A Private Library

In the earliest age of the codex book, collections were relatively small and difficult to acquire. The armarium, such as the one pictured here from the tomb of Galla Placidia in Ravenna (5th century), was the usual place of storage. Cassiodorus often tells us just which such bookcase such-and-such a work was kept in. There are instructive analogies between that age and this, so this image seems an appropriate icon here. This page will comprise texts of particular value and interest to the collector, Jim O'Donnell.

The Virtual Library (which is dead) is often spoken of as a vast public facility, containing all the world's information, and doubtless some inadequately attended rest rooms as well. Think of this as just a small corner of it (with its own reference shelf). To begin with, a few words about libraries:

THE LIBRARY OF BABEL (From J. Borges, Ficciones):

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution of the galleries is invariable. Twenty shelves, five long shelves per side, cover all the sides except two; their height, which is the distance from floor to ceiling, scarcely exceeds that of a normal bookcase. One of the free sides leads to a narrow hallway which opens onto another gallery, identical to the first and to all the rest. To the left and right of the hallway there are two very small closets. In the first, one may sleep standing up; in the other, satisfy one's fecal necessities, Also through here passes a spiral stairway, which sinks abysmally and soars upwards to remote distances. In the hallway there is a mirror which faithfully duplicates all appearances. Men usually infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite (if it really were, why this illusory duplication?); I prefer to dream that its polished surfaces represent and promise the infinite . . . "

The Library of Babel is now open for business

Ishmael knew a librarian once . . ..

Sometimes it's pleasant just to spend time in your study with a friendly critter or two.

The philosopher Seneca took a dim view of collecting books for ostentation rather than for use: we may read him in Latin or in English. (I owe notice of this text to Professor Steven N. Orso.)

Ostentation of a different sort occurs in the traditional use of a near-meaningless Latin phrase by typographers to display samples of their type.

By contrast, it repays time to read Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think", a famously visionary article of 1945 in which he successfully imagines the virtual library and hypertext but not the women's movement. To be sure, not all upgrades are equally enticing: Mark Twain offered some modest suggestions for spelling reform that have not proven widely compelling.

Few who know to come into this space will be surprised to find that our first acquisition is an old English translation of Augustine's Confessions, the one done for the Oxford Movement's "Library of the Fathers" by E.B. Pusey. The proprietor hopes to be able to add a Latin text and other embellishments in due course; he maintains a large body of resources for Augustinian studies.

Nor will many be surprised that the only copy of scripture to turn up ready to hand here is in Latin, the Vulgate of St. Jerome.

I was born in Germany, left when an infant, read the language with fascination, speak it with ineptitude, and always chuckle when I reread what Mark Twain had to say about "The Awful German Language" in A Tramp Abroad. Whether German will always be German, on the other hand, begins to be a philosophical question when you look at certain specimens of contemporary usage. Not that German doesn't also sometimes seem to be translated from the (ab-)original Greek.

One topic that has preoccupied me of late is the history of the western idea of the "soul", and to that end, I have latched on to an old translation of Aristotle's De anima. Other works of Aristotle are available by gopher.

Plato's Phaedrus and the "Seventh Letter" of disputed authenticity are of interest to the historian of the book and I use them in my teaching regularly. Other works of Plato are available by gopher.

I carried Ulysses with me inside the case of my Smith-Corona portable manual typewriter in the fall of 1968 on my first airplane right, a red-eye back to the college I had never seen. It was the sort of book one would read in college, was it not? I didn't actually read it until five years later, in the last week or ten days of my student year in Dublin, when it suddenly struck me that to read it with the cityscape in front of me would be an irreplaceable experience. I was right, and so by lorries along Sir John Rogerson's Quay I walked soberly . . . . The text brings back the city every time I reread it. The text is now out of copyright and some kind soul placed it on the net. It's about time I read it again . . .

It was years later that I learned really to read Dubliners, and now I cannot read, but occasionally do read aloud to myself late at night in special moods, the last page of "The Dead" without being moved to tears.

That same fall, I continued the study of Latin at University for what I thought would be one last semester, but I was hooked. Part of the experience came from finding, in the stacks of a great library, Caesar's Gallic Wars and the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, and discovering that Latin was a language that could, with a favoring tail wind, actually be read, not merely disencrypted. That empowering moment became the theme of my undergraduate years as my skills increased . . . Not long ago I came across some moving words on the net from not far from where I grew up offering thoughts on why we might study Latin.

The Essais of Montaigne

Spenser's Faerie Queen and his "A View on the Present Condition of Ireland".

I still have the Signet paperback, for 50 or 60 cents, in which I first read Thoreau's Walden, a tale of the Massachusetts woods that read rather differently in the New Mexico desert c. 1966.

Rilke, Der Panther

Shakespeare's Sonnet 71 has been very effectively rendered into Latin by J.K. Newman of the University of Illinois.

The first poem I can recall having read to me, age 5, was Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride". Many years later, when I taught at Cornell around 1980, I was amused to see regularly of a Sunday morning the distinguished poet A.R. Ammons in the McDonald's up by Pyramid Mall, eating with his young son; but I was more amused when a few years later a collection of his poems appeared with one entitled, "Sunday at McDonald's".

The only member of the O'Donnell ever to have a Disney film made about him was dauntless Red Hugh O'Donnell, best known today perhaps from Thomas McGreevy's "Aodh Ruadh Ó Domhnaill -- I owe my knowledge of this text to Helen North.

Every classicist knows and has trouble remembering where to find A.E. Housman, "Fragment of a Greek Tragedy"

If hearing the music of Catullus is hard for you, try this exercise in writing English hendecasyllables by a poet better known for other works.

Meanwhile, for a little light reading, click here for a late antique Latin poem of uncertain origins but pleasing content that I ran across lately. If you are not easily moved to tears by the plight of the weak, click here for the last will and testament of a late Roman pig who has run afoul of the cook. If in the midst of such readings, a concern for the elegance of your Latin style should come upon you, feel free to consult the grammarian Donatus on "barbarism" for guidance. If your repentance runs deeper, try the 95 Theses of Martin Luther -- in Latin, of course. When finally wearied of these pages, respite may be had on a park bench in a leafy glade that offers good advice.