The exciting life of Miguel de Cervantes (II)

 

Love adventures and marriage

 

Upon his return to Madrid, the writer has a love affair with Ana Franca de Rojas, married to a tavern keeper, who will give him a natural daughter [1], Isabel, born in the autumn of 1584.

Some researchers claim that Isabel was, in fact, the natural daughter of Magdalena, one of Cervantes’ sisters.

 

Authentic portrait of Isabel de Saavedra,
Authentic portrait of Isabel de Saavedra, attributed to Juan Pantoja de la Cruz (1553-1608).

In any case, Magdalena later takes care of Isabel, who will be called Isabel de Saavedra, will be part of the Cervantes clan and will follow the adventures of her aunts and her cousin Constanza, the result of the first love affair of another of the Cervantes’ sisters, Andrea, with a nobleman who breaks their marriage commitment, which will have important consequences for the family and will be the beginning of a long life in which relationships with men become a business to survive.

One of the longest adventures of her sisters Andrea and Magdalena, the latter only 17 years old, is the one they have with the brothers Alonso and Pedro Portocarrero. They will be the ones who provide most of the money that will free Miguel and Rodrigo from his kidnapping in Algiers.

 

 

 

 

Wedding bells are ringing

 

On December 12 of the same year that his daughter was born, Cervantes married Doña Catalina Salazar y Palacios, a young woman nineteen years younger than him, daughter of a recently deceased nobleman from the town of Esquivias (province of Toledo), where they established their marital domicile.

This town interested Cervantes because its proximity to the court allowed him to cultivate friendships and achieve his goals. In this way he established a relationship with the most illustrious men of that time.

 

[1] Natural daughter: born out of wedlock.

 

 

Record of the marriage of Cervantes with Catalina.
Record of the marriage of Cervantes with Catalina.

 

Imaginary portrait of Catalina Salazar y Palacios.
Olga Akira (2019). Imaginary portrait of Catalina Salazar y Palacios.

 

However, the marriage did not work and they did not have children; In fact, the writer never talks about his wife in his many autobiographical texts.

Two years into their marriage, Cervantes leaves his wife in the town and begins his long travels through Andalusia to make a living.

Surely, between the years 1581 and 1583, Cervantes wrote his first important literary work, La Galatea, published in 1585. It is a pastoral novel, a genre that the Portuguese writer Jorge Montemayor had established in Spain with his novel La Diana.

    

Cover of the first edition of La Galatea. It features a typicla 16th century design, with Gothic typography and Renaissance ornaments.
Cover of the first edition of La Galatea.

   Blakc and white engraving of La Galatea.

Cecilio Prats (2019). La Galatea.

 

From commissioner of supplies to tax collector

 

Between 1587 and 1600, Miguel de Cervantes lived in Seville, exercising the thankless job of commissioner of supplies, which forced him to travel around Andalusia requisitioning[2] food, especially cereals and oil, for the military expeditions that his king Philip II was preparing against England, especially for the Invincible Armada, which was destroyed in August 1588, which constituted a terrible disaster in the history of Spain and marked the beginning of its decline.

The stay in Seville is fundamental in his life, since it allowed him to meet all kinds of people who would later appear as characters in his work.

 

[2] Requisition: expropriate, with immediate effect and without following the ordinary procedure, things, rights and services.

 

Oil painting depicting Cervantes inside his house, sitting and writing while several of his characters seem to be observing him expectantly. Two resting bulls are also visible.
Lizcano, Ángel (1887). Cervantes and his models. Prado Museum (Madrid, Spain).

 

In 1594 he obtained a position as a tax collector in some towns in the kingdom of Granada (southern Spain) and deposited the proceeds in a banking house [3] in Seville. But the banker went bankrupt, and Cervantes, who could not pay the amounts collected, was imprisoned in Seville, where he spent about three months in 1597.

 

[3] Banking house: bank.

 

Painting depicting a prison. Cervantes is sitting with a resigned expression, imagining the protagonists of his novel Don Quixote, who appear sketched on a stone wall.
Cervantes and the characters from his Don Quixote.

 

Cervantes refers to this fact when he says that Don Quixote was conceived in a prison.

Miguel was already over fifty years old when he came out of prison. He had no money, but he carried with him the first part of an important manuscript that years later would become one of the most read books of all time, Don Quixote of La Mancha.

