Sometimes there are characters who end up “eating” their authors. It happens in the movies but also in literature, where no one knows what happened before, if the author or the character. In the case of Miguel de Cervantes, nor should be a man of sublime training, not a valiant soldier nor a hero lost in Algiers.
This follows at least the last book of José Manuel Lucia Megías, which, moreover, is president of the Association of Cervantes: “I do not know if anyone’s going to stop talking after this biography”
the first part of “youth of Cervantes.. A life under construction “(Edaf) is a novel way to address the phenomenon. Cervantes know what he wanted to know. Basically what he left written with the intention to succeed. But the reality was much less sweet if we consider the historical context.
“I have tried to strip the myth,” explained José Manuel Lucia yesterday during the presentation of the book. “I wanted to take the myth layers to discover the real Cervantes. Like a set of Russian dolls and at the bottom was the man. From the first biography in 1738, until the last to be published are subject or imbued with the idea of having to explain the genius as if every moment had to make a genius. “
He does not has been influenced by the admiration that has character and one chapter to verifying whether what we have received is adjusted to reality or not.
the first myth is that it has stretched the “lay genius “a theory that, without having received a university education, Cervantes had a special talent to assume knowledge. What Megías Lucia defends, in the circumstances of the time, is that Cervantes did not study with the intention to be a great writer.
He, when he arrived in Madrid in 1566, wants to study to get a job feasible within their socioeconomic status. What is one of the most popular posts? Secretary of the Court. Someone who manage the documentation of the nobles. Cardinals thought in the Church, but also in the Court. “
The second image that has come to us is that of a heroic Cervantes at the Battle of Lepanto, that of a man with fever resolved almost with one hand tied behind their backs the war against the Turks. Nothing to do. When the Battle of Lepanto he takes just six months in the army it occurs. He was a rookie soldier and is not credible to occupy a prominent position on the front. He created this image for a rise and centuries later retrieved O’Donnell, wanting to make the writer in another kind of knight.
“He participated in the Battle of Lepanto, yes, but like so many others thousands “explains Lucia Megías. “And he was lucky to survive as many others. Work for which he received a bonus. “
Business Argel
In this obsession relate well, Cervantes made a virtue of necessity and turned the captivity of Algiers in their big business. She participated four escape attempts, some attempts that were all the same pattern: never did individual, collective always leaks, and never helped ordinary people, but trying to escape with clergy, nobles or people with important names. It was the way of linking its name to the great personalities and that once he could return to Madrid, they will return the favor.
“To me to Cervantes in Algiers it seems a survivor who is not only loaded of those values that brought the myth argues, Lucia Megías-, but a survivor who seeks to benefit from the means it has to get some money, get some influences and then build a better life when he returns to court. Not the captive trying to survive, but it is the captive captivity makes a profession. “
What is then the writer Cervantes? Says the author of the book that when Cervantes failed in his attempt to get a job in America decided to devote himself to literature. For that reason, it is from 1613 when he builds his work. “If Cervantes had died in 1612 would be neither a character in itself. Would “La Galatea”, the first part of Don Quixote and nothing else, that is, a book shepherds like so many others and a book of chivalry. “
Wore glasses
Just months ago, Cervantes revealed that the CIS is still a big unknown to most Spanish: only 21.6 percent claimed to have read the full version of Don Quixote. That Cervantes ignorance ranges from literary to the physical, for no original portrait of his face has not reached us. Basically because “I was nobody,” explains Lucia Megías. All works recreate Cervantes were inspired by an engraving of 1738 that draws the writer semiperfil, carrying a similar Quevedo knob.
Cervantes described in the preface of “Exemplary Novels” as a man “aquiline face, chestnut hair, forehead smooth and unencumbered, bright-eyed and hooked nose, but well proportioned.” He forgot to add that wore glasses, a detail that did point out Lope de Vega in a letter in 1612:. “I read some verses with some glasses of Cervantes that seemed fried eggs shoddy”
final stretch of his life, in addition to wearing glasses, Cervantes wanted to succeed as a writer. Unfortunately for him, it coincided in space and time with Lope, who was the real ruler of the publishing market and pens comedy. That glass ceiling that made it possible to experiment with his work Cervantes and do something refreshing and ingenious compared to what was being done. Looking to get out of the margins, leaving anonymity, leaving a style that made him the most important writer of history in Castilian.
Jose Manuel Lucia Megías dedicated the epilogue of his book to “the bones of Cervantes’, a finding that after being cover a few months ago has disappeared from the political agenda. “After all the media movement that was, finishing with a plate … For me it was very sad when they asked Ana Botella what he planned to do and said that all he had in mind was a solemn Mass celebrated by a cardinal and a military parade to honor the military Cervantes. It was very sad to see the little projection that sought him. “
Lucia Megías, taking a leading role in the celebrations of the fourth centenary, believes the new council is time to give these remains the treatment they deserve. “I think the real tribute to Cervantes would recover the Barrio de las Letras. The neighborhood of the letters would be the big national or European project that could link us to Cervantes. Turn the neighborhood into what the English did to Shakespeare and a place of pilgrimage. Because it is not only the convent of the Trinity: the house of Lope de Vega, pens comedy … It was brewing where the best of Golden Age literature
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