Abel's Library
By Francisco Almagro Domínguez
Moving or making a major repair at home requires double effort; getting used to the clutter for a while, and trying the previous order, the latter almost always impossible. Once the books, ornaments, souvenirs, and dresses have been packed, returning them to the original space is usually a disappointment.
During the collection, things that we thought were lost appear. And others that we wish would disappear from seeing them so much. Turning things around requires a delicate and perhaps even onerous selection. We will have to choose what stays and what is given away or thrown away – some to calm the guilt make donations or put them in Garage Sale.
Certain objects that were costly in time, because of their usefulness or the money invested, suffer the worst of fates. Such can be the case with books. For those who love libraries – at school it was like entering a wonderful forest of smells and wisdom – it is difficult to let go of the simplest works. Saying goodbye to novels and short stories that shaped ethics and emotions at an early age; of a princely edition, or a text by José Martí – an enigma that accompanies me. They are books of special value, and they rest in a lost space on the shelf, and waiting, sometimes fruitlessly, for a curious grandson.
The paper book is, for previous generations, an essential travel companion. It's art. Art the text and the illustration of the cover. Art the binding and the typeface. Arte the successive editions, each trying to be a new book – the publisher, a second author. Buying books, reading them, treasuring them on shelves that climb up to the ceiling gave a strange sensation of intellectual security, of accumulated ethics, of alien erudition.
The paper book has a life of its own. And that life clothes the owner-reader with a helmet of infallibility. For better or for worse, the opponents would say, we have entered a new century with a paradigm shift in the well-known library, the one that Borges immortalized as an infinite and indecipherable universe in The Library of Babel.
The digital book has filled us with lights and shadows. The paper has become a screen and the letter goes according to the recipient wants it or can read it. The huge bookcase now fits in a tiny warehouse called a pocket. Everything we want to know is within reach of a key. To write a page of paper, it is no longer necessary to underline the notes of dozens of books on the work table, upholstering the floor, protruding from the shelf. A few seconds are enough, open a couple of "search engines", and perhaps print the desired text as a "selection".
Along with the disappearance of the paper book, and the benefits of literary immediacy, the "long-distance" reader is being lost. The one who cannot sleep if he does not consume at least 5 or 6 pages a day, who retreats to a corner of the house in an intimate dialogue, and surrenders to the book as he would with a furtive lover.
The electronic "character" reader does not usually advance beyond eight thousand, and about 5 minutes of reading at most. Nor is he interested in the classic works, those essential to see with the heart, as the Little Prince would say. The new reader seeks the simplicity of the text; and Enjoy simple adjectives and superlatives for trivial people and deeds.
Who came first? Did the electronic reader "give birth" to the electronic device or has the electronic device created a new reader? Will the so-called artificial intelligence modify the way we write, read? Is literature as art, goldsmithing of letters in the past? Literary aesthetics, disappeared?
The biblical character of Abel, Cain's brother, means "weak" in Greek. That's how weak the classic library is today, the one of smells and wisdom on shelves up to the ceiling, in need of a good librarian to find what they are looking for. The library is the oldest cultural center since reading was no longer a privilege of the rich and priests. It was the place of meetings, gatherings, and promotions.
But today's library, unlike the one in Alexandria, fits everything in a few "megabytes" and is a solitary place, oblivious to any socialization that is not "internautical. The spirit of Abel, the loser, inhabits the world these days. It is difficult to say goodbye to so much paper especially if our other half was stranded in the twentieth century.
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