El Guardian de Los Libros

This is the fourth in a series of pieces about the book in poetry released at this blogspot.

Philip Harvey

Libraries have always been places for the disabled. Any honest history of a library includes not only founders with visions, benefactors with collections, librarians managing in all kinds of weather, and users whose own works would not exist but for the library, it includes the day-to-day reality of its users. The users’ needs make a library a living place. This will include those whose physical, mental, developmental, or learning disabilities have made them the natural friend of the safe, unthreatening environment of a library.

Furthermore, librarians themselves often bring their disabilities into the workplace. One of the most outstanding examples is the blind poet Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) who at one time was, astoundingly or not, the Director of the National Library of Argentina. Libraries and books are prominent subjects in his writing, as for example in the poem ‘El Guardian de los Libros’, set in a historical moment in time that as the poem proceeds we come to gauge is 14^th century China.

Classical achievement is expressed in classical form. We are told “Here they stand: / gardens and temples and the reason for temples,” though as the list continues we are looking at more than earthwork constructions. “Exact music and exact words; / the sixty-four hexagrams” of the I-Ching, such things as “the conduct of that emperor / whose perfect rule was reflected in the world,” are included, but then even “the secret and eternal laws; / the harmony of the world.” And where do all of these things stand? “These things or their memory are here in books / that I watch over in my tower.”

So far, so classical. The library as repository of centuries of civilised achievement is a commonplace. We all know this about libraries, even if it is helpful at times to be reminded. It is always fascinating to study a rundown of the internal holdings of a library, it makes it sound all rather marvellous. Until we meet in the middle verse of this poem the actual conditions inherited by the narrator, a world where the Mongols have caused havoc and barbarous destruction, sweeping from north through the region and so further south. It is only after this devastation that “In the faltering dawn /my father’s father saved the books.”

Rather than a classical ode to learning, we find ourselves in the middle of a short story. Rather than being conveyed to a place of action in a remote past and romantic place, we become uncomfortably aware that Borges may be talking about his own time. As someone who acted against fascism in his homeland and spoke out against totalitarianism elsewhere, the poem takes on a personal and contemporary meaning. This is someone who knows what total war and ignorance can do to our chances of survival, our connection with a past to which we are heirs. While the poem owes much to Constantine Cavafy and to the English translations from the Chinese of Arthur Waley and Ezra Pound, Borges’s prime motive is not simply to replicate their work, or even to write an ersatz copycat poem from the Yuan or Ming Dynasties, but to use this model as means to a particular message.

It is the blind poet Borges who opens the last stanza, “In my eyes there are no days. The shelves / stand very high, beyond the reach of my years.” We glimpse the poet himself, ever so briefly, surrounded by the thousands of books he cannot read. But then comes the real surprise:

Why go on deluding myself?

The truth is that I never learned to read,

but it comforts me to think

that what’s imaginary and what’s past are the same

to a man whose life is nearly over,

who looks out from his tower on what once was city

and now turns back to wilderness.

Who can keep me from dreaming that there was a time

when I deciphered wisdom

and lettered characters with a careful hand?

This man is not a librarian, not a scholar, not even a reader, but as the title says 'El Guardian de los Libros', i.e. ‘The Keeper of Books’. He knows only that he must revere his patrimony, both human and cultural. For him and his compatriots, “we know nothing of the Son of Heaven / or of the Empire’s fate.” The books themselves stand “at the same time near and far, / secret and visible, like the stars.”

So what do we make of this twist of events? What do we say about someone who protects hundreds of books that he cannot even read? Has someone explained to him the contents of these books, for how else could he describe them in the first stanza? For me, the poem has several meanings.

First, it is a poem about disability and, even more than that, powerlessness. The books contain everything ‘imaginary’ that he can ever expect to pass on to the future. He has seen that the actual mess of the past is all it is, but that books can recreate the past and we may come to understand. It is not all forgotten. All he can do is be the guardian of something he himself cannot read or interpret. Paradoxically, an illiterate is left responsible for the vast scale of surviving literature.

Second, the poem reminds us of the physical presence of books, and libraries more especially, and how these things connect us with ages and people who have been separated from us not just by time but war and disaster. Change turns the world of immediate expression into the strange afterwords that are books, the ‘memory’ contained in books.

But third, the poem is concerned with how a book’s existence is a gift to the future. Who knows what word or hexagram or ceremony or rule read by those who come after Hsiang will not help revive the civil relationships between individuals and societies? The books will explain the Chinese to themselves, even the Mongols to the Mongols. The secret is that such insight will not happen if the books are lost.

And the poem is, fourth, a statement of personal belief in the book. Librarians handle hundreds of books every month, the majority of which they will never read themselves. The belief persists that selection and preservation are responsibilities developed by a librarian to honour the past, but especially the present and the future. The blind librarian-poet Borges carefully depicts a person whose sole task is to keep vigilance. He says in his poem that, despite setbacks and absurdities, boredom and barbarity, he knows that vigilance and protection of the patrimony are themselves unstated purposes of the librarian’s vocation.

Here now is the translation in full and my apologies for not presenting the original Spanish. Bibliographical details are listed below.

The Keeper of the Books

Here they stand: gardens and temples and the reason for temples;

exact music and exact words;

the sixty-four hexagrams;

ceremonies, which are the only wisdom

that the Firmament accords to men;

the conduct of that emperor

whose perfect rule was reflected in the world, which mirrored him,

so that rivers held their banks

and fields gave up their fruit;

the wounded unicorn that’s glimpsed again, marking an era’s close;

the secret and eternal laws;

the harmony of the world.

These things or their memory are here in books

that I watch over in my tower.

On small shaggy horses,

the Mongols swept down from the North

destroying the armies

ordered by the Son of Heaven to punish their desecrations.

They cut throats and sent up pyramids of fire,

slaughtering the wicked and the just,

slaughtering the slave chained to his master’s door,

using the women and casting them off.

And on to the South they rode,

innocent as animals of prey,

cruel as knives.

In the faltering dawn

my father’s father saved the books.

Here they are in this tower where I lie

calling back days that belonged to others,

distant days, the days of the past.

In my eyes there are no days. The shelves

stand very high, beyond the reach of my years,

and leagues of dust and sleep surround the tower.

Why go on deluding myself?

The truth is that I never learned to read,

but it comforts me to think

that what’s imaginary and what’s past are the same

to a man whose life is nearly over,

who looks out from his tower on what once was city

and now turns back to wilderness.

Who can keep me from dreaming that there was a time

when I deciphered wisdom

and lettered characters with a careful hand?

My name is Hsiang. I am the keeper of the books –

these books which are perhaps the last,

for we know nothing of the Son of Heaven

or of the Empire’s fate.

Here on these high shelves they stand,

at the same time near and far,

secret and visible, like the stars.

Here they stand – gardens, temples.

‘El Guardian de los Libros’, translated from the Spanish of Jorge Luis Borges by Norman Thomas di Giovanni and published in ‘In Praise of Darkness’ (Allen Lane, 1975)