Subject: Now that surprises me.
Author:
Posted on: 2020-12-19 11:00:51 UTC
Not that you've been, but that it exists at all! I wasn't entirely convinced any of these places were real. ^_~ My childhood library looks more like this:
Except that back then it was brown.
hS
"There's nothing quite like a good library, is there?"
The elderly man walked down the long gallery, his cane clicking on the polished floor at each step. His right arm was outstretched, allowing him to brush his fingers over each shelf as he passed.
"I've seen 'em all," he went on, not bothering to look at the young woman at his side. "New York, Oxford… I was in Alexandria once, though the old place is long gone. They're all different, but you can tell as soon as you step inside which ones are the good ones."
The young assistant librarian looked around at the rows of books, shelf after dark-stained shelf of leather-bound knowledge. "And what about this one, sir?" she asked, reaching her own hand out to touch the spines as they passed.
"Here? This place is the best library," the old man said. He stopped, surrounded by books, and turned to smile warmly at his apprentice. "Do you know why? Because it's mine."
Many years ago, I made a PPC advent calendar. I've always wanted to make another one. Hello!
All images from Wikimedia Commons. All text by me.
hS
The library seems to reach up to the sky. Heavyset columns, broad enough to support the heavens, bear up long balconies of cast iron filigree and gold-painted wood. Lush carpets line the walkways, muffling every footstep into silence. Lanterns hang from the glazed ceiling on long chains, filling the air with an amber glow.
And everywhere there are the books. Tall shelves line the walls, lower cases jutting out from them onto the balconies; the windows at each end of the room are flanked by bookcases, pressing in close to claim every available inch. The very air is rich with the taste of them, of a thousand thousand pages sleeping between their covers.
And in an ancient leather armchair, seemingly unaware of any of these wonders, her mind a million worlds away, sits a single reader with her book.
hS
There are Libraries - not the ordinary, fact-or-fiction type of library, you understand, but the real capital-L Libraries - where the books whisper in the night, sharing their secrets with any brave enough to listen. There are Libraries filled with the constant, dust-dry scratching of ink, as their tomes of life and death write themselves on the shelves. There are Libraries where a wrong turn in the stacks can lead to a sudden rustling, a brief scream, and a satisfied purr from the watching books.
Not in the Library of Fate. There, alone among the Libraries - and indeed libraries, for 'ordinary' books have power too - there is truly silence.
Silence… and each evening, as the sun sinks into a clear western twilight, the librarian (do not think her name) walks through the endless shelves of tombstone-white books. Her feet make no sound on the boards, and the numberless identical volumes do not stir at her passing. When she stops, they do not lean in to see which of them she will reach for.
She chooses only one. One book, one fate, to carry back to her desk, to open, to read from cover to cover in perfect silence. And then (it is said, among those few who have seen her) she will smile, and rise again, and return the book to its shelf. And she will never speak a word of what she has read.
hS
Some say the library was formed in the likeness of Heaven.
The ceiling is of woven gold, delicate curves embracing the blue sky beyond. Slender pillars seem to touch the ground only lightly, as if tethering the roof instead of supporting it. From them spring graceful arches, and elegant balustrades encompassing the room entire.
At first glance the books are almost an afterthought, but the eye is drawn ever back to them. Spines and covers in infinite variety whisper or shout their stories, catching the passing reader in their snares of words. Each one eagerly waits to be pulled out, borne down to the serried ranks of tables below, opened with careful reverence, and read.
Some say that Heaven will be formed in the likeness of the library.
I do not think they are wrong.
(Main room, Real Gabinete Português de Leitura, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
hS
When the invaders came, they stole the gold from the library. They carried away the furnishings, stripped it from the shelves, tore it from the very books.
We watched undismayed, and whispered that they had left the true treasure.
They came again, and prised the mosaics from the floors, the carved panels from the walls. After much labour they even managed to chip away the frescoes on the ceilings.
We hid our smiles behind our hands, and marvelled to each other at their foolishness.
They returned and bore away the very bookshelves, elegant and ancient in their dark woodstain, leaving their contents where they fell.
We laughed aloud, calling them blind and ignorant, openly mocking them.
At last they came to us, demanding that we reveal the secret. The tales said our library held a treasure beyond price, but they had stripped the building to bare bones and found nothing. Where had we hidden it?
We did not answer. How could we explain the true treasure of a library, to those who sought only wealth?
(Vasconcelos public library, Mexico City, Mexico)
hS
Nita had always wondered about the trees. They grew throughout the library, thriving despite the filtered light and bottled water they fed on. They seemed perfectly healthy - more healthy, really, than a lot of their cousins lining the roads outside, exposed to the endless fumes of passing cars.
