VLADIMIR NABOKOV
31
It is quite impossible to follow these rambles in central Spain across
four or six provinces , in the course of which until we reach
Barcelona in the northeast one does not meet with a single known
town or cross a single river. Cervantes's ignorance of places is whole–
sale and absolute, even in respect of Argamasilla in the La Mancha
district, which some consider the more or less definite starting point.
The " When" of the Book
So much for space. Now about time.
From
1667,
the publication year of Milton 's
Paradise Lost,
we
now slide back into a sunshot hell , back to the first two decades of
the seventeenth century.
Odysseus in a blaze of bronze leaping from the threshold upon
the wooers; Dante shuddering at Virgil's side as sinner and snake
grade into one; Satan bombing the angels-these and others exist
within a form or phase of art that we call epic . Great literatures of
the past seem to have to be born on the periphery of Europe, along
the rim of the known world . We are aware of such southeastern,
southern , and northwestern points as, respectively, Greece, Italy,
and England . A fourth point is now Spain in the southwest.
What we shall witness now is the evolution of the epic form, the
shedding of its metrical skin, the hoofing of its feet, a sudden fertile
cross between the winged monster of the epic and the specialized
prose form of entertaining narration, more or less a domesticated
mammal, if I may pursue the metaphor to its lame end. The result is
a fertile hybrid , a new species, the European novel.
So the place is Spain and the time is
1605
to
1615 ,
a very handy
decade easy to pocket and keep . Spanish literature flourishes, Lope
de Vega writes five hundred plays which today are as dead as the
armful of plays by his contemporary, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra .
Our man,comes very softly out of his corner. I can devote only a
slanting minute to his life, which, however, you will easily find in
various introductions to his work. We are interested in books, not
people . Of Saavedra's maimed hand you will learn not from me.
Miguel Cervantes Saavedra
(1547-1616);
William Shakespeare
(1564-1616).
The Spanish Empire was at the height of its power and
fame when Cervantes was born . Its worst troubles and its best litera-
