Rare books 22: Text upon Text, Notes upon Notes

The letters of Saint Teresa, translated into Italian by Orazio Quaranta, together with the annotations of Juan de Palafox y Mendoza (1600-1659), translated by Carlo Sigismondo Capece (Venice, 1690). Notes: Pictured left are three slips of paper. 1. A typed catalogue entry of unknown origin, rubber-stamped FEB 1985, and further annotated by unknown hands in ink. Some of this information proved useful for my own description. 2. Marker of the Australian Early Imprint Project scribe, ‘E.I.P. 10.10.85’. 3. My own date marker, also written on acid free paper, for shelving purposes. The source of the card may be explained by Paul Chandler’s handwritten accession note inside the back cover, ‘From Institutum Carmelitarum, Rome 1985, $7.50’ Pictured right is the title page, evidence if we needed it of Teresa’s established place in European thought by the turn of the 18^th century. But also of her annotator, Bishop Palafox. Annotating the letters of Teresa would have been a practical and pleasurable break from the daily backlog of work of this erudite man. As Bishop of Puebla in Mexico, he established what most people regard as the first public library in the Americas, the Biblioteca Palafoxiana, on the 6^th of September 1646. As bishop he protected the Native Americans, forbidding any form of conversion other than persuasion, also writing a work about them entitled ‘Virtues of the Indians’. Palafox came into conflict with the Jesuits, who ignored his episcopal authority by not paying the required land tithe to the church, and this led ultimately to a breakdown in relations and his humiliating recall to Spain. Pope Innocent X responded to his complaints by issuing an order for Jesuits to obey the bishop in Mexico, something which amounted to a rap over the knuckles. As can be seen on the title page, he ended his days as ‘vescovo di Osma’, a parochial backwater in Old Castille. Palafox was designated Blessed in 2011.   

Rare books 21: The 20th of September, 1665

A work recalling certain events twelve years after they occurred. It is an account of the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel during a naval encounter on this day (Lucca, 1677). Notes: Readers of Samuel Pepys will know that this week was the height of the Plague in London. 7,165 people had died in the city during the previous week, a figure recorded by a shocked Pepys after his visit to the Duke of Albemarle, who had been with the Mayor of London the night before. Pepys records visiting a barber for the first time in twelve months (sound familiar?) and laments the state of the streets, with grass growing in Whitehall. In other news, today is three days after the death of King Philip IV of Spain (1605-1665). To believe the cover of this rare book, it is also the date of a naval conflict, probably in the Mediterranean, though between whom and on what account is thus far unclear. Visits to several online sites for sea battles has not yielded anything definite for September, 1665. The Venetians are fighting the Turks. Google Books displays pages in Italian books reporting that something is going on with Naples, but exactly what is lost in the fine print. Neapolitans populate the pamphlet’s pages, all arguing for the intercession. It is more than sobering to know that these men had survived the plague of 1656, the one that almost eradicated the population of Naples. The item in hand has been used as an ink blotter. Someone has unhelpfully added text in ink that he thinks adds something. Tears and burn marks are visible. The Italian is resistant to immediate elucidation. As for author authority, it is not certain if those testifying to the miracle are the authors, or simply signatories to a legal document. There is no record for this document in any major Italian state library, including the Bibliotheca Statale di Lucca, the town where it was printed.

The pamphlet is positioned on a page of ‘Decorative Floors of Venice’ by Tudy Sammartini, with photographs by Gabriele Crozzoli. (London, Merrell, 1999), here details of the floor of Santa Maria Assunta at Torcello.

Reveries of libraries, the thirty-fifth: Reverence for the Conversation

At library school we found out about national, state, public, private, research, business, university and school libraries. Then there was the category: special libraries. They are special because they collect in a specific subject area. The conversations of those engaged in that special subject have grown so large and complex that it is necessary to collect all of their works in their own library. Such a library is the Carmelite Library.

A special library collects in its own main subject area, in this case Carmelite literature, mysticism, and spirituality, and then everything that in turn is talking to that literature, that is engaged in a conversation with all of those people. In fact, you cannot have one without the other. The library collection is having a huge conversation with itself, each book responding or connecting with a book in another part of the collection.

The more years that are spent adding to this special collection, are years spent increasing the inestimable value of that conversation. Indeed, each new book added to the collection sparks fresh thought and discussion, thought and discussion that would not be happening if those books had not been brought together under one roof. Reverence for the conversation is an unwritten guideline behind all ordering in a special library.

Conversation is fairly much how most books are made, even for the solipsistic philosopher or self-referential poet or searching mystic. At some stage in the process, conversation happened to make the thoughts begin. At some stage the esteemed and anonymous author had to talk to someone else about all of their thoughts, or nothing would have happened. That which was hidden had to come into the light. That which was unspoken, turned into a conversation.

Sometimes a person is talking to someone long in the past, or the future. The languages can be different. The conversation with the future is especially pertinent here because it is the future reader who will listen and understand. They may be the only person who really understands. Having a place where those two people can meet is sacred, and it will be most of the time, a library. One conversation leads to another through time and the way to trace them is here.

I certainly don’t want to wear you out with this awareness of the library as an immense conversation. It is a perfectly obvious idea once it is expressed. That we are having this conversation at all is due to libraries. It must be satisfying sometimes to know that our words may start up whole new conversations in the future. It is an honour to be part of the conversations that we have each day that are substantially inspired and supported by a special library.

The point about a conversation is to make it happen, not to stop it from happening, or interrupt it by removing one or another of the speakers. We are told when young that one of the rudest things we can do is interrupt someone else’s story while it is in flow. The story is much more important than our interruption, which anyway can wait until the end, when it can become the next part of the conversation. Hearing the story can be a form of grace.   

Removal or downsizing of a library is another way of stopping the conversation. The way that one author spoke to another, and continues to speak to the living authors in the library, is stopped. The potential for new conversations to start up is unavailable, there is no interlocutor, no host or listener, no friend from another time who can prompt the conversation you have been having with yourself all these years. Books in a library await their ideal listener.

During the day, when the library is available, librarians observe these conversations going on, as they loan out more books to readers. Sometimes hardly a word passes between borrower and librarian. But sometime soon the librarian will catalogue the book written by the borrower, or must order similar books for borrowers engaged in what is plainly a long and intense conversation with the relevant authors.  

And at night, when the lights are turned out, the generations of pages rest again. The conversation continues even in the silence and in the dark. It is you and I who are the ideal reader. Next morning it is we who will walk into the library to encounter, in an aisle or at a reading desk, the conversation we never knew we were going to have, the conversation we have been meaning to have for a very long time. The book is responding and connecting us to other human books nearby.