I said in my last column that I had given myself the ultimate gift: a custom-built library, but that the day this beauty was ready to accommodate the books that were languishing in the basement waiting to see the light of day again, I I froze. The echo remained in this room, and I was in denial, petrified. This unexpected event coincided with a trip to France for the Paris Book Festival where I hoped to find, perhaps, no doubt, something to inspire me to fill the vacant shelves.
In the charming little hotel at 15e arrondissement, rue de l’Avre, where I stayed, books are everywhere. In the hall, upon arrival, I noticed an old, fragrant novel with a red, black and gold cushioned cover, entitled Social eveningsa collection of titles by Alexandre Dumas with rust-speckled pages, as well asAn old mistressby Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, whose incipit goes like this: “One night in February 1830, the wind whistled and threw the rain against the windows of an apartment, located on rue de Varennes, and furnished with all the cute elegances of that time of selfishness without grandeur. This apartment […] was linen gray and pale pink, and it was as warm, as fragrant, as wadded as the inside of a muff. It was the boudoir of a woman who had never sulked endlessly, but who no longer sulked at all. »
In the room I occupied, there are other old books, including volume 3 of Metamorphoses of Ovid in Latin, near the head of the bed. A book that has passed through many hands, through the decades, and which still looks great. Even when withered, books have this magical power to be both talkative and silent, to stop time and invite you into dreams. Arranged in the hotel in no apparent order, they seem to have been tastefully assembled a long time ago by someone who loved great literature. It’s funny, there’s no library here… or maybe this little hotel is one? The humans would be passing through and the books would be at home.
As soon as we arrive in Paris, we, the official delegation of Quebec authors, and the Minister of Culture and Communications, Mathieu Lacombe, have an appointment at 23, quai de Conti, in the courtyard of the Institut de France . This address, we realize, is that of the French Academy. A man of great kindness and infinite patience awaits us there and will be our guide throughout the visit: the permanent secretary of the Academy, none other than the writer Amin Maalouf. What luck, what a surprise! We follow him, amazed, through the corridors of the Palace of the Institute, a magnificent, sumptuous, absolutely sublime place. We are told the history of the place and the founding of this institution by Richelieu in 1635, an important date, since in French history, it was the first time that the debates of an assembly of intellectuals were considered as being able to influence the future of society.
Through the statues of Corneille, Lafontaine, Molière (shunned by the Academy, we learn), we are led to the small room where decisions are made on new words added to the dictionary. I obviously take this opportunity to ask a few questions of relative relevance about the Academicians’ coat and sword (what is it for, why do they need it, do they always have it with them? , is the blade sharp, have they used it before, etc.?), and the kind Mr. Maalouf answers each of them. Basically, it is the symbolic power of the green coat and the sword which must be considered, as a symbol of the fight for the defense of the language. Women are not required to carry swords. An Academician had replaced it with a fan, and Jacqueline de Romilly with… an embroidered handbag! But Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, Simone Veil and Danièle Sallenave chose the sword.
The Academy library has been open to the public since 1796. I observe the students who have settled there to read, learn, study. I understand that we might want to linger in this place of calm and concentration. A beautiful, high, open place. Lamps just bright enough, dark wood, ancient volumes, knowledge as a vehicle to propel oneself through the world, understand it, decode it. Reading sometimes gives the impression that this world is so small that you can fit it all in your palm, that there is nothing scary about it, and that you have perhaps even already tamed it.
I think of the writer and immense reader Alberto Manguel, director of a research center on the history of reading in Lisbon, where his monumental library of 40,000 titles is housed. In the introduction toA history of reading, he declares: “I want to live among books. »
I think of the publisher of La Pastèque Frédéric Gauthier, whose house threatened to collapse because of the weight of the books which overloaded the family library. To the poet Denise Desautels, who has stored certain books in the upper shelves of hers, and is sorry to no longer have access to them as freely as she would like. I think back to my library — always so absurdly empty — and I see the labyrinth that it could become… We must be able to follow all the Ariadne’s threads, each time finding the treasures, promises, landmarks that we slip into its spaces . The prospect of not succeeding, the possible loss of my marks, that’s what paralyzes me.
There are many of us, like Manguel, who want to live among books, because they elevate us, tell the story of the world and our human destinies, without ever altering its mystery — but how is this possible? Story after story after story, they save us, move us, amuse us. This is why we like to live in the crumpling of paper, even yellowed ones, and take care of the house that shelters them.