400e anniversaire de Shakespeare et Cervantes

En 2016, le monde a pris note de la mort, il y a 400 ans, de William Shakespeare et Miguel de Cervantes, deux des plus grands géants de l'histoire de la littérature occidentale. Le dramaturge et le romancier avaient peu de choses en commun, sauf leur inventivité extraordinaire, l'universalité de leur attrait et la coïncidence apparente de leurs dates de mort presque identiques (en fait, l'Angleterre a utilisé le calendrier julien et l'Espagne le calendrier grégorien à l'époque, donc les dates étaient en fait espacées de 10 jours). Il y avait cependant un point de contact possible alléchant. Une pièce qui aurait été écrite par Shakespeare (avec le dramaturge John Fletcher) et jouée en 1613, L'histoire de Cardenio, aurait été basée sur des incidents dans l'histoire d'un personnage du roman déjà célèbre de Cervantes, Don Quichotte. Le manuscrit de la pièce, cependant,n'a jamais été découvert.

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Shakespeare.

Le 23 avril 1616, le poète et dramaturge anglais William Shakespeare est décédé dans sa ville natale de Stratford-upon-Avon à l'âge de 52 ans. Sa mort est survenue le jour de son anniversaire ou à proximité (la date exacte de sa naissance demeure inconnue), a été la source d'une légende postérieure selon laquelle il est tombé malade et est décédé après une nuit de forte consommation d'alcool avec deux autres écrivains, Ben Jonson et Michael Drayton. Bien que Shakespeare ait obtenu une certaine renommée et un succès financier au cours de sa vie, l'écriture pour la scène n'était pas, au moment de sa mort, encore considérée comme une poursuite artistique sérieuse, et son enterrement modeste à l'église Holy Trinity était plus adapté à un retraité local riche qu'une célébrité. Cependant, quelques années après sa mort, les amis et admirateurs de Shakespeare ont commencé à jeter les bases de son immortalité littéraire.En 1623, John Heminge et Henry Condell assemblèrent ses pièces en une seule édition grand format. Cette édition est devenue connue sous le nom de First Folio, l'un des textes les plus célèbres de la littérature anglaise. Anticipant que le monde finirait par reconnaître le génie de Shakespeare, Jonson - une figure littéraire importante à part entière - a proclamé dans la préface du folio que son ami était un écrivain "pas d'un âge, mais pour toujours!" Les quatre siècles qui ont suivi la mort de Shakespeare ont confirmé l'évaluation de Jonson. Le «Barde d'Avon» tient une place dans l'histoire comme l'un des plus grands écrivains à avoir vécu, et son travail continue d'être joué, lu et enseigné à travers le monde. L'héritage de Shakespeare a également évolué pour s'adapter à l'évolution des temps; par exemple, aux 20e et 21e siècles, ses pièces ont été adaptées en centaines de longs métrages.

In 2016 Shakespeare was lavishly honoured. The Globe Theatre in London organized The Complete Walk—a 4-km (2.5-mi) course that included 37 short films, each of which explored one Shakespearean play; the project was to be exported to cities in several other countries. The Royal Opera House live-streamed performances from opera and ballet adaptations of Shakespeare’s works. The British Council offered interactive options, including films and the opportunity for members of the public to create a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A free six-week MOOC (massive open online course) on the life and works of Shakespeare was also offered. In the U.S. the Folger Shakespeare Library developed a traveling exhibition intended to take a copy of the First Folio to each state.

Cervantes.

Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes died in Madrid on April 22, 1616. He was buried the next day in a convent. When the convent was rebuilt decades later, Cervantes’s remains were moved, but at some point their exact location became unknown. The grave of Spain’s greatest writer had essentially vanished. Cervantes himself was by no means forgotten, however. Cervantes became a war hero in the 1571 Battle of Lepanto, during which he received two gunshot wounds in the chest and a third that rendered his left hand useless, a disability that earned him the nickname “el Manco de Lepanto.” In 1575 a ship on which he was traveling was attacked by Barbary pirates, and as a result, Cervantes spent five years as a slave in Algiers. He began writing in 1585, trying his hand—with limited success—first at the fashionable genre of pastoral romance and later as a playwright and as a poet. His attempts to support himself as a commissary of provisions and as a tax collector were disastrous; he was twice imprisoned for discrepancies in his bookkeeping. However, the first part of his novel Don Quixote was instantly popular when it was published in 1605. Over the next six years, the work was reprinted across mainland Europe. The publication jumped the English Channel, was translated, and appeared in London in 1612. Two decades after he began writing, Cervantes had found a ravenous audience, so he started a Part II. He had not yet completed that work when a bogus sequel by an unknown author was published in 1614. That perfidy proved to be of no consequence, however; Cervantes’s own Part II was published in 1615, and it quickly spread across Europe and to England. Cervantes enjoyed few benefits from the success of Don Quixote. Because he had sold the publishing rights to his work, he made little money from Part I, and he died less than a year after Part II was released. Yet the novel flourished, in Spanish and particularly in translation. Its central characters, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, became familiar to generations of readers. By the 20th century, scholars were flattering Don Quixote by subjecting it to every sort of analysis, from which the novel emerged gleaming and resilient. It remained a good, if troubling, story—funny, affecting, and wayward, with paroxysms of violence and suffering that continued to shock. In March 2015 Cervantes suddenly rose from his grave. Spanish researchers announced their discovery of bones that they thought were his. Scientific testing confirmed the hunch, and Cervantes’s remains were reburied in June. The rediscovery of his bones, however, seemed superfluous. Cervantes had proved centuries earlier that he did not require his body to survive.

Cervantes was celebrated in Spain and elsewhere as the inventor of the modern novel. Tours of his hometown, Alcalá de Henares, offered a greater understanding of the writer. The National Dance Company of Spain performed Ballet Don Quixote in various Spanish cities, beginning in Valencia. Students at the University of Málaga gave a reading of the first chapter of Don Quixote in 18 different languages. An exhibition at the National Library in Madrid offered an overview of Cervantes’s work and its worldwide influence. In addition, the Cervantes Institute, the embassy of Spain, and the Film Development Council of the Philippines presented a series of films based on the writings of Cervantes, which were not limited to his immortal novel. An exhibit, Don Quixotes Around the World, which focused on the many translations into some 140 different languages of the novel and its dissemination around the world, began in Madrid and traveled to several other cities during the year.