Don Quixote

Join me for an enchanting foray into the life of literature's most beloved dreamer, Don Quixote. With our knight-errant's chivalric illusions and lofty aspirations for immortal fame, wrap yourself in the comfort of your bed and let the dulcet tones of this episode cradle you into a restful repose, filled with the poignant yet amusing escapades of Don Quixote, the knight time itself cannot forget.

The music in this episode is Moon Glow by Helmut Schenker. 

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Transcript

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Speaker 1 0:20

Welcome to Dreamful Podcast bedtime stories for slumber . Welcome to Dreamful Podcast bedtime stories for slumber . Though we don't have any new subscribers to shout out this episode , I'd like to take this moment to say that there's other ways to support the show as well , like leaving a 5-star rating and review or sharing the podcast with a friend or family member who might enjoy it as well . And if you'd like to gain access to subscriber-only episodes , visit dreamfulstoriescom and , on the support page , find a link to become a Buzzsprout supporter or subscribe via Supercast if you love it . On Spotify , you can also find bonus episodes on Apple Podcasts . Your donations go toward things like music licensing , equipment upgrades and paying my awesome editor , katie . Upgrades and paying my awesome editor , katie . This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp .

Speaker 1 1:09

As we drift into the realm of sleep , let's take a moment to acknowledge something we all carry with us Stress . It comes in all shapes and sizes , big and small , and when we let it fester inside , it can cast a shadow over our well-being . I've found that therapy offers a gentle beacon of light in the darkness . It's a safe haven where you can release those burdens , untangle the knots in your mind and discover the path toward healing . But therapy is not just about addressing specific issues . It's about fostering resilience , enhancing self-awareness and nurturing a deeper sense of connection with oneself and others .

Speaker 1 1:44

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Speaker 1 3:13

In a village of La Mancha , the name of which I have no desire to call to mind , there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance rack an old buckler , a lean hack and a greyhound for coursing and I'll love rather more beef than mutton . A salad on most nights , scraps on Saturdays , lentils on Fridays and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays made away with three quarters of his income . The rest of it went in a doublet . A fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to match for holidays , while on weekdays he made a brave figure on his best homespun . He had in his house a housekeeper past forty , a niece under twenty and a lad for the field and marketplace who used to saddle the hack as well as handle the billhook .

Speaker 1 4:15

The ageless gentleman of ours was bordering on fifty . He was of a hardy habit , spare , gaunt-featured , a very early riser and a great sportsman . They will have it . His surname was Kihara or Kisara , for here there is some difference of opinion among the authors who write on the subject subject , although from reasonable conjectures it seems plain that he was called Kehana . This , however , is of but little importance to our tale . It will be enough not to stray a hair's breadth from the truth and the telling of it . You must know , then , that the above named gentleman , whenever he was at leisure , which was mostly all the year round , gave himself up to reading books of chivalry with such ardor and avidity that he almost entirely neglected the pursuit of his field sports and even the management of his property . Field sports and even the management of his property . Into such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that he sold many an acre of tillage land to buy books of chivalry to read and brought home as many of them as he could get . But of all , there were none he liked so well as those of the famous Feliciano de Silva's composition , for their lucidity of style and complicated conceits were its pearls in his sight , particularly when , in his reading , he came upon courtships and cartels , where he often found passages like the Reason of the unreason with which my reason is afflicted , so weakens my reason that with reason I murmur at your beauty . Or again , the high heavens , that of your divinity , divinely , fortify you with the stars , render you deserving of the desert your greatness deserves .

Speaker 1 6:36

Over conceits of this sort , the poor gentleman lost his wits and used to lie awake striving to understand them and worm the meaning out of them , what Aristotle himself could not have made out or extracted had he come to life again for that special purpose . He was not at all easy about the wounds which Don Bellianus gave and took , because it seemed to him that great as were the surgeons who had cured him . He must have had his face and body covered all over with seams and scars . He commended , however , the author's way of ending his book with the promise of that indeterminable adventure , and many a time he was tempted to take up his pen and finish it properly , as is there proposed , which no doubt he would have done and made a successful piece of work for it too , had not greater and more absorbing thoughts prevented him . Many an argument did he have with the curate of his village , a learned man and a graduate of Sequenza , as to which had been the better knight Palmeron of England or Amadis of Gaul . Master Nicholas , the village barber , however , used to say that neither of them came up to the knight of Phoebus and that if there was any that could compare with him , it was Don Galore , the brother of Amadis of Gaul , because he had a spirit that was equal to every occasion and was no finican knight nor lacrimose like his brother , while in the matter of valor he was not a wit behind him .

