is the highest honor of my life to receive the Premio Miguel de Cervantes, doubly honored by Serme delivered from the hands of a man who's supporters admire and respect freedom: His Majesty Don Juan Carlos I, King Spain.
With his insight and his indomitable energy, Isabella wanted the speech of Castile, and consolidated to become the language of the vast territories they dreamed, in the conviction that only religion and language can aliga different peoples. Nebrija, at his side, tried to fix it forever, for the English language was "as much at the summit, that more could she feared the descent of his ascent to wait. "The intent was politically understandable, but languages \u200b\u200bend up rejecting all impositions, also imperial. And so, Castilian continued to change, because, as noted by Wilhelm von Humboldt, a language crystallized product is not a perpetual energy transformación.De but this way of life and its vicissitudes were enriching and altering the Castilian, in the metropolis and, through huge jungles and mountain ranges in the New World in such epic testing formidable force and its invincible strength, always staying on mutations, according to the dialectic between tradition and renewal governing the major cultural phenomena.
destiny of this language in a thousand years, and revealing the mystery of the Conquista.Porque if only it were true that counts the Black Legend, the descendants of the subjugated races today should express their resentment. And no. Two of the greatest poets of our time, Rubén Darío and César Vallejo, with Indian blood in their veins, not only written in the language of the conquerors, but sang in Spain poems memorable. This is proof, through the meanings but infallible signs of language, that the Conquest was something infinitely more complex than that transmitted by history: it was a very deep phenomenon that after half a millennium, became a spiritual unity of nations a score of different races. How many and what empires produced such a prodigy?
For this intricate way, Cervantes is the ancestor of all today wrote in Castilian, either in Spain or in the wilds that once made up the vast empire. When exegetes have investigated admirable Don Quixote, one of which I am honored by your friendship and your presence, may seem a daring than me, no more titles than the writer intends to give back to all that he said. If I do is because this award which has given me the name of Cervantes and that I will refer only to the enigma of fiction, and every writer, however modest, has had the experience of this mystery and may perhaps contribute to unravel.
Cervantes knew who wrote an important work? No, of course, when it began. An engineer knows in advance what will become the bridge that has been calculated in their plans, but you can not calculate a great fiction, it is not built solely for the reasons of the head, those used to prove theorems, but also - and above all with what Pascal called "les raisons du coeur" , incomprehensible and contradictory truths of the heart. Dostoevsky set out to write a pamphlet on the problem of alcoholism in Russia and came out Crime and Punishment. Cervantes wanted to write a hilarious parody of chivalric romances and ended up creating one of the most moving parables of life, a pathetic and sad testimony to the human condition, an ambiguous myth of the clash of dreams with reality and the essential frustration leads to that clash. This did not know to start your business, I could not find even with his prodigious intelligence, because the heart is incommensurate with his head knowing it was as progressed, as unforeseen events and actors that went far beyond or in different directions of the preconceived. And maybe it never quite knew, even after giving top to the great adventure, as we can never decipher finishing the meaning of our dreams, because all attempts to explain that the reason they are powerless, because sleep is reduced to pure concepts, because sleep is a ontofanía, a revelation of the dark reality of the unconscious in the only way they can express themselves. Hence all the interpretations given the same dream, according to the time and the theories used, and hence and for the same reasons, the various readings and even found deep as fiction Don Quixote. If nothing more than a satire of the novel of chivalry, would not survive if these stories were neglected and lacked the slightest effect. Nor would explain why the alleged satire, besides making us laugh, we tied the throat. We all understand that his adventures are grotesque and at the same time, we sense that something as visible as windmills are a myth revealing the human condition. What, then, Don Quixote: a simple joke or a symbol endless?
The main characters of great fiction are emanations of the self hypostasis depths of the writer and are therefore unexpected paths taken by the operator had not foreseen, or change their attributes as they develop, attributes that are discovered by the acts performed, as the operation is progressing. Nothing more sense than Don Quixote when he gives advice to Sancho to govern the island, and no more quixotic than Sancho when you believe in this island. The experienced writer knows that this phenomenon is inevitable and should be modestly obeyed, because that is what ensures the life of his creatures utente. Should not be assumed to have existence in the paper and to be invented by the author have no free will are puppets with which the writer can do whatever he wants. On the contrary, the artist feels in front of his own character so intrigued as to a being of flesh and blood, someone who has his own will and make their own projects. Funny thing, the reason ontologically wonder, is that this character is an extension of the operator, going as if a part of you witness the other hand, an impotent witness. Therefore, at first sight strikes us, it is understandable when we consider that this outpouring is the result of the reason for the author and his will, but his ego motivations more enigmatic. So, too, about our dreams, those fictions of which each of us authors are, as characters who have not left, they could not have come, rather than ourselves and that, however, is suddenly so unknown that even frighten us.
