In this splendid biography, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1987,
Canavaggio (Univ. of Caen) has achieved an unusual balance between
meticulous scholarship and creative presentation in a style
personable, lucid, and coherent. Along the way, Canavaggio offers
insightful histories of the history of Cervantes - those fantasies
that, for lack of genuine information, successive ages and diverse
cultures have projected on him just as they did on Shakespeare, his
contemporary, who died only a week before him in 1616. Born in
1547, the son of a deaf, itinerant barber-surgeon, Cervantes spent
much of his life either wandering or imprisoned, an elusive figure
for whom the peripheries of society held immense appeal and
inspired his literary works. But he did not begin as a writer: to
avoid exile and mutilation for wounding a civil servant in a duel,
Cervantes went to Rome, then, as a soldier, fought the Turks at
Lepanto, ironically losing the use of his left hand, the very
mutilation he had tried to escape from. On his way home, he was
captured by Barbary pirates, imprisoned for five-and-a-half years,
and ransomed in 1581, when he began writing poetry, narratives, and
dramas - which contradicts the popular belief that he began writing
while in prison. To support himself, his young wife during their
brief marriage, his many affairs, literary quarrels, and
imprisonments, he became an itinerant tax-collector of sorts until,
at age 57, he began writing Don Quixote, published three years
later to universal acclaim. In place of the heroic vision of
Cervantes as inspired genius writing in his dungeon, Canavaggio
offers an evenhanded, enlightened, and provocative discussion of a
very talented writer appearing at a crucial point in history who
unself-consciously produced one of the great cultural icons. His
discussion of Don Quixote is a model of literary
analysis-sensitive, clear, informed, moving from the creative
circumstances to the aesthetic achievement of the novel, from the
political contexts to their representation in fiction. The
translation, however, is so faithful to the original that it is
often awkward, unidiomatic, even silly: did Cervantes really "give
up the ghost" when he died? The great strength of this book is in
the substance and to some degree in the concentration: the last
biography of Cervantes filled seven volumes. (Kirkus Reviews)
The life of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, has always posed a
puzzle to scholars: a tantalizing patchwork of myth, fact, and
conjecture. We know that he was a soldier and later a tax
collector; that he was maimed in battle at Lepanto and held
prisoner of war by the Turks; that he was thrown in jail, and later
excommunicated; that he vanished from view for years at a time; and
that at the age of 57, in 1605, he published the masterpiece that
was both the first modern novel and the first best seller.
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