Eulogy for my books

Eulogy for my books

Time to add some thoughts. They have been collected over the years, are anything but new, still it does no harm to bring them to the attention of a reader.

Over sixty years ago I first touched European soil and stayed for almost a year. After another spell in the US, I crossed the ocean once more, this time to remain in Italy where I have now been for over sixty years. My occupations have varied, from having a shop to teaching English to translating. I’ve raised two children, and now here I am “retired”. Many old friends have fallen by the way, but there have been new ones. And then there are those that never fail –  my books.

Knowing that my sons are trying to reorganize the villa, where I lived with my dog after my parents died, means of course eliminating some of the books, legacies if you like but mostly vital signs of those who lived here off and on, that take up just too much space. Many my books. And now I feel bereft. For they are all somehow old friends. I mourn them, the way I would mourn the passing of a friend. In writing about them though I know they will continue to be alive in my mind.

The time has come to retire some, to decide which ones I will keep in active service. So, let me pay them homage. Let me write a eulogy for my books. My great grandniece put it well. While we are decades apart, we share a love of books. She admits to having a tendency to hoard more books than she can read, due in part to growing up with my sister. She remembers that they had shelves full of books, some she doubts were ever picked up twice. The air would be impregnated with the scent of old books, a scent you don’t smell much anymore when you walk into someone’s house. Some of the books were good, some were bad, and some absolute true gems. For these books allowed her to meet different people, go to different places, and step into completely different worlds. At any point in time, she could pick up a book on one of those shelves, and go anywhere in the world she wished to.

I agree with her about the magic of books. It is not that I hoard them, but since they are part of me, how can I let them go? There are so many categories, perhaps that is  the best way to understand them. They are my friends and companions. Even so, now that I think about it, over sixty years ago when I was a watcher more than anything else, books were somehow shelved for later, put on the back burner as they say. Some went into cold storage as new impressions crowded them out. But they were patiently waiting, waiting to be joined by others, by the hordes of words that would be written and read, by new acquaintances that would join the old. They sit there on their shelves, waiting to be turned to once again. Even then, books continued to be in my life. But of a different kind. One was obviously the Italian grammar book, used in memorizing tenses and how some words changed in their past appearances. Then occasionally there were books someone I knew might give me as I tried to understand a poem by D’Annunzio. Or those I tried to read as I attempted to learn Italian, like Pirandello. My contacts were much more with people or with the landscape and architecture around me, with a type of life I had never imagined.

Now as I renew old friendships, I also open the door to new ones. Discover what they have to say, much of which I was too immature at the time to really understand. There is a time, as there probably is for all of us, when we come face to face with the future. One for me was leaving the place I had lived in for years, with all its books and objects, not just me. I had written the following at the time.

The Closet of Forgotten Things

The future looms closer. For finally I have moved. My books are no longer where I knew them to be. Will I ever find them again? Are my books now wandering in purgatory? Are they in the bardo, that intermediate, transitional, or liminal state between death and rebirth, waiting to be reborn?