Alone in Papa's Library

"In the beginning was the Word!"
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
Words, words, words, words . . .
Candide (Excerpt from “Words, Words, Words,” lyrics by Leonard Bernstein).
. . . words; words as live things to be loved.
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
The small boy lived in a world of books, the books which overflowed his . . .
T.Z. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest.
. . . father’s . . .
Richard Wagner, Siegfried.
. . . study, the lending-library books of his grandmother, . . .
T.Z. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest.
. . . the French Countess Marie d’Agoult, . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (translator’s introduction).
. . . the books from which . . .
T.Z. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest.
. . . Mama . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (translator’s introduction).
. . . read him stories. “I began my life,” . . .
T.Z. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest (quoting Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words).
. . . he said, . . .
Jacques Pepin, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen.
. . . “as I shall no doubt end it: amidst books.” The words in these books became the world which he longed to possess and manipulate, . . .
T.Z. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest (quoting Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words).
. . . but which now assumed the garb of . . .
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo.
. . . tantalizing fruit . . .
Jacques Pepin, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen.
. . . forbidden fruit, that . . .
Rabbi Heshy Grossman, Jerusalem Views.
. . . dangled well out of reach.
Jacques Pepin, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen.
His father did his utmost to beget in the son as great a love of words as he had himself. He never permitted the child to use an incorrect word or to utter a slipshod sentence. After their walks together, the boy and his father would talk over the whole experience, . . .
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
. . . his father . . .
William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale.
. . . insisting that every description, every idea be expressed completely in perfect English. As soon as the boy learned to read, they played by the hour the game of "synonyms," taking turns holding the dictionary.
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
What I liked best about him was his universality; he would pay scant attention to his own affairs or his family's, but, instead, his passionate interest would be aroused by some piece of literature or a remote item in an encyclopedia.
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
The son loved the teaching . . .
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
( . . . as if it came from Prospero himself.)
J.D. Salinger, SEYMOUR—An Introduction.
Synonyms became his favorite game. He began to love words as much as his father loved them.
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
Now . . . now I go back thirty-five years. No, I don't go back . . . I come back.
Claude Lanzmann, Shoah.
. . . back to a time when reality itself is little more than a playground for the imagination, the realm of the storyteller's once-upon-a-time.
Gilbert Rose, William Faulkner's Light in August: The Orchestration of Time in the Psychology of Artistic Style.
Recently, . . .
Sigmund Freud, Letter to Wilhelm Fliess.
. . . I stumbled upon [a] childhood memory of my father, when I was a boy of five, . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . or perhaps . . .
Henry David Thoreau, Walden.
. . . six or seven.
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
My father kept . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . . a fair-sized private library . . .
Francis Crick, Of Molecules and Men.
. . . a library temptingly rich in . . .
Will & Ariel Durant, A Dual Autobiography.
. . . the stuff of wonder.
Frank Ryan, Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plagues — Out of the Present and Into the Future.
Leather-bound books reached from floor to ceiling.
John Le Carre, The Night Manager.
It was irresistible!
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . . glorious!
Sigmund Freud, Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis.
At that stage, I must confess, . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . . my father's . . .
Richard Wagner, Siegfried.
. . . holy of holies . . .
John Le Carre, The Night Manager.
. . . the room in which he . . .
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.
. . . had assembled everything of consequence from his three-score-years-and-ten —
Joachim Kohler, Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation.
. . . that room was . . .
Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.
. . . out of bounds, . . .
John Le Carre, The Night Manager.
. . . the most sacred of the relics . . .
Joachim Kohler, Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation.
. . . now displayed in glass cases . . .
Frank Rich, Conversations with Sondheim.
. . . for posterity . . .
Sigmund Freud, An Autobiographical Study.
. . . stood there . . .
H.G. Wells, A Moonlight Fable.
. . . once upon a time . . .
K.R. Eissler, Goethe: A Psychoanalytic Study 1775-1786.
. . . as . . .
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . mysteries which were hidden from me.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions.
