Personal Library -- Don Quixote

Author: (Spanish) Miguel de Cervantes
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: The ancients said, "Travel ten thousand miles and read ten thousand books." For modern people, traveling ten thousand miles is easy, but reading ten thousand books is difficult. The wheels of technology are sweeping across the world at an astonishing speed. The modern people, busy in front of computers and all kinds of machines all day, have turned the Earth into a village with wires, optical cables, tracks, or air routes. With a click of the mouse, we can paste ourselves anywhere in the world. However, in the face of vast civilizations, lacking the foundation of reading ten thousand books, we not only frequently encounter the awkwardness of "meeting face to face but not recognizing each other," but we also accumulate the strangeness that comes from the depths of our hearts. For this, we long for a deeper understanding, a connection of the soul; we long for a return to a way of traveling—before traveling ten thousand miles, put a few books in our spiritual backpack to allow our steps and souls to go further. A spiritual journey does not require "writing essays in youth and studying until the hair turns white," nor does it require hanging on the beam, gnawing through walls to steal light, nor does it require a red sleeve adding fragrance, or never letting go of a book. A spiritual journey only requires reading a few classics in the leisure of life. Novels, essays, and poems can all be made into soup for the soul; buses, subways, and even our palms can be our desks. Therefore, we have tailored a "pocket library" for busy urban dwellers. Classics are the soul of the library; easy to absorb is the essence of the library; carrying it with you, anytime, anywhere, and in any state of mind, is the purpose of the library. The selected titles in the library are all the timeless classics that have been refined after exposing themselves to the harsh realities of different civilizations; the illustrations, carefully selected and painstakingly collected from hundreds of rare books and private collections, are a true restoration of the essence of the classics. The small format design makes it as clever as a wallet; the special printing process makes every book "filled with the fragrance of hidden incense." Classics are not afraid of time, but life cannot withstand the erosion of "time flies." The charm of classics is better seen than heard. It is better to use them to mend the gaps in our time, to add value to the fragments of our days; it is better to use on-the-go reading anytime, anywhere, to gather wisdom piece by piece and to understand life in the spiritual journey. Reading classics, with the least expense, to reach the furthest distance of life.
The famous novel Don Quixote (1602–1615) is Cervantes's masterpiece. The full title of the novel is The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, consisting of two volumes. It mainly describes a thin, declining nobleman named Quixote, who, obsessed with ancient knightly novels, dresses up like a knight in old armor and a broken horse, worships an ugly swineherd as a goddess, and takes a short, fat peasant named Sancho Panza as his squire. He sets out three times to travel the country to create knightly deeds of helping the weak and suppressing the strong. As a result, he often makes jokes, encounters obstacles and humiliation everywhere, suffers serious injuries, or is sent home as a madman. The novel features nearly 700 characters and depicts scenes from courts to wildernesses across the country. It exposes the various contradictions of the Spanish kingdom, which was declining in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, condemns the debauchery and corruption of the aristocracy, and shows the suffering and struggles of the people, touching on issues of politics, economy, morals, culture, and customs. The novel portrays Quixote as a ridiculous, admirable, and tragic figure, and Sancho Panza as a down-to-earth, timid but clever and just peasant. These two characters have become famous archetypes in world literature, combining realism and romanticism organically. It has both simple and unadorned life realism and humorous and exaggerated fictional plots, taking a new step in the depth and breadth of reflecting reality and the typicality of character creation. The novel has been highly praised by revolutionary leaders and famous writers such as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Schiller, Goethe, Scott, Byron, Heine, and Belinsky. It has been translated and published more than 1,000 times in countries around the world, becoming one of the universally familiar and beloved world literary masterpieces.