Reading is a subversive activity

In 1995, the bishop of Évreux, Jacques Gaillot, was called by Pope John Paul II to go to Rome. There, because of his activism in defence of, among others, the Palestinian people, the Holy Father told him that on the following day, Friday, January 13, at 12 o’clock, he would cease to be Bishop of Évreux and that he would be given instead the bishopric of Partenia, in the highlands of Sétif in Algeria, where Gaillot had done his French military service. Though the seat of Partenia had disappeared in the fifth century and Gaillot was effectively left without a physical diocese, his followers decided that, in the age of electronic technology, it was possible to create a bishopric in cyberspace. A few months later, in early 1996, the virtual seat of Partenia was electronically established, operated from Zurich and accessible in seven languages. Perhaps this was what Christ (who hadn’t foreseen the Internet) meant when he said: “My kingdom is not of this world.”

In library terms, Christ’s words can have both a spatial and a temporal meaning. Libraries exist materially in one place, in solid buildings of brick or marble, but their holdings span time to give evidence of what occurred in the near and distant past, hopefully serving as a lesson for its readers in the future. Most readers intuit that what we call reality, beyond the restricted concepts of blood and nationality, is held between those pages, stored for them or for their offspring to lend words to the experiences they’ve lived through, or will perhaps one day encounter. This extends the concrete space a library occupies to every place conceivable described somewhere in its holdings, even imaginary places, wherever a reader might be sitting, bringing its words to mind. The kings of Alexandria sought to accumulate under one roof every book within the borders of their realm; they didn’t know that a library’s ambition (be it Alexandria or the poorest library of a remote village) is vaster than that of kings and does not limit itself to political frontiers. Sir Thomas Browne made this clear in his Religio Medici of 1643: “We carry with us the wonders we seek without us: there is all Africa and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous piece of Nature which he that studies wisely learns in a compendium what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.” He could have been defining a library.

During my time as director of the National Library of Argentina I felt it was important for our institution to become truly national by becoming universal, as Borges had wanted, and by developing its cultural role not only as a centre for the memory and identity of the people of Argentina but by extending its mission across the world, bringing into our stacks “the wonders we seek without us.” Several national libraries already do this by allowing readers from beyond the country’s borders free access to their material, sending books and documents overseas, physically or virtually, expanding the traditional understanding of the interlibrary loan system usually restricted to a city or a country. And yet, we asked, why not widen this generous purpose and assist librarians not only in providing books for absent readers and supplementing the holdings of other libraries, but also in creating or re-creating libraries that have been destroyed by earthquakes, storms or fire, or that have been closed due to government censorship, or libraries that cannot be established in the first place, for arrogant political reasons?

An example. The Library of Ukrainian Literature in Moscow was founded in 1986 and, in 2, was granted an autarchic status. However, in March 217, President Putin ordered its closure and its tens of thousands of volumes were seized and incorporated into the Library of Foreign Literature of Moscow. The head librarian, Natalia G. Sharina, was declared guilty of “inciting hatred toward the Russian people” and of “possessing herself of state funds” to purchase anti-Russian texts, in order to grant Ukrainian nationalists a refuge in Moscow. For these alleged crimes, Sharina was given a suspended sentence of four years in jail. Learning of these events, the National Library of Argentina decided to open a Ukrainian Library within its precinct, offering in material and virtual form to readers around the world a repository of Ukrainian material that would, in some small measure, replace the precious library they had lost. We did this in accordance with the beliefs of the founder of our National Library, Mariano Moreno, who in 181 wrote: “Truth, like virtue, has in itself its own indisputable apology. By discussing and making it known it appears in all its luminous splendour. If restrictions are opposed to an intellectual discourse, both the spirit and the matter will languish, and errors, lies, anguish, fanaticism and stultification will be the banner of nations, and will cause for all time their abasement, their misery and their ruin.”

A second example. As we should know by now, technology can serve as an instrument against intelligence and depth of thought or, on the contrary, as a weapon against stultification, fanaticism and censorship. It was in this spirit that the National Library of Argentina suggested setting up a virtual National Library of Palestine, following the steps of the supporters of Bishop Gaillot. Why not, we said, suggest fostering this new National Library under the auspices of our own, creating a sister institution, virtual like the diocese of Partenia, to which we would contribute material, and solicit contributions from other libraries? Why not assist Palestinians in creating a National Library that would be, like ours, a symbol of identity and a repository of their memory? Unfortunately, in spite of many attempts, conflicting opinions and bureaucratic tangles prevented the project from ever taking wing. Nevertheless, the project still exists in potentia, and perhaps one day it will come to fruition.

These attempts at crossing and erasing borders in the world of libraries are possible because, in its very nature, a library is borderless. To establish sections that prevent the mingling of arts and sciences, to restrict access to certain books only to certain privileged readers, to forbid the acquisition of problematic titles and to avoid controversial material, are all forms of curtailment that are never, in the end, fully effective because readers will always find ways to blur divisions, gain illegal access, place controversial titles on the stacks behind the authorities’ backs. Reading, as we have long known, is a subversive activity and does not believe in the convention of borders.

In the ninth century, the Syrian poet Abu Tammam, compiler of one of the best-loved collections of Arabic verse, Hamasah, wrote these lines:

Blood relationship we may lack,

But literature is our adopted father.