04/27/2021 – Cervantes & Shakespeare: Two Writers who helped shape Western Literature.
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American Minute with Bill Federer
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| Read American Minute American Minute with Bill FedererCervantes & Shakespeare: Two Writers who significantly shaped Western LiteratureMany countries had individuals whose literary contributions were so significant that they shaped their language. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, composed in the late 8th century BC, significantly influenced the development of the Greek language. The Latin language was affected by Roman writers of the 1st century BC, like Cicero, Vergil, Ovid and Horace. Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible, published 1522-1545, greatly influenced the German language. Moliere (1622-1673), considered one of France’s greatest playwrights, made a profound impact on the French language.Read as PDF …The Treacherous World of the 16th Century & How the Pilgrims Escaped It: The Prequel to America’s FreedomSimilarly, William Shakespeare influenced the development of the English language, as Miguel de Cervantes influenced the Spanish language.Miguel de Cervantes was born in 1547. He fought the Sultan’s Ottoman Navy at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, where he was wounded and lost the use of his left hand.Four years after the battle, while sailing across the Mediterranean, Cervantes was captured by Muslim Barbary pirates.He spent five years in captivity as a slave in Algiers before being ransomed by the Catholic Trinitarian Order and returned to Madrid, Spain.In 1605, Cervantes influenced Western literature with his work, Don Quixote de La Mancha, considered the first modern European novel.In a semi-autobiographical chapter, Cervantes described being held captive: “They put a chain on me … I passed my life in that bano with several other gentlemen and persons of quality marked out as held to ransom; but though at times, or rather almost always, we suffered from hunger and scanty clothing, nothing distressed us so much as hearing and seeing at every turn the unexampled and unheard-of cruelties my master inflicted upon the Christians.… Every day he hanged a man, impaled one, cut off the ears of another; and all with so little provocation, or so entirely without any, that the Turks acknowledged he did it merely for the sake of doing it, and because he was by nature murderously disposed towards the whole human race.”In Don Quixote de La Mancha (First Part, ch. 39-40, 1605), Cervantes described how Muslim pirates raided Christian areas of the Mediterranean. If they perchance were captured during their attacks, they would proclaim that they intended to become Christian, but upon release, they reverted back to raiding: “Some obtain these testimonials with good intentions, others put them to a cunning use; for when they go to pillage on Christian territory, if they chance to be cast away, or taken prisoners, they produce their certificates and say that from these papers may be seen the object they came for, which was to remain on Christian ground, and that it was to this end they joined the Turks in their foray …… In this way they escape the consequences of the first outburst and make their peace with the Church before it does them any harm, and then when they have the chance they return to Barbary to become what they were before.”In 1853, prior to the American Civil War, anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner wrote the book White Slavery in the Barbary States. Sumner documented that throughout the Middle Ages, Barbary pirates raided coastal towns from the eastern Mediterranean to the Netherlands, and as far north as Iceland, carrying away white Europeans as slaves. They then sold them throughout the Ottoman Empire and the North African Barbary states of Morocco, Algiers, Salee, Oran, Tunis, Tripoli and Bacra. This did not stop until they were defeated in the Barbary Pirate Wars, 1801-1805, and 1816.Charles Sumner wrote: “The Saracens, with the Koran and the sword, potent ministers of conversion, next broke from Arabia, as the messengers of a new religion, and pouring along these shores, diffused the faith and doctrines of Mohammed … even … entered Spain, and … at Roncesvalles … overthrew the embattled chivalry of the Christian world led by Charlemange. (The Song of Roland) … Algiers, for a long time the most obnoxious place in the Barbary States of Africa, the chief seat of Christian slavery … the wall of the barbarian world …”Sumner continued: “And Cervantes, in the story of Don Quixote … give(s) the narrative of a Spanish captive who had escaped from Algiers … The author is supposed to have drawn from his own experience; for during five and a half years he endured the horrors of Algerine slavery, from which he was finally liberated by a ransom of about six hundred dollars.”Miguel de Cervantes stated: “We ought to love our Maker for His own sake, without either hope of good or fear of pain.” “When God sends the dawn, he sends it for all.” “Among the attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines with even more brilliancy than justice.”“I do not believe that the Good Lord plays dice.” “Truth … will always bear up against falsehood, as oil does above water.” “Every one is as God made him, and often a great deal worse.” “Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.”“A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.” “God bears with the wicked, but not forever.” “God who sends the wound sends the medicine.”In 1965, Man of La Mancha was made into an award-winning Broadway Musical, and in 1972, a motion picture starring Peter O’Toole and Sophia Loren. The most popular song of the performance was “The Impossible Dream”: To dream the impossible dreamTo fight the unbeatable foeTo bear with unbearable sorrowTo run where the brave dare not go To right the unrightable wrongTo love pure and chaste from afarTo try when your arms are too wearyTo reach the unreachable star This is my quest to follow that starNo matter how hopeless, no matter how farTo fight for the right without question or pauseTo be willing to march into Hell for a heavenly cause And I know if I’ll only be true to this glorious questThat my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I’m laid to my rest And the world will be better for thisThat one man, scorned and covered with scarsStill strove with his last ounce of courageTo reach the unreachable star. |