But they couldn't really be happy, could they? Caged inside, kept in pots, even their autumn leaf-fall managed and monitored. And just look at where they were…
So one evening, just as the library was closing, with only a couple of people left in the building, she seized her chance. Propping a foot on one of the benches as if to tie her shoe, she leant in and murmured, "I have to know: how do you do it? How do you grow in a building surrounded by books written on your own kin's remains?"
The tree shivered above her, and a single leaf drifted down to land atop her head. Oh, little one, the tree whispered back. What do you think I want to be when I grow up?
(Biblioteks haven, Det Kgl. Bibliotek, Aarhus, Denmark)
hS
A bad library is a mess. Children's fiction mixed in with the cookbooks, art history stacked on top of engineering manuals. No books seem to leave the building, because nobody can find what they're looking for.
A good library is a haven of organisation. Every book has its place, and if one is moved, the librarian will make sure it gets home again. It is a hub for readers, who walk in and out with stacks of books, taking them home to enjoy.
But the best libraries are inherently unordered, because there is no filing system that can impart structure on the wonders they contain. Books of mystery and magic, alchemy and sigaldry, a million million worlds waiting to be explored. And it is vanishingly rare for any to be taken away - because how could you waste time leaving, when you have a book like that in your hands?
(Göttweig Abbey library, Austria
hS
"I used to sing here, once."
I float down the book-lined aisles, my white dress trailing behind me. I do not know who I'm talking to; perhaps it doesn't matter.
"Oh, it was marvellous," I sigh, looking up at the ornate roof high above. "All the people would lean forward when I sang, stretching from the galleries and boxes as if they could catch my words and keep them forever."
I spin, a lazy circle, the books whirling around me. I remember the lights, the music, the applause - and then it all fades away. I am between the shelves once more, the only sound the gentle rustling of pages.
"This is better," I conclude, and let go.
(El Ateneo, Buenos Aires, Argentina)
hS
"Doctor Cornelius! Doctor Cornelius!"
The head librarian looked up from his ledgers and smiled. "What is it, mm, Lorelei?"
The harried young woman pulled up in front of the lectern. "It's the busts," she panted. "The statues, over in the Lost Philosophy wing? They're talking!"
Doctor Cornelius chuckled. "You never can get a philosopher to be quiet," he said. "Did they have anything interesting to say?"
Lorelei looked nonplussed. "Er. Mostly they just complained about us calling it Lost Philosophy when all the books are clearly still there."
"Sounds about right for them." The librarian clambered down from his stool and collected his walking stick. "Don't you worry, I'll go and have a chat with them, get them sorted out." He hobbled a few steps, then paused and looked back at his assistant. "But just in case they're feeling unreasonable… can you fetch me a hammer? The bigger the better."
(Library of Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp, Belgium)
(Because how could I not pay a visit to the Musée des Univers Perdus?)
hS
The first question every new librarian at Alexandria asks is, "Why is the library so tall?" The shelves are all standard height, the topmost books in easy arm's reach; but the ceiling is high overhead, the slender columns that support it looking impossibly stretched. "It's such a waste of space," they say. "Why didn't they just add a second floor?"
That question lasts until their first night shift; until the first time they step through the doors and see the ghostly stacks of the ancients, the burned and lost scrolls of two thousand years of Libraries of Alexandria.
And when the rest of the librarians return in the morning, the new initiate always has the same question for them: "Why is the library so short?"
"Don't be silly," they told me. "The library can't be haunted."
I shook my head in despair. I knew what they were thinking of: our cheerful local library, with its bright children's section, computerised catalogues, and more bestsellers than you could shake a pen at. It was the least haunted-looking building imaginable.
And it was nothing like the library I meant: the one with shelves that filled the space, stacked high with coverless books, ethereally-lit colonnades marching from doorless wall to doorless wall.
"That's not what I said," I told them. "I said the library is haunting me."
(Bibliothek im Reformierten Kollegium, Debrecen, Hungary)
hS
This is not the bright, candlelit room where lives are written.
That library belongs to a different Death. This one was stocked by the Death who meets you twice: once to ask if you're ready to begin, and once to ask how it went.
Its shelves are stocked with memories - your memories, the ones you wouldn't write in even the fullest autobiography. All the little failures and triumphs, the loves and losses; all bound up in a cover as unique and special as you were.
And when she has borne you aloft in her soft-beating wings; when your family and friends have mourned you and moved on; when all memory of your life has passed from the Earth; still from time to time she will sit, and take out your book, and think of you as she reads.
(German Library, Helsinki, Finland)
(And with gratitude to both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman)
hS
Some countries have vast libraries of marble and gilt, each book a precious object treasured by its readers.
Some countries have cozy libraries with thick carpets, centres of the community, where reading and friendship go hand in hand.
