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Cervantes and the Don: a new view - IP Reg No 000378705

Precis: The identities behind the Don and Sancho Panza are revealed and colourfully and persuasively argued.

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Author: Hugh O’Connor

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Thumbnail Bio: Hugh O’Connor  was born and educated in Dublin, Ireland, and has lived in London, Paris, New York and – for seven years - in the Australian bush.  He now ekes an existence in inner Sydney as a writer and a professional business communicator; although his true avocation is as litterateur, linguist, philologist and philosopher. He is open to offers of Governorship of Islands large and small.

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Copyright: © Hugh O’Connor, Sydney, 10 March 2010

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Cervantes and the Don: A New View

There is more to the story of the writing of Don Quixote than simply that of a one-armed war vet trying to earn a Real. While we suffer a severe dearth of data about Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, we do know that at least one of his ancestors had been a true war-lord who fought the Moors and played a role no less prominent than that of El Cid. Nuno Alfonso was granted estates at Toledo for these services, and he and his line were raised to the nobility.

By Miguel’s time, the title has drifted away and his father was reduced to working for his living, which he did as a surgeon, barber and bonesetter. He was victim of a persistent, pernicious and implacable impecuniosity; curiously parallel to the conditions of the fathers of Dickens, Shakespeare and Joyce. Miguel’s education was sufficient to enable him to win employment as secretary to a Diplomat-Cardinal and to travel to Rome with him, then the centre of the cultural world.

Although this job exposed him to the greatest literature of the then flourishing Renaissance, which he apparently relished and absorbed, an insistent itch in his young feet soon led him into a Spanish Navy infantry regiment. He sailed with it and fought at Lepanto against the Ottoman Turks on 7 October 1571, which battle was pivotal; it broke the stranglehold of the Moors on the Mediterranean. Despite a raging fever Cervantes insisted on taking a musket and fighting alongside his shipmates; he nearly died, shot twice in the chest, a third ball disabling his left arm for the rest of his life.

After some seven or eight months of recuperation, he returned to active naval duty and in 1575 his ship Sol was attacked by Algerian Corsairs who – after a fierce battle in which they killed his captain and most of the crew – took Cervantes and some others captive. He was imprisoned and enslaved in Algeria for five years, until his family raised the ransom to redeem him.

During his captivity he repeatedly organised escape attempts and was severely punished for these. The Captive’s Story in the first book of the Don appears part autobiographical, and shows him for a very courageous, valiant and honourable officer. On his return to Spain ‘needs must’ obliged him to join his old regiment marching into Portugal to support Phillip II’s claim to its crown.

After this adventure Cervantes – still financially famished – was appointed a chandler for the navy, and later a form of regional tax collector, in which latter position he was cheated by a merchant he had trusted to carry tax revenue money to the Court, which resulted in his imprisonment – the setting of Man of La Mancha. He was jailed at least twice, in 1597 and in 1602. It’s said it was while in durance vile in the La Mancha pokey that the Don introduced himself to Miguel’s mind. It is also said that he based the character of the Don on an uncle of his wife’s; but we shall see about that. He had published his first book, La Galatea, in 1585, along with some plays, none of which received much notice and certainly not acclaim. The first printing of the Don – in 1605 - did not bring in much money, but it brought international literary recognition and with it – professional jealousy.

Let’s leave Cervantes there for a moment and look at his world: Spain was then the richest and most powerful nation on earth, heart of an empire which through Phillip II’s alliances with Portugal, Catalonia, Castile, Netherlands, Naples, Burgundy and Jerusalem ‘owned’ most of the Americas, all of the Philippines and all of the Portuguese possessions. Phillip as a Hapsburg monarch was related to the Holy Roman Emperor and other monarchs, and as Europe’s best bankrolled blueblood Phillip effectively called the shots far and wide – quite the grandest of enchiladas. He had also in passing become King of England, but had to hand back the office key; perhaps even the most acquisitive of emperors draws the line somewhere as to what he wants on his résumé?

Phillip II gets bad reviews from the Anglo-Protestant historian clique, which is no less than to be expected from such thin-lipped urea-whitened sepulchres as they; he comes out quite well in nearly all other opinions, however. He was a control freak, which at the time was perhaps justified - Yes I know that I’m paranoid, but am I paranoid enough? In this he followed Henry VIII’s lead, with certain minor variations. In coercing the Church and emasculating the Regional Parliamentary Courts, he devolved all decision-making – and therefore power, and revenue flow – unto himself. In doing so he invested his undoubted energy and unstinted time in personal oversight of and intervention into all of the processes of Government, just like Napoleon Bonaparte a couple of centuries later. By the latter years of his reign he had made an absolute monarch of himself; unfortunately he had nothing of the brilliance of the Augustus / Livia combination that established the Roman Empire so soundly.

