Library of Unrequited Love Read Free Page B

care to look more closely into the history of libraries, who could have collected all these books so methodically? Not country bumpkins like you, let me tell you. You don’t work on a farm, do you? Sorry, thought you did. But anyway, I don’t need to see your tax return to see that unlike those kings and monks andnobles, people with power, in short, you wouldn’t have been able to collect thousands of books. Take Cardinal Mazarin for instance, seventeenth century: he had forty thousand books in his personal library in Paris. Nice little collection. And one day, he decided to open it to the public. That was pretty good going, for a cardinal. Still, we shouldn’t be fooled: what mattered most to him was the prestige it brought him. The building got to be called “the Mazarine”. He was as proud as punch, our cardinal. Well, after all, books are like carriages, the whole point is to show off. True culture for rich people doesn’t come till later, it creeps up on them, and it’s not well regarded. In his case, it took the shape of an admirable man called Gabriel Naudé. A talented little commoner, who started off wanting to be a doctor, but he fell in love with the cardinal’s books, so he became his head librarian. When the weather was overcast, you couldn’t see a thing inside the poky Mazarine, it was worse than here. But they had an excuse, it was early days. Impressive early days. Gabriel Naudé there and then defined a dozen categories: theology, philosophy, history and so on, andabout thirty sub-categories.
Pre-Melvil Dewey!
Which proves the Americans didn’t invent anything. Well, isn’t an American a European who missed the boat home? I don’t go anywhere nowadays, myself. Oh, let’s not even mention boats, I’ll get a hot flush. Aeroplanes? Are you kidding? Never! No, I don’t go anywhere these days. I ask you, what’s the point? You never have enough time to understand what you’re seeing, and I can’t stand only half knowing things. Trying to visit an art gallery in a couple of hours is stupid. Two hours, that’s hardly enough for me to take in a single painting. No, I’m not exaggerating. Oh, well, perhaps you, when you look at a picture, you’re just happy to let your feelings respond to colours arranged in a certain order. That kind of romantic swooning isn’t my cup of tea. No, no. I have to have all the possible information, about even the tiniest picture. That’s the way I am, I have to know everything; the painter’s biography, where his studio was, what were the technical conditions, who commissioned the painting, the political context, the aesthetic quarrels of the day, how the paints were chemically composed –everything. No, I can’t stand having just a smattering of superficial knowledge. So tourism, no, out of the question. I used to go to Italy, time was. Now I just read the books in the Fine Arts section. I learn more and it costs me less. I’m sure Martin would agree with me about that. A perfectionist, a workaholic, an obsessive. In fact he must be writing a thesis or something. I told myself that, when I finally peeped discreetly over his shoulder and managed to read: “Peasant revolts in the Poitiers region in the reign of Louis XV”. Written on the outside of a big blue folder. I assumed that was the subject of his thesis.
Peasant revolts in the Poitiers region in the reign of Louis XV
. I’d have preferred it if he’d been working on the reign of Louis XVI or the Revolution. Because Louis XV – kind of a nothing reign. Louis XIV or Louis XVI, yes, no problem, but Louis XV is just a black hole. Look under 944.655, and you’ll see, we don’t have anything. Whereas in 944.75, history of the French Revolution, there’s much more. My favourite shelfmark. And there are nine sub-divisions in it. You really can’t imagine. For instance, 944.755 is the