I think I've fallen in love with the State Library in Melbourne! The building itself was incredible. An imposing Neocassical entrance with heavy doors. The grounds were not formal at all - we walked through Green space where people were sitting and enjoying the sun, and just outside the entrance there were a pair of giant chess sets with all the pieces in play.
Inside are several reading rooms, but the most spectacular is the La Trobe Reading Room, with an octaganol rotunda and a soaring view to tiered galleries above. Circling the main floo are 38 inspiring, intriguing and challenging quotations about books, reading and libraries called the Ribbon of Words. I swore when I got home I'd capture them all... you can find them at the end of this post.
We spent a couple hours exploring several exhibits.
World of the Book showcased more than 300 rare, remarkable, historically significant items from the State Collection. It included a manusript from the Edo period (Tale of the Genjii), pages from Audobon, gorgeous botanicals, Winnie the Pooh, and some campy covers. I was swooning!
One of the other displays focused on Australian Camaleers from the 1860's. These men hailed from Afghan, Punjabi, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India; they helped explore and build camel trains that would later be replaced by rail. Discriminatory policies prevented them from settling with their families in Australia so some returned home but others stayed, with many marrying into Aboriginal families.
It didn't even cross my mind that this would be a tale from the Outback:
Our Footprints Remain
From Ghanzi to Karachi
from Kabul to Calcutta
from Zabol to Azad Kashmir
We came here
to this distant land
on great ships
And we set off
with our camels, whom we
knew by name
We carried railway sleepers
from Adelaide to Port Augusta
We travelled for three minths
from Marree to Tennant Creek
carrying cables for telegraphs
And we brought back gold from
the Arltunga mines
We travelled from Bourke
to Cloncurry
carrying cotton.
At sunset we opened up
to the willie wagtail
so it would carry our messages
to our loved ones
and it listened
and sung its heavenly song.
And we became friends with the
First Nation peoples
since our outlooks were similar
They taught us the real name of
their country.
Whenever we were lost, they
gave us directions
When we were sick, they
gave us bush medicine
And they showed us springs
and we drank from the same spring
We sat by the fire and played robab
and cooked chapati and curry and we
were beholden to each other
A strange love arose between us
so that we bacame one
and we built a home away
from home.
In the quiet plains of this country,
you can still hear
the sounds of our voices and our
camel bells ringing
And beside each spring
still our footprints remain
And when the wiffle waggle sings
he carries our messages with him.
- poem by Elyas Alavi, translated from Dari/Persian into English by Timothy Johannessen --------------------
No two people read the same book ∼ Edmund Wilson (1895-1972)
Attributed to a quotation by John Russell in the Sunday Times, 25 July 1971. The real quote is, “No two persons ever read the same book.”
Variation: In a sense, one can never read the book that the author originally wrote, and one can never read the same book twice.
The true University of these days is a collection of books ∼ Thomas Carlyle (1795-1871)
Wide and independent reading — self-education — is what matters ∼ Patrick White (1912-1990)
Australian novelist, 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature. “The Reading Sickness, 1980”, Patrick White Speaks, 1989.
Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey ∼ Anna Quindlen (1953-) How Reading Changed My Life, 1998.
Let's save old books and study them with care ∼ Phùng Khác Khoan (1528-1630) 16th century Vietnamese military strategist and poet Phùng Khắc Khoan, ‘Advice to scholars’, in An anthology of Vietnamese poems: from the eleventh through the twentieth centuries, edited and translated by Huỳnh Sanh Thông, 1996.
Complete quote:
Through your own efforts learn, and Heaven helps./ Let’s save old books and study them with care./ To read proves quite an act in these foul times:/ even wise heads have found it hard to teach./ By knowledge freed, the mind flows like a stream;/ with few desires, the body fears not threat./ Purge man of greed, and Heaven’s truth will shine:/ must scholars think of stipends and naught else?