Phillip II lived in a curious age. One would have thought that all that gold gushing in galleons from the New World would have increased prosperity, but no; it only increased individual wealth. It generated runaway inflation of a like never seen since the Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon to get him to pop the question; she pork-barrelled the Israelites so much gold they felt funded for retirement and downed tools, at which the economy all but expired, regretted by all. Also, Phillip’s centralising of government took the spending power from the regional councils which tended to invest and employ within their regions and applied that spending to his own external ‘big picture’ global projects, further fouling the Español economy.

He initiated some successful schemes for enhancing Spain’s global power and wealth; unfortunately he also engaged in – and funded – vast numbers of ventures that were not successful, some of which were even downright silly. By the end of his reign Spain was not quite a financial basket-case, but it was not economically or governmentally healthy. Indeed, one might be forgiven for saying that he neglected his activities and even the management of his birth-right … as Mr C in the second paragraph of his book says of the Don’s squandering money on his addiction, books of chivalry:
Y llegó a tanto su curiosidad y desatino en esto, que vendió muchas hanegas de tierra de sembradura – ‘to such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that he sold many an acre of tillage-land  …’ Nowadays we would say that he had bet the farm …

Phillip II’s eldest son and heir intended turned out mentally defective, most likely due to inbreeding, and predeceased him; it was Phillip III who succeeded, and his first action on taking the job was to appoint a buddy to run things for him. Just like Dubya Bush and Quagmire, his Vice. Quick as thinking, the buddy had installed his good friends into all of the positions of power and revenue in the Empire, and as happens, the people of Spain very quickly tired of this. At the same time, he was a believer in ‘freedom for the people’ – of a sort – so his relaxation of Phillip II’s strict absolute control and personal intervention must have been received with some relief.

The Spanish Armada – El Grande y Felicísima Armada – was Phillip II’s solution to the recent Protestant disorder that plagued Europe and that had cost him the Kingship of England. He had won the title through marriage to Mary I, who had died in 1558, thereby somewhat truncating the arrangement. The idea was to send a bunch of ships – more than 100 merchantmen escorted by 44 warships – into the English Channel to board 30,000 soldiers of Spain then fighting in Holland and take them to England to conquer and invest the place. The result you know. And here is where the tricky Cervantes wit – his personal Ingeniosa - comes in.

Here is Miguel, scion of genuine warrior knights of the old nobility; he has proved himself in battle several times, he has taken serious wounds and fought on, he has suffered capture and enslavement for his king and country, and he has been deserted, disgraced and dishonoured. He sees himself as a litterateur in a society that won’t pay to read his well-crafted but un-acclaimed books, while they just can’t throw enough money at the garbage that ruled the media of the day –call it Kni-fi! - the chutzpah confections of corny Chivalry, of the far-out phoney knights of former days, poorly penned and even more indigently indited, the Murdock media of its moment. (Hey! I just realised quite why I relate so well to Miguel …)

And here is Phillip II whom he could be forgiven for seeing as an ingénue; his King of course but without the background at arms or the valour of the old warrior nobility. Phillip II had organised the alliance which won Lepanto without leaving home; he never saw action, never fired a shot, never risked a scratch. As an active Navy man, one still involved in and connected with Navy affairs through his provisioning commission for the Grand Armada, Cervantes must have been privy to the sotto voce professional criticism by the Admiralty General Staff of the King’s plans for invading England.

The Chanel had no deep water ports that would be accessible to the Armada, which they needed for embarking the invading army. The Spanish ships from its Mediterranean service were plagued with shipworm, which weakened them. Spanish ships’ cannon were located in such cramped ‘tween-deck spaces that the men could only fire one round per cannon per engagement; they would then run into the rigging to await their next task, which was boarding, which battle tactics had won at Lepanto. A ‘mini Ice-age’ then affected north Atlantic waters, caused by an expansion of the Greenland ice shelf; this was distorting wind patterns and causing freak gales, the like of which were responsible for smashing 35 of the Armada’s ships on the west coast of Ireland.

Professional naval wisdom dictated that a different strategy should be adopted for Spain’s Crusade into England. But Phillip – then aged sixty-one, with God and his own good opinion on his side in equal agreement - would have his way, and the ships sailed in 1588. Only half came back, meaning that of Miguel’s fellow officers and men of the Armada, at least half had died - thanks to this dilettante fantasising himself a fighting man, a commander of battle, a Knight Errant. How expensive this Emperor’s ego! What a cost to incur for incompetence! How selfish this senile self-deception!

Phillip had won a reputation as a bungler, in part because he demanded that he run everything himself – which of course led to mistakes, to getting it wrong and again. Problem was in doing so much that he got it wrong so often, and would not listen to the voices saying ‘perhaps you are not right, Don Philippe!’ Then again of course, voices telling absolute monarchs that they are mistaken tend to be very whispered indeed. He would have it his way, this despot dotard. He was quite the horse’s petouche, if you will pardon my Pictish.

