Great Satirist

CERVANTES (256 pp.)--Aubrey F. G. Bell --University of Oklahoma Press ($3).

Miguel de Cervantes is one of those writers doomed to live in the shadow of great characters that they created. Most people know some of the adventures of Don Quixote. Few know much about his creator. This biography (written for the 400th anniversary of Cervantes' birth) is one of the few thorough lives of Cervantes in English. Biographer Bell is an Englishman who lives in British Columbia, An Iberic scholar, he has been assistant librarian of the British Museum and editor of The Oxford Book of Portuguese Verse.

Maimed Soldier. Cortez, conqueror of Mexico, died in the year (1547) Miguel de Cervantes de Saavedra was born. The writer's life outlasted the Siglo de oro (Golden Century) of Spain's empire; he died in the same year (1616) as his great contemporary, Shakespeare. A soldier, like every active Spaniard of his period, Cervantes commanded a longboat against the Turks at the decisive sea fight of Lepanto (1571) and got his left hand crushed. The Christian commander, Don John of Austria, later gave him a letter of commendation. Carrying the letter, Cervantes was captured by the Turks and held in Algiers for ransom until 1580.

The creator of "the ingenious knight of La Mancha" was ingenious enough to give his guards a good deal of trouble. After one of Cervantes' daring attempts to escape, the Turkish commander remarked: "So long as I have the maimed Spaniard secure, my slaves and my ships, nay the whole city will be safe." But when Cervantes finally got back to Spain, he found nothing but poverty and idleness. He had a wife, a mistress, and an illegitimate child to support. Says Biographer Bell: "We may suspect that his life at Madrid at this time was not unlike that of the soldier described in El Suez de los Di--vorcios [The Judge of the Divorce Court, a tale by Cervantes]. According to his satirical wife, this soldier earns nothing, goes to Mass, stands gossiping at the Guadalajara Gate, comes home to dinner at two, spends the afternoon and evening gambling, and returns at midnight, when he has supper, if there is any, makes the sign of the Cross, yawns, and goes to bed, where he tosses composing a sonnet, for he is a poet."

Loco Knight. In 1587 Cervantes got a job as a government agent, collecting wheat and oil for the Invincible Armada. Collections were slow, and he was excommunicated for seizing wheat belonging to the Dean and Chapter of Seville Cathedral (the Church later took him back). His debtors failed him; his accounts were snarled; in 1592, 1597 and perhaps again in 1602, he was clapped in jail for indebtedness to the State. Later he applied for a job in the New World--possibly as paymaster of galleys in Cartagena, Colombia. He was turned down. Even after Don Quixote appeared (1605), Cervantes never knew much prosperity.

All his life he had scribbled poor verses and unsuccessful plays (he was a little envious of the then famous and incredibly fecund playwright, Lope de Vega). But in Quixote, Cervantes knew that he had written a bestseller. He predicted, in jest, a sale of 30,000,000 copies (just about it). Biographer Bell, with other critics, observes that this bland and spacious masterpiece is less simple than it seems. More than a satire on medieval romances, which were the soap operas of Cervantes' age, it leads even the earthy Sancho Panza into a subtly dizzying identification of reality and dream.

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