Read in order to live ∼ Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) Letter, 1857. The letters of Gustave Flaubert / selected, edited, and translated by Francis Steegmuller.
Complete quote:
“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
No place can be chosen more likely to arouse and exalt such feelings than this apartment, reared in honor of literature ∼ Redmond Barry (1813-1880) Preface to The catalogue of the Public Library of Victoria,
1880, p. x111
Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy ∼ Germaine Greer (1939-) “Still in Melbourne January 1987”, Daddy, we hardly knew you, 1989.
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations ∼ Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Walden, 1854 (Chapter 3: "Reading")
The chief glory of every people arises from its authors ∼ Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) “Preface” to A dictionary of the English language, 1755.
A public library is the most democratic thing in the world ∼ Doris Lessing (1919-2013)
complete quote
“Libraries are treasures houses of stories, poems, essays, from every country in the world and from all times, and literature shades off into history and magic and mystery and religion, into sociology and anthropology – into nearly every subject you can think of, and it is there for everyone. There for the trouble of finding someone who loves books ready to make suggestions. A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough...People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.”
Until I feared to lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing ∼ Harper Lee (1926-2016) To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960.
Beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies ∼ John Milton (1608-1674) The Reason of Church Government, Introduction
Words on the page are never prisoners of the page ∼ Sonya Hartnett (1968-) Sonya Hartnett said ‘Words on the page are never prisoners of the page’ when accepting an audio book award, in 1999.
Writers speak for those who are kept in silence ∼ Isabel Allende (1942-)
complete quote
“For whom do I write, finally? Certainly for myself. But mainly for others, even if there are only a few. For those who have no voice and for those who are kept in silence.” Isabel Allende, “Writing as an act of hope”, in Paths of Resistance: The Art and Draft of the Political Novel, edited by William Zinsser, 1989, pp.39-63.
“…a writer is a foreteller of the future, has a prophetic gift, has the ability to speak for others who have been kept in silence.” John Rodden, Conversations with Isabel Allende, 1999, p.257
“I wanted to speak up for those that are kept in silence”,
Angel Flores, Spanish American Authors: The Twentieth Century, 1992, p.28.
A real book is not one that's read, but one that reads us ∼ W H Auden (1903-1973)
Poet. Attributed that is was once said and recalled at his death in 1973, Leo Thayer, Mental Hygiene: Communication and the Health of the Mind, 2014, p. 103.
Reported by Lionel Trilling in "On the Modern Element in Modern Literature", Partisan Review, January-February 1961, p. 15 (reprinted in Trilling's Beyond Culture, 1965): Trilling wrote: "taking the cue of W. H. Auden's remark that a real book reads us, I have been read by Eliot's poems...".
complete quote
More commonly reported as "a real book is not one that we read but one that reads us". This paraphrase of Trilling's reported quotation first appeared in a review by Robie Macauley of Trilling's Beyond Culture in the New York Times Book Review, 14 November 1965, p. 38: "I must borrow a phrase from Mr. Trilling (who borrows it from W. H. Auden): a real book is not one that we read but one that reads us." The same version, attributed to Auden, appears in Evan Esar, 20,000 Quips & Quotes (1968), p. 87 (with a comma after "we read"). There is no evidence that Auden ever wrote or said this version of the phrase.
Blessed are those who are privileged to read what they like ∼ Dorothy Green (1915-1991) “The Reader”, Writer: Reader: Critic (1991), p.112.
Books can warm the heart with friendly words and counsel, entering into a close relationship with us which is articulate and alive ∼ Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374) Letter to a friend
Complete quote:
“There is moreover something special about books; gold and silver, jewels and purple raiment, marble halls and re-tended fields, pictures and horses in all their trappings, and everything else of that kind can only accord only passing pleasure with nothing to say, whereas books can warm the heart with friendly words and counsel, entering into a close relationship with us which is articulate and alive.”
Quoted from Nicholas A. Basbanes, A gentle madness : bibliophiles, bibliomanes, and the eternal passion for books, 1995, p. 73.