But then, . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
—why not confess it?—
Howard Carter and A.C. Mace, The Tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen.
I prowled hungrily among those treasures, . . .
Will & Ariel Durant, A Dual Autobiography.
—assembled there once and for all . . .
Joachim Kohler, Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation.
. . . hidden from all . . .
Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold.
. . . in the inner chambers of . . .
Peter Schrag, Test of Loyalty.
. . . father's personal library, . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . like an ancient tablet locked in a vault.
R. Lipkin, A Look into Life's Chemical Past: A Computer Model of Gene Regulation Yields Some Evolutionary Clues.
It is astonishing—I find so many years later—what a clear picture I have of these early days.
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
I remember . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Thoughtless, shallow-brained Fool!
Richard Wagner, Parsifal.
I remember once, . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
I said—
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.
I dashed to . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . . father, looked at the library, and said, "This will one day belong to me, when I am big, you will be dead then."
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Tuesday-Monday, February 10-16, 1874).
. . . silly boy now, what would his Papa say?
John Le Carre, The Night Manager.
His father . . .
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
. . . scolded him and said, . . .
Genesis. A New Translation of the Classic Biblical Stories by Stephen Mitchell.
"What do you mean by that?"
Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study.
Since I am old you should accord me some honor.
Richard Wagner, Siegfried.
. . . but his father kept thinking about this for a long time afterward.
Genesis. A New Translation of the Classic Biblical Stories by Stephen Mitchell.
He was just eight then.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 7).
I loved, and could not get enough of, the discoveries I was making there. . . .
The house was like a gigantic treasure chest.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
One other thing I just thought of. One time, . . .
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye.
One evening before going to sleep I disregarded the rules . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . and entered the . . .
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist.
. . . book-lined room . . .
Hermann Hesse, Excerpt from A Dream.
. . . the close, twilit room . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 7).
. . . intensely curious about what was inside . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
And saw that I was not the only guest. An old man stood before that grand array of tomes.
Hermann Hesse, Excerpt from A Dream.
I imagined . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . for a moment . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . I was seeing a ghost;
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Sunday, June 6, 1869).
But no—
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
The older man (clearly my father . . .)
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . was . . .
Richard Wilbur, Excerpt from Lamarck Elaborated.
. . . occupied with the task of arranging his library.
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Thursday, July 2, 1874).
I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. You need not fear any of that. Instead, I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with the dust of wood, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among the piles of volumes . . .
Walter Benjamin, Unpacking My Library.
. . . volumes by . . .
James Joyce, A Painful Case.
. . . Goethe, Rousseau, Dickens . . .
Geoffrey Skelton, Wieland Wagner: The Positive Sceptic.
. . . six-hundred-odd volumes . . .
Guido Suchtelen, The Spinoza Houses at Rijnsburg and The Hague.
. . . that are seeing daylight again after two years of darkness, so that you may be ready to share with me a bit of the mood. It is certainly not an elegiac mood but, rather, one of anticipation—which these books arouse in a genuine collector.
Walter Benjamin, Unpacking My Library.
Here was the inner meaning, here the key,
To poetry, to wisdom, and to science.
Magic and erudition in alliance
Opened the door to every mystery.
These books provided pledges of all power
To him who came here at this magic hour.
Hermann Hesse, Excerpt from A Dream.
And yet, . . .
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
. . . more and more . . .
Charles Darwin, Origin of Species.
. . . the Old Man . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
. . . had to bid farewell to the dream, the feeling and the pleasure of infinite possibilities, of a multiplicity of futures. Instead of the dream of unending progress, of the sum of all wisdom, [a timid youth who approached him with worshipful curiosity] stood by, a small, near, demanding reality, an intruder and nuisance, but no longer to be rebuffed or evaded. For the boy represented, after all, the only way into the real future, the one most important duty, the one narrow path along which [his] life and acts, principles, thoughts, and glimmerings could be saved from death and continue their life in a small new bud.
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
A little while elapsed.
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
The study is lighted now, by a greenshaded reading lamp sitting upon the desk.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 4).
