In the many pages that have been written about how to order a library the Italian Roberto Calasso added his some time ago, a small work entitled, ‘How to Order a Library’, has the simplicity of what a treasure hides. Published in Italy by Adelphi in 2018 i now edited in Spanish by Anagrama, Calasso’s essay is an erudite and humorous lesson about this exercise that all the owners of a book collection have undertaken at some point in their lives — their bookseller lives, perhaps literary ones. this arduous enterprise which the one involved postpones ad eternum until he runs out of excuses, surrendered at the foot of those hundreds or thousands of volumes demanding immediate redistribution. But then it turns out that, oh, it’s a joyous undertaking. A puzzle, a game, a journey through one’s own biography, which the books point out at once relentlessly and affectionately.
A metaphysical subject
“It’s a highly metaphysical topic,” Calasso writes on the front page of his essay. “I’m surprised Kant didn’t dedicate a short treatise to it.” Computers in his personal libraries around the world are willing to prove him right: it’s not trivial. “Organizing a home library, no matter how small, involves work,” he writes Lluís Agustí, professor at the Faculty of Information and Audiovisual Media of the UB (Or, what is the same, professor of future librarians), in his article ‘Organization of a personal or family library’. In it he reviews from practical questions such as furniture and lighting (capital, any bibliophile knows) to the question-dock: how to order. “It takes work and you have to have some time to do it, but it is a task that is usually enjoyable. Reinforces reading memory and finds little gems to read or reread. “Sort your own library it is an encounter with oneself, with the past reader and possibly with the past in general. It is an important activity.
A mind map
because a personal library is a map, anyone knows that. Calasso writes that, “on entering a room, one is quickly recognized, even only by the color and typography of the loins, what the homeowner’s mental landscape is made of. ” Or, as Gabriela Olmos writes in the splendid issue that the magazine ‘Arts de México’ dedicated a few years ago to libraries: “What fits in a personal library? All that was proposed by the man who gathered it . The library is an extended and eloquent portrait. “ That is why some are extremely modest in the face of the prospect of someone sniffing through their books. Given that it is an exercise in mental naturism, see biographical, it is best to be someone you trust.
La Central, the “ideal bookstore”
Plural, full of labyrinths and roads, Calasso’s essay stops for a moment in the concept of “ideal bookstore”, which for the Italian is none other than La Central de Barcelona. “I remember buying at La Central some Italian books I hadn’t seen before,” writes the author in the middle of a handful of laudatory paragraphs. For Italian, The Central satisfies the rule that according to him defines in the ideal bookstore: “The one in which at least one book is bought every time, and very often not the one (or not just the one) that was thought to be bought when we walked in.”
“Calasso,” recalls the director of the bookstore, Antonio Ramírez, ” visited the bookstore for the first time about 15 years ago. And then, the few times he returned to Barcelona, he came to visit us. Your first comment about us will appear on an article published in ‘La Stampa’ in Turin, on the occasion of the book fair of this city. It was quite shocking as it was preceded by another article by Umberto Eco at the top of the page asking how “the ideal bookstore” should be; below, Calasso replied: “It exists, it’s in Barcelona and it’s called La Central.” After the publication of the article, booksellers from Rome, Catania, Padua and other places in Italy traveled to Barcelona to meet her. “It was our moment of glory, we were suddenly the most famous bookstore in Italy. “ Broadly speaking, Ramirez says Calasso’s formula can be applied today “to quite a few of the bookstores that have recently opened in the city,” adding that all of them are based on criteria such as “careful selection” or presentation. of his proposal “Like someone who designs a harmonious landscape.” Ramirez highlights French bookstores as benchmarks, and above all Ombres Blanches, in Toulouse.
Infinity of models
About the specific way to order a personal library, the only consensus is that there is no one way better than another, and that in the end it is a personal matter. Alphabetical order, sort by genre, by country, by publisher, by color … “Inevitably in some areas, the alphabetical order would be lethal if applied to all of them,” Calasso writes. “Of certain books – especially mushrooms, about plants in Cornwall, about famous chess games and innumerable other cases- the subject is remembered but the author is often forgotten. Putting them in a general alphabetical order would be like losing sight of them. “In ‘High Fidelity,’ Nick Hornby’s novel, the protagonist sets out to classify his records in the order in which he has acquired them, with the intention of thus forming a kind of autobiography, a criterion that could perfectly well be applied to books (some have done so, or at least boast of it). In any case, it must be borne in mind that, as Rafael Vargas writes in his own contribution to that issue of ‘Arts of Mexico’, “A library is not a mere repository of books. You need to give him an address. Without it it grows like weeds. It’s about designing a garden. “
Writer’s library
question: Enrique Vila-Matas, how do you think the ideal library should be arranged? Answer: “In the way you feel like ordering it from its owner.” Question: What criteria do you use to sort your library? Have you always assumed the same or modified it? “I do not remember ever changing my mind. Over time, I have created an unclassifiable order, more of a geographer than a librarian or bookseller. A secret classification, far from alphabetic tyrannies and backed by a visual memory that allows me to remember each loin, and locate it, at a glance, on the shelves. And that I estimate I have more than 5,000 books at home. “Question: Are your books in a separate place or incorporated in the established order? Answer:” They are modestly incorporated into the general order. “All this is matter to consider since writers’ libraries are a world apart in the world of libraries. Of the one of Carlos Monsiváis, for example, Rafael Vargas writes that it was “a self-proliferating forest in which only he himself could orient itself well”.
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As a colophon
As a colophon go Calasso’s comment on the judgment of Aby Warburg, founder of the Warburg Library of Cultural Studies, in ordering the books: “An attempt to reproduce in space the plot of Warburg’s own thought.” Also visit Vila-Matas the personal library of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and recalling the ease with which he found Shakespeare’s copies. “Mythical copies for me, because the author of ‘The Leopard’ (what a great novel!) Took them for a walk on his excursions around Palermo. The truth is that I loved playing them.” I vaguely the way Lluís Agustí, our library expert, arranges the books of his: “I have literature sorted alphabetically by authors regardless of languages, genres and eras, as well coexist with novel poetry, Catalan Spanish, French and Portuguese. History books, by eras, from prehistory to the contemporary era. Books on Spanish exile, by specific topics. Books on books, libraries, bookstores and reading, by specific topics. The books of philosophy, also by epochs, and within these, in alphabetical order, starting with the Greek authors. Books on religion, by traditions: Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, heterodoxies … Reference books (dictionaries and encyclopedias), by format and by hand. Finally, the ancient books from the sixteenth to the eighteenth, by formats “.