Word: wassermanns
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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COLUMBUS, DON QUIXOTE OF THE SEAS -Jacob Wassermann-Little, Brown...
Columbus discovered a New World, and never knew it. Biographer Wassermann has taken this mystical-dogmatic adventurer as the prototype of Cervantes' famed Sorrowful Knight: he has made a good case...
Genoa claims the birth of Christobal Colon, so do six other towns. Columbus' early life is wrapped in obscurity. Says Wassermann: he told conflicting tales about his origins, his early experiences. "He was as morose as a monk, crafty as a peasant, without a glimmer of humor-a character unrelieved by a single ray of cheerfulness. A man of sighs and lamentations, misery and gloom. But for all that, his capacity for suffering and his patience in the bearing of it were prodigious and are strangely touching, like stories from the life of a saint. He learned almost nothing...
...Says Wassermann: Columbus was a poor administrator, a hopelessly lax disciplinarian. When his men had smoked so much tobacco they were unable to work, his reproof was mild. Said he: "What sort of satisfaction you can get from a sort of smouldering tube is more than I can understand." No land but gold was Columbus' quest: from his first voyage he brought back little, promises of much more. On his first return to Spain he was made, according to previous agreement, High Admiral of Spain, Viceroy of the Indies, given a coat of arms,* his family raised forever...