An Hour in a Library

O face of sober life! O well of knowledge! You, O treasure of the generations, O library: I came to you seeking release from the torpor in my soul, but the heaps of books kindled my alarm, and the massive volumes wore down my feelings with a sense of inadequacy! So my spirit turned back, abashed, seeking from your gravity one rare smile to dissolve the idle mental complacency hidden in the depth of my depths.

I walked timidly toward the piles of wise books and murmured to them in my heart: "O daughters of great hearts, O sisters of sorrows, tell me of life's afflictions, and recount to me the pains of an age wrapped in stillness! Grant me your forelock, traced over by the white hairs of the generations, that I may flee to its mercy when my trials grow fierce, and find rest in the tales of ruin and the moans of extinction!"

And when I glimpsed reproach peering out from the sternness of their pages, I folded them away, forsaken, and turned to the heavenly books, imploring them to make me worthy of receiving their overflow into my heart, and I began to say:

"With you, O queen of revelation, the ages of the eons crumble away; through your letters contemplation rises above the pallor of nothingness, and the dust-colored face of reason darkens, and unbelief and denial grow old. So extend to me your lights, and enter into my panting heights that strain toward loftiness."

And when their spiritual magic delighted me, and I remained for a time their worshiper, I longed for something new; and facing me were ornate piles of books of poetry, which opened their two covers to me in invitation, so I whispered to them:

"In your folds, O brides of the imagination, my heart makes its nest, and over your polished surface my gaze glides. O precious shells brought from Abqar, tell me: how do you dance with the stars and the spheres, and become a bond joining matter and spirit, structure and meaning? O great and humble one, be my friend, that feeling may glow within me, as you lay upon my lips your eloquence, your grace, and your melancholy, and delight my senses with the authenticity of your explorations."

And I remained a while, stepping in my perplexity and confusion among those crowded tiers of intellectual tomes, in that awesome, merciful library; and I found myself touching the books of philosophy with the fascination of one savoring a strange feeling that fills the soul with endearment and brims it with awe and dread. So I drew near and whispered to them:

"O you of the coyness that entices! Shall your lines forever defy, with their depth, the pride of my understanding, and shall your secret remain veiled in the sayings of your trinity — Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato — that awesome trinity which laid bare the secrets of the heart, the mind, and the soul! Can whoever wishes truly enter you, or do you require, as a condition of belonging to you, logic and argument and eloquence? Is this not an injustice against the poor minds that perfume themselves to come seeking you? In what aristocratic tongue do you address your followers, O majestic philosophy!"

And when she turned away from me with a glance steeped in disregard, I went begging the poetry of the books of history, saying to them: "In your folds, O daughter of the past, the remote ages crouch, and from your lines peers the magic of bygone eras. It is you who rouse longing from its slumber, and who, with your sacred palm, hand down the wisdom of the generations that went before to the generations that follow. In your pages looms the eerie moan of human hatred, which brought forth revolutions and created wars and strife, buried the remains of civilizations, and dipped spearheads and lances in the blood of seething breasts!

"In your chapters civilization speaks with the impassivity of narrative and the neutrality of the historian's mind: Hannibal, Napoleon, and Khalid ibn al-Walid receive from you nothing but exact mention! As for the acclaim and the wonder, you leave them to work upon our hearts. Who, then, is to prevent us from glorifying these men, from uttering our reverence for them out of our souls, and from lavishing veneration upon Copernicus and Ibn Khaldun and Aisha!"

This enchanting library speaks with the tongue of a thousand poets, ponders with the mind of a thousand philosophers, and feels with the heart of a thousand reformers and scholars and inventors! This creature that sings, that wails, that dances, that weeps — sedate and clamorous, folded upon the honor of silence! Is she not the very symbol of ascent, and the emblem of peace and transcendence! How many libraries like this one are there in my country?

Live on with the vanished peoples, O library; speak to me in your silence of those behind the veils of the centuries; boast of the company of the great; take up the wisdom of crumbled civilizations, unriddle the talismans and untie the symbols... As for me, let me go out from your enchanting ether, for the sky of my thought has grown overcast, and my spirit has filled with gloom at the frown of your wisdom! My helplessness and my scant experience press hard upon me! So let me go out to the easy roads of life, free of the mind's exhaustion, with the thousands who walk them...