He Was Then Fifty-Eight, And
All His Works That Survive Are Posterior To That Date.
He built his
monument from the ground up, in his old age.
The Persiles and
Sigis-munda, the Exemplary Novels, and that most masterly and perfect
work, the Second Part of Quixote, were written by the flickering glimmer
of a life burnt out.
It would be incorrect to infer that the scanty dole of his patron
sustained him in comfort. Nothing more clearly proves his straitened
circumstances than his frequent change of lodgings. Old men do not move
for the love of variety. We have traced him through six streets in the
last four years of his life. But a touching fact is that they are all in
the same quarter. It is understood that his natural daughter and only
child, Isabel de Saavedra, entered the Convent of the Trinitarian nuns
in the street of Cantarranas - Singing Frogs - at some date unknown. All
the shifting and changing which Cervantes made in these embarrassed
years are within a small half-circle, whose centre is his grave and the
cell of his child. He fluttered about that little convent like a gaunt
old eagle about the cage that guards his callow young.
Like Albert Duerer, like Raphael and Van Dyck, he painted his own
portrait at this time with a force and vigor of touch which leaves
little to the imagination. As few people ever read the Exemplary
Novels, - more is the pity, - I will translate this passage from the
Prologue: -
"He whom you see there with the aquiline face, chestnut hair, a smooth
and open brow, merry eyes, a nose curved but well proportioned, a beard
of silver which twenty years ago was of gold, long mustaches, a small
mouth, not too full of teeth, seeing he has but six, and these in bad
condition, a form of middle height, a lively color, rather fair than
brown, somewhat round-shouldered and not too light on his feet; this is
the face of the author of Galatea and of Don Quixote de la Mancha, of
him who made the Voyage to Parnassus, and other works which are straying
about without the name of the owner: he is commonly called Miguel de
Cervantes Saavedra."
There were, after all, compensations in this evening of life. As long as
his dropsy would let him, he climbed the hilly street of the Olivar to
say his prayers in the little oratory. He passed many a cheerful hour of
gossip with Mother Francisca Romero, the independent superior of the
Trinitarian Convent, until the time when the Supreme Council, jealous of
the freedom of the good lady's life, walled up the door which led from
her house to her convent and cut her off from her nuns. He sometimes
dropped into the studios of Carducho and Caxes, and one of them made a
sketch of him one fortunate day. He was friends with many of the
easy-going Bohemians who swarmed in the quarter, - Cristobal de Mesa,
Quevedo, and Mendoza, whose writings, Don Miguel says, are distinguished
by the absence of all that would bring a "blush to the cheek of a young
person," -
"Por graves, puros, castos y excelentes."
In the same street where Cervantes lived and died, the great Lope de
Vega passed his edifying old age. This phenomenon of incredible
fecundity is one of the mysteries of that time. Few men of letters have
ever won so marvellous a success in their own lives, few have been so
little read after death. The inscription on Lope's house records that he
is the author of two thousand comedies and twenty-one million of verses.
Making all possible deductions for Spanish exaggeration, it must still
be admitted that his activity and fertility of genius were prodigious.
In those days a play was rarely acted more than two or three times, and
he wrote nearly all that were produced in Spain. He had driven all
competitors from the scene. Cervantes, when he published his collection
of plays, admitted the impossibility of getting a hearing in the theatre
while this "monster of nature" existed. There was a courteous
acquaintance between the two great poets. They sometimes wrote sonnets
to each other, and often met in the same oratories. But a grand seigneur
like Frey Lope could not afford to be intimate with a shabby genius like
brother Miguel. In his inmost heart he thought Don Quixote rather low,
and wondered what people could see in it. Cervantes, recognizing the
great gifts of De Vega, and, generously giving him his full meed of
praise, saw with clearer insight than any man of his time that this
deluge of prodigal and facile genius would desolate rather than fructify
the drama of Spain. What a contrast in character and destiny between our
dilapidated poet and his brilliant neighbor across the way! The one
rich, magnificent, the poet of princes and a prince among poets, the
"Phoenix of Spanish Genius," in whose ashes there is no flame of
resurrection; the other, hounded through life by unmerciful disaster,
and using the brief respite of age to achieve an enduring renown; the
one, with his twenty millions of verses, has a great name in the history
of literature; but the other, with his volume you can carry in your
pocket, has caused the world to call the Castilian tongue the language
of Cervantes. We will not decide which lot is the more enviable. But it
seems a poet must choose. We have the high authority of Sancho for
saying, -
"Para dar y tener
Seso ha menester."
He is a bright boy who can eat his cake and have it.
In some incidents of the closing scenes of these memorable lives there
is a curious parallelism. Lope de Vega and Cervantes lived and died in
the same street, now called the Calle de Cervantes, and were buried in
the same convent of the street now called Calle de Lope de Vega.
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