In a lecture delivered to a group of Catholic authors, Jacques Maritain coined the term “Apostle of the Pen” whose characteristics are the following.
- “A good deal of humility and some kind of appreciation of, yearning for, the ways of the spiritual life.” Hence, “his work should be animated from within by a motion that comes from a higher Source, which is able to reach the souls of men as no human dexterity can do.” Because “spiritual experience born in Charity is the most profound and fecund inspiration to creative work.”
- “What is to be hoped for with respect of a Catholic writer is that he may be an artist fully dedicated to the requirements of his art and the beauty of his works.”
- “Catholic means universal, to the extent to which he is true to type, a Catholic writer speaks to all men. As a result, a Catholic writer should endeavor to offer his thought in a vocabulary apt to touch not only his fellow Catholics but every man.”[1]
For St. Therese of Avila, humility is the mother of all virtues and the foundation of the spiritual life. Something similar is said by Berganza in The Dogs’ Colloquy: “you are aware that humility is the base and foundation of all virtues, and that without it, there are none.” Human virtues and the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity were essential in the life of the writer Cervantes, and play a prominent role in his masterpiece, Don Quixote, therefore, it is reasonable to affirm that in Cervantes we have an exceptional example of intimate coherence between life and literature. This is the same type of unity which Don Quixote would mention to Don Diego de Miranda: “If the poet, however, is chaste in his morals, he will be chaste also in his verses. The pen is the tongue of the soul, and the thought begotten there will burgeon in whatever he writes.” (II, 16; 668) [2] In addition, Cervantes’ work, although not always explicitly Catholic, is animated from within by the writer’s faith. Cervantes shows, by the way he treats religious and doctrinal matters in his works, that he has a solid grasp of Catholic doctrine, and more knowledge about the subject that was considered normal in a layman in his day and age.
It is beyond doubt that Cervantes was an artist fully dedicated to the requirements of his art and the beauty of his works. In the prologue of his Exemplary Novels, he calls them “exemplary” because from an artistic and ethical standpoint, they are well-written and a source of honest entertainment. What can be said about his masterpiece, Don Quixote, the best known and influential Spanish novel of all times, the favorite of famous writers such as Dostoesvsky, Faulkner, and Twain among others?
Finally, Don Quixote has proven to be a work of such a universal appeal that is able to captivate an almost infinite number of readers as was recognized by one of his characters, bachelor Samson Carrasco: “for it is so plain that there is nothing in it to puzzle over; the children turn its leaves, the young people read it, the grown men understand it, the old folk praise it; in a word, it is so thumbed, and read, and got by heart by people of all sorts.” (II, 3; 549)
In conclusion, because of all the reasons that have been given, Cervantes is, according to Maritain’s terminology, an extraordinary and true Apostle of the Pen. He leaves us, as a legacy of love, Don Quixote, the best known and influential Spanish novel of all times, to teach while amusing us with a masterpiece of honest entertainment whose language delights and its invention amazes and astounds, in an extraordinary mingling of delight and moral philosophy, truth with jokes, the sweet with the useful, and the human with the divine. It is a metaphor of man’s search for absolute beauty, goodness and truth.
Egberto Bermúdez
[1] http://www.americamagazine.org/issue/668/article/apostolate-pen
[2] Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote. Trans. Walter Starkie. New York: New American Library, 1979.
