“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
The Abbey Library at St Gall
Sissinghurst Library
Biblioteca dell'Archiginnasio, Bologna
Rotating Sutra Library at Hasedera
Oriental Library in Tokyo (for its Silk Road archives)
Hapsburg Libraries at el Escorial and the Vienna State Library
Monastery Libraries at Admont and Melk
Coimbra
Royal Library of Turin
(Why have I never seen in French libraries? And to see the library at Salamanca is a top priority!)
1) The Abbey Library at St Gall
Many years ago, I worked on a translation of a Japanese documentary on the subject of the Abbey Library of St. Gall, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Everything I read about the library entranced me. And I finally got to visit this beautiful jewel a few years ago when I traveled to see it in St Gallen, Switzerland. Nothing could have prepared me for the perfect Baroque period jewel that is the library. I think it is the most beautiful library in the world. The library itself dates far back in history, having started out as an early medieval scriptorium. Some of the books in the collection are national treasures. With its carved bookcases and painted ceilings, it's like a baroque dream come true. There is even a huge painted 16th century globe of the world.
Probably what struck me most of all about the place (and this is perhaps true of many pilgrims visiting the famed library) was the plaque that was affixed above the rococo doors leading into the room, which reads in Greek: Psyches iatreion, which can be translated as "pharmacy of the soul" --though when we were there, I think the guidebook said "medicine of the soul." This claim that books are medicine for the soul (or libraries are hospices for the sick) is, in fact, the world's oldest library motto, dating all the way back to Pharaoh Ramses II, whose ancient library also had a "plaque" above the door designating the pharaoh's library to be a "house of healing for the soul."
Here is an article: Download Library motto.
2) Sissinghurst
Like a lot of people, I have long imagined paradise as a beautiful garden.
And of all the gardens in the world, there is one in particular that perfectly embodies the heavenly for me. My obsession with Sissinghurst goes way back. The garden had "caught instantly in my heart and imagination" when I was around 13. A garden of my dreams, it is also a real life place. A place in England, in fact. And, if the idea of the "Kentish Weald" is not romantic enough for you, how about a garden created in the ruins of an early Tudor period castle?
At 13, I was greatly enamored by its creator Vita Sackville-West-- and thought she was like Karen Blixen in Out Of Africa. Independent, fearless and talented.
Or like Virginia Woolf, with whom she had had a legendary love affair, Vita was for me the ultimate heroine. Denied an inheritance because she was female, she stood up and took brilliant charge of her life in a way that continues to dazzle me. She would have her fun, her friends and lovers; her books and art--not to mention her stunning career--and simply never look back. Of course, Vita was born into great privilege, and yet there was still something triumphant about her way of living her life. Looking back at my own life, I don't think I have achieved anything close to her stunning independence. Not all that long ago, a friend of these pages remarked that despite considering herself to be an independent person, she had actually never lived on her own. Her words struck me. Of course, I have lived independently both in Japan and America for some lengths of time--and yet with the birth of my son especially, I feel I have lived in a very dependent way. And given my youthful admiration with Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, it is surprising that I never became more resistant to living on someone's else's terms.
3 Biblioteca dell'Archiginnasio, Bologna
The most history-fragrant library I have ever been in... from the arcades covered in paintings of the coats of arms of students who had studied here in the middle ages to the old anatomy theater--two great marble staircases sweep students up to the Stabat Mater Lecture Hall and the old library.
Upper loggia of painted memories
Famous Alumni of the Europe's oldest university
History from official website:
The Archiginnasio palace was constructed between 1562 and 1563 as desired by the Papal Legate of Bologna, Cardinal Carlo Borromeo and Vice-legate Pier Donato Cesi, by the project of Bologna's architect Antonio Morandi called Terribilia. The purpose of the operation, during the cultural climate of the Council of Trent, was that to give a unit seat to the university teaching until then dispersed in various seats.
