The Home Library

I find myself inclined to excuse my pen from glorifying the book and demonstrating its benefits, deferring in my own mind to those who first glorified it, and fearing for my pen lest it fail to catch even their dust in this field; I should then be like one lighting a candle in the blaze of midmorning. So I content myself with saying that the matter is self-evident to those who hear me and those who do not; the book can dispense with me, since it imposes itself upon the age — the age of knowledge and learning — for it is the first and direct instrument in acquiring knowledge and gaining learning.

Yet if I extricate myself, like a lover of safety, from speaking about the book, I have something to say about the receptacle that holds it, in which it sleeps soundly until there comes to it a discerning hand, soft or not soft, which wakes it from its slumber to press it into the service of its owner.

The library has been known since the most ancient ages of history, and it passed through various crises before it settled into a corner of the house where it could dwell at peace, fearing neither fire nor flood.

The acquisition of books was, among the ancient kings, a cause for boasting and rivalry: they would spend vast sums upon it, sacrifice what was most precious for its sake, and exert unflagging efforts to obtain a book to add to the contents of their libraries. It is related in the introduction to Kalila wa-Dimna that King Dabshalim, after his rule was firmly established, resolved that there should be in his royal library a book composed for him, to add to what each of his predecessors had left. And when we read, too, in the chapter on Chosroes' sending of the physician Burzoe to India in quest of a book he had heard existed in the treasury of the Indian kingdom and wished to join to his own treasury — of the hardships Burzoe endured, the perturbations he was exposed to, his fear for himself of the pain of scandal, and what free rein in money his king allowed him — we learn what importance the ancient kings, and some of the elite, attached to the acquisition of books.

History has made famous certain libraries which the historians mention and proudly count as a foundation of human civilization. In the East, there is the library of Alexandria, which the Arabs found on the day they conquered Egypt, and with the burning of which they were charged — though among the scrupulous of their own historians, and some historians of the Franks, are those who clear them of this charge. And there is the library of Pergamum in Asia Minor, contemporary with the first, some of whose books perished, as did the library of Alexandria, upon the ruin of that city.

Nor did the Arabs fall short of the advanced peoples who preceded them in this arena. It is related of al-Ma'mun that he would pay, for every new book he added to the treasury of the caliphate, the equivalent of its weight in gold; and if we consider the size of books in those days and what they weighed, we realize what a price authors received — writers could truly live with easy minds thanks to the pen.

The most famous of the Arab libraries, as related by al-Qalqashandi, was "the treasury of the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad, in which there was what could not be counted for multitude; it perished, and its trace was effaced, when the Tatars overran Baghdad." It is said that they threw its contents into the Tigris, until the waters turned into a black liquid because of the ink of the books that dissolved in them.

Then there is the treasury of the Fatimid caliphs in Egypt, which was also among the greatest of treasuries and the richest in precious books in all the sciences; and so it remained until their dynasty came to an end with the death of al-'Adid and the seizure of the Egyptian realm by Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi, whereupon al-Qadi al-Fadil bought most of the books of the treasury and endowed them to the Fadiliyya school in Egypt, where they remained until grasping hands laid hold of them, and only a little was left.

And a third treasury: that of the Umayyad caliphs in Cordoba, "which contained a precious collection of books, that perished with the passing of the dynasty and the seizure of Andalusia by the Party Kings, so that the books went every which way." Perhaps these books were the keys of the European renaissance in the Middle Ages.

The blessing of acquiring books remained confined to those upon whom God had bestowed wealth — and, with it, the possibility of devoting their time and money to copying them or having them copied — until the printing press was discovered. Books then came out of the narrow circle of kings and the rich and were set before the sons of the people, who could now acquire them as they pleased; the iron machine dispensed the book generously and made the enjoyment of its benefit easy for the many.

Houses were then blessed with a special room, or at least a special corner, in which stood a cabinet, large or small, called the home library.

A period passed in which certain households, whether in the West or in the East, grew accustomed to acquiring books in a merely formal way — that is, for decoration only. Collectors of books very often, even the cultivated among them, took care to gather and bind them in a fashion whose splendor delights the eye, without heeding what lies between their covers or profiting

by it. Of this sort is what I read lately in al-Hilal magazine about the movie stars: that "in the past they did not care to acquire books to profit by them, but for decoration"; now, however, things have changed, and they are counted "among the people fondest of reading."

Nor has our own society lacked such dilettante fops. I remember that one of them wished to honor me by showing me into the library room of his house. I found it truly a delightful feast for eye and heart alike, with the treasures it contained; and our friend would have nothing less than to hand me, in his enthusiasm, one of its books, to show me the quality of the leather in which it was bound. I took the book, and after I had examined it from the outside as he wished, it occurred to me to open it, to see what it was and what it treated of — when suddenly I heard a cry of alarm. I traced its source: it was the owner of the book, anxious lest I open it and spoil its newness. And I learned, not without astonishment, that these books were, in his view, not for use but for show.