The old man . . .
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
. . . took off his cravat, put on his dressing gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down . . .
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
. . . at his desk . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . to compose a tranquil letter . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities.
. . . in the pool of light from the shaded lamp.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 16).
Somebody had been writing to him about me.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
(or so I fully believed)
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield.
And memory knows this; twenty years later memory is still to believe On this day . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 7).
. . . he resolved to write
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (February 1883, final entry).
. . . a personal note.
The Diary of Richard Wagner: The Brown Book 1865-1882.
—a letter I still have in my possession.
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
I was fascinated.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
Hidden in the shadows . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 9).
. . . as noiseless as a ghost, . . .
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer.
I saw that he was earnestly intent
Upon some task, and I could not resist
A strange conviction that I had to know
The manner of his work, and what it meant.
Hermann Hesse, Excerpt from A Dream.
After my father's death I opened it myself, thinking there might be, for anything I knew, some . . .
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit.
. . . deletions and corrections in the text . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . something surprisingly new.
Sigmund Freud, Letter to Wilhelm Fliess.
That evening, however, . . .
Edgar B.P. Darlington, The Circus Boys on the Plains.
. . . silent and motionless at the side, . . .
Richard Wagner, Parsifal.
. . . I watched the old man, . . .
Hermann Hesse, Excerpt from A Dream.
. . . as if quite dumbfounded.
Richard Wagner, Parsifal.
I was not a little afraid, I must confess, to have to face the dreaded Papa alone.
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
He took up his pen several times and laid it down again because he could not make up his mind what he ought to write.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities.
At last he had a fortunate idea, and when it fell into his brain it lit up his whole head . . .
Mark Twain, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg.
"Ha!" muttered the old man, "yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!"
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit.
One gets sometimes such a flash of inspiration, you know.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
Papa was speaking
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (February 1883, final entry).
Almost whispering, he read some lines to himself:
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
Gracious, Exalted Friend
The Diary of Richard Wagner: The Brown Book 1865-1882.
In days gone by . . .
Richard Wagner, Letter to King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
. . . so his thoughts ran . . .
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit.
. . . I would simply discard anything which might have served as a memento of me . . . Then one morning I called out all over the house, 'I have a son!' All of a sudden the whole world looked different! The happy mother realized immediately that my whole past and future had acquired a completely new meaning . . . From then on every relic was preserved: letters, manuscripts, books which I once used, every line I had ever written, were tracked down and collected; my life was recorded in ever greater detail, pictures of all the places and houses I had lived in were accumulated.
Richard Wagner, Letter to King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
. . . the text concluded by saying, . . .
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
I do not remember ever having . . .
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions.
. . . broken out of the ring of what I have already done and cannot ever undo . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 14).
. . . but before I . . .
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.
. . . abandon myself to my fatal destiny, let me turn for a moment to the prospect that . . .
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions.
. . . at least . . .
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.
My son, for all his tender years, shall on reaching maturity, know exactly who his father was.
Richard Wagner, Letter to King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
a letter to the King
The Diary of Richard Wagner: The Brown Book 1865-1882.
If only I could have seen it lying finished before me!
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
I listened. There was nothing more.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
With these words, and with a hasty gesture . . .
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit.
. . . he laid down his pen, . . .
Fergus Hume, Mystery of a Hansom Cab.
. . . and came to a full stop at last.
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit.
Then it happened.
William Faulkner, Light in August.
The next moment . . .
George Orwell, 1984.
. . . the old man . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 19).
. . . became sensible of confused noises in the air;
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
He can feel the other looking at him . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 13).
—and with a half-unconscious action, . . .
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
. . . fidgets with coins in his pocket.
Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams.
'How now!'
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
Who’s there?
William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
Is it you, boy?
Richard Wagner, Siegfried.
'What do you want with me?'
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
It was quite still then.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 7).
The little eight-year-old . . .
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
. . . Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear . . .
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
. . . stepped out . . .
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.
. . . from the shadows . . .
Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams.
