Quid est Liber?

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

Philip Harvey

Quid est Liber?

Liber est lumen cordis;

Speculum corporis;

Uictiorum confussio;

Corona prudentium;

Diadema sapientium;

Honorificentia doctorum;

Uas plenum sapientia;

Socius itineris;

Domesticus fidelis;

Hortus plenus fructibus;

Archana reuelans;

Obscura clarificans;

Rogatus respondet,

Iussusque festinat,

Uocatur properat

Et faciliter obediens.

Explicit.

This delightful 12^th century poem about what is a book started circulating online a few years ago. It comes from the Codex Miscellaneus, Ms. 381 in Toledo’s Biblioteca Pública del Estado, copied out again in the 18^th century by Francisco Santiago Colmenas. Several, yes several, Spanish translations can be found on Hispanic and Latin American blogspots. Here is a good version by Ana Mosqueda:

¿Que es el libro?

Un libro es la luz del corazón,
espejo del cuerpo,
confusión de vicios,
corona de prudentes,
diadema de sabios,
honor de ilustrados,
vaso lleno de sabiduría,
compañero de viaje,
fiel amigo de la casa,
huerto lleno de frutos,
revelador del arcano,
clarificador de lo oscuro.
Si se le pregunta, responde,
y si se le ordena,se apresura.
Si es llamado, acude rápidamente
y obedece con docilidad.
Fin.

It was in 2007 on Atlantis, the list of the American Theological Library Association, that I first saw this poem and an English version by a librarian working in San Diego, Mariel Deluca Voth:

What is a book?

The book is light to the heart

Mirror to the body

Vice confuser

Crown to the prudent

Diadem to the wise

Honor to doctors

Glass full of wisdom

Partner in travels

Faithful servant

Garden full of fruit

Revealer of secrets

Dissipater of shadows

Answers when asked

Moves swiftly when sent

Responds quickly when called

And readily obeys.

The end

One commentator on Atlantis asked if the poem could not also include e-books, especially in light of the line Uas plenum sapientium and the opening line Liber est lumen cordis. Glassy words and light cords? Maybe, but the poem uses analogies from a world in which reading is dependent on sunlight and candlelight. We can even see the medieval reader sitting there with their wax taper and text when we read Liber est lumen cordis, but also Obscura clarificans. The candle and the book together drive away shadows as well as the obscurity in the reader’s mind. Likewise the mirror at this time is becoming a useful device in everyday life and so also in literary usage. Speculum corporis might remind us of anatomy atlases, which are a modern literature unimaginable in the 12^th century, but the line I think is talking about the growing awareness at this time amongst the educated of the book as capable of describing and reflecting and expressing the whole person. Speculum itself is an emerging genre at this time in medieval writing, i.e. the production of manuals of all known knowledge. The growth in book-making for all sorts of subjects was showing people that a library could explain every known thing about themselves, direct from the shelves. This included the ethical reality of human existence, hence the next line Uictiorum confussio. The next six lines then show in miniature the feudal worldview out of which this poem emerges. That a book can be Corona prudentium and Diadema sapientium is praise indeed in a world where monarchs rule and hand out the hats. It is logical that the learned will benefit from books, Honorificentia doctorum, though the poet is wise enough to know that learning does not start or end in books, which is a meaning hidden I think in the next line, Uas plenum sapientia. This particular line indicates too the Christian context of the poem, with its eucharistic implications, wisdom being available to all through the taking of the bread and wine. The miniature social picture is rounded off with the book being Socius itineris, true not just for journeys generally to this day, a Penguin for the trip, but also true for pilgrimage, that religious practice where reflection on life journey is made by taking a literal journey to a destination of deepest meaning. Then the poem anthropomorphizes the book as, last but not least, Domesticus fidelis, expressive of an attitude we daily have toward most things printed, whether on page, on wall, online. Domesticus fidelis reminds me too of the books at home that we probably use more than any others, and ultimately treasure for those reasons: cookbooks, user’s manuals, garden guides. Speaking of which, the book is also Hortus plenus fructibus. The original punctuation encloses this garden in by itself, suggesting to the modern ear that language in books is self-sufficient and replenishing with each new visit. This is an attractive thought in today’s world, where the book is so often regarded in many quarters as simply another commodity. Notice that the next line in the original Latin is also a single statement: Archana reuelans. The word arcana is nowadays immediately associated with the tarot, but at this time means any kind of secret or mysterious thing. The sensation of seeing a new book that we really want to read is generally associated with the excitement of finding out some new secret. This line taps into that desire, the hope of fulfilling our initial expectations. A really good book does more than that, books that not even a critic can spoil with easy summary. But as if to qualify concerns that books might be arcane, the poet rightly asserts that the book is equally Obscura clarificans. We are back in the reading room at night with the lighted candle and the words. The concluding lines then seem to describe the behaviour of the book as Domesticus fidelis. Though one could insert here the warning Cave canem. What kind of book is it that does all of these things? One would like to think that the book could Rogatus respondet, but life can prove more complicated than that and no monograph tells you all the facts. The same goes for the rest: Iussusque festinat, Uocatur properat Et faciliter obediens. If only. Librarians in particular are liable to give a rueful chuckle at the claim that an overdue item will instantly Uocatur properat. It is curious that the poet moves from sturdy similes throughout to an extended poetic metaphor at the conclusion. The poet makes claims for the book here that are idealizations rather than precise analogies, implying at least to me that the poet is indulging in wishful thinking. That said, we need to remember it is wishful thinking that has produced such facts as sets of encyclopedias and the e-book. The poem then says Explicit, rather as a child writes The End after saying everything they need to say in their school composition. The Latin holds meanings that we have lost in our use of The End. Explicit literally means unfolded, that is the poem has now revealed what a book is, it has provided a complete set of dictionary definitions for us to use. The poem has been utterly explicit about the book, or however we understand this word Liber. One of the beauties of the poem itself, nevertheless, is how the explicitness of each line contains implicit meanings that go way beyond the literal or descriptive.