The external portion of the palace is presented by a long portico of 30 arches and is pronounced in two internal floors around a central courtyard with a double order of loggias. Two grand staircases lead to the floor above that presents 10 scholastic lecture halls (today they are not able to been visited, as they hold the principle books deposits of the library) and two home lecture halls located at the two ends of the building, one for the Artists (today Reading Hall of the Library) and one for the Legisti (Ancient Law students) (Sala dello Stabat Mater).
The sides of the rooms, the vaults of the grand staircases, and of the open galleries are decorated with inscriptions and monuments commemorating the masters of the ancient university and thousands coats of arms and students names.
The building's university function ceased in 1803; from 1838, after being for a few years a primary school, is the seat of the Library. At the ground level some of the antique lecture rooms are occupied by the Società Medica Chirurgica and by the Accademia di Agricoltura.
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Following Hapsburg Libraries I think of as a set:
4 Abby Library at Melk
5) Abby Library at Admont
6) Library at El Escorial
HasederaKyōzō (Sutra Archive)
Royal Library of Turin
Coimbra
Oriental Library
Admont
https://io9.gizmodo.com/lose-yourself-in-these-photos-of-europes-most-magnifice-1679182958
In some ways libraries do stand as types of memory palaces mirroring who we are and where we came from. Libraries are often associated with nation-state or kingdom building. And thinking of the above image of a civilization in ruins trying to rebuild with what books they had left is a topic taken up by Roy Scranton in his incredibly compelling book, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene. I've written about this book before in these pages. And I highly recommend this book to you. Ostensibly about climate change, the short book is really a brilliant meditation on death. Convinced there is no rolling back the damage, Scranton examines ways of facing the end of civilization. And he thinks we should learn from Rome. We don't want to have to rebuild like those shipwreck survivors of the early middle ages trying to frantically recreate all the knowledge that was lost. And so much has already been lost. We must, therefore, make a concerted effort, he says, to conserve our ecological and our civilizational heritage. In libraries.
Manguel, while playing with the idea that his library will stand as a kind of legacy of his life, long after the body of the man has turned to dust; wonderfully tells the reader that he also “likes to imagine that, on the day after my last, my library and I will crumble together, so that even when I am no more I'll still be with my books.” It's true that libraries have also been mausoleums. Think of Ramses II or Alexander the Great's places of final rest. Or el Escorial in Spain. Manguel, though, seems to reject the legacy of memory aspect to his library.
So, then, what does it all mean? Well, like so many others who came before him, Manguel wonders if perhaps more than anything, a library is a consolation.
Consolation, perhaps. Perhaps consolation.
As balm for the fractured soul~ this is how he ends his book.
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Do you have a favorite library?
Many years ago, I worked on a translation of a Japanese documentary on the subject of the Abbey Library of St. Gall, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Everything I read in the translation about the library entranced me. And I finally got to visit this beautiful jewel a few years ago when I traveled to see it in St Gallen, in Switzerland. Nothing could have prepared me for the perfect Baroque period jewel that is the library. I think it is the most beautiful library in the world. The library itself dates way back in history, having started out as an early medieval scriptorium. Some of the books in the collection are national treasures. With its carved bookcases and painted ceilings, it's like a baroque dream come true. There is even a huge painted 16th century globe of the world.
Probably what struck me most of all about the place (and this is perhaps true of many pilgrims visiting the famed library) was the plaque that was affixed above the rococo doors leading into the room, which reads in Greek: Psyches iatreion, which can be translated as "pharmacy of the soul" --though when we were there, I think the guidebook said "medicine of the soul." This claim that books are medicine for the soul (or libraries are hospices for the sick) is, in fact, the world's oldest library motto, dating all the way back to Pharaoh Ramses II, whose ancient library also had a "plaque" above the door designating the pharaoh's library to be a "house of healing for the soul."
Isn't that wonderful?
This very ancient library motto became known to Europeans in the Renaissance when it was translated into Latin by Poggio and then adopted by the Swedish Royal Library for its official bookplate; finally, being carved into the eye-catching plaque above the library at St. Gall in 1760.
**
-- For Abbas and Margit, who are also organizing their library
See my posts on the book burning scene in Don Quixote: Don Quixote: When Professor Wey-Gómez Ate Mochi and The Inquiry of the Library
Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night