Souvenir Series #7
I was once sitting in a meeting at
work in which a colleague said: “Oh no,
we don’t want to be doing that, if we do – we’ll just be chasing after
windmills.” I couldn’t help smiling, as this instantly presented me with the
Monty Python-esque mental picture of cartoon windmills with spindly little legs
running across the rustic landscape in order to evade capture ... But it was
decided. We wouldn’t be chasing after windmills. Presumably we’d stick to the same
old, tried and tested plan of tilting at
shadows instead. Far more sensible. No need to rock the boat after all.
Best carry on with business as usual …
My interest was piqued last week by
a headline on the BBC News website
which announced that – similar to the lost grave of Richard III, recently
unearthed in a Car Park in Leicester – the lost tomb of Miguel de Cervantes
(1547-1616), the writer of Don Quixote, had
been found in Madrid. Reading the article itself though showed that things
perhaps weren’t quite as straightforward. For whilst the facts seemed to
suggest it was ‘quite likely’ to be at least some of Cervantes’ mortal remains
which had been uncovered, they were actually in quite a bad state of
preservation and were jumbled up with a number of other individuals too, some
of whom might be his relatives – so it wasn’t entirely certain it was really him
after all. Even though a wooden fragment of a casket bearing the initials ‘M.C.’
were tantalisingly part of the find, another article in El Pais gave a clearer account of the facts of the discovery. In
response to this, a short piece in The Guardian asked: ‘Did it really matter
if it was him or not?’ ... Good question. After all, a similar article in The New Yorker pointed out that whilst
Cervantes is seemingly everywhere in Spain, he is actually nowhere – because so
little is verifiably known about him.
It’s true though. Travel to Spain
and Miguel de Cervantes is
everywhere. He follows you wherever you go. Not least because his likeness
adorns several of the various Spanish minted Euro cent coins which will
undoubtedly be in your pocket. I remember meeting him on my very first trip to
Spain in 2003. I was working in an art gallery in Valencia and every day, on
our walk to work from the place where we were staying, my two colleagues and I
would pass by a bronze bust of the man, his bearded face smiling affably at us
as we strolled past in the early morning sunshine.
Casa de Lope de Vega, Madrid |
Plaza de España, Madrid |
There is also a story which says
that the reason UNESCO first decided in 1995 to designate April 23rd
as ‘World Book Day’ (also, the Feast Day of Saint George), was because it was thought
that both Shakespeare and Cervantes
died on this particular date in 1616. What they overlooked though is the fact that
in 1616 England and Spain were each using different calendars; England – the
Julian, and Spain – the Gregorian. Therefore the dates (as uncertain as they
are) do not quite match. But there is something ironically subversive in
this garbled, misremembering of hearsay being transmuted – a fiction of
coincidence burnished into solid, resolute fact – which deeply appeals to me … ‘Cry – God for Quixote, England and Saint
George!’ … I can almost picture the two writers sitting together, wreathed
in cloud, amidst the laurel groves somewhere at the top of Mount Parnassus –
chuckling together, looking down on us all with wry grins beaming across their
faces!
But then, when so little is
actually known about the day-to-day lives of such august historical figures – I
think it is, in some senses, easier to make a greater personal connection to
them. Reading the bare facts of Shakespeare’s life in Samuel Schoenbaum’s excellent
William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life (1987) brought the man back to life for me far more vividly than any
creative work of the imagination, such that I felt I could imagine sitting in a
wayside inn somewhere en route
between London and Stratford-upon-Avon with him, having a chat over a couple of pints. Charles
Nicholl’s The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street (2007) is a similarly evocative piece of scholarly detective
work. We can perhaps more easily project our own ideas and images onto the blank
parchment which is the only record left to us of their real lives. Whilst their
literary works may now justly be held up as truly extraordinary, they
themselves in their own times were perhaps just as ordinary as we are today.
Oddly enough, it was again in 2003,
having passed through Stratford-upon-Avon en route
to the Welsh ‘El Dorado’ of books at Hay-on-Wye, that I encountered Miguel de Cervantes
again. In one of the dusty old bookshops there, I came across a little room
which was filled with cardboard boxes of old prints – mostly loose sheets (hacked
or salvaged?) which had been collated from old Victorian books long since
before dismembered. Amidst this treasure trove I came across sheaves of the
famous illustrations of Don Quixote done
by the artist, Gustave Doré
(1832-1883). There were so many I couldn’t decide which I liked best,
and I kick myself to this day that in the end I didn’t buy any. I’m sure I
thought I’d go back before we left Hay, as we were there for several days – but
somehow, for some reason, I never did.
Those images of Doré’s, like the little statuette (which I
think I bought in Toledo in 2009), reminded me of the film Lost in La Mancha (2002), a documentary about Terry Gilliam’s own
quixotic attempt to make a film version based upon Cervantes’ tale which was
bedevilled by misfortune and unhappy accident, and finally had to be canned
only partially made. It’s an excruciating film to watch, not least (as I’m a
big fan of Terry Gilliam’s films) because it looked set to have all the
hallmarks of the outlandishly singular imagination which has marked the best of
Gilliam’s films. As elaborately mad as one of Gustave Doré’s prints. I’m sure it would have been good.
I’ve been back to Spain several
times since that first visit, and it was on my last few trips that I really
caught the Cervantes’ Don Quixote bug.
Everywhere I went in Madrid, Toledo, Segovia, Alicante, and in Bilbao, he
seemed to be there. So many streets are named after him. Everywhere seemed to
sell trinkets and souvenirs connected to the famous tale. As I said, I succumbed and
bought a little resin figure of the Knight (but oddly not a matching one of his tubby little
sidekick). I also bought a small tin repro’ plaque of an old advert (for a
brand of cigarette papers, I think) which depicted the pair each on horseback
with lances in hand, presumably riding off to ‘chase windmills’ somewhere. And
I even spent a day wandering around Madrid itself seeking out the places which
my guidebook pointed to as having some sort of Cervantes connection. Plaza de
España – with its imposing
statue of Cervantes, sitting overlooking two enormous bronze recreations of his
most famous characters. Casa de Lope de Vega, Calle de Cervantes – on the site
of Cervantes’ own residence. Convento Trinitarias Descalzas – where his tomb has
recently been ‘rediscovered.’
Convento Trinitarias Descalza, Madrid |
When I returned from that last,
most recent trip to Spain in 2010, I finally stirred myself to seek out the
book itself. Cervantes’ great work, ‘El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la
Mancha’ or ‘The
Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha.’ It’s a satisfyingly hefty tome.
Leafing through several editions to compare different translations I finally
settled on the one which seemed to read most engagingly to me ... But, for all
that delicate care and time spent in dedicated search and selection, having had
my eagerness and enthusiasm fired to such a pique – still it sits, very patiently,
waiting on my shelf of books reserved as yet ‘to read.’ – I’ll get there one
day. I’m sure I will … When the time is right – When I’ve finally finished chasing a host of other literary windmills
…
~ * ~
The site of Shakespeare's lodgings on Silver Street, London |
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