The home library is the mirror of its owners' refinement, and its spread in any society is proof of the high culture and learning that society has attained. It is natural that the foreigners should be ahead of us here, directing exceeding care to this piece of furniture and reckoning for it a special place in the family budget. And no wonder: the house is woman's kingdom, and the home library is among the contents of that kingdom; while woman among us, until half a generation ago, walked in pitch darkness of ignorance and illiteracy, in the odious ages of decadence, when reading and writing were forbidden her. And if, as a rarity, one was found who could read, her home library did not go beyond books of prayer and worship, some stories of saints, men and women, and, at most, some easy, trite novels.

Today, however, when we have come to the height of our intellectual renaissance, and many of our women possess no small measure of culture and of the desire for culture, it has become rare to enter a house without seeing a corner set apart for books, arranged in a way that lets you withdraw there into an atmosphere of quiet befitting the majesty of knowledge and its pursuit.

There is no doubt that the library, as I have said, is the mirror of its owners: its contents depend upon their culture, in kind and in extent. It is not reasonable to find, in the library of a house of modest culture, what we find in another house whose members are known for a high share of it. There is, however, a point I should like to make clear and to draw attention to: the home library must escape the fetters of specialization. If the master of the house is, say, a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer, that does not mean his home library should contain only books treating of his specialty; such books have another place, which is usually the doctor's or the lawyer's or the engineer's place of work. The home library should contain a variety of books on all manner of subjects — and how beautiful is the library in whose contents the cultivated woman has had a hand in the choosing! Every member of the family profits from it, above all those who keep to the house most of the time.

I once entered the house of a friend of mine, and my eye was caught by the beauty of the library and the ordering of the books in it. It was divided into a number of shelves suited to the books in size and breadth, and the works treating a single subject were ranged together, without regard to their language, on one side, so that the reader, when in need of some inquiry, could easily find the book that would set before him what concerned him in the least time and with the least trouble. And I noticed that the library was free of those books which parents so often own and which it is not well for children to read — whence problems arise in the family through the children's curiosity and their eagerness to read what they ought not. I saw in this both taste and a complete knowledge of the psychology of the young in general, who must be kept away from certain readings that corrupt the fresh mind if it comes upon them before their time.

And if some think that children ought to be brought up in a way that guarantees they will not touch what they are not permitted to touch, I say that man has not, to this day, attained such an ideal. The child, by force of the inquisitiveness that is in him, loves to explore, is forever eyeing what is withheld from him, and desires it greatly. It is enough for him to know that his parents have forbidden him a book in the library for that book to become the object of his hopes and the pivot of his thinking. The sounder course in such a case — the case of there being children at this dangerous age — is that the home library be free, as my friend's library was, of any book whose prohibition would stir in the children the desire to read it; that is safer for their upbringing.

I noticed, too, that the housewife had taken particular care with one corner of her home library, which from the earliest childhood of her children she had set apart for them, bestowing on it her closest attention. And when

I congratulated her on this necessary and well-placed attention, she answered me: "At first I had no wide experience in choosing books for those of my children's age, and I saw no harm in consulting people more expert in it than I — their teacher, for instance. I always tried to draw my children into attachment to the book, accustoming them to look upon it with great interest, and with something of reverence. I would deliberately economize before them on matters of pleasure and buy books for the library — and my plan has succeeded, for my children have come to put the pleasure of the book before any other pleasure."

The advanced world has outstripped us by long stretches in this arena and has understood the importance of the home library in the rearing of the young, preparing it for them rich in form and in contents, until children now have countless books devoted to them, to cultivate their minds, refine their souls, and train their character. For it has been proven that to content the young person with schoolbooks alone is not the effective way to develop his imagination and widen his experience. The child who sees before him nothing but his schoolbooks — if he is of a disposition inclined to laziness, he wearies of them and throws them far away; and if he is diligent and fond of study, his mentality petrifies, and he comes to understand of culture only one side: the side his dry schoolbooks have given him.

On this occasion I say that we in Lebanon are failing our young. We are wretchedly poor in reading books fit for our children, and were it not for our reliance on foreign books on the one hand, and on the Arabic books lately published in some of the sister countries on the other, we should find no book fit for our children to put into their hands. And when I say we are failing, I do not lay the burden of the failure on any particular quarter; we all share in it. The men of letters are at fault, because they will sacrifice nothing of their mental efforts for this side of things; those in authority are at fault, because they do not encourage writing in it; and the rich are at fault, because they do not found a great publishing house, nourishing it with their money and rendering through it a signal service to the young of their country.

But to remain as we are — the home library among us dominated by foreign books, in which the young reader comes upon no tint of the colors of life in his own country, books which satisfy neither his spiritual need nor his national one — that, upon my life, is the utmost impotence, in a country that wants to keep its place in the sun.

The home library among us exists, no doubt, and with it we stay our hunger for knowledge and quench our thirst for it; but in the kind of food we eat and offer our children, and in the drink we find palatable for ourselves and for them, we taste the flavor of estrangement from our surroundings and from the air of our own country.

The home library, then, needs what will enrich the culture of the Lebanese as a Lebanese, and what will grace the world of the Lebanese child as a Lebanese child in the first degree.