And a horse’s thingummy is indeed what Cervantes called him. Not out loud, or quite so straightforward that the lads running the Inquisition would notice, but effectively enough.

Curiously, of the foremost half-dozen Spanish writers of the sixteenth century, five of them hailed from the Atlantic seaboard mountains of the north, from Celtic Galicia and Catalonia, whence Miguel’s people originated. They still have their own languages in these lands, and in Catalan cuixot (pronounced ‘key-shote’) translates as ‘a horse’s rear thigh’. If my dear reader can’t work out that anatomical geography, perhaps he – or she - should turn to the sports or comic sections where his – or her – readership skills might be more nearly equal to the intellectual demands of the literature.

And permit me another translation: the Brits call the ditch to their south ‘the English Channel’ in their usual grabby grasping way; the French call it La Manche which of course means Partie du vêtement qui entoure le bras – that which covers the arm; ie. sleeve. This name would have been known to Miguel’s better educated Spanish audiences, who would positively pick up on such a pun on La Mancha. And that’s not all – La Mancha translates as The Blot or The Smudge or The Mark.

Cervantes had a patron even before he started on the Don, by title the Duke of Bejar, Marquis of Gibraleon, Count of Benalcazar and Banares, Vicecount of the Puebla de Alcocer, Master of the Towns of Capilla, Curiel and Burguillos, who must have had a real problem with autograph hunters. Cervantes would read his recent work in progress at weekly soirées hosted by the Duke, and the Don appeared first as a characterisation rather than a character, perhaps a satirical send-up rather than a dramatis persona. Doubtless the hint would be passed around beforehand – first and most especially to the noble Patron, to make him look even smarter (in return for supporting the scribe) by being earliest in the know of the covert jest. Think of Don Phillip where he says ‘the Don’! So here we have Señor Cervantes, perhaps within a year of the Armada disaster, regaling his up-market readers and listeners – them without the guts or the gall to gab anything even close to covert condign criticism contra their king – with the character M’Lord the Horse’s Arse of the English Channel mess, aka Pip Two.

The Don, wits wizened by his reading of romances and his aching ambition to be admired as doer of great and good deeds, protector of the innocent and righter of wrongs, acquires the trappings for his new career – a noble name for his bony nag, antiquated armour assembled with spit and string, an old lance long past its lifespan and the prerequisite pretty for his pedestal. He works hard at preparing for this project – no-one could deny the dedication described. On his first foray he finds a country inn which his poor pixelated pate pictures as a castle keep, the lord of which – and a landlord indeed he was – he convinces to ‘knight’ him. The Don’s first of his knight-errantly errata comes about in the form of a fight with inmates of the inn; then follows another on the road with some traders from Toledo who ‘insult’ his unaware inamorata Dulcinea; and next another with a man who is about to beat his apprentice for having the audacity to ask for his earnings.

From Chapter XX: ‘… of Heaven's will I was born in this our iron age to revive in it the golden or age of gold; I am he for whom are reserved perils, mighty achievements, valiant deeds.‘ This can only be Phillip, who despite his many virtues, laudable ambitions and dedication was apparently a slave to form and appearance at the cost of contact with the concrete of reality. Perhaps the reading of so many self-glorifying, puffed-up and frequently fictional reports from his generals and governors spread across the fantastic New World had given Phillip a lust for a life in la-la land. The Don’s disposition to swing sword or lunge lance into the violent resolution of matters that were no affair of his own – and which he all too often misapprehended - was a further failing in Phillip. Of course one did not mention this to His Maj. himself; the absoluteness of the monarchy being nothing to the absoluteness of one’s abhorrence of the concept of conversion into rib roast by the holy horrors of the Inquisition, however doleful their dirge at their duty.

* * *

It is not good for Man to be alone, God said, and God knows, She could have been right. Cervantes seems to have been of a like mind in that prior to his second sally the Don acquires the services of a local peasant for his squire. This is Sancho, certainly not the shrewdest of serfs. He has a certain peasant practicality and a sort of soily sophistication about him, but his thinking tackle is a touch triceratopic. He is prodigal in his prolixity; he is a wellhead of words, a vast vallium of verbiage; he talks and talks. And talks. Such a susurrus of syllables, such a surging of sentences, such an onslaught of non-thought. Sancho Panza is a married man when he is introduced to us; he has a young daughter, is a man with responsibilities, with commitments; yet he allows himself to be seduced away into the service of the Don, abandoning wife and child to the maintenance of their own ménage. In fact, he appears even eager to get away from his home … how odd for a husband!

