Using Cervantes as an example, I argue and illustrate that artists share the ability to transform their actual and imagined lived experiences into a work of art, creating an aesthetic variant of the significant issues in their lives. I explore three questions raised by this perspective on the novel Don Quixote, First, how did Cervantes create from his lived experiences an imagined, aesthetically transformed, experience open to empathic appreciation by the reader? Second, how did Cervantes wrestle with the frame of his craft to achieve a form suitable to his aesthetic aim and his readers' comprehension? And third, what wisdom did Cervantes embed in a book that is replete with topical issues of his time to have it retain a lasting significance for readers four centuries later?