Some countries have ancient libraries, their shelves crammed with faded leather and the smell of a thousand years of history.
We are not that lucky. Our libraries are hidden, tucked away in attics and basements, kept secret behind false walls.
Shh! Silence in the library - you don't know who's listening!
(Galerie Sondersammlung Stadtbücherei Landshut, Germany)
hS
The library is sealed.
For fifty years it has been this way. The shelves stand untouched, resplendent in gilt and mahogany. The leather-bound books sit silent, row upon row reaching up to the ceiling. The painted gods watch over all, mute and patient in the golden light. The dust lies thick on the stone floor, undisturbed by footprints.
There is a click; the first sound that has disturbed the library for half a century. The door, ancient wood polished smooth by countless years, swings slowly inwards. The dust stirs, a million flecks catching the light and reflecting it back.
In the doorway stand two figures. The elder, withered by age, stoops over a gnarled cane, his white beard dragging upon the floor; the younger is barely more than a boy, his hands clasped in front of him tight enough to turn his knuckles white.
"This-" The elder breaks off, coughing as the dust rises. His voice sounds as dry as the library itself - as if it, too, has been sealed for decades.
"This is your charge," he continues. "The library. In all the living world, only we two have set eyes on it." He holds out a wrinkled hand, a brass key gleaming in it. "There you are; it's yours now."
The boy takes the key in trembling fingers. He holds it up to the golden light, watching the dust dance behind it. Then he fits it into the lock, grasps the handles, and seals the library once more.
In the girl's mind, the library was a vast maze.
Of course she knew it wasn't; she was a very sensible girl, she understood perfectly well that Mrs Phelps' library was just an ordinary public library, a handful of shelves stocked with whatever volumes the local council had been able to acquire. It was comfortable, cozy - but small.
But in the girl's mind, it was enormous, rooms and balconies and stairwells all crisscrossing each other, such that you could never be sure where you would end up, or who you might find there. Down one hall might be the remains of an ancient abbey; down another, a gang of Victorian street-children; down a third, a Time Machine, waiting to whisk her away. It was a place you could lose yourself utterly - and for two hours every afternoon, while her mother was away at bingo, Matilda Wormwood did exactly that.
(Bibliothèque de l'Assemblée nationale du Québec, Canada)
hS
Hello.
Shh! No - up here. Higher - come on, right at the top. That's right, you can see me now. Hello.
I've been waiting for you for a long time. Two years it's been - no, three now - since my last visitor. He was a lovely man - an old vicar, I think he was - took me back home and kept me in his cozy sitting room. I was sad to leave him, but I had to come back. I needed to wait for you.
Because you're different, aren't you? With you, I could go places - see things - travel the world. And while we go, I can show you new wonders, tell you tales you've never imagines. Interested? I knew you would be.
Yes, the ladder's a little too short, but I have faith in you. Come on - reach up. I'm right here on the top shelf. Just… reach… out…
(Joanina Library, University of Coimbra, Portugal)
hS
"Do you remember when you first came here?"
The young man from a distant land smiled at the memory. "I fell to my knees in the doorway," he recalled. "The light from above blinded me; I could only see those magnificent pillars, the ornate carving above them, the silent, motionless figures along the walls."
"I came over to you," the girl said. "I had to ask what you were doing."
The young man dropped to one knee and pressed a hand to the cool marble of the floor. "I looked up at you, like this," he said, "and I couldn't think of anything to say but: 'I'm praying'."
"I thought that you thought it was a temple," the girl said with a grin. "That you saw our readers and imagined them the images of gods… I know better now."
"So do I," the young man said. "I will never be ashamed of my love for the library again."
(Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, France)
hS
The Watcher walks across the floor far below, barely looking where he's going. "It has to be here somewhere," he mutters, studying a scrap of paper. "It's not, not like anyone else is going to want to read it." A beat. "I hope."
He walks out of sight, appearing a moment later on the first balcony. "Th-the Forbidden Almagest was quite clear," he told himself as he walked along the stacked shelves. "Only a mortal can read the-" He stopped, adjusted his spectacles, and peered at a leatherbound volume. "No, no."
Another doorway, another level up. "Most Slayers would be happy to help," he continued to himself, frowning at the books as he passed. "But no, I-I have to get the one who insists on 'hanging out' instead. You'd think an imminent apocalypse would take precedence, but, but no."
He reached the highest level, right beneath the vast white dome that roofed the ancient library. "It's probably quicker without her," he concluded, running his fingers over the books. "I can, can just imagine how little respect she would show for the Library of-"
His fingers seemed to snag on a book, dark and weathered. He frowned, bent over and studied the spine, then pulled the volume out with a smile of triumph. "There you are at last! Now, let's see what you can tell me…"
Dive.
