Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born in Alcala de Henares, a town 20 miles from Madrid, on September 29, 1547. He was named Miguel for Saint Michael, whose patron day is September 29. Being the son of a barber-surgeon, he traveled around a lot, moving wherever his father's services were needed. His family was large; he was only the fourth son out of what was to become seven children in total. Not much is known about his educational background.
In 1570, he
left Spain for Italy, a move usually done by the Spaniards of his time to
further their careers. Once there he joined the Spanish infantry in Naples. In
1571, a Turkish fleet invaded Cyprus, an island country near Greece. This move
made the confrontation between the Turks and the Spanish infantries located in
nearby Italy inevitable. Cervantes valiantly fought in the Gulf of Lepanto, an
area near Greece. He was badly wounded in his left hand and thus earned the
nickname "Manco de Lepanto" (Maimed of Lepanto). After that, he continued
fighting in the Mediterranean.
Something
incredible happened when he tried to come back home to Spain in 1575. His ship
was captured by pirates and he was taken as a slave to Algiers, a country in
northern Africa. It is believed that his life as a slave from 1575 to 1580
became the source of inspiration for some episodes in Don Quixote. In 1580, his
family, with the help of the friars of a Trinitarian monastery, was finally
able to raise the ransom money necessary to free him.
Spain had
changed drastically during Cervantes's absence. Prices had increased
dramatically and the standard of living for people like his middle-class family
had fallen. As a sad consequence, Cervantes would spend the rest of his life
employment-hopping and being continually short of money. But it was his return to
Spain which began his career as a major literary figure. In 1585, he published
his first long work, La Galatea, a prose pastoral romance. Its publication
brought him success with the reading public. After this pastoral romance,
Cervantes decided to try his luck as a dramatist. His plays were average in
comparison to the Don Quixote which he was to write in 1604.
Unfortunately,
all of this success resulted in no profit for Cervantes, who had sold the
publishing rights of his work. The other major works that he published were 12
Novelas Ejemplares (12 Exemplay Novels, 1613) and Ocho Comedias y Ocho
Entremeses (Eight Comedies and Eight Interludes, 1615). In the latter,
Cervantes poignantly bids goodbye to the world in the prologue; he obviously
foresaw his imminent death.
The influence
of Don Quixote on later literature was astounding. The work, which is in
essence a parody of the time's popular chivalric romances, had been written in
a realistic style. Cervantes' use of irony came to be admired and Don Quixote
came to be seen at times as a comic hero and at others as a tragic hero driven
by impossible dreams. It is believed that the influence of this work can be
seen in such writers as Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Benito Perez Galdos
and in painters like William Hogarth and Pablo Picasso.
