A Book

In my life, it's needless to say, books have always been part and parcel.

I've already had a number of them. Not anylonger.

Some were lost with my own frequent moving, others were borrowed by people who never read them, but never returned them either, others were stolen, some were sold and many were given away.

I had for example a precious Nestle New Testament, Greek and German (Gothic characters), 18th century, one of the most regretted losses. Only someone who knew what it was about would covet such a relic, so I thought nobody ever would. It was just a very old book that seemingly nobody could even read. But I found out I was wrong... by losing it. I'll certainly never know who the hell stole it. And it will take me too long to fetch another copy, if ever. This kind of stuff is really rare.

A not so old Bible in Italian had suffered the attack of bookworms. I managed to stop it and then filled a great big hole in the hard back cover with epoxi resin. But the book went "crippled". The main text was left intact and can still be reread, though.

An old volume called The Limits of Art, given me (or transferred to me, in his own words) by Daniel Brilhante de Brito, my initiator in the art of translation, is an impressive sample with the best pages ever written by authors of all times and places, according to very competent critics of all times and places.

The book, printed in the early 50's, was already old when of said transference in the mid 80's. The volume also reminded me of its giver, who passed away about three years ago. He was a man whose impressive learning has earned my unqualified respect and admiration. Men of this rare kind also grow old and eventually die. I don't know how old he lived to be but saying he had at least fulfilled his alloted span must be a safe guess.

I used to flee to that volume during a long period of personal "darkness". Literal darkness even, since I had for example to live without electric energy for months on end.

To while away the tedium of that hopeless period of extreme poverty earlier in this century, I often could enjoy the company of Homer, Vergil, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Hugo, Voltaire, Yeats, Poe, Verlaine, Schiller, Goethe, just to mention some. Of course, no one around to share anything from such readings. By turning again and again to it I have even learned by heart some of my favorites.

Just imagine, every single line in my book was worth reading and rereading, just in a moment I scarcely ever could hear anything worth hearing, see anything worth seeing, let alone read anything worthy at all.

In the very "cave" I found these days again the volume I though lost. Apparently, it has been there all the time.

Now I can turn again to those extreme pages. I just love them.