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Don Quixote: A Manual for Life
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Growing up I used to love Don Quixote. One can really expand one's mind with that book. What a great idea Cervantes had!
My name is Asa. I just self-published my first book, "I always loved you. Creatures of eternal love." A spiritual/psychological self-help book aimed to enlighten people about the mental dimensions of love. True love outside the mind. The nihilistic mind. And it goes deeper into the human experience.
https://www.amazon.com/Asa-Rodriguez/...
“One of these essential experiences, the greatest perhaps is Cervantes….. Alas! If only we knew with certainty the certainty of Cervantes style, of his manner of approaching things, we would have found out everything, because on these spiritual heights there reigns such indestructible solidarity that a poetic style brings with it philosophical, moral, scientific, and political conceptions. If one day someone were to come and reveal to us the profile of Cervantes’ style, it would suffice for us to prolong its lines over our other collective problems and we would awake to a new life. Then if there is courage and genius amongst us, the new Spanish experiment could be made in it’s purest form. ” - Meditations on Quixote by Jose Ortega Y Gasset
Here is the explanation of why it is a manual for life.
Don Quixote of La Mancha (Restless Classics) Paperback – October 6, 2015
by Miguel de Cervantes (Author), John Ormsby (Translator), Ilan Stavans (Introduction)
5. Basic Questions
I beg to differ with the characterization of Don Quixote as unrealistic; to me, Don Quixote is hyper-realistic. He understands quite well the weight of reality, even if he refuses to see it, thus choosing to sidestep it, to improve on it. I find him the most learned of all characters in literature, a wise man, an enlightened soul. His repeated mishaps are conventionally seen as the outdatedness of his value. His redemption doesn’t come from standing unintentionally for his dream, but, instead, for endorsing it even if it is... well, Quixotic.
Indeed, after countless readings, I have come to see Don Quixote not only as a novel but as a manual for life. You’ll find in it everything you need, from lessons on how to speak and eat and love to an exhortation of a disciplined and focused life, an argument against censorship, and a call to make lasting friends, which, as Cervantes puts it, is what makes bearable our long journey from birth to death.” People have been drawn to this book because it addresses the basic questions: Who am I and what makes me unique. What is the truth and how should that truth be shared? Are we all trapped in our own circumstances? And what happens to a dream when it differs? Don Quixote sweeps these questions off the table with a simple response it is our imagination that sets us free. For as Yeats said, “With imagination comes responsibility.” Although it clearly doesn't end there.