ROGER CHARTIER

Libraries WithoutWalls

These examples made it possible fora librarianof genius to discoverthe fundamentallaw of the Library.This thinkerobserved thatall the books, no matterhow diversethey might be, are made up of the same elements: the space, the period, the comma, the twenty-twoletters of the alphabet. He also alleged a factwhich travelers have confirmed:In thevast Library there are no twoidentical books. From these two incontrovertiblepremises he deduced that the Libraryis totaland thatits shelves register all the possible combinations of the twenty-oddorthographical symbols (a numberwhich, although vast,is not infinite):in other words,all thatit is given to express,in all languages. Everything:the minutelydetailed historyof the future,the archangels' autobiographies,the faithfulcatalogue of the Library,thousands and thousands of false catalogues,the demonstrationof the fallacyof those catalogues,the demonstrationof the fallacyof the true catalogue, the Gnosticgospel of Basilides, the commentaryon thatgospel, the commentary on the commentaryon thatgospel, the true storyof your death, the translationof all books in all languages, the interpolationsof everybook in all books. When it was proclaimedthat the Librarycontained all books, the firstimpression was one of extravaganthappiness. Jorge Luis Borges'

W H E N I T WA S P RO C L AI ME D that the Library contained all books, the firstimpression was extravagant happiness." The dream of a library (in a variety of configurations) that would bring together all accumulated knowledge and all the books ever written can be found throughout the history of Western civiliza- tion. It underlay the constitution of great princely, ecclesiastical, and private "libraries"; it justified a tenacious search for rare books, lost editions, and texts that had disappeared; it commanded architectural projects to construct edifices capable of welcoming the world's memory. Bringing together the entire written patrimony of humanity in one place proves an impossible task, though. When print produced a proliferation of titles and editions, it ruined all hope for an exhaustive collection. Even for those who hold that a library must be encyclopedic, selection is an absolute necessity. This was true for Gabriel Naude in his Advispour dresserune bibliotheque,written in 1627 and addressed to Henri de Mesmes, presidentat the Parlement de Paris and a great book collector.2 Against the model of the cabinet curieux or the cabinet choisi reserved for the delectation of their proprietor and gathering together a small number of books distinguished for their rarityor their luxury, Naude pleads for a well-furnished library: "It is much more useful and necessary to have, for

38 REPRESENTATIONS 42 - Spring1993 C PolityPress

This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Sat, 30 May 2015 13:37:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions example, a greatquantity of books well bound in the ordinaryfashion than to fill only some small, pale, gilded, and decorous room or cabinet enriched with all manner of littleoddities [mignardise],luxuries, and superfluities."3A libraryis not built to satisfyegotistical enjoyments but because there is "no more honest and assured means for acquiring a great renown among the peoples than to erect handsome and magnificentLibraries in order then to dedicate and consecrate them to the use of the public."4 Ideally made up of an "infinityof good, singular,and remarkable"works, the librarymust nonetheless limit its ambitionsand make choices: Still,in ordernot to leavethis quantity infinite by not defining it, and also in ordernot to throwthe curious out of all hope of beingable to accomplishand cometo theend of this handsomeenterprise, it seemsto me thatit is appropriateto do as thePhysicians do, who orderthe quantityof drugsaccording to theirquality, and to saythat one cannotlack gatheringall those[books] that have the qualities and conditionsrequired for being put in a Library.5

Naude's Advisthus functionsto guide the collectoras he makes necessaryselec- tionsand takes the appropriate "precautions,"since Naude indicatesthe authors and the worksabsolutely indispensable for his library. The divisionbetween the books that one absolutelymust possess and those thatmight (or must) be leftaside is onlyone of the waysto mitigatethe problem of the impossibilityof a universallibrary. There were other ways,which the lan- guage of the seventeenthand eighteenthcenturies indicated withthe veryterm definingthe place in whichthe books were kept: bibliotheque.In the entryfor that word in Furetiere'sDictionnaire (1690) the firstdefinition is the most traditional meaning: "Bibliotheque:Apartment or place destined for puttingbooks; gallery, building full of books. Also said in general of the books that are placed in this vessel." Next comes a second meaning designatinga book rather than a place: "Bibliothequeis also a Collection,a Compilationof severalworks of the same nature or of Authorswho have compiled all thatcan be [compiled] on the same subject." The termsfor a collectionvary considerably in these titles:thesaurus, corpus,catalogus, fiores, and so forth.In Frenchthe genre was usuallyqualified as a bibliotheque.Four years afterthe publicationof Furetiere'sDictionnaire, the Dic- tionnaireof the Academie Francaise bore witnessto this preference: "One also calls BibliothequesCollections and Compilationsof works of like nature." Three examples followthe definition:"La Bibliothequedes Peres, La NouvelleBibliotheque desPeres, La Bibliothequedu DroitFranqois." Eighteenth-centurybookseller-publishers published great numbers of these multiple-volumecollections gathering together published worksin a given genre such as novels, tales, or travelaccounts. Many collections,however, made use of boththe formulaand the terminaugurated by the Amsterdamperiodicals ofJean Le Clerc, the Bibliothequeuniverselle et historique (1686-93), the Bibliothequechoisie

