An universe opened to all, inhabited by addictive beings

The story of the books buried with the plough between ’46-’50 by the communists is not only the reaction of primitive spirits against culture but it also represents their fear when faced with something they don’t understand. A book is an idea, a part of the world. More books represent a state of facts. A library hides a mystery. The great mystery that only the initiates are allowed to decode. After a lifetime spent among books, librarians are strange beings, alien. They are almost transparent and they speak in whispers even outdoors. They are egoist and greedy. When they are persuaded to lend one of their books, it’s like they would give away a piece of their body. If they could, they would forbid all access to the universe they’re in charge of. The same thing happens to those who push the passion for books to the extreme. I knew such a person when I was a child. He was big and had long white curls. He walked amongst us like in a dream without paying any attention to the world surrounding him. He didn’t even notice his own children. He devoured books. He begged the antiquarians to let him read there, among the shelves. He bothered no one and if he did not finish the book, the antiquarian had to lock him in, until morning. He only had a few books at home. He bought them just to read them and then he returned or sold them. Sometimes he read to his children from Hoffman, Dostoevski or Baudelaire. He read to them in German of French or Russian. He said it mattered not that they could not understand the words for there is understanding beyond words, like a flux that can make them understand. One of his daughters told me that it was strange because, over the years when she read a book in Romanian she felt she knew it already. Bookstores are public spaces; libraries are intimate, private. The first are opened and inviting, the others are cold and oppressing. During the ’80s, a printing house in Bucharest had received a large order for French Books. Poetry books, novels, history books… every collection had its own colour and style. People were glad for they had work and everyone was happy. The whole thing stopped after less that one year. The story is rather funny: there was a furniture manufacturer in France who thought it would be a good idea to sell a bookshelf already filled with books. He figured that Frenchmen would like to have at home a bit of Voltaire, a bit of history, a bit of poetry and so he ordered the books printed here in Romania. He soon went out of business and the Romanian printing house had no more work. This goes to prove that libraries are not serial products. It takes time and love to grow a library.