Waste and Wisdom

Some Reflections on the Scale of Mechanised Information

Philip Harvey

One day soon a novelist will compose a work consisting entirely of internet citations that can no longer be traced. Files have been removed, first documents replaced by updates, websites de-linked by a Google gremlin. Even better, novels will be composed that consist of fictitious websites full of any amount of falsely attributed author information. That such a slippery situation exists at all is the private nightmare of the rational academic, scrupulous bibliographer, and internet spook. The imagination can be put to mischievous as well as constructive ends, but we are reminded too that online technology is more unstable and unreliable than the book.

Almost every week I hear from a lady living in Ivory Coast who addresses me fetchingly as Dearest in the Lord Jesus Christ and wants to meet me at Heathrow Airport with a suitcase of money and a few shared tears for her dead husband. I have come to delete her electrical blandishments with a prompt indifference I never knew I had before. Invitations to be guest speaker at a Future Intelligence Conference or to accept my claim to First Draw in an Italian Super Lottery are met with the same sangfroid and press of Delete. One doesn’t have to be a Cassandra to know that clicking with a Trojan could bring your whole world tumbling down.

I don’t use these examples to gripe about the internet, but to air this regular awareness that most of us have of the massive amount of waste that fills our lives each time we logon to the internet. There is the email waste that we have to fend off as it heads toward us like an unfunny and very obvious April Fool’s joke. And there is the spam we spend precious minutes differentiating from the stuff that may have some meaning. My Beloved from Ivory Coast is easy to identify, but in a mailbox of fifty messages what if in a hurry I remove the email that trumpets a friend’s genuine desire? Is the micro email note the one with the jumbo meaning? Have I missed the elephant in the room?

Never mind the news, where online papers give equal screen space to a footballer’s fame-drenched peccadilloes, the unpretty opinions of a fashionista, misguided polls about passing fads, and the imminent collapse of the European currency. All of this interrupted by noisy advertisements for products we will never buy. Where is the information we have lost in information? Never mind if knowledge is being imparted.

I find that so much of our life comes down to our habits of reading. And the value is in having the space to read closely and properly. The internet is a gift, a continuum of free knowledge, but how are we reading the internet? And will what we read today still be there tomorrow? Either online or in our thoughts? And will we be wiser? I mean, we’re not robots.

In his mordant comic novella ‘Too Loud a Solitude’ the great Czech satirist Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997) writes about the life of a wastepaper baler. For the 35 years of his working life Hanta, the main character, has two main occupations: the day job putting paper into a press for pulping, and drinking beer. Paper, whether books, magazines, cartons, butcher’s paper or other industrial product, all of it goes into the baler. This mindless job has its perks, however. Hanta can take home to his cottage outside Prague books he finds of interest. Thus the personal account of his life becomes interspersed with sayings from Lao-Tse and Jesus Christ, Nietzsche and Holderlin, select authors that he studies in gorgeous morocco-bound volumes, whether or not he is drinking beer at the time. He even starts to differentiate the endless paper he commits to the baler, opening books of poetry at his favourite verse before they go down to be pressed.

Hrabal’s 100-page masterpiece is open to varying interpretation, but for anyone who deals in books, like librarians and booksellers but also readers in general, it is a reminder of the huge scale of the printed record of humanity, of the need to choose what we save, and of the excess waste that is implicit in this process. We simply don’t have time to read everything. We have to trust our instincts about what is worth reading now and what is best left for later, and what is best left. And then there is the business of what we are learning, as distinct from what we are simply reading.

Mechanisation sped up the possibilities of collective knowledge. From Victorian times books became a means to increased education, not just for the autodidact like Hanta but way into the higher reaches of institutional education. However, mechanisation also brought improved means to pulverise and eradicate the means of learning. Printed matter like books and journals could be removed from sight and even access forever with the same efficiency as totalitarian regimes could remove all trace of people’s lives, which is itself another meaning to Hrabal’s story.