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This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Sat, 30 May 2015 13:37:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions (1703-13), and the Bibliothequeancienne et moderne:Pour servir de suiteaux Biblio- thequesuniverselle et choisie ( 1714-27). In all, therewere thirty-oneperiodical pub- licationsin the French language, some of which lasted longer than others,that were offeredunder the titleof bibliothequebetween 1686 and 1789.6The termwas used throughoutthe century,with seventeen titlespublished before 1750 and fourteen after. Several of these publications were not periodicals, properly speaking,but imposingcollections of textsrelated by their genre or theirtargeted audience. One such was the Bibliothequeuniverselle des romans(1775-89, com- prising224 volumes in duodecimo format),which was presentedas a "periodical work in which is given the reasoned analysis of Novels-ancient and modern, French or translatedinto our language," which published extractsand summa- ries, historicaland criticalnotes, unabridged textsof novels, and tales both tra- ditionaland original.7Another was theBibliotheque universelle des dames (1785-97, comprising 156 octodecimo-sizedvolumes), which had encyclopedicambitions, given thatit contained travelnarratives, novels, works of history,morality, math- ematicsand astronomy,physics and naturalhistory, and all the liberal arts. These imposing"libraries," along withthe encyclopediasand the dictionaries, constituteda major part of the great publishingventures of the eighteenthcen- tury.As Louis-SebastienMercier noted, theyguaranteed the diffusionof knowl- edge-or at least of literarypleasure-and theyprovided a livingfor a multitude of the people who were scornfullycalled demi-litterateursor ecrivailleurs.8 The "libraries,"which aimed at being exhaustiveand universalin any given genre or domain, had a counterpointin the eighteenthcentury in a vastnumber of equally popular small,concise, and easilyhandled volumes named extraits,esprits, abreges, analyses,and so forth.9 The smaller,portable anthologieswere another formof "library"produced by the book trade. Even if both genres offeredextracts, their intention was not the same. The smallerworks aimed at eliminating,selecting, and reducing rather than accumulatinga multitudeof separate and dispersed worksin one collection, periodical or not. If the collectionsin a bibliothequewere constructedwith the aim of accomplishingthe impossibletask of assemblingfor every reader all the books concerninga particularsubject, an appeal to analyseand espritimplied that such a task was useless or harmful,and that the necessaryknowledge-available in a small number of works-needed to be concentratedor distilledlike a chemical substance. In that belief the compilers of portable anthologies agreed with the utopian writersof the century who rejected encyclopedic libraries as over- encumbered and superfluousand permittedonly a veryfew books in theirideal library. In his utopia (more accurately,his "uchronia") of 1771, L'An 2440, Louis- Sebastien Mercierpays a visitto the libraryof the kingand findsit to be somewhat singular: "In place of those four galleries of immense length,which contained many thousands of volumes, I could only findone small cabinet,in which were

40 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Sat, 30 May 2015 13:37:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions several books that seemed to me far fromvoluminous." Intrigued, Mercier asks the librarianwhat has happened, and the librariananswers thatbefore burning all the booksjudged to be "eitherfrivolous or useless or dangerous," the enlight- ened men of the twenty-fifthcentury saved the essential, which took up little room: "As we are neitherunjust nor like the Saracens, who heated their baths withmasterworks, we made a choice: wise men extractedthe substance from a thousand in-foliovolumes, all of whichthey transferred into a small duodecimo- sized volume, somewhatin the same waythat the skilfulchemists who extractthe virtuefrom plants concentrateit in a flaskand throwout the vulgar liquors.'"0 The tensionbetween the exhaustiveand the essentialthus ordered the complex and contradictoryrelations linking the library,in its usual spatial and architec- tural sense, to printgenres (only some of which were called bibliotheques)-rela- tions thatassigned to the "library"as a book, be it one volume or one of a series, the functionsof accumulationor selectionattributed to the libraryas a place."1 But a librarywas not only a place or a collection.Furetiere's Dictionnaire pro- poses a thirddefinition of the term(not found in the more concise entryof the Dictionnaireof the Academie): "One also calls Bibliothequethe books that contain the Catalogs of the books in the Bibliotheques.Gesner, Possevin, Photius, have made Bibliotheques.... FatherLabbe, a Jesuit,has made the Bibliothequedes biblio- thequesin an octavo-sizedbook thatcontains only the catalogue of the names of those who have writtenBibliotheques." 12 For anyone who mightwish to design an open and universallibrary, the possession of such catalogs was a necessity.The sum of theirtitles defined an ideal libraryfreed fromthe constraintsimposed by any one actual collectionand overflowingthe limitsinherent in anthologies and compilationsby the immaterialconstruction of a sort of libraryof all librariesin which nothing,or almost nothing,was lacking.Thanks to the circulationof the catalogs, the closed world of individual librariescould be transformedinto an infiniteuniverse of books noted, reviewed,visited, consulted, and, eventually, borrowed. Furetiere'sdefinition slips from catalogs of particularholdings toward an- other sort of work. A "library"is not only the inventoryof the books assembled in a specificplace; it can be an inventoryof all the books ever writtenon a given subject or by all the authorsof a given nation. Thus Furetierenotes: "In France, thereis not yeta generalBibliotheque of all the Authors.There are particularones by the Sieur La Croix du Maine Manceau and Anthoine Du Verdier.Spain has one by Nicolas Anthonio.There is also a Bibliothequed'Espagne of Peregrinus,and the [Bibliotheque]Des EscrivainsEspagnols by Andre Schot in 1608."13Thus the genre that the Dictionnaireevokes and designates with the term bibliothequeis defined according to two criteria: it lists authors, and it respects the national (French or Spanish) framework. At the end of the seventeenthcentury such "libraries"already had a long history.14 Three such workshad appeared before 1550, the Cathalogusillustrium