Speaker 1 8:24

In short , he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise and his days from dawn to dark poring over them . And what with little sleep and much reading , his brains got so dry that he lost his wits . His fancy grew full of what he used to read about in his books enchantments , quarrels , battles , challenges , wombs , wooings , loves , agonies and all sorts of impossible nonsense . And it so possessed his mind that the whole fabric of invention and fancy he read of was true that to him no history in the world had more reality in it . He used to say that Sid Rui Diaz was a very good knight , but that he would not be compared with the knight of the burning sword , who was one backstroke cut in half , two fierce and monstrous giants . He thought more of Bernardo del Carpio because at Roncesvalles he slew Roland in spite of enchantments , availing himself of the artifice of Hercules when he strangled Antaeus , the son of Tyr , in his arms .

Speaker 1 9:44

He approved highly of the giant Morgante because , although the giant breed of which is always arrogant and ill-conditioned , he alone was affable and well-bred , but above all , he admired Reynaldos of Montauban , especially when he saw him sallying forth from his castle and robbing everyone he met and when , beyond the seas , he stole that image of Muhammad which , as his history says , was entirely of gold . To have a bout of kicking at that traitor of a ganelon , he would have given his housekeeper and his niece into the bargain . In short , his wits being quite gone , he hit upon the strangest notion that ever madman in this world hit upon , and that was that he fancied it was right and requisite , as well for the support of his own honor as for the service of his country , that he should make a knight-errant of himself , roaming the world over in full armor and on horseback , in quest of adventures and putting in practice himself all that he had read of as being the usual practices of Nyserent , righting every kind of wrong and exposing himself to peril and danger from which , in the issue , he was to reap eternal renown and fame . Already , the poor man saw himself crowned by the might of his arm , emperor of Tremesond at least , and so , led away by the intense enjoyment he found in these pleasant fancies , he set himself forthwith to put his scheme into execution . The first thing he did was to clean out some armor that had belonged to his great-grandfather and had been for ages lying forgotten in a corner , eaten with rust and covered with mildew . He scoured and polished it as best he could , but he perceived one great defect in it that it had no closed helmet , nothing but a simple morion . This deficiency , however , his ingenuity supplied , for .

Speaker 1 12:13

He contrived a kind of half-helmet of pasteboard which , fitted onto the Morian , looked like a whole one . It is true that , in order to see if it was strong and fit to Santa Cat , he drew a sword and gave it a couple slashes , the first of which undid in an instant what it had taken him a week to do . The ease with which he had knocked it to pieces disconcerted him somewhat and to guard against that danger , he set to work again , fixing bars of iron on the inside until he was satisfied with its strength and then , not caring to try any more experiments with it , he passed it and adopted it as a helmet of the most perfect construction . He next proceeded to inspect his hack which , with more cortos than a reel and more blemishes than the steed of Ganola a tantampellis sitosa fut , surpassed in his eyes the bucephalus of Alexander or the bubiaca of the Cid .

Speaker 1 13:29

Four days were spent in thinking what name to give him because , as he said to himself , it was not right that a horse belonging to a knight so famous and one with such merits of his own should be without some distinctive name . And he strove to adapt it so as to indicate what he had been before , belonging to a knight-errant , and what he then was , For it was only reasonable that , his master taking a new character , he should take a new name , and that it should be a distinguished and full-sounding one . Benefiting the new order and calling he was about to follow , and so , after having composed , struck out , rejected , added to unmade and remade a multitude of names out of his memory and fancy , he decided upon calling him Rojanante , a name to his thinking , lofty , sonorous , as significant of his condition as a hack . Before he became what he now was , the first and foremost of all the hacks in the world , to his taste , he was anxious to get one for himself , and he was eight days more pondering over this point till , at last , he made up his mind to call himself Don Quixote , whence , as has already been said , the authors of this voracious history have inferred that his name must have been , beyond a doubt , qu ? Kihada and not Quesada , as others would have it , recollecting , however , that the valiant Amadis was not content to call himself Kirtli Amadis , and nothing more , but added the name of his kingdom and country to make it famous and call himself Amadis of Gaul .