One must be an inventor to read well ∼ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Essay “The American Scholar”, An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837.
The Public Library is at once the product of democracy and a sign of faith in universal education as a life-long process ∼ Irving Benson (1914-2016) Is attributed to Benson in the Australian Dictionary of Biography –
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/benson-sir-clarence-irving-9493:
‘In the public sphere, he was trustee (1942-46) of the Public Library, museums and National Gallery of Victoria (vice-chairman 1945), chairman (1946-66) of trustees of the Public Library of Victoria and deputy-chairman (from 1966) of its successor, the Library Council of Victoria. He was also president (1938-49) of the Library Association of Victoria and chairman (1947-56) of the Free Library Service Board. Having himself substituted the reading of books for his lack of formal education, he regarded libraries as 'a practical demonstration of democracy's faith in universal education as a life-long process'.’
Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, are a substantial world, both pure and good ∼ William Wordsworth (1770-1850) Complete Poetical Works, Personal Talk, 1888.
Books are the threads from which the fabric of our culture and civilization are woven ∼ Richard W Clement (1951-) “Introduction”, The Book in America with images from the Library of Congress, Richard W. Clement, 1996, p.3.
Complete quote:
(In reference to Thomas Jefferson’s assertion: “I cannot live without books.) “With this statement, addressed to John Adams, Thomas Jefferson voiced a national cultural truth. Jefferson understood that books are the threads from which the fabric of our culture and civilization are woven and that it is this fabric that gives our nation coherence and continuity”.
One reads in order to ask questions ∼ Franz Kafka (1883-1924)From an interview with Kafka. Conversations with Kafka, Gustav Janouch, 1953.
Books, the children of the brain ∼ Jonathon Swift (1667-1745) A Tale of a Tub, 1704.
Full quote: “I confess to have been somewhat liberal in the business of titles, having observed the humour of multiplying them, to bear great vogue among certain writers, whom I exceedingly reverence. And indeed in seems not unreasonable, that books, the children of the brain, should have the honour to be christened with variety of names, as well as other infants of quality.”
The Dome and its ascending galleries seemed like a giant brain vaulting towards the heavens ∼ Arnold Zable (1947-)
Stories are the way to feel you belong ∼ Boori Monty Pryor (1950-) Boori Monty Pryor, an Aboriginal writer, said ‘Stories are the way to feel you belong’ in a session at the 1999 Melbourne Writers’ Festival.
Nobody has the last word ∼ Brenda Walker (1957-) Brenda Walker said ‘Nobody has the last word’ when speaking about Edgar Allan Poe at the 1999 Melbourne Writers’ Festival.
The studious silence of the library … Tranquil brightness ∼ James Joyce (1882-1941) “Was first sighted in Diane Asséo Griliches’ book Library: the drama within (1996). The cited source was Ulysses (1922) - the words used by Asséo Griliches had been extracted in two grabs several hundred words apart. We finally decided to use the same form as Asséo Griliches.”
To slide into the Domed Reading Room at ten each morning, specially in summer, off the hot street outside, was a sensation as delicious as dropping into the water off the concrete edge of the Fitzroy baths ∼ Helen Garner (1942-) Helen Garner, '"A smell of old reading...": Helen Garner remembers the Domed Reading Room',
State Library of Victoria News, Jul-Oct 2003 p. 5.
But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew, upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think ∼ Lord Byron (1788-1824) Don Juan, Canto III, LXXXVIII, 1824.
Come, and take choice of all my library, and so beguile thy sorrow ∼ William Shakespeare (1564-1616) Titus Andronicus, Act 4, scene 1, lines 34 and 35, a speech of Titus’ to Lavinia after her mutilation.
There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away, nor any coursers like a page of prancing poetry ∼ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) Poem. “There is no Frigate like a Book”. From a letter written in 1873, and was published in Volume I of her Letters (1894