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This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Sat, 30 May 2015 13:37:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions virorumGermaniae suis ingeniiset lucubrationibusomnifariam exornantium of Johann Tritheim(Mainz, 1495), theBibliotheca Universalis, sive Catalogus omnium scriptorum locupletissimus,in tribuslinguis, Latina, Graeca, et Hebraica of Conrad Gesner (Zurich, 1545), and the IllustriumMaloris Britanniae Scriptorum of John Bale (Ips- wich, 1548). These three workshave several traitsin common: theyare written in Latin, they list for the most part ancient authors, and they privilege works writtenin the classicallanguages. Gesner innovatedby launching a new usage of bibliothecathat detaches the word from its material definitionand invests the librarywithout walls proposed in his book with universality.Finally, the three worksdiffer in theirorganization: Tritheim and Bale chose a chronologicalstruc- ture (the latterspecifying "in quasdam centuriasdivisum cum diversitatedoctri- narum atque; annorum recta supputatione per omnes aetates a lapheto sanctissimiNoah filio,ad annum domini M.D. XLVIII"), providingan alphabet- ical index to make the work easier to consult. Once again Gesner stands alone, optingfor alphabetical order but in the medievalstyle (unlike Tritheimand Bale) and classifyinghis authors by theirbaptismal names-that is, theirfirst names. The declared universalityof hisBibliotheca presupposes an exhaustivesurvey that retainsancients and contemporaries,printed texts and manuscripttexts, learned authors and less learned authors.15 When Anton Francesco Doni published his Libraria... Nella quale sonoscritti tuttigl'Autori vulgari con centodiscorsi sopra quelli: Tuttele tradutionifatte dell'altre lingue,nella nostra e una tavolageneralmente come si costumafraLibrari (, 1550), he inaugurateda new mode of presentationin thisgenre. 16 He innovatedin three ways: first,in language, since the Librariareviewed only authors or translatorsin the vernacularand is itselfwritten in the vulgar tongue. Furthermore,the inten- tion of the book was new: it containsno inventoryof all authors,no collectionof judgments. Rather,it is primarilydesigned to provide informationon titlesavail- able in the vernacular: "I have made thislibrary only to give knowledgeof all the books printedin the vulgar language so that people who like to read in our lan- guage may know how many workshave been published and what [theyare], not tojudge whichare good and whichbad." The thirdnovelty consisted in the work's format.Doni abandoned large formats(the quarto of Tritheimand Bale, the in- folio of Gesner) to publish his Librariain a more manageable duodecimo format that the reader who haunted bookshops in search of the titlessuggested by this ideal library(again, withoutwalls) could easilycarry with him. The small volume of the Librariapublished in 1550 had 144 pages and listed 159 authors,arranged in alphabetical order by theirfirst names (from Acarisio da Cento to Vincenzo Rinchiera). Doni plays learned games with the fourteen lettersof the alphabet around which his nomenclatureis organized. The initial of the given name of the authorslisted in a sectionwas also the initialof the given name of the dedicatee mentioned in a preamble heading the section,as well as the initial of the firstword in that brief text (for example, the A section was

42 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Sat, 30 May 2015 13:37:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions headed, "Abate Abati. Assai son l'opere . . ."). Afterthis list of all the authorswho had published in the vulgar tongue, Doni provides three other lists: a typology of vernaculargenres, an inventoryof textstranslated from Latin into Italian, and a "Tavola Generale di tuttilibri volgari" in the formof a bookseller'scatalog but withoutbibliographic information on specificeditions. A year afterthis first book Doni publishedLa SecondaLibraria listing texts that had not yetbeen printed.The principlein thiswork, an alphabetical inventory, was the same as in the first.As Amedeo Quondam has noted, the Librariaof manuscriptworks-"of Books thatthe Author has seen in manuscriptand which are not yet printed"-is largely fictional,enumerating invented authors and imaginarytitles. It providessomething like a "paradoxical and ironic double" to the Librariathat surveyspublished works.17 Doni's two librarieform a complex book. Their bibliographicdefinition ("they were not onlythe firstItalian national bibliographies;they were also the firstbibliographies in a vulgar tongue")18 fails to do justice to theirmultiple significance. They proclaim the excellence and the dignityachieved by the vulgar language; theyconstitute a repertoryof contem- porary authors; they dismantle, in a parodic key, the recipes for literary invention. Doni's work was known in France, where it gave direct inspirationto two "libraries,"the one published in 1584 by Francoisde La Croix du Maine and the other published in 1585 by Antoine du Verdier.19These two works share an interestin demonstratingthe superiorityof the Frenchlanguage over the Italian by citing the number of authors who wrote in the vernacular,by the fact that Frenchhad been used as a literarylanguage longer than Italian, and bythe scope of the learning of French expression. This intentionis explicit in the Premier volumede la Bibliothequedu Sieurde La Croixdu Maine: Qui estun cataloguegeneral de I toutessortes d'Autheurs, qui ontescrit en Franqoisdepuis cinq cents ans etplus, jusques ce jourd'huy(Paris, 1584). La Croix du Maine compares, to the advantage of France, the "threethousand authors"(in fact2,031) inventoriedin his "catalog" and the three hundred (in fact 159) who figuredin Doni's Libraria. In La Bibliothequed'Antoine Du Verdier,Seigneur de Vauprivas:Contenant le Cata- loguede tousceux qui ontescrit, ou traduictin Francois,et autres Dialectes de ce Royaume (Lyons, 1585) recognitionof the superiorityof France does not referexplicitly to . The model from which Du Verdier took inspiration was not Doni but Gesner: "In our timesConrad Gesner has gathered togetherall Authors what- soever in threelanguages, Hebraic, Greek,and Latin, to his great honor and the common benefit."It was in referenceto that ancient knowledge and that great example that Du Verdierconstructed the catalog by whichhe intended to prove the excellence of the moderns.Du Verdiersimply surveys modern authors "from sixtyor seventyyears past,"whom he findssufficiently numerous and excellent to obviate any need to name older writers,since before thattime "our [authors] were somewhatheavy in theirwritings."

