Scientists say they've found the burial place of the influential author.
Miguel de Cervantes died in 1616
(CNN)"In
order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd," wrote
Miguel de Cervantes, the Shakespeare of Spain. And the quest to find his
remains has sometimes seemed both, even (dare one say it) quixotic in a
time of recession. But forensic scientists have persevered, and appear
to have triumphed.
Almost 400
years after Cervantes' death, a team led by Francisco Etxeberria
announced Tuesday that they were confident they had found Cervantes'
coffin in the crypt of the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians in the
Barrio de Las Letras (Literary Quarter) in Madrid. Historical records
indicated Cervantes had been buried there, but the convent had been
substantially rebuilt since. (Etxeberria, incidentally, performed the
autopsy on former Chilean President Gen. Salvador Allende, confirming he
had committed suicide.)
At a news
conference in Madrid on Tuesday, Etxeberria said that while there was no
mathematical proof or DNA test available to completely verify the
findings, there were "many coincidences and no discrepancies" in the
examination of "Osario 32," a common grave in the crypt that contained
the remains of 16 people.
"We have
Cervantes, represented in some form in this group of bones that are
unfortunately very degraded and very fragmented," Etxeberria told
national television.
The search for
Cervantes' coffin -- using radar -- began last year, funded by the
Madrid City Council. It first mapped more than 30 burial cavities in the
walls and nearly 5 meters beneath the floor of the church. Mass
spectrometry dated fragments of wood and cloth found in these cavities
to the 17th century, an encouraging but far from conclusive development.
One
crumbling coffin found in January had the initials "M C" hammered in
nail heads, along with a jumble of skeletal remains. Even then
Exteberria urged caution, but further research has narrowed the odds.
The
forensic team had been hoping that some of those remains would
positively identify Cervantes, who suffered gunshot wounds in the chest
and left hand at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. But they are not in
sufficiently good shape, and some of the remains found may be of
Cervantes' wife, Catalina de Salazar. Nor will DNA analysis be much
help, for there are no known descendants of Cervantes.
Catalina
was not Cervantes' first partner. As a teenager he ran away from home
with a barmaid, Josefina de Perez, before enlisting with the Spanish
Navy. It was only in the 1580s that he started to write, publishing "La
Galatea" in 1585 and his most famous work, "Don Quixote," in 1605 -- or
to give its full title, "The Adventures of the Ingenious Nobleman Don
Quixote of La Mancha."
But "Don
Quixote" would hardly be noticed in Cervantes' lifetime, and he was
almost penniless when he died, having joined the Third Order of St.
Francis in his declining years. He knew he was dying when he wrote in
the prologue of a posthumously published novel, "Perhaps the time may
come when I mend again this broken thread and say what words fail me
here and what needed to be said. Farewell, waggish jokes; farewell,
wittiness; farewell, merry friends, for I am dying and longing soon to
see you, happy in the life to come."
Cervantes was buried on April 23,1616 -- in the same week William Shakespeare died.
There
are now plans to reinter Cervantes at the convent and build a new
entrance to the crypt in time for the 400th anniversary of Cervantes'
death next year. Tyler Fisher, a lecturer in Hispanic studies at Royal
Holloway College in London, says that such exhumations "ignite public
attention, inspire re-readings, and invest an all-but-forgotten corner of the city with a renewed, imaginative depth."
Cervantes
might enjoy all the attention. Many literary critics say he was not
aware of his own genius. John Ormsby, a scholar and translator of
Cervantes' work in the 19th century, wrote of "Don Quixote," "Never was a
great work so neglected by its author."
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