Here let me introduce another contemporary of Cervantes; he is literary, and he is a character, but not a literary character; perhaps not a good character, or perhaps even a nice character. He was reading Spanish and Latin by age five, and wrote his first play at age 12; all in all he produced some 3000 sonnets, three novels, four novellas, nine epic poems and – get this – 1800 plays. Ladies and Gentlemen, a big hand please for Lope de Vega.

Cervantes was the only literary figure of greater eminence than Lope in Spain’s Siglo de Oro, its Golden Century, and perhaps this rankled; but that only came about after publication of the Don in 1605. Cervantes is said to have called him The Phoenix of Wits and The Monster of Nature. Perhaps because of this the Loop did not like Cervantes, or perhaps he had earlier earmarked the Cervantes talent as a threat; or perhaps there was some quite independent interaction between them hidden from history that roused the rancour. Certainly the Loop’s followers got stuck into Cervantes, quills well sharpened and dipped in venom, codpieces charged and cocked. (You were nobody as a nib in them nether days if you couldn’t conjure a contrail of yes-men, touts, thimble-riggers and various other lickspittles ready to defame, denounce and denigrate your opponents and competitors.) In one Lope-inspired book of literary review, a broad selection of Spain’s prominent literary figures were critiqued and praised; only the work of Cervantes was derided. Yet Cervantes’ is the only name known today in that tome.

When a man has fought in real battles, and has endured real hardships that have tested the human condition to its breaking point, he becomes intrinsically better natured. He loses what pettiness he may have had, he sees life’s values differently, and he tends to accept and understand his own and others’ weaknesses, vices and villainies. He becomes a real Man. Cervantes had to be essentially good-humoured and fun-loving – not only based on the fun in the Don’s story, but how else could he have survived his hospitalisation in those days before hygiene and anaesthetics, how else could he have endured the punishments inflicted during his slavery, his disappointments in literature and in career aspirations, his imprisonments? As a good soldier his instinct would have been to not allow an enemy attack to go unanswered; but he was too generous, too ‘big’ to respond in kind to the Lope-style backbiting and venial vituperation.

While the Don apparently first featured as a characterisation prior to the idea of writing him into a story, Sancho appears only after the Don’s adventures have started. The Don’s debut gave Cervantes enough encouragement to start a story to play him in, but after his first forays it became clear that he called for a counterpoint. Enter Sancho.

Did Cervantes satirically cast the Loop as Sancho Panza? Look at them both! Words, words, words – can so many words possibly share enough sense to justify them all?  Sancho deserts his wife and daughter to squire his demented Don in La Mancha in the southern tablelands of Spain; Lope, who had wed into wealth through the innovative ingenuity of knocking up the daughter of a much moidoré’d magnate, promptly deserts her and child to forward Phillip’s fantasy in the English Channel – La Manche.

Sancho’s surname Panza means ‘belly’. He talk is of basics – of food and wine, sometimes of friendship and family and farm; his is a practical world, his is no great or more elevated mind. He is an illiterate, he has no wit; his talk is dull, and what is funny about him is that he is a dullard who can’t stop producing words that show his dullness. What a line to lay on Lope de Vega, wordy windbag that he was! Sancho is totally self-centred, he is servile, he is mercenary – he wants that Island Governorship which his Don promised him. (Had Lope been promised an administrative sinecure in a certain Island Kingdom then expected soon to be in Phillip’s gift? Was that what induced him to so disgracefully desert his young wife and child?) This is not a character description one would care to have of oneself; this is not a nice man, could not be an agreeable companion. And yet it is perhaps because he is so remiss in any redeeming qualities other than his practicality – which encompasses his servility – that he and his dotty Don get along.

Sancho’s satirical characterisation in the style of the Don’s is most of all that of a villain of varicose verbosity – too many words. Who could miss such a signpost to the Señor of the 3000 sonnets and the 1800 plays? Surely all of the Spains couldn’t supply a smidgen of sufficient sense to spread however sheerly across such a tsunami of syllables as that of Lope de Vega?

Sancho’s many beatings in the story, and his blanket tossing, could be what Cervantes would like to have seen landed on Lope, but that is as close as he comes to violence and vitriol. Perhaps it’s an invitation from Cervantes to his readers to not waste their time or money patronising the Loop’s literary lugubriosity - how gallant can commercial literary rivalry be? Surely it is a very gentle and considerate pen that appoints Lope de Vega as an immortal of literature in the form of the character of Sancho Panza; and that in return for the cheap, bitter and low ill-treatment offered to Cervantes by Messrs Loop and Co.

But then, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a witty, funny, gentle man, truly an Ingenioso Hidalgo himself – perhaps so gentle, or so ingenioso, that the needle of his rancour rested unremarked until now.

 

© Hugh O’Connor
Sydney, 10 March 2010