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This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Sat, 30 May 2015 13:37:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions There are obvious similaritiesbetween Doni's Libraria and La Croix du Maine's Bibliotheque.Both inventorybooks (printedand in manuscript)written or translatedinto the vulgar tongue; both offerbrief biographies of some of the authors whose worksthey list; both classifyauthors in strictalphabetical order by author's given name. There are nonethelessfundamental differences arising from their quite dif- ferentways of conceivingthe librarywithout walls. First,there is a physicaland formal differencebetween the two works: far frombeing a manageable small- formatbook in the manner of the Libraria,La Croix du Maine's Bibliothequewas a majesticfolio volume, a libroda banco,to use Armando Petrucci'sterminology, not a libroda bisaccia(saddlebag book) or a librettoda mano (littlehandbook).20 Anton FrancescoDoni's Librariawas founded on the practiceof literarynovelties; La Croix du Maine's Bibliothequewas based on the scholastictradition of common- place books. A literateman withoutoriginality, but not withoutprolixity, La Croix du Maine scrupulouslycalculated his compilation activities.He states that he wrotethree hours per day,figuring that if in one hour he filledone sheetof paper of over one hundred lines, his yearlyproduction was some one thousand sheets. It is certainthat his work was organized intellectuallyaccording to the principle of the notebook or the commonplace book and that it gathered under one heading extractsfrom various authors'works. Hence the centralimportance that La Croix du Maine gave to the instrumentsfor puttingorder into this prolifer- ating material. La Croix du Maine's workalso differedfrom Doni's in thatthe Premier Volume of his Bibliothequewas "dedicated and presented to the King," whose engraved portraitfigured on the page facingthe dedication addressed to him. In both the Desseins,ou Projectsof 1583 and thePremier Volume de la Bibliothequepublished the followingyear, La Croix du Maine pursued the same aim of obtainingthe sov- ereign'sprotection, which had cash value in termsof gratificationsand posts. The originalityof this"notice to erecta library,"which preceded Naude's projectby a half century,lay in La Croix du Maine's desire to embody the immaterialand universallibrary of locicommunes in a real library,one of whose bookcases (one of the centBuffets) is depicted in the work. Thus it was on the basis of the practice of the commonplace book that the totallyoriginal system of classificationproposed by La Croix du Maine should be understood.21The work was divided into seven "orders": "sacred things,""arts and sciences,""descriptions of the Universe both in general and in particular," "the human race," "famous men in War,""the worksof God," and "miscellanies of various Memoirs,"subdivided into a totalof 108 "classes."Unlike the twenty- one categories in Gesner's Pandectarumsive Partitionum universalium .. . libriXXI (Zurich, 1548), thisorganization was not intended to constructa tree of knowl- edge thatproceeded by successivedivisions. In Gesner's work,the arteset scientia

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This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Sat, 30 May 2015 13:37:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions thatmake up philosophiawere divided intosubstantiales (subdivided intophysica or naturaliphilosophia, metaphysica ettheologia gentilium, ethica or moraliphilosophia, oeco- nomica,politica, jurisprudentia, medicina, theologia christiana) and praeparantes.The lattercategory was subdividedinto ornantes(historia, geographia, divinatio et magia, and artesilliteratae et mechanicae) and necessariae.These latterare furtherdivided into mathematicae(arithmetica, geometria, musica, astronomia, and astrologia),and ser- mocinales,which were grammaticaet philologia,dialectica, rhetorica, and poetica.A "Tabula de singulis pandectarum libris" arranged the various bibliographical classes according to a systematicorder-the order of the divisionsof philosophia, understoodas a trajectoryof knowledgeleading fromthe triviumand the quadrivi- um to Christian theology.Unlike Gesner's taxonomy,the one proposed by La Croix du Maine has no overall governingsystem, but simplyjuxtaposes conve- nient headings in view of gatheringtogether extracts and commonplaces. The fourth"order," for example, includes the bookcases devoted to "Man and what is dependent on him,""Diseases of Men and theirremedies," "Illustrious and other Women,""Worldly Wisdom, or Instructionfor men," "Divers exercisesof Nobles and Gentlemen,""Miscellaneous exercises for the mind or the body,""Divers traf- ficsand commerce of men on sea and on land," "Divers customsand fashionsof living everywherein the universe,""Men of honest exercise,"and "Officersof long robe, or of theJudiciary." Because it was to be an example worthyof being imitated,the "perfectand accomplished" libraryset up by the king was to be "the means for renderingthe less learned or the totallyignorant well informedand knowledgeable,and also to make the vice-riddenexercise virtueif theyconform to theirPrince." Similarly, only the approval of the king could give authorityto the PremierVolume de la Bibliothequepublished in 1584 and to all the other books that were supposed to followit. At theend of hisdedicatory epistle, signed "FRANCOIS DE LA CROIX DV MAINE, theanagram for which is RACE DV MANS, SI FIDEL' A SON ROY," La Croixdu Maine suggestsa more concreteversion of the connectionwith the sovereign:"If your Majesty should desire to know what are the other [volumes] that I have writtenand composed for the ornamentationand illustrationof your so famous and flourishingKingdom, I am ready to provide a reading (when it may please you to so command me) of the Discourse that I had printed five years ago touchingthe generalcatalog of myworks." Doni's Librariahad multiplededicatees (one for each letterof the alphabet) and was aimed at a broader audience. La Croix du Maine's Bibliothequesupposes an exclusive relationship,established in proximityby reading aloud, between an author in search of protectionand the monarch whose patronage he seeks. A finaldifference between Doni's workand thatof La Croix du Maine is that the Florentine'swork was solidlyconnected with publishing activities; it was "con- structedin directcontact with (and probablybacked by) two of the publishersof