Speaker 1 15:34

To make it famous and call himself Amadis of Gaul , he , like a good knight , resolved to add on the name of his and to style himself Don Quixote of La Mancha , whereby , he considered he described accurately his origin and country and did honor to it in taking his surname from it . So then , his armor being furbished , his morion turned into a helmet , his hat christened , and he himself confirmed , he came to the conclusion that nothing more was needed now but to look out for a lady to be in love with , for a knight errant without love was like a tree without leaves or fruit , or a body without a soul , as he said to himself . If , for my sins or by my good fortune fortune , I come across some giant hereabouts a common occurrence with knights errant and overthrow him in one onslaught , or cleave him asunder to the waist , or , in short , vanquish and subdue him , will it not be well to have someone I may send him to as a present , that he may come in and fall on his knees before my sweet lady and , in a humble , submissive voice , say vanquished in single combat by the never sufficiently extolled Knight Don Quixote of La Mancha , who has commanded me to present myself before your grace , let your highness dispose of me at your pleasure . Oh , how our good gentleman enjoyed the delivery of this speech , especially when he had thought of someone to call his lady . There was , so the story goes , in a village near his own , a very good-looking farm girl with whom he had been at one time in love , though , so far as is known , she never knew it nor gave a thought to the matter . Her name was Aldonza Lorenzo , and upon her he thought fit to confer the title of Lady of His Thoughts . And after some search for a name which should not be out of harmony with her own and should suggest and indicate that of a princess and a great lady , he decided upon calling her Dolcinea del Toboso , she being of El Toboso , a name to his mind musical , uncommon and significant , like all those he had already bestowed upon himself and the things belonging to him .

Speaker 1 18:42

These preliminaries settled , he did not care to put off any longer the execution of his design , urged onto it by the thought of all the world was losing by his delay , seeing what wrongs he intended to right , grievances to redress , injustices to repair , abuses to remove and duties to discharge . So , without giving notice of his intention to anyone and without anyone seeing him , one morning , before the dawning of the day which was one of the hottest of the month of July , he donned his suit of armor , mounted rojanante , with his patched-up helmet on , braced his buckler , took his lance and , by the back door of the yard , sallied forth upon the plain in the highest contentment and satisfaction as seeing with what ease he made a beginning with his grand purpose . But scarcely did he find himself upon the open plain when a terrible thought struck him , one all but enough to make him abandon the enterprise . At the very outset , it occurred to him that he had not been dubbed a knight and that , according to the law of chivalry , he neither could nor ought to bear arms against any knight and that , even if he had been still , he ought , as arms against any knight , and that , even if he had been still , he ought , as a novice knight , to wear a white armor without a device upon the shield until , by his prowess , he has earned one . These reflections made him waver in his purpose , but his craze being stronger than any reasoning , he made up his mind to have himself dubbed a knight by the first one he came across , following the example of others in the same case as he had read in the books that brought him to this pass .

Speaker 1 20:51

As for White Armor , he resolved , on the first opportunity , to scour his until it was wider than a Nermine and so , comforting himself , he pursued his way , taking that which his horse chose . For in this , he believed , lay the essence of adventures . Lay the essence of adventures . Thus setting out , our new-fledged adventurer paced along , talking to himself as saying who knows ? But that in time to come , when the voracious history of my famous deeds is made known , the sage who writes it , when he has to set forth my first sally in the early morning , will do it after this fashion .

Speaker 1 21:42

Scarce had the Robicund Apollo spread over the face of the broad , spacious earth , the golden threads of his bright hair . Scarce had the little birds of painted plumage attuned their notes to hail , with dulcet and mellifluous harmony , the coming of the rosy dawn that , deserting the soft couch of her jealous spouse was appearing to mortals at the gates and balconies of the Manchegan horizon when the renowned knight Don Quixote of La Mancha , quitting the lazy down , mounted his celebrated steed Rochenante and began to traverse the ancient and famous Campo de Montiel , which in fact he was actually traversing . Happy the age , happy the time he continued , in which shall be made known my deeds of fame , worthy to be molded in brass , carved in marble , limbed in pictures for memorial forever . And thou , o sage magician , whoever thou art , to whom it shall fall to be the chronicler of this wondrous history , forget not I entreat thee , my good Roginante , a constant companion of my ways and wanderings , wanderings .

Speaker 1 23:25

Presently , he broke out again , as if he were love-stricken in earnest . O Princess Dulcinea , lady of this captive heart , a grievous wrong hast thou done me to drive me forth with scorn and with inexorable obduracy . Banish me from the presence of thy beauty . O lady , deign to hold in remembrance this heart , thy vassal that thus in anguish pines for the love of thee . So he went on , stringing together these and other absurdities , all in the style of those his books had taught him , imitating their language as well as he could . And all the while he rode so slowly , and the sun mounted so rapidly and with such fervor that it was enough to melt his brains if he had any , I'm going to make a little .

Speaker 2 34:19

Thank you , I love you . I'm going to put the Thank you . Thank you . I'm going to put the Thank you . Thank you , I'm going to put it in the fridge for a while . I'm going to put the Thank you . I'm going to go to bed now . Thank you . I'm going to put the Thank you . Thank you , I'm going to use a brush to paint the background . I'm going to use a brush to paint the background . I'm going to use a brush to paint the background . I'm going to use a brush to paint the background . I'm going to use a brush to paint the background . Thank you , thank you .