“If every library is in some sense a reflection of its readers, it is also an image of that which we are not, and cannot be.”
― Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night
Remember the days when invited into someone's home, you sometimes had a chance to poke around their bookcases? I used to love seeing the books people owned; loved how books were part of most people's lives and how these books illuminated the people who owned them; who loved them; who cared for them.
I am reading a delightful book by British historian Valerie Flint about the books that Columbus owned and loved. It is a fascinating project to try and illuminate the man by the books he managed to collect and lug around with him on board ship.
Titled The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus, in a nutshell it is an exploration of the explorer's inner landscapes--of the myths and notions that informed his project.
In thinking about:
Mexican writer and translator Ilan Stavans' book, Imagining Columbus, recounts some of the wildly changing incarnations the explorer has occupied in our collective imaginations over the past five hundred years. Stavans contends--and I agree-- that only Jesus Christ has been interpreted in so many different ways. In my lifetime, for example, Columbus has gone from "rational man of commerce and science" to the representation of all the evils of imperialism and religious fanaticism. Reading Stavans book, I was surprised by just how many great writers have engaged with Columbus in literary terms-- from Nietzsche, Whitman, Umberto Eco and James Fenimore Cooper to Borges, Salman Rushdie, and Kazantzakis.
Stavans himself has been fascinated by the explorer since childhood and helpfully narrows down the multitude of literary tropes into three main types: that of messiah; that of ambitious gold seeker; and that of a conventional, rather unremarkable man.
A bumbler, some said.
Looking at the books that Columbus owned and heavily annotated we can say that he certainly knew--like most people at the time-- the earth was round and more, he was very concerned with the riches of the east. He made careful notes of resources to be found in India, China, Japan--specifically of gold, silver and pearls, spices and silks... he alsoi made careful notes about the people he might find --being worried about cannibals and the best way to govern (in a future colony presumably).
Five books survive from his library.
Pope Pius II's Historia Rerum Ubique Gestarum
A version of Marco Polo's Travels
Plutarch's Lives
Piny's Natural History
++
I wanted to ask Brooks about Durer's library. I came across a wonderful essay by Suzanne Stratton-Pruitt in a book of essays about Las Meninas. As Laura Cumming described so painfully in her book Vanishing Velazquez, there is very little information to go on about Velazquez's personality (or his inner life). One crucial piece of evidence came to light in 1925 when scholars were able to make an inventory of his library. This was a turning point in Velazquez studies. And in knowing what books he owned, we can surmise that the painter was no intellectual slouch. For informing Las Meninas are sophisticated books on mathematics, architecture and geometry. He also had two editions of Pliny. Velazquez owned 154 volumes--which was substantial for a painter at that time.
In Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night (a book that has become my Bible), the author describes a visit to the fateful home that Cervantes lived in in Valladolid from 1602-1605. Fateful because it was where he wrote his last work, Exemplary Novels (our hotel in Valladolid is named after one of the novellas in this work)-and where Cervantes got caught up in a murder investigation and was --yet again-- hauled off to jail. The house is a museum now and as Manguel wanders amongst what is left of Cervantes belongs, he thinks about the famous Inquiry of the Library chapter in part one of el Quixote. Deciding to try and help the mad Quixote, the barber and the priest decide to purge Don Quixote's library of any items which could have contributed to his madness. Manguel takes note of the housekeeper who insists the room itself must be purified, "for there might be here one of those many wizards who inhabit these books, and he might cast a spell on us, to punish us for wanting to expel them from the world."
Maguel notes that like many people who do not read (He doesn't say who cannot read but who do not read), the housekeeper fears the power of the books that she refuses to open.He goes on to suggest that the same superstition holds true for most readers as well; for the books we keep closest to hand are possessed by magic.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.