Digital speeds us up further, which is why I stare at the rows of Google links to my next Search with a certain sobriety. All of those sites, all those attachments, images, downloads, blogs, going on forever. Behind each link are words that could be instrumental to our well-being, and individual humans with the potential to improve our state. Yet the rate of appearance seems equal to the rate of disappearance. Fast information outmanoeuvres slow information and we are none the wiser. Our access, we are told, is now unlimited to the information, yet are we reaching it? Is it all really there? Is that all there is? And how much of it will have evaporated from the silicon in twelve months time? I try not to get concerned, but as someone taught to value knowledge for its own sake, both the scale and the turnover of online information seems fraught with the possibilities of waste and loss. I reach out to take what I need, certain still there is something I have missed. And what of the remainder?

I keep coming back to the nature of reading itself, how the eye and the mind connect to words and images. In the precious time allowed us, how are we selecting and collecting? How are we prioritising what we read? The false dichotomy of book versus online is a distraction from the real issue: how do we read most effectively in order not just to know, but to become wise? And is wisdom the final purpose of our reading?

Occasional Imperfections

Philip Harvey

Two recent acquisitions to the Carmelite Library exemplify the growing problem of online purchasing of unsighted books and the racket, for want of a quainter word, in reprinted monographs that now seems to be gripping book agencies and polluting the in-trays of good libraries.

The first is the reprint of an important Dutch work of the early 16th century, a Carmelite account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land that influenced the thinking of Saint John of the Cross. The book was written before 1539, the imprint in hand is Ghent, 1612. Well, actually, a small town in Tennessee this year if you check inside the back cover. This title is scarce as hen's teeth, which is why any copy at all will be ordered through a reputable online agency, and no agency is more reputable than the one we are talking about here. What we have is a book-on-demand, but demand is not what Acquisitions was doing when it asked for this. The late renaissance typeface is so blurred in places that whole words become smudges, with sentences like approaching thunder clouds. The magnifying glass is an important utensil in any library and will be essential in this case. The Library has acquired a crucial source work that it would not otherwise be able to provide, but the scholar will be walking into rough weather. The book will go into the collection and, to be fair, this particular reprint business publishes covering statements like this: "... we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections, such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control." Buyer, beware! Even though the book was bought before being able to read the warning. Nor did the agency really indicate that it was a book-on-demand, it simply displayed it online as available for purchase.

The second is a history of certain hagiographers, written a century ago and not reprinted since 1922. Is this a necessary book to add to the collection? Yes. Do we expect an accurate printing of this 'rara avis'? Yes, as if we would expect anything less. The online agency would seem to promise that the text is word perfect. Upon arrival of the book, the reprint company advises on the verso of the t.page that "we automated the typing, proof reading and design of this book using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software on a scanned copy of the original rare book." The results test one's ideas about recognition. For example, parts of the original that are obviously in Greek, Old Church Slavonic and Syriac script have been scanned, but the lettering reminds me of the more exciting moments in a Klingon monologue. Though I doubt if the text under discussion would meet the stringent standards of the Klingon Language Institute: http://www.kli.org/ The company says it has produced the book this way "to keep your cost as low as possible," but this book must not go into the Library as it is not an exact or even vaguely recognisable imitation of the original. It is not a reprint or facsimile. It is unusable. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker from a famous book review, this is not a book you put aside lightly, it is a book you hurl across the room with great force.

If this phenomenon becomes any more widespread, it is going to test the library world's confidence in quality reprinting. Books, any books in the public domain and outside copyright are simply being seized and reprinted by any business with the available technology. The results are often underwhelming, to say the least. Much of what is coming out in this form is a disservice to the authors, a danger to the scholarly community, and a waste of our collective resources.

Those practising their RDA skills will also be interested. Exhibit One is published in 2012 if you use AACR2, but 1612 if you use RDA. Notes fields in both sets of Rules will clarify any confusion. A second author is named on the cover who doesn't appear anywhere in any text inside the book. Unless I can find out who is he is I cannot even make a note, let alone an added author entry. Or can I? Who is he? Exhibit Two is published only in Milton Keynes, as there is no title page to inform you that it was originally published by the press of a reputable American university. It is unlikely that the press in question would have anything to do with the contents, as the Optical Character Recognition software has failed to scan much of the text in a language that even resembles grammatical English, let alone Greek, Syriac or good Old Church Slavonic.

Postscript:

Today, while searching an internationally respected book agency, I came across an exciting reprint for sale that included the following editorial review in the description.

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

The Carmelite Library will not order this book.

At the risk of stating the obvious, permit me to make some observations about this Product Description.

What does 'EXACT reproduction' mean?

Notice how the seller is keen to assure us that the reprint has not been done using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), for reasons exactly similar to those I spelt out above in my description of an OCR book.

Are we meant to accept as standard the expectation that there may be 'occasional imperfections'?

Can we believe that the reprint company's prime concern is a 'continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide'? If this was their prime concern, wouldn't they be doing something better than this?

Why should the prospective buyer be placed in a position where they will (or must) have an 'understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process'? Shouldn't we expect 'perfection' as a basis for purchase?

What is 'valuable' about a book that is potentially useless and unusable?

I strongly encourage members to be on the lookout for such Product Descriptions on the databases of bookselling agencies and to make judicial reviews of the sale item accordingly, based on the inherent warnings.