Down, down the endless spiral of the stair wrought from calligraphy and iron. Down past the balconies, curlicued sentences of architecture sweeping out on either side. Down past shelves of steel, supported on lattices woven of poetry and prose. Down past dictionaries and directories, Cookery and Contemporary History, shoes and ships and sealing-wax and all the tales ever told.
Dive - and never come up for air.
The wood came from distant lands, borne here on mighty ships. It was shaped and polished by skilled carpenters, the shelves pieced together by professional joiners and installed by trained decorators.
The stone came from the local quarries, hacked out of the living rock by the labourers' rough hands. It was carved by volunteer artists, raised into place by the community's strong arms, and smoothed by the touch of each passing hand.
The gold came from the people's houses, each surrendering what they had for the beautification of our library. Family heirlooms and hoarded coins were willingly brought together, melted together, their new forms chosen together.
And the books? The books came from our hearts.
And on that longest, darkest night, if the stars align and the great planets burn together in the heavens, a visitor will slither down their pallid radiance. At ITs presence, this fragile Earth will tremble, and the library doors will melt away before ITs touch.
IT will leave grooves in the floor as it passes, the stones cracking beneath impossible chemistries. When IT touches a shelf, all the volumes stacked there recoil, their pages curling in mute despair. And when at last IT approaches the counter, the librarian on duty will realise at last that there are some things no amount of training can prepare you for.
"I have come," IT will hiss, in a thousand voices of madness and misery. "I am seeking…" The words will hang in the air for an eternity before it continues: "... a book. I don't remember the title, but it had a black cover…"
(Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library, Antwerp, Belgium)
(In honour of the Great Solstice Conjunction)
hS
"Why doesn't your library have an art section?"
"Well, sir, the previous librarian was rejected from art school. When he took the position, the very first thing he did was to remove all the art books and conceal them. We're positive they're still in the library, so we can hardly replace them, but we haven't yet tracked them down."
"And why doesn't your library have a chemistry section?"
"Well, sir, the very first benefactor of the library was a self-styled alchemist. It seems he deeply resented the reduction of his pursuit to a historical footnote in chemical texts, so as a condition of his bequest, he forbade the inclusion of any books related to the field."
"And why doesn't your library have a children's section?"
"Sir! How can you say such a thing? Our children read all the books; how else are they to learn what they need to grow?"
(Literary And Philosphical Society of Newcastle, United Kingdom)
hS
They aren't lamps.
They hang overhead like lamps, and indeed they glow like lamps, illuminating the desks where contented readers pass the hours. No-one could be faulted for imagining that to be their sole purpose.
But they are collectors: of hopes and dreams, of highs and lows, of laughter and tears and anger and longing, of all the powers that a good book can unleash. The readers fill the air with it, and the collectors catch it, store it, keep it safe in crystal vials.
And when someone comes to the library depressed, or lost, or mournful, they sense it, and select a vial, and with exquisite care release a little light into a shadowed life.
So perhaps, in a way, they are lamps after all.
And if you venture far enough into the stacks - far enough that wood and brass give way to brushed aluminium, and then to wrought iron and stonework - far enough that the mass of accumulated knowledge bends the fabric of reality like weights on a rubber sheet - you may find yourself in the places where past and future, fact and fiction, here and there become one. In those liminal spaces, there are three rules you must follow, if you are ever to return to the shelves you know:
Respect the books.
Follow the Dewey Decimal system.
If you meet a fellow traveller who offers you a banana, by all that you hold dear, say yes.
(Stacks in the Mathematics Library, University of Illinois, USA)
(Ook.)
He's making a list. He's checking it twice. He's going to find out who's naughty or nice.
And then he's carefully filing all the letters and lists and wishes and kisses into the correct boxes, each embossed with a single name. He's carrying them through the baroque corridors, into the halls where gold and marble and alabaster climb between towering shelves. The high ceiling's ancient frescoes glow jewel-bright, and through the windows the arcane light of the aurora borealis is blinding.
He's climbing the ladders, and placing each box, each report, each childhood back in its comfortable place with a father's care. He's whispering to them, words of comfort or counsel, and half a world away each child stirs in their sleep for a moment or two.
He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. And whether you are five or a hundred and five, he is so proud of how much you've grown.
Merry Christmas.
Been to that one! The rotunda is both incredible and also just the top floor - there's even more books to be found in the floors beneath.
Not that you've been, but that it exists at all! I wasn't entirely convinced any of these places were real. ^_~ My childhood library looks more like this:
Except that back then it was brown.
hS
They've pretty much all been pretty. I just wanted to say something. {= )
Also, I like the idea of a library haunting someone. Some kinda Brigadoon situation where it manifests periodically, centered on one poor, confused soul who doesn't know what they're in for... yeah.
~Neshomeh
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