September 29th is the birthday of a writer so significant that his native language is still referred to as his. It’s Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote Don Quixote. He wrote in Spanish, which is still sometimes called “the language of Cervantes.” And Don Quixote, which was the first modern novel, and written hundreds of years ago, has been voted “the most meaningful book of all time” — I think because it influence so much of the literature that’s come afterward.
Cervantes was not well known in his own time, and spent most of his life in poverty and relative obscurity. The only surviving portrait of him is only “probably” of him, and even his birthday (September 29, 1547) is a bit of a guess. We’re not even completely sure his name was Miguel Cervantes — he signed his name “Cerbantes,” and later decided his surname was Saavedra. We do know that he moved to Rome in 1569 (possibly to escape an arrest warrant) and worked for a while in the household of a Cardinal of the church. After that he enlisted in the Spanish Navy where he was injured in a battle and lost the use of his left arm. He was later captured by pirates. They imprisoned him for five years, when he was ransomed and made it back to Madrid.
In Madrid he worked as a tax collector and purchasing agent, and (probably) began writing. His first novel was La Galatea, published in 1585 when Cervantes was 38. Don Quixote was published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, just one year before his death. A few of his other works were published, some posthumously, but a lot of the work he claimed to have written has been lost. He never made much money from his writing; it was apparently more of a hobby.
Cervantes’ work was rediscovered about a century after he lived, when some literary critics and editors read Don Quixote and started talking about how significant it was. But although the book was republished, it still didn’t prove popular. It wasn’t until the 1800s that his work began to be accepted as important, and at this point Don Quixote has been published in over 700 editions in every language you can probably think of. But some people find the original Spanish to be the best, and Sigmund Freud said he learned Spanish in order to read Cervantes’ in his own language.
There are three towns on three different continents named “Cervantes,” but trying to figure out whether they’re actually named after Miguel de Cervantes is just more tilting at windmills. There was a popular Broadway musical in 1965 called Man of La Mancha that was based on Don Quixote. And in Europe, there are two universities, a health care center, a nonprofit foundation, a memorial, a museum, and a literary prize that are named after him. So even if you find Don Quixote difficult to read (especially part 2), as Cervantes wrote, “there is no book so bad that it does not have something good in it.”