 

His bad luck continues

 

In 1601, King Philip III established his court in Valladolid and in 1604 the Cervantes went there to earn a living. Catalina accompanies Cervantes to the new capital and they will not be separated until his death. Living conditions were not good at all: they lived in a hovel on the banks of a river.

 

Old colored drawing of the neighborhood where Cervantes lived in Valladolid.
The number 1 marks the Cervantes house in Valladolid.

 

When Isabel, Cervantes’ illegitimate daughter, was orphaned, Magdalena, the writer’s sister, took her in. He recognized her as Isabel de Saavedra a year after her, when she was sixteen years old. Father and daughter never had a good relationship.

In 1604, the year of the publication of the first part of Don Quixote, his masterpiece, a new misfortune befell Cervantes.

 

Cervantes imprisoned

 

Drawing showing two knights fighting with swords. In the background, the neighborhood of Cervantes in Valladolid, a cart, and several characters.
                                              Illustration by Antonio Varas.

On the night of June 27, 1605, the knight Don Gaspar de Ezpeleta is mortally wounded by an unknown person outside the door of the writer’s house.

Cervantes went to help him, but two days later, an arbitrary judge, to favor a notary who had reasons to hate Ezpeleta, and who therefore wanted to be free of suspicion, ordered the arrest of everyone. The neighbors of the house, among them, Cervantes and part of his family.

The imprisonment lasted only one day, but the writer’s morality is called into question, since in the statements of the trial it is stated that gentlemen entered his house night and day.

His wife, his sisters, his niece Constanza, and Isabel, the writer’s natural daughter, lived with Cervantes. In Valladolid they were derogatorily called the Cervantas, perhaps because none of Cervantes’ sisters married.

As we have seen before, Andrea and Magdalena led a liberal life and became lovers of rich men who supported them. Cervantes assumed the way of life of his sisters with all the dignity in the world and never put any obstacle  to the development of his activity. On the contrary, he contributed to it, understanding that it was his will and that the woman’s will, like the man’s, must be respected. In this sense, he was a man far ahead of his time.

In 1606 the court moved from Valladolid to Madrid, and Cervantes followed it with his family; there he changed his address several times until settling permanently on León Street.

At that time he married his daughter Isabel. In 1609 and 1611 his sisters died, and the family was reduced to his wife and his niece Constance.

 

Finally, he publishes his Don Quijote

 

The first part of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha came to light in Madrid in 1605, after going through suffering and setbacks.

In Don Quixote he tells the story of a gentleman fond of reading books of chivalry[4] who goes crazy, begins to believe that he is a knight-errant[5] and leaves his village three times in search of adventure, until, Forced to return home, he became ill, regained his sanity and died a Christian death.

 

[4] Books of chivalry: novels of great success and popularity in Spain in the 16th century that narrated the exploits of a knight.

[5] Knight-errant: a knight who traveled the world looking for adventures and served as the prototype for books of chivalry.

 

 

The cover displays the title in Gothic typography, with the author's name, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Overall, the design is austere, with few decorations, focusing on the title text and publication information.

The cover of the second part features a similar design to the first, with 17th-century typographic and decorative style. The title is clearly highlighted, and it includes the author's name and publication details.

                                    Covers of the first editions of both parts of Don Quixote.

 

Copper engraving showing Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza, riding their mounts. In the background, a windmill.
Don Quijote (1618), anonymous copper engraving.

 

El ingenioso hidalgo was received by the public with the applause it deserved, and in the first year four editions were made.

 

Oil painting depicting Cervantes seated in a chair, attended by an assistant while writing a dedication to the Duke of Lemos, who is sitting beside him. Two standing figures observe the scene.
Oliva, Eugenio (1883). Cervantes dedicating his Don Quixote to the Duke of Lemos. Prado Museum (Madrid, Spain).

 

Success smiles at him

 

The success of this book moved Cervantes to publish others.

In 1613 the Exemplary Novels appear; in 1615, the second part of Don Quixote and the Comedies and Entremeses, and in 1617, already posthumously, the Byzantine novel[6] Persiles and Sigismunda, so the great period of appearance of Cervantes’ works, except the first part of Don Quixote, corresponds to the stage that goes from 66 to 68 years of the writer.

 

[6] Byzantine novel: it is a type of novel that developed in Spain during the 16th and 17th centuries in imitation of the ancient Greek novel.

