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The/Book Collector

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The/Book Collector The B ook C ollector / by Charles Nodier CAM BRIDGE A AC HU ETT , M SS S S 1 95 1 Foreword essa No dier 1 7 80- 1 844 The accompanying y by Charles , , e i Librarian of the Ars nal in Paris , bibliographer, bibl ophile , and a literary leader of the Romantic Movement, originally “ ’ a L Amateur appe red in French under the title des Livres , ‘ L i i t u —meme 1 1 es Fran a s Pe n s ar E x s 84 . in g p , Paris , , Vol III , 2 - 0 1 9 . pp It seemed to me excellent, and so agreeably of its period, that I asked my friend Barbara Sessions to translate S he as it, which has now done , far as I know, for the first time . Together we have edited the few parts ! hich seemed slightly pedantic , and have added some notes which will i . expla n the more abstruse literary, or bibliophilic , allusions N dier notwith . o Book collectors , M to the contrary standing , are Still very much alive , and can again be found even in the harried ranks of capitalists . But the learned French librarian was nearer right about his own pamphlets : They have indeed faded from memory . Now I hope this one of them may survive for a few more years, despite the ephemeral form in which you receive it . August 1 9 5 1 PHIL I P HOFER ’ Un Bouquiniste dans l Ivresse ’ ’ un i e i d achéter ci t éc Rien n égal e ma jo e j v ens pour nquan e us 1 780! tt iti est xc i t Horac e imprimé 5 Amsterdam en Ce e ed on e ess vemen t c i é t ! précieuse : d cbaque pag e elle es r bl e de fau es H é D i ( 1 844) Lithograph by onor aum er, The B ook Collector uicon ue est lou a isse en lou ! q p g p , ’ ! u rt i u C est le pl s ce a n de beauco p . HOU LD S like to warn you , from the outset, that this I essay will be as lively as a speech by Mathurin Cordier 1 or 2 D es autere ! and a chapter of p God, Nature , the Academy have enclosed my imagination within these narrow bound o to . aries , which it is no l nger able overstep At least you can always refrain from reading me , and in that are more tu for nate than I who , following the dictates of a too exigent publisher, have no choice but to write . The draw ings were made , the plates were ready; and the only thing needed to complete the i ssue was a long and unprofitable t ! u d . ! 1 o text ell, then here is But y will be isappointed if you expect to find in it one of those clever portraits to o which your favorite authors have accustomed y u . If what you are seeking is an original and telling sketch of the ’ ’ bou uzmSte - - q , the second hand book addict, then you need . e go no further Pause h re , and, following the modest advice ! of certain almanacs : See illustration on opposite page . The collector of books is a type which we would do well to define , since everything points to his disappearance in the very near future . The printed book has existed at the most for some four hundred years , yet books are already accumulating in some countries in a manner that threatens the very equilibrium of the globe . Civilization has reached its . the most unexpected of ages , the age of paper Now that e everyone writ s books , no one Shows any particular eager to . ness buy them Besides, our young authors are well on { 7 1 the way to building up whole libraries for themselves out of their own works . They need only be left to their own devices . If we were to subdivide the species book collector into - its various classes , the top most rank in the whole subtle p C 0 91 . S and capricious family should without doubt be given to the bibliophile . The bibliophile is a man endowed with a certain amount of intelligence and taste , who derives pleasure from works . his of genius, imagination, and feeling He enjoys mute [ 8 ] — conversations with great minds unilateral conversations e which can be begun at will , dropped without discourt sy , and resumed without insistence ; and , from this love of the absent author whose words have been made known to him in through the device of writ g, he comes insensibly to love the material symbol in which those words are clothed . His feeling for the book is like the love of one friend for ’ another s portrait, or of the lover for the portrait of his mistress ; and, like the lover , he wants the loved object to look its best . He would not be happy to leave the precious volume that has so enthralled him clad in the drab 1t i s i n habiliments of poverty , when his power to clothe His it luxuriously in watered silk and morocco . library, like the gown of a favorite , is resplendent with gold lace ; his and books, by their outward look alone,are worthy — as Virgil would have said of the regard of consuls . Alexander was a bibliophile . ! hen victory put into his ff D was hands the rich co ers of arius , he able to fill them with the rarest treasures of Persia . The works of Homer were among the spoils . k Bibliophiles today are vanishing along with ings . In is the past, the kings themselves were bibliophiles and it to their enlightened munificen ce that we owe the copy ing of so many manuscripts of inestimable value . Alcuin 3 Gruthu se Gru thu se was the y of Charlemagne , just as y was the Alcuin of the Dukes of Burgundy . The salamanders of Francois Ier will become as widely known through his beautiful books as through his architectural monuments . His son , Henri II , entrusted the secret of his love cipher to the magnificent bindings in his library, just as he did to the hi sumptuous decoration of s palaces . The volumes once [ 9 ] ’ 4 owned by Anne d Autriche still delight the connoisseur by their chaste and noble elegance . Great lords and statesmen echoed the taste of their sover ei ns g , and there were as many rich libraries as there were families with shields and escutcheons . Almost down to our ’ d Urfé own day, the houses of Guise , , de Thou , Richelieu , Molé S é uier Lamoi Mazarin, Bignon , , Pasquier, g , Colbert, g ’ ’ d EstréeS d Aumont e non, , , de la Valli re , rivalled one another in their treasures of learned and serviceable books . I have named but a few of these noble bibliophiles , quite at ran dom , in order to spare myself the tedious task of naming tu them all . To compile fu re additions to this list will be a less embarrassing task to those who come after us ! Even more remarkable finance itself once showed a has ! ! love for books . How it since changed ing Francois ’ Ier s treasurer, Grolier, alone , did more for the progress of typography and binding than will ever be accomplished by r all our paltry medals and our grudging litera y budgets . A 5 Préfon d mere dealer in wood, M . Girardot de , bolstered his slightly insecure claim to nobility by using his money im in the same worthy fashion, thus earning at least the mortality of the bibliographies and catalogues . Our bankers of today Show no signs of envying him . o Alas , the bibliophile is no longer t be found in the upper classes of our p rog ressive society (I ask your pardon for the adjective , but it will have to stand , by your leave , along with the verb to prog ress ) ; the bibliophile of the present artl st day is the scholar, the man of letters , the , the small t u independent proprietor or the man of moderate for ne , who finds in dealing with books some relief from the bore dom and insipidity of dealing with other men , and who is , t to some extent, consoled for the deceptive na ure of the [ 1 0 ] f other a fections by a taste which , though perhaps misplaced, n is at least i nocent . But such a man will never amass impor tant collections ; it is , alas , the exception if his acquisitions are Still there to meet his dying gaze or to be left as a modest legacy to his children . I know one bibliophile of this sort (and could tell you his name if I chose) who has Spent fifty years of his hardworking life in building up a library, and in selling his library in order to live . There is one a bibliophile for you , and I warn you that he is of the last of the species . Today, it is love of money that prevails ; ff books no longer o er the slightest interest . The opposite of the bibliophile is the bibliophobe . Our great gentlemen of the political and banking worlds , our great statesmen , our great men of letters , are for the most l h be part bib iop o s . For this imposing aristocracy which our the happy advances in civilization have brought to fore , education and human enlightenment in general date at the most from Voltaire . In their eyes , Voltaire is a myth which sums up the discovery of letters by Trismegistus and the invention of printing by Gutenberg .
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