Spring XVII. Why we read

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: XVI. No friend of the people

A day of almost continuous rain, yet for me a day of delight. I had breakfasted, and was poring over the map of Devon (how I love a good map!) to trace an expedition that I have in view, when a knock came at my door, and Mrs M. bore in a great brown-paper parcel, which I saw at a glance must contain books. The order was sent to London a few days ago; I had not expected to have my books so soon. With throbbing heart I set the parcel on a clear table; eyed it whilst I mended the fire; then took my pen-knife, and gravely, deliberately, though with hand that trembled, began to unpack.

It is a joy to go through booksellers’ catalogues, ticking here and there a possible purchase. Formerly, when I could seldom spare money, I kept catalogues as much as possible out of sight; now I savour them page by page, and make a pleasant virtue of the discretion I must needs impose upon myself. But greater still is the happiness of unpacking volumes which one has bought without seeing them. I am no hunter of rarities; I care nothing for first editions and for tall copies; what I buy is literature, food for the soul of man. The first glimpse of bindings when the inmost protective wrapper has been folded back! The first scent of books! The first gleam of a gilded title! ...

I had in me the making of a scholar. With leisure and tranquility of mind, I should have amassed learning. Within the walls of a college, I should have lived so happily, so harmlessly, my imagination ever busy with the old world. In the introduction to his History of France, Michelet says: “J'ai passé à côté du monde, et j'ai pris l'histoire pour la vie.” [“I passed by the world on the other side, and I mistook history for life.”] That, as I can see now, was my true ideal; through all my battlings and miseries I have always lived more in the past than in the present...

Scholarship in the high sense was denied me, and now it is too late. Yet here am I gloating over Pausanias, and promising myself to read every word of him. Who that has any tincture of old letters would not like to read Pausanias, instead of mere quotations from him and references to him? ... To the end I shall be reading -- and forgetting. Ah, that’s the worst of it! Had I at command all the knowledge I have at any time possessed, I might call myself a learned man... I cannot preserve more than a few fragments of what I read, yet read I shall, persistently, rejoicingly. Would I gather erudition for a future life? Indeed, it no longer troubles me that I forget. I have the happiness of the passing moment, and what more can mortal ask?

Alpha.

Here is the crux of the matter. This may be both why I love this book and why I’m writing this all in one section. There is very little here I couldn’t have written myself. I’ve read Pausanias, though not in Greek, and I had to find a translation of Michelet’s quote, but I’ve felt all these feels.

If I thought academia was what it should be, I would regret not having spent my life within some institution (ha) doing what I so love to do -- and have mostly done anyway. But there’s the catch: “doing” philosophy or literature or history from within a discipline is a very different thing from doing it independently.

I would love to pick the brains of scholars knowledgeable about books or subjects that interest me, but that’s why I read. I am currently scanning the dizzying variety of literary criticism of Goethe’s Faust. Some of it is inspired, some random, some virtually unreadable. Some of these people draw on considerable scholarship and others seem to be pulling it out of their asses. It’s great fun if you don’t have to take it, or them, seriously. Besides, I’m riding my own hobby-horse in this literary quest and I will only accept criticism from Uncle Toby (Tristram Shandy reference).

I have never looked through publisher's catalogs for myself, but I have done so for bookstores. The buyer (this was an independent bookstore) would pass the catalogs for history and philosophy to me and ask what the store should buy. It wasn't even my money... at first. The books would arrive and I would unpack them with all the rest and shelve them in my sections. I would borrow them and, carefully, read them at home. And when they failed to sell, as they almost always did, I would often buy them rather than sending them back to the publisher as remainders. Today they sit on my shelves

Beta.

And why am I writing this? To help me remember. For the past few years I’ve endeavored to read more slowly. There are light-weight, plot-driven books (fiction or nonfiction) that you can read quickly, but almost all the books that are of interest to me respond to a more careful reading -- 20 pages at a time or less -- and often a quick re-reading helps as well. But the next step is to take notes and the next after that is to write about what you are reading and how it connects to everything else in your intellectual life. This forces you to pay attention. To ask the questions you might overlook, and to do a little more research. And this is why I am really, and happily, the audience for this blog.

Next: Spring XVIII. The literary life.