Reveries of libraries, the thirty-third: Video Vacations
The Middle Kingdom builds more stately
pleasure domes than heretofore, tiers and terraces of books in sunny spaces
reaching for the sky. Tianjin is an optical illusion in this regard as we
cannot tell if engineers are reaching for the dizzy limits or it’s all a
split-level design masterpiece. Readers pace the levels, the cool white
niceties of the post-nineties. Every month or so someone posts films of Most
Beautiful Libraries of the World. Once again we are transported to the most
beautiful that time decreed. The champagne music transports us in seconds to
the Lello in Portugal. These spiral ceilings and plush spaces are redolent of
the global heyday of empire, a world that looks out at unbounded oceans, inward
at the fancies of stay-at-homes. Then back to China again, like an
international traveller in the bygone days of international travel. Word from
the East keeps filtering through. We stroll cylindrical rooms of Yangzhou,
whether zoom room or tunnel vision best not to guess, too quickly forgetting
how the ancestors burnt the libraries to eradicate an enemy’s documented
memory. Outwesting the West has resulted in the import of geometric
extravagance, a groove tube of bending burden bordering on the baroque. Oxford
is not for burning, though the selection process means documented memory holds
on to what is Oxford, and what Oxford does not collect. Excludes is another
word. What is not Oxford? A world without Beautiful Libraries. Volume up on
bubble music. Trinity College Dublin, likewise, is a tall order. We climb
together with the stack worker into the leather-bound reaches of further
learning. Yet at TCD, as elsewhere, the real action happens in the modern
library of high tech and nearing deadlines. While still, its most used book is
under glass in a room next door. We imagine having the secure job of
page-turner for the Book of Kells, curving over the curves each morning. Not
that anyone will be seen in these Irish libraries this month. Except the very
rare librarian, and the rare cleaner. The rarest sight to be enjoyed today is
not the illuminated manuscripts, it’s the people. Our film shows the
well-dressed shadows of visitors past, where today the books remain as they
stand, unopened. Now closed until further notice. Music soothes our fears. Our
frames are not allowed through the front door. Our bodies, so frequently peas
in a pod as we study for examinations under a library’s green shades, must now
enjoy in glorious self-isolation the glorious storeys of the George Peabody in
Baltimore. What an incredible frame the Peabody has, big as only America cares
to be big. Spare no expense, the collection silently says. When, all too
quickly, frothy music, we are taken into the Grimm of Berlin. The idea of a
university library named after the Grimm Brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm, gives
pause for thought. One would not want to lose oneself forever in the Hansel and
Gretel Research Room. Where are all of these students of life now,
self-isolating in the black forest of the world. Thence Stuttgart, a library
for modern dreamers who don’t give a hang for a chandelier. Stuttgart knows
what it’s doing in this regard. Of course it does, but we do like a bit of
flourish. It is smooth lines, flat surfaces, and metal railings, all the better
to pick up invisible microbes. The Grimms would have a tale to tell. Some of
the newest libraries on our visual vacation, those in China and Germany, remind
us that not only are libraries not going away due to digital, they are being
built bigger and better for the reading future. Digital and print, both are the
future, like the reopening of the front door. Some of us have enjoyed a
personal tour of what happens next, the Strahov Monastery Library in Prague,
the fabulous collection of the very austere Premonstratensians. Surely, we
think, this is one of the most wondrous interiors we will see in a month of
Sundays. But is it really a working collection, or very much a showpiece? And
who will use it now, now Prague and the world in general has gone into monastic
shutdown? We travel by handheld Golem-13 camera across broad floors,
along its ornate shelves and across twirls of roof, but no closer. More secure
by a long shot is the elevator of the public library in Zurich. The floors go
by with pinpoint timing. It is the twentieth century’s gift of form and
function, rising to the occasion then taking us down again with a satisfying
silent landing. Even the champagne music seems to be sobering up, or is it that
we have plateaued? Bnf Richelieu Paris graces the eye, the idealist nineteenth
century’s dream of rows of polished tables and slants of sunlight where
Parisians could read to themselves at industrial scale levels. A couple of
these vacation libraries would not have got a building permit in Australia, the
Bibliothèque Nationale one of them. It’s the high high shelving, don’t
you know? Beautiful and deadly. Paris should have known better. We don’t want
people falling off ladders and killing themselves. But before that can happen
we are suddenly dropped into the Chetham in Manchester. Our interest is piqued
by all those clinking chains attaching book to ledge, those darkly varnished
cases in passage after passage. By remote chance, at the end of our holidays we
will visit its website. Chetham's is the oldest public library in England, or
in fact the English-speaking world. Theology abounds here, as it should.
However, the fact that we cannot borrow books doesn't make it much of a public
library, we might say. What they mean is it's not a private library because it
was owned by Chetham. Logic is not called for under these circumstances. It
says that the first task facing Humphrey Chetham’s governors was to purchase
the medieval College House, which, after many years of neglect, was in a poor
state. Our opinion of Puritans is not improved by the news that during the
Civil War it had been used as a prison and arsenal, and it was remarked that
‘the towne swine make there abode bothe in the yards and house’. Restoration
began in 1653 and seems to have gone on ever since, though it's mainly a
cultural centre and charity. Some of us have never been happy about chained
books, but understandable if it’s the only copy in existence of a certain
scrutable folio. Not that we can touch any of these rare books this month, or
secrete one in our handbag. And with this in mind, our own positive vacation
attitude is temporarily restored by a rush tour of the Duchess Anna Amalia in
Weimar. Truly, it’s all very grand, but by this stage while we might envy those
who waltz about such decorative compartments, who sprint through texts beneath
spritzy canopies, only marble heads stare blankly into space this month. Too,
we are tiring of all the holiday overload. What, not another library? Mum, I
want to go to the circus. Not that we can go to the circus this month, nor any
other month in the foreseeable, nor any of the rococo libraries in existence.
It’s either back to our hotel room no questions asked, or perhaps rest up in an
abbey. Waldsassen Abbey is an idea and it has a library. Those monks knew how
to pass the time. Prayer and books and gardening, books and sleep and prayer,
gardening and prayer and refectory. Whether we could do that for a whole
lifetime is impossible to say, maybe it’s a temperament thing, but there’s no
time to decide because the champagne music transports us to, Mum no please! not
another abbey library living in a bubble like a stream of consciousness that is
all book and no substance. Yes, dear, Admont Abbey Austria, to be precise, and
though the walls are piled high with pink and azure, all very lovely dovely,
and that’s before we get to the books in whitest vellum, it’s time for us to
weave rapidly time running out toward a splendiferous cork-popping exit.
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