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This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Sat, 30 May 2015 13:37:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions greatest cultural importance in the mid-sixteenthcentury," the Venetians Gabriele Giolitode' Ferrari,the publisherof the firstedition and of the complete edition of the work, and Francesco Marcolini, the publisher of the Seconda Libraria.22La Croix du Maine's workoriginated in the constructionof his private library,begun in his universityyears. That was the collection of printed books and manuscriptmemoirs that La Croix du Maine had transportedto Paris in 1582. The librarythat La Croix du Maine gatheredtogether and, in part,produced provided support for all his undertakings.The librarypublished in 1584 was in factlittle more than an epitomeof a more ambitiousundertaking, the projected GrandeBibliotheque Franqoise (and its twin,a BibliothequeLatine). ImitatingGesner, La Croix du Maine added to his Bibliothequesvolumes of PandectesLatines et Franpoises ("to wit,a veryample Catalogue of all the Authors who have writtenin each art, science, or profession of studies, which I have divided according to the seven arts thatwe call liberal") and several volumes of whathe called a mentionnaire,"which is likea book of commonplaces,or an Aggre- gation of authors who have made mentionof particularthings." Three differentprinciples of classificationexist concurrently in La Croix du Maine's works.The firstorganizing criterion is the categoryof the author. The author function,as Foucault definesit, is already sketchedout here.23In his only published volume,as in his GrandeBibliotheque, La Croix du Maine makes thisthe basic criterionfor assigning discourses, which are organized alphabeticallyby their authors' given names. In announcing that he will provide authors' "lives" (written,according to La Croix du Maine, in imitationof Suetonius, Plutarch, and Paolo Giovio), he equates men of letterswith militaryleaders, famous for theirexploits, and withprinces and grandees, mastersof theirdeeds. Nonetheless,this first scheme for assigningworks did not neglectthe power of patronage. La Croix du Maine demonstratesthis when he promisesto indicate, for all the works mentioned in his unpublished GrandeBibliotheque, "above all [emphasis mine] the name of those men and women to whom they were dedi- cated, withoutomitting their full and entire qualities." A work thus belongs as much to the person to whom it has been dedicated as it does to the person who has writtenit and, in the ideal libraryas on the titlepage, the two names of the author and the patron stood as proof of this. A thirdcriterion for classifying works eliminates assignment to an individual in favor of placing each work withinan order or class of knowledge. It is the tensionbetween a proper name and a commonplacecategory that underlies Ges- ner's dual enterprise,the Bibliothecauniversalis of 1545 and the Pandectarum... libriXXI threeyears later-a workthat was presentedas "Secondus hic Bibliothe- cae nostrae Tomus est, totius philosophiae et omnium bonarum artium atque studiorum Locos communes et Ordines universales simul et particularescom-

46 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Sat, 30 May 2015 13:37:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions plectens." That same tension is reflectedin La Croix du Maine's bibliographic zeal, even though his grandiose projectswere never realized. The almost simultaneouspublication of the two Bibliotheques(May 1584 for La Croix du Maine; 1585, withan end printingdate of 15 December 1584, for Du Verdier) raises a problem. La Croix du Maine took the initiative and preempted any possible accusationthat he had plagiarized a work as yetunpub- lished,but whose publicationhe knewwas imminent,as shownby the entryunder "Antoine du Verdier" in the PremierVolume de la Bibliotheque.Declaring that he had never known of the existence of Du Verdier's work, La Croix du Maine claimed anteriorityfor his own venture,begun more than fifteenyears before. He stressed the great distance ("more than a hundred leagues") that separated theirplaces of residence,Paris and Lyons,where Du Verdierhad settledin 1580 and held the post of controleurgeneral desfinances. For good measure, La Croix du Maine stated his scorn of plagiarism,and he founded the authorityof his own book on the resources of his libraryand on his own knowledge: "As for the authors I have mentionedin mywork, I have seen or read them,and have them stillbefore me forthe mostpart withouthaving borrowed them." As in the travel narrationsof the age, auto-psie-theaction of seeing withone's own eyes ("I have seen them") became the exclusive guarantee of truth. That certificationof authenticitythrough direct experience is not withoutparadox in an author who compiled extractsand commonplaces in innumerable notebooks that he then presented as learningitself. Du Verdier,who was firsta financialofficer in the election of Forez, then controleurgeneral des finances,24 weighed heavier in the social scales than La Croix du Maine, a simple provincialgentleman who had moved to Paris. Du Verdier's response was two-pronged:first, he mocked the erudite rodomontades of his rival and expressed doubts about the existenceof the many works La Croix du Maine promised. Furthermore,after Du Verdierexamined the workin question (which he lists as being currentlyprinted in Paris in his entry"Francois de La Croix du Maine" in his own Bibliotheque),he questioned the accuracyof the infor- mation given by La Croix du Maine because the latter surveyed fictitiousor unproductiveauthors, including in his work"several [authors] that never were in nature,or if theywere, have writtennothing, as he himselfconfesses." In its format(a heavyfolio volume) and in itsform (organized alphabetically by name), Antoine Du Verdier'sBibliotheque is akin to La Croix du Maine's work, but it is constructedon a differentprinciple. Du Verdier'simmaterial library is not directlydependent on the constitutionof the author's own collectionbut is rather a conceptual entitydetached fromany particularmaterial presence. Du Verdier's catalog is indeed a "library,"but it is an all-inclusivelibrary. In this exhaustiveinventory every reader mustbe able to findwhat he or she needs and use thatinformation to constructa librarymade up of real books.