 

The Exemplars Novels

 

The exemplars novels is, after Don Quixote, Cervantes’s book of most permanent interest. Cervantes called them that because his intention was for them to always teach something useful and be positive. He published twelve, among them: La Gitanilla, La Fuerza de la Sangre, Rinconete y Cortadillo, La Española Inglesa, El licenciado Vidriera, El celoso extremeño, and El coloquio de los perros.

 

Black-and-white engraving of a knight abducting a lady while her family cries and despairs. In the background, the entrance walls of a city.
Arturo Montero y Calvo (1859-1887). The Abduction. (Illustration for La fuerza de la sangre).

 

 

La fuerza de la sangre tells the misfortunes of the young Leocadia, raped by Rodolfo, an excessively dishonest and libertine nobleman, and the consequences of that abominable act.

We find here the theme of honor and also other issues such as justice, sin, virtue, reparation and forgiveness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interior of an edition of the novel El licenciado Vidriera, featuring a black-and-white illustration on one page and the title on the other.
Inside cover of an edition of El licenciado Vidriera.

 

In El licenciado Vidriera, the protagonist, Tomás Rodaja, goes crazy because of a love potion that a lady gives him and he believes that it is made of glass and can be broken.

Through it, Cervantes ridicules and satirizes the customs and characters of the society in which he lived.

 

 

 

 

Furthermore, throughout his life, Cervantes premiered several plays that were very popular with the public. His greatest success was the entremeses, brief costumbrist pictures of Spanish life, such as El retablo de las maravillas o La cueva de Salamanca.

 

The last months of his life

 

During the last months of his life, Cervantes dedicates the little strength he has left to completing another enterprise begun a long time ago, perhaps during his stay in Seville, then suspended for years, and which he now wants to finish: Los trabajos de Persiles and Sigismunda .

 

Black and white engraving of Persiles. Cervantes Birthplace Museum (Madrid).
Engraving of Persiles. Cervantes Birthplace Museum (Madrid).

 

On April 20, he dictates in one breath the prologue of this work, and ends by addressing the reader: “My life is ending and at the pace of the anniversaries of my pulses[7], which, at the latest, will end their career this Sunday, I will end the career of my life […]. Bye thank you; goodbye, sweethearts; Goodbye, rejoicing friends: I am dying, and wishing to see you soon happy in the other life.”

Cervantes survived a few months after the publication of the second part of Don Quixote. On April 2, 1616 he fell ill with dropsy [8], and died on April 22, 1616 in his house on León Street in Madrid.

 

[7] He refers to the fact that his life will end when his heartbeats end.

[8] Dropsy: excessive accumulation of fluids in internal tissues.

 

Oil painting depicting Cervantes dying in bed while a gentlemanholds his hand. Around him are several other characters.
Cano de la Peña (1865). Cervantes’ Agony. National Library of Seville (Spain).

 

His place of rest

 

He was humbly buried in the convent of the Trinitarias Descalzas on Cantarranas Street, where his remains undoubtedly still rest without the possibility of identifying them.

In the records of his parish, it is determined that his death occurred on Saturday the 23rd, in accordance with the custom of the time, which only included the date of the burial. As is known, it is the latter that is known today, and that is why Book Day is celebrated every year in Spain.

His wife Catherine died in 1620.

Cervantes’ contemporaries did not know him; posterity has given him fair compensation, but late, because he has recognized that there was a man who was ahead of his century, who divined the taste and tendencies of another society, becoming popular due to his inexhaustible graces.

 

 

Adapted from Martín de Riquer, Cervantes y el Quijote.

 

 

 

 

 

Picture of María Pérez
María Pérez

I am a Spanish Language and Literature teacher and hold a Master's degree in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language.

With all that I have learned from my teaching experience, I have adapted a selection of the best works of Spanish literature for different levels of Spanish teaching (from A2 to C2), accompanied by interactive exercises in comprehension and expression, grammar, and vocabulary with the answers.

You'll see how much you enjoy it and progress in your Spanish!

Picture of María Pérez
María Pérez

I am a Spanish Language and Literature teacher and hold a Master's degree in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language.

With all that I have learned from my teaching experience, I have adapted a selection of the best works of Spanish literature for different levels of Spanish teaching (from A2 to C2), accompanied by interactive exercises in comprehension and expression, grammar, and vocabulary with the answers.

You'll see how much you enjoy it and progress in your Spanish!

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