The Whispering Shelves: From Alexandria's Dream to Reading in my Garden

The Whispering Shelves: From Alexandria's Dream to Reading in my Garden

To my friends and family its well known that I love books. My Mom and my older sister passed that down to me. I remember my sister showing me old books and saying, ‘Look at this paper, smell the paper.” I was born into loving books. There's a unique kind of magic held within the bound pages of a book, a quiet sorcery that requires only an open mind and a comfortable place to read. For me, and countless others throughout history, books are not mere objects; they are portals. As the great astronomer Carl Sagan once said, “A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." I feel this profoundly. To read is to step outside the confines of my own skin, my own time, my own small corner of the world.

Reading allows my imagination to paint the picture of the words. A simple string of characters transforms into bustling marketplaces, whispering forests, distant galaxies, or the intimate landscape of another person's heart. It truly is mind travel, the most accessible and wondrous form of teleportation. Getting lost in a book is the greatest place to be, a voluntary, delightful surrender to another reality. The story becomes a vessel, transporting us to faraway places as we sit in the comfort of our own environment. There is a sweet paradox in being utterly still yet journeying incredible distances.

And the sensory experience! It begins even before the first word is read. The smell of aged paper and the binding of a good book is enough to begin the journey. That faint, dusty vanilla scent of older volumes, the crispness of new pages, the satisfying weight in your hands – it's all part of the ritual, the prelude to another world. It primes the senses for the imaginative feast to come.

Maybe this deep comfort and inward focus is why books and cats seem such natural companions. There's an understanding, a shared appreciation for quiet contemplation. As the saying goes, “What greater gift than the love of a cat?" – perhaps only the gift of a book, and ideally, both enjoyed together. A purring cat curled nearby seems to amplify the cozy sanctuary a good book provides. T.S. Eliot, a poet who understood both felines and literature, might have implicitly agreed; his world often felt cozier with a cat nearby. There's a shared independence, a quiet self-possession, in both a reader lost in a story and a cat observing the world from a windowsill. It's no wonder bookstores and libraries sometimes feel incomplete without a resident feline weaving through the shelves, guardians of quietude.

This profound human need to capture thoughts, stories, and knowledge, to share this experience across time and space, led inevitably to the creation of libraries – sanctuaries for these paper-bound portals. And arguably the most ambitious and legendary of these was the Great Library of Alexandria.

Founded in Egypt by Ptolemy I Soter or his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus in the 3rd century BC, the Library of Alexandria wasn't just a collection; it was a statement. Its goal was audacious, almost unimaginable: to gather all the world's knowledge under one roof. Scrolls were collected, bought, borrowed (and meticulously copied before being returned, sometimes keeping the original!), and even seized from ships docking in the harbor. It was part of a larger research institution called the Mouseion, dedicated to the Muses, the goddesses of the arts.

Imagine the intellectual energy in those halls. Scholars from across the known world flocked there – mathematicians like Euclid, astronomers like Eratosthenes (who calculated the circumference of the Earth with astonishing accuracy), poets, physicians, inventors like Archimedes (though he primarily worked in Syracuse, he likely studied or corresponded with Alexandria). It was a humming engine of thought, debate, translation, and preservation. Estimates of its collection vary wildly, but it likely held hundreds of thousands of papyrus scrolls.

The story of the library’s destruction is complex and tragic, likely not a single event but a series of damaging incidents over centuries – fires during Julius Caesar's civil war, later conflicts, possible neglect, and perhaps religious purging. Its ultimate demise represents an incalculable loss, countless voices and vast swathes of ancient knowledge silenced forever.

Yet, the idea of the Library of Alexandria endures. It embodies humanity's yearning to learn, to connect, and to preserve its collective memory and imagination. Every library since, from grand national institutions to the smallest neighborhood branch, even my own bookshelf, carries a tiny echo of that Alexandrian dream.

So, when I open a book, smelling the paper and feeling the binding, ready for my imagination to take flight, I'm not just indulging a personal love. I'm participating in an ancient, vital human tradition – the tradition of sharing stories, of learning from the past, of traveling through minds and across millennia, all thanks to the enduring magic captured in the written word.

© Gesso Cocteau

__for everyone who loves books__