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This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Sat, 30 May 2015 13:37:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions It was in order to facilitatethat task that Antoine Du Verdiergave the biblio- graphic informationthat was lacking in the epitomepublished by La Croix du Maine. There was thusno contradictionbetween the design of a "universallibrary of French books," whichnecessarily had no physicalreality, and the making of a bibliographicinstrument useful to all who mightwant to create a collection. The various meanings given to the termbibliotheque thus clearlyshow one of the major tensionsthat inhabitedliterate persons of the early modern age and caused them anxiety.A universal library(or at least universal in one order of knowledge) cannot be other than immaterial,reduced to the dimensions of a catalog, a nomenclature,or a survey.Conversely, any librarythat is actually installedin a specificplace and that is made up of real worksavailable for con- sultationand reading, no matterhow rich it mightbe, gives only a truncated image of all accumulable knowledge.The irreduciblegap betweenideally exhaus- tive inventoriesand necessarilyincomplete collections was experienced with intensefrustration. It led to extravagantventures assembling-in spirit,if not in reality-all possible books, all discoverabletitles, all worksever written."When it was proclaimedthat the Librarycontained all books, the firstimpression was one of extravaganthappiness."

As the twentiethcentury wanes, our dream is to be able to surmount the contradictionthat has long haunted WesternEuropeans' relationshipwith the book. The libraryof the futureseems indeed to be in a sense a librarywithout walls,as were the librariesthat Gesner, Doni, and La Croix du Maine erected on paper. Unlike theircatalogs, which furnished authors' names, the titlesof works, and at timessummaries of or extractsfrom the works,the libraryof the futureis inscribedwhere all textscan be summoned, assembled, and read-on a screen. In the world of remote relaysmade possible by digitaland electroniccommuni- cations,texts are no longerprisoners of theiroriginal physical, material existence. Separated fromobjects, texts can be transmitted;there is no longer a necessary connectionbetween the place in whichthey are conservedand the place in which they are read. The opposition, long held to be insurmountable,between the closed world of any finitecollection and the infiniteuniverse of all the textsever writtenis thus theoreticallyannihilated: now the catalog of all catalogs, ideally listingthe totalityof writtenproduction, corresponds to electronicaccess to texts universallyavailable forconsultation. This projectionof the future,written here in the presenttense, retains some- thingof the basicallycontradictory utopias proposed by Louis-Sebastien Mercier and Etienne Boullee. Still,it is perhaps not too soon to reflecton the effectsof the change thatthe projectionpromises and announces. If textsare emancipated fromthe formthat has conveyed them since the firstcenturies of the Christian

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This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Sat, 30 May 2015 13:37:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions era-the codex,the book composed of signaturesfrom which all printed objects withwhich we are familiarderive-by the same tokenall intellectualtechnologies and all operations working to produce meaning become similarlymodified. "Forms effectmeanings," D. F. McKenzie reminds us,25and his lesson, which should be takento heart,warns us to be on guard againstthe illusionthat wrongly reduces textsto theirsemantic content. When it passes fromthe codexto the mon- itor screen the "same" textis no longer trulythe same because the new formal mechanismsthat deliver it to the reader modifythe conditions of its reception and itscomprehension. When the text is transmittedby a new technique and embodied in a new physicalform, it can be subjected to manipulationby a reader who is no longer limited,as withthe printedbook, to adding hand-writtennotes in the spaces left blank in typographiccomposition.26 At the same time,the end of the codexwill signifythe loss of acts and representationsindissolubly linked to the book as we now know it. In the formit has acquired in WesternEurope since the beginning of the Christianera, the book has been one of the mostpowerful metaphors used for conceivingof the cosmos, nature, and the human body.27If the object that has furnishedthe matrixof this repertoryof images (poetic, philosophical, sci- entific)should disappear, the referencesand the procedures that organize the "readability"of the physicalworld, equated witha book in codexform, would be profoundlyupset as well. To realize the dream of the Renaissance bibliographersof makingthe partic- ular place in which the reader finds himselfcoincide perfectlywith universal knowledge,thus puttingthat knowledge within his grasp,inevitably presupposes a new definitionof the concept of the text,wrenched away fromits immediate association (so evidentto us) withthe specificform of the book-the codex-that some seventeenor eighteencenturies ago replaced another form,the volumenor scroll.28The historian'smusings presented here lead to a question essential for the present-not the overworkedquestion of the supposed disappearance of writing,which is more resistantthan has been thought,but the question of a possible revolutionin the formsof itsdissemination and appropriation. -Translated byLydia Cochrane

