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For me alone Don Quixote was born and I for him. His was the power of action, mine of writing.
These parting words of Cide Hamete Benengeli,
in Chapter LXXIV of the Second Part, reflect Cervantes’s words at
the novel’s beginning. At the start, Cervantes declares that Don
Quixote is only his stepson—in other words, that he is not fully
responsible for creating the character of Don Quixote. Don Quixote’s
real father, according to Cervantes’s account, is Benengeli, the
Moor from whose manuscript Cervantes claims to translate
