Fashionable Biography

Cervantes: The Man and His Time, by Sebastian Juan Arbó. Translated by Ilsa Barea. 270 pp. New York: The Vanguard Press. $4.00

This book takes its place among the better biographies of literary men produced in this decade. It provides a clear and reasonably accurate account of the vicissitudinous and often pathetic life of Spain’s greatest writer. In keeping with current fashion, however, it says as little as possible about him as a writer. There is, for example, a brief statement that Cervantes failed as a playwright in Madrid, but we are not told that he failed primarily because he was determined to observe certain literary standards, while his successful rival, Lope de “to please the fool who pays.” Neither are we told that one of Cervantes’ tragedies (the Numancia, occasionally performed even today) is the finest expression of Spain’s national pride and sober idealism in the brief years of her glory-before the failure of the great Armada subjected her to international humiliation almost as great as that which was brought on us by our ignominious defeat in Korea. Such omissions are, of course, directed by the strange but prevalent assumption that the persons who buy biographies of literary men are not interested in literature. r. p. o.

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Cervantes: The Man and His Time, by Sebastian Juan Arbó. Translated by Ilsa Barea. 270 pp. New York: The Vanguard Press. $4.00

This book takes its place among the better biographies of literary men produced in this decade. It provides a clear and reasonably accurate account of the vicissitudinous and often pathetic life of Spain’s greatest writer. In keeping with current fashion, however, it says as little as possible about him as a writer. There is, for example, a brief statement that Cervantes failed as a playwright in Madrid, but we are not told that he failed primarily because he was determined to observe certain literary standards, while his successful rival, Lope de “to please the fool who pays.” Neither are we told that one of Cervantes’ tragedies (the Numancia, occasionally performed even today) is the finest expression of Spain’s national pride and sober idealism in the brief years of her glory-before the failure of the great Armada subjected her to international humiliation almost as great as that which was brought on us by our ignominious defeat in Korea. Such omissions are, of course, directed by the strange but prevalent assumption that the persons who buy biographies of literary men are not interested in literature. r. p. o.