Notes

1. Jorge Luis Borges, "The Libraryof Babel," in Labyrinths:Selected Stories and OtherWrit- ings,ed. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby(New York, 1964), 54-55. 2. Gabriel Naud6, Advispour dresserune bibliotheque,reproduction of the 1644 edition, with preface by Claude Jolly,"L'Advis, manifeste de la bibliotheque erudite" (Paris,

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This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Sat, 30 May 2015 13:37:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 1990). On Naude's text,see Jean Viardot,"Livres rares et practiquesbibliophiliques," in Histoirede l'editionfrancaise,ed. Henri-JeanMartin and Roger Chartier,4 vols. (Paris, 1982-86), vol. 2, Le livre triomphant:1660-1830, 446-67, esp. 448-50; Viardot, "Naissance de la bibliophilie:Les Cabinets de livresrares," in Histoiredes bibliotheques francaises,3 vols. (Paris, 1988-91), vol. 2, Les Bibliothequessous l'AncienRegime, 1530- 1789, ed. ClaudeJolly,269-89, esp. 270-71. 3. Naud, Advis,104. 4. Ibid., 12. 5. Ibid., 37. 6. Jean Sgard, ed., Dictionnairedes journaux, 1600-1789 (Paris, 1991), nos. 144-74. 7. Roger Poirier,La Bibliothequeuniverselle des romans:Redacteurs, textes, publics (Geneva, 1977). 8. Louis-Sebastien Mercier,Tableau de Paris: NouvelleEdition revue et augmentee,12 vols. (Amsterdam,1782-83), vol. 6, Dictionnaires,294-95. 9. For example, see Hans-JurgenLuisebrink, "L'Histoire des Deux Indes' et ses 'extraits': Un Mode de dispersiontextuelle au XVIIIe siecle,"Litterature 69 (1988): 28-41 (spe- cial issue on "Intertextualiteet Revolution"). 10. Louis-SebastienMercier, L'An 2440: Reves'il enfutjamais, ed. RaymondTrousson (Bor- deaux, 1971), chap. 28, "La Bibliothequedu roi,"247-7 1. For quotations,see 247-78 and 250-5 1. 11. Jean-Marie Goulemot, "En guise de conclusion: Les Bibliotheques imaginaires (fic- tionsromanesques et utopies),"in Histoiredes bibliothequesfrancaises, 2:500-511. 12. Furetiere was alluding not only to the Bibliothecauniversalis of Gesner but also to ,S.J., qua agiturde rationestudiorum (Rome, 1593; Venice, 1603; Cologne, 1607); Photius,Myriobiblion sive Bibliotheca librorum quos legitet censuitPhotius ... Graeceedidit David Hoeschelius... etnotis illustravit, latine vero reddidit etschohiis auxit Andreas Schottus (Rouen, 1653, afterthe Greek and Latin eds. published in Augsburg in 1601 and 1606); Philippe Labbe, S.J.,Bibliotheca bibliothecarum curis secundisauctior (Paris, 1664; Rouen, 1672). 13. The two Spanish "libraries"that Furetierementions are Nicolas Antonio,Bibliotheca hispana,sive Hispanorum qui ... scriptoaliquid consignaverunt notitia (Rome, 1672; 1696); and Andreas Schott [or Andreas SchottPeregrinus], S.J., Hispaniae bibliotheca,seu de academiciisac bibliothecis;item elogia et nomenclator clarorum Hispaniae scriptorum (Frank- furt,1608). 14. Theodore Besterman, The Beginningsof SystematicBibliography (Oxford, London, 1935); Luigi Balsamo, La bibliografia:Storia di una tradizione(Florence, 1984), available in English as Bibliography:History of a Tradition,trans. William A. Pettas (Berkeley, 1990). Helmut Zedelmaier,Bibliotheca Universalis und Bibliotheca Selecta: Das Problemder Ordnungdas gelehrtenWissens in derfriihenNeuzeit (Cologne, 1992), was published after thisessay was written. 15. There is an abundant bibliographyon Gesner as a bibliographer:see Jens Christian Bay, "Conrad Gesner (1516-1565), The Father of Bibliography:An Appreciation," Papersof the Bibliographical Society of America 10 (1916): 53-88, published separatelyas ConradGesner, The Fatherof Bibliography: An Appreciation(Chicago, 1916); Paul-Emile Schazmann,"Conrad Gesneret les debutsde la bibliographieuniverselle," Libri, 1952- 53, 37-49; Josef Mayerhofer,"Conrad Gesner als Bibliograph und Enzyklopadist," Gesnerus3/4 (1965): 176-94; Hans Widman, "Nachwort,"in Konrad Gesner, Bib- liothecaUniversalis und Appendix(Osnabruck, Germ., 1966), i-xii; Hans Fischer, "Conrad Gesner (1516-1565) as Bibliographerand Encyclopedist,"Library, 5th ser., 21 (1966): 269-81; Hans H. Wellisch,"Conrad Gesner: A Bio-Bibliography,"Journal of theSociety for theBibliography of Natural History (1975): 151-247, 2nd ed., rev. and