This feature of major fiction is precisely that which makes them great truths. A dream can mean anything, unless it is a mentira.No know hardly reach to understand the ultimate meaning of this wondrous phenomenon, but it certainly is the authentic expression of a fact. Through what is called inspiration from ancient unintentionally rescues the writer of that territory archaic symbols and myths that give truth to their creations and give them the durability of the human species. The pure spirit produces ideas, but ideas change, and thus Hegel is superior to Aristotle, but Joyce's Ulysses is not superior to Homer's Ulysses. Dreams do not progress: truths are immutable and absolute.
In a letter to a friend, Karl Marx is puzzled because the tragedies of Sophocles were shaking, despite being modern societies as fundamentally different. But that last attribute of the human condition do not suffer the vicissitudes of history. Death is not historical, if man is mortal and will continue, and so also other features that constitute the metaphysical background of man. These last attributes are those that manage to discover and describe the great writers in their fictions. It is precisely for this reason that Don Quixote is true for all times and anywhere in the world. Cervantes is radically English, to the extent that is hard to imagine that might have arisen elsewhere, but at the same time reveals mysteries of the soul and states of all men. As Kierkegaard said, the more we delve into our heart, the more we delve into the heart of any human being.
This sort of complexity is what makes impossible to judge fairly the greatest work of Cervantes. His mind began planning a "melancholy pastime to the chest, but his poetic instinct does eventually rise from the ruins of its protagonist beaten, mocked and ridiculed conmovedora.Y an imposing figure and not the witty and graduates who are unbelieving imposed on the reader, but the dilapidated gentleman with his faith unshaken, their naive courage, heroic ingenuidad.Esto is after or even in the midst of laughter suddenly filled with tears our eyes.
In the last chapter, Cervantes makes him give up all illusions and chimeras. As a writer, I suspect he wrote this part with the contrite soul, feeling vaguely committed gentleman with the last and most painful of his adventures, forcing him to die desquijotado for happiness and tranquility of the mediocre, those who accept the existence as it is, with his head down, whatever the disclaimers and sordideces.
ara me, Cervantes many adventures in pursuit of ideals frustrated, painfully self-referred and humiliated in that final scene, accepting finishing his own life with great bitterness. One might think that he accepted with Christian resignation the will of God. But why does God not to love the Quixote? I venture to think that Cervantes loved to finish the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, and that timid and laterally moves his illusions nothing less than the laughable squire, that his bitterness is more painful irony.
And so, Cervantes took out his grandiose fantasy. And ambiguous torn region, home of the perpetual struggle between the flesh and purity, between night and light, battlefield between the Furies and the Olympic gods of reason, the soul is the most tragically human. For the pure spirit, through mathematics and philosophy, man explored the beautiful world of ideas, infinite universe and invulnerable to the destructive powers of time, even the mighty pyramids of Egypt end up being distorted to the relentless wind desert but the geometric pyramid is its spirit remains eternally identical with itself. But the Platonic world country is not the real human being: it's just a nostalgia of the divine. Its real homeland, returning after his travels ideals, is the middle region of the soul, a region where we love and suffer, because the soul is a prisoner of his body and the body is what makes us "loved to death" . There, in the soul, which appear the ghosts of dreams and fiction. Men painstakingly built his inexplicable fantasies because they are embodied, for long for eternity and must die, because they want to perfect and imperfect, because they want purity and are corruptible. Why write fiction. A god does not need to write. Existence is tragic that essential duality. The man could have been happy as an animal without awareness of death or as pure spirit, not as a man, from the time they got up on two feet, opened his unhappiness metaphysics.
Thus, Cervantes wrote Don Quixote because he was a mere mortal. Tender, helpless, restless, brave, quixotic Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, the man who once said that freedom as well as for honor, can and should risk one's life: what emotion I feel now, at the end of my existence, be protected by his generous and countless shade!
