It
is true that when nothing really happens, we say that time is passing slowly
and that when we have spent hours or days filled with passion, we say that time
passed in an instant. But this happens only when we are into boredom or
elation. Try to think again about a dull day or week that you have spent some
time ago. You 'll remember little things, and those hours or days, which were
all alike, would hold just a little space in your memory. There are people that
when reaching the end of their lives, after they did every day the same things,
look backwards and think that they never really "exist" to the world.
Everything passed with tremendous speed. On the other hand, consider of a day
or a week in which many things happened, one after another, all touching (either
were joys or pains). You will remember full hours or days and you will get the
impression that you lived a lot.
I think this is one of the reasons why people always
devote themselves to restoring the past, whether through the mouth of the elders
who narrated stories around the fire, or through stories written in books. Whoever,
along with personal recollections, has in his memory the day that was murdered
Julius Caesar and the battle of Waterloo, remembers more things than someone
who knows nothing about what happened to others. I, along with my memories,
have some very moving ones, about things that didn't happen to me but to my
father or my mother or my grandmother and they had narrated them to me (often
many times, alas), so they came to be part of my personal memory. Remembering
more things, it's like to have lived longer. I think this is a good reason to
read books, whatever are the other reasons, aesthetic or cultural, which
usually people put forward. Of course, if we read because they force us to do
so,(as sometimes happens in school), the experience is boring and so is one of
those which does not leave traces in memory. But if we read because of passion,
then it is something completely different.
Valentino Bompiani, a great publisher, once said: "A man
who reads is worth for two." We can understand this phrase in the sense
that anyone who reads is more cultivated and more aware of things and because
of that, it may be more possible for him to have success in his life. But we
know very well that sometimes people who are not worth anything and who have
never read anything, become successful. But it's not for success that we should
read. It is to live longer. In my childhood have happened to me, like to
everyone else, so many things, and even if I got bombed, and I can assure you
that even the memory of many nights we spent in anti-aircraft shelter, and we
heard explosions over our heads and yet we were playing with other children, is
an exciting piece of my past. But I feel that I lived a very long childhood and
a full one, just because it is full of memories that I stole from others, stole
from the Sadok and Ianez and ran through boats to the seas of Malaysia, from d'
Artagnan that dueled with the Baron of Winter, from the man with the mask with
a passion for chasing Diana Palmer or by Renzo and Lucia who left Lake Como.
Yes, because that part of the greater life that conquers when reading does not
distinguish between high art and entertainment literature, are part of my life
and even the stairs of Odessa's "Battleship Potemkin" and stagecoach
chases I've seen in westerns. Also, deep inside, are part of my life and even
the non-fictional cases, stories with dinosaurs, the way in which Madame Curie
discovered radium, some eternal questions about the world, life and
death.
In any case do not let others "blackmail" you
that you must read only important books. I have vivid and wonderful memories of
books probably meaningless, but they filled my afternoons with elation. I am
very grateful to all those who wrote about me. They gave me such a long life
that I fail to remember all of it at once and I must remember it in doses. So I
hope to live for a long time, to remember all that i was narrated. Maybe when
we are very young, we do not think it is worth living for a long time, but I
assure you that as the years pass (already after the thirties and forties), to
have lived more is nothing contemptible. Therefore, to read now is a good
guarantee, not for the times of old age, but for a maturity that will not take
a long time to come. And this is beyond the pleasure we will feel now. If every
television show is similar to the one of the previous week, any book, even the
stupidest, is different from another.
Umberto Eco, 2001
"Del furore di possedere libri"
"
The passion/fury of owning books "
translation
by Emy B.