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This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Sat, 30 May 2015 13:37:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions published under the same title(Zug, Switz., 1984); Luigi Balsamo, "II canone biblio- graficodi Konrad Gesner e il concettodi bibliotecapubblica nel Cinquecento,"in Studi di biblioteconomiae storia del libroin onoredi FrancescoBarberi (Rome, 1976), 77-96; Joseph Hejmic and V.AclavBok, Gesnereuropaische Bibliographie und ihreBeziehung zum Spdthumanissmusin Bohmen und Mdhren (Prague, 1988); Alfredo Serrai, ConradGesner, ed. Maria Cochetti,with a bibliographyof Gesner's worksby Marco Menato (Rome, 1990). 16. For a reprintof this text,see Anton Francesco Doni, La libraria,ed. Vanni Bramanti (Milan, 1972). See also Cecilia RicottiniMarsili-Libelli, Anton Francesco Doni, scrittoree stampatore(Florence, 1960); Amedeo Quondam, "La letteraturein tipografia,"in Let- teraturaitaliana, ed. AlbertoAsor Rosa, 8 vols. (Turin, 1983), vol. 2, Produzionee con- sumo,555-686, esp. 620-36. 17. Quondam, "La letteraturain tipografia,"628-29. 18. Besterman,Beginnings of Systematic Bibliography, 23. 19. I shall quote fromDu Verdier'sand La Croix du Maine's worksfrom the copies in the Bibliotheque nationale de Paris. On these two Bibliotheques,see Claude Longeon, "AntoineDu Verdieret Francoisde La Croix du Maine,"Actes du ColloqueRenaissance- Classicismedu Maine (Le Mans, 1971; Paris, 1975), 213-33. 20. Armando Petrucci,"Alle originidel libro moderno: Libri da banco, libro da bisaccia, librettida mano," in Libri,scrittura e pubblico nel Rinascimento: Guida storicae critica,ed. Armando Petrucci(Laterza, 1979), 213-33. 21. On the historyof classification,see the very dogmatic E. I. Samurin, Geschichteder bibliothekarisch-bibliographischenKlassi/ikation, 2 vols., originallypublished in Russian (Moscow, 1955; Leipzig, 1964); on La Croix du Maine, vol. 1, 106-9. Samurin's Ge- schichteis also available as a singlevolume (Munich, 1977). See also Henri-JeanMartin, "Classementset conjonctures,"in Histoirede l'editionfrancaise,ed. Martinand Chartier, vol. 1, Le Livreconquerant: Du MoyenAge au milieudu XVIIe siecle,429-41. 22. Quondam, "La letteraturain tipografia,"623. 23. Michel Foucault,"Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur?",Bulletin de la SocieteFran aise de Philosophie 44 (1969): 73-104, reprintedin Littoral9 (1983): 3-32. Also available in English as "What Is an Author?" in TextualStrategies: Perspectives in Post-StructuralCriticism, ed. Josue V. Harari (Ithaca, N.Y., 1979), 141-60. 24. Claude Longeon, "AntoineDu Verdier (11 novembre 1544-25 septembre 1600)," in Les Ecrivainsforeziensdu XVIe siecle:Repertoire bio-bibliographique (Saint-Etienne, France, 1970), 288-316. 25. D. F. McKenzie,Bibliography and theSociology of Texts (London, 1986), 4. 26. Roger E. Stoddard,Marks in BooksIllustrated and Explained(Cambridge, Mass., 1985). As examples of studies thattake handwrittenentries presented in printedworks as a fundamentalsource of a historyof reading and interpretation,see CathyN. Davidson, Revolutionand theWord: The Rise of theNovel in America(Oxford, 1986), 75-79; Lisa Jardine and AnthonyGrafton, "'Studied for Action': How Gabriel Harvey Read His Livy,"Past and Present129 (1990): 30-78. 27. The fundamentalwork on the various definitionsof the metaphorof the book in the Westernphilosophical tradition is Hans Blumenberg,Die Lesbarkeitder Welt (Frankfurt, 1981; 2nd ed., 1983). 28. On the difficultand controversialquestion of the shiftfrom the volumento the codex, see Colin H. Robertsand T. C. Skeat, TheBirth of the Codex (London, 1983; reprinted., 1987); Alain Blanchard, ed., Les Debutsdu codex,Actes de la Journee d'etudes organi- see a Paris par l'Institutde Papyrologiede la Sorbonne et l'Institutde Recherche et

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This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Sat, 30 May 2015 13:37:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions d'Histoire des Textes, 3-4 July 1985 (Turnhout,BeIg., 1989); and the revisionpro- posed in Guglielmo Cavallo, "Testo, Libro, Lettura,"in Lo spazio letterariodi Roma antica, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo, Paolo Fedeli, and Andrea Giardina, 5 vols. (Rome, 1989), vol. 2, La circolazionedel testo, 307-41; Cavallo, "Libro e cultura scritta,"in Storia di Roma, Arnaldo Momigliano and Aldo Schiavone, eds., 4 vols. (Turin, 1988-), vol. 4, Caratterie morfologie,693-734.

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This content downloaded from 128.192.114.19 on Sat, 30 May 2015 13:37:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions