it, and, when he came to the final volume, lamented that the story was so short. Charles Lamb declared that Cervantes was the most consummate artist that the world had ever seen, Macaulay insisted that "Don Quixote" is beyond all comparison, the best novel in the world. Coleridge could find no language sufficiently adulatory to express his praise. Victor Hugo called Cervantes the Homer of humour; Froude declared that he was without a rival in any literature.

Clipping The Wings Of Inspiration
This tall, gaunt Spaniard, whose left arm hangs helplessly at his side, and who drags one foot awkwardly and painfully as he walks, is worth knowing. His hair and his beard are a mixture of chestnut and silver, whilst there is something in his lean countenance and twinkling eyes that invites confidence and even affection. He is crippled and scarred by military service and foreign slavery; he has been educated in the school of realism and brutality; but he has carved his way to immortality in spite of everything. To understand him, you must reflect that, in the 16th century, every precaution was taken to present mere literary men from being exalted above measure.

Poor Miguel languished in a dungeon, not because of any high crime or misdemeanour, but to keep him duly humble and to correct any tendency on his part to criticise too caustically his betters. One does not like to think, as he follows the hectic progress of the gallant Don, proudly astride Rosinante, with the faithful Sancho Panza on foot beside him, that the pages that afford us such exquisite delight were penned by an unhappy wretch whose own laughs were few and far between. His body was scarred with the brands of five years of cruel servitude on the galleys at Algiers; he rotted for some time in a loathsome cell in his native land; his health, after he returned broken from the wars, was never robust; and he spent a good deal of his time, when at liberty, in wondering where the next meal was to come from.

Byron accuses Cervantes of having laughed Spain's chivalry away. But this is scarcely fair. Spain's chivalry was as dead as a door nail when Cervantes reached for his quill. Cervantes was forty when the Great Armada was defeated. The pride of Castile received its death blow; the glory of Spain was humbled to the dust. Everybody felt that the age of chivalry had passed. It often happens, however, that a good thing, when it passes, is succeeded by a spurious imitation of that thing.

The sturdy Puritanism of Cromwell and Milton was immediately followed by a disgusting and hypocritical Puritanism which evoked universal nausea. In the same way, the golden age of Spanish chivalry was succeeded by a burlesque that awoke in all sensible minds a feeling of derision and contempt, and it was against this counterfeit of chivalry that Cervantes, who was older at the time than Shakespeare was on the day of his death, determined, in his own way, to protest.

The Wedding Of Chivalry And Sanity
At that moment, boys in their teens, hearing from their fathers the humiliating story of their country's fading prestige, vowed that they would reinstate Spain as mistress of the main. They had no idea as to how this proud ambition could be achieved, but, like knights in shining armour going in search of distressed damsels at whose beautiful feet they could lay their swords, they streamed forth in quest of stirring adventure.

Hot-headed young enthusiasts were swept off their feet by a passionate desire to cover themselves with glory. They were prepared to suffer and to die even though no practical gain resulted from their spendid and exciting exploits. They would fare forth and fight something, whether that something needed to be fought or not.

It was to counteract this curious and extravagant temper, partly admirable and partly ludicrous, that Cervantes wrote the book that has immortalised his name. Glorifying the spirit of sacrifice, and paying eloquent homage to the shining genius of chivalry, he, at the same time, ridiculed the appreciation of these heroic ideals to unworthy and ignoble ends. He designed to show that whilst there is nothing nobler than a man's willingness to shed his blood in a glorious cause, there is no real knightliness in hazarding one's life in tilting at windmills.

Will all his sly satire and delicious nonsense, Cervantes never derides genuine valour. He struggles to hold steadily the balance between romance and reality. He insists that the risk run must bear some due proportion to the ends to be achieved. Cervantes will always be remembered as the finest representative of Castilian culture, who, unappreciated in life and lying in an unknown and unhonoured tomb has enshrined his name in a lustre that can never fade.


F W Boreham

Image: Miguel Cervantes