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Uninterrupted readings of The Ingenious Don Quixote. On 23 April, 1995, the World Book Day and the Authors’ Right Day, was proclaimed by the General Conference of UNESCO to celebrate the anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and William Shakespeare. But none of them died on April 23, 1616.
I love this uncertainty. It allows me to write these lines on any day and month. Any time is good to admire the ingenious gentleman, take life with the practicality of Sancho or listen to love poetry from the balcony.
I think that scholars were seeking for a date for veneration of the adorable and the universal. Because what it matters is not the day more or less. To Cervantes and Shakespeare’s lives we owe wisdom and passion with a taste of eternity. Love, hatred, envy, jealousy, illusions, and madness: who can say that has not suffered any or all of those states, typical of the human condition?
For these reasons, provided for the validity of what was created by Cervantes and Shakespeare it seems to oppose what marks the 21st Century. Since the overwhelming emergence of the Internet and its sequel, we discuss here and there about the end of paper books, the decline of the reading habit, the funeral song to poetry and the disappearance of our rich languages ​​in the SMS, Twitters, WhatsApp and everything that is about to come.
We are alerted about the danger of the paradoxical isolation in the era of increasingly effective means of communicating among one another.
What awaits us? Will Cervantes dissolve in Shakespeare? ¿Will the virtual sex, through the Internet, overcome the blind love between sweaty bodies of passionate souls? ¿Will we forget, with the wi-fi, the flavor of a kiss?
The world is moving; welcoming the increasingly surprising new technologies. But none can send a text message to Miguel and William to confess how much we like their mysteries, how much we still get surprised by their conflicts, they are ours. Nor we need to. I think they knew what they were doing: we are entangled in their realities and legends to keep us believing they left the same day of 1616.