The narrator sums up his initial description of Don Quixote with these words:
“In short, our hidalgo was soon so absorbed in these books that his nights were spent reading from dusk till dawn, and his days from dawn till dusk, until the lack of sleep and excess of reading withered his brain, and he went mad. Everything he read in his books took possession of his imagination: enchantments, fights, battles, challenges, wounds, sweet nothings, love affairs, storms and impossible absurdities. The idea that this whole fabric of famous fabrications was real so established himself in his mind that no history in the world was truer for him.”
~Don Quixote, Part 1, Chapter 1
Don Quixote is a warning to book lovers, to fantasy immersers, to those prone to let their imagination run away with them.
“And so, by now quite insane, he conceived the strangest notion that ever took shape in a madman’s head, considering it desirable and necessary, both for the increase of his honour and for the common good, to become a knight errant, and to travel about the world with his armour and his arms and his horse in search of adventures, and to practice all those activities that he knew from his books were practiced by knights errant…”
~Don Quixote, Part 1, Chapter 1
It puts me in mind of Anne of Green Gables, when Anne thoroughly scares herself with her imaginings of ghosts in the “haunted wood” (haunted woods are so romantic).
So enthralled they are with the beauty or the romance of the imaginary world, both Quixote and Anne make themselves ridiculous in the current world.
Quixote tilts at windmills and insists that monks are really bandits kidnapping a princess. Anne is truly terrified by the world of her own inventing.
Both led astray by a fiction not grounded in reality.
Does this mean all fiction is dangerous? Is imagination bad for us?
Certainly not.
But when fiction becomes more real than reality, we have missed the point.
Fiction can be a welcome escape from reality, yes–but truly good fiction consumed wisely is a means by which to better understand reality.
Escaping into a dream world can seem desirable (I certainly know I like it often enough)–but when the dream world seems more attractive than the real world, something has gone wrong.
In our imaginations, we have somehow forgotten the story currently being woven with our own lives–a true story more fantastic and romantic than even the most phantasmagorical fiction.
The true story is one of a brave knight slaying a terrible dragon, of a great sorcerer banishing the dark forest’s haunts, of a bridegroom seeking a bride. The true story is of a God seeking worshipers, a King establishing a kingdom, a Father making a match for His Beloved Son.
Every book that causes me to escape this reality is a dangerous book.
Don’t forget to take a look at Barbara H’s meme “The Week in Words”, where bloggers collect quotes they’ve read throughout the week.
“Balance” is a word I continually come back to. It’s so easy to get caught up in something good in itself to the point that it becomes harmful.