. . . knelt down at once beside his father . . .
Franz Kafka, The Judgment.
. . . and, by an impulse, . . .
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure.
. . . begged a lucky coin from him
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
In the old man's weary face . . .
Franz Kafka, The Judgment.
. . . the boy, undressed for bed and in his shirt, . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 7).
. . . saw the pupils, over-large, fixedly looking at him from the corners of the eyes.
Franz Kafka, The Judgment.
The boy still knelt. He did not move at all.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 7).
His father said pityingly, in an offhand manner:
Franz Kafka, The Judgment.
Poor boy.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 17).
'My time is nearly gone.'
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
"I am old enough that any new day may be my deathday. . . ."
Harold Bloom, The Book of J.
"Here," he said. He opened his purse and took a coin from it.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 8).
But be patient!
Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold.
"You will soon be getting other things from me, dear child."
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
The boy was off like a shot . . .
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
. . . carrying the coin . . .
Tom Krattenmaker, New Dollar Coin Destined to Fail, Swarthmore Economist Says.
. . . clutched hot and small in his palm as a child might.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 8).
Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting.
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
He was just eight then. It was years later that memory knew what he was remembering; years after that night when . . .
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 7).
. . . that moment in the library . . .
Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams.
. . . came back to him.
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
We may say that . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . inheritance is the soundest way of acquiring a collection. For a collector's attitude toward his possessions stems from an owner's feeling of responsibility toward his property. Thus it is, in the highest sense, the attitude of an heir, and the most distinguished trait of a collection will always be its transmissibility.
Walter Benjamin, Unpacking My Library.
An hour passed.
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice.
Or perhaps . . .
John Le Carre, The Night Manager.
. . . perhaps it is an hour later, perhaps three.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 14).
The old man . . .
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
—quite alone now—
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
. . . fumbled for his watch . . .
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.
. . . that had slipped out of his pocket while he was . . .
Joachim Kohler, Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation.
. . . playing with his watch chain.
Franz Kafka, The Judgment.
"My watch!" he ejaculated.
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
He took up the watch and closed it and returned it to his pocket, looping the chain again through his suspender.
William Faulkner, Light in August (Chapter 7).
He had forgotten to wind it so the watch was dead . . .
Gilbert Rose, William Faulkner's Light in August: The Orchestration of Time in the Psychology of Artistic Style.
Now it was ticking again.
Joachim Kohler, Nietzsche and Wagner: A Lesson in Subjugation.
But he knew it was late without having to look at the watch.
Gilbert Rose, William Faulkner's Light in August: The Orchestration of Time in the Psychology of Artistic Style.
In this world, a second is a second is a second. Time paces forward with exquisite regularity, at precisely the same velocity in every corner of space.
Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams.
And yet, not exactly!
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.
No doubt a . . .
Anthony Trollope, The Prime Minister.
. . . detailed examination of the question . . .
Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory.
. . . would show that . . .
Henry James, Washington Square.
Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.
William Shakespeare, Othello.
For a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked me. Then I noted the clock.
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.
. . . the clock in the corner.
Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams.
A moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute or so past ten; now it was . . .
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.
. . . midnight.
William Shakespeare, Othello.
Time!
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Excerpt from To Time.
The clock indicates the moment—but what does eternity indicate?
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself.
He then became lost in his own thoughts, without really knowing what he was thinking about.
Buket Uzuner, An Unbearable Passion.
The past rose before his eyes . . .
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
. . . undone after all and played backward in memory and forward in hope . . .
Gilbert Rose, William Faulkner's Light in August: The Orchestration of Time in the Psychology of Artistic Style.
Now I am on the last half-emptied case . . .
Walter Benjamin, Unpacking My Library.
. . . of worm-eaten books thickly laden with dust . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
. . . and it is way past midnight. Other thoughts fill me than the ones I am talking about—not thoughts but images, memories. Memories of the cities in which I found so many things: Riga, Naples, Munich, Danzig, Moscow, Florence, Basel . . .
Walter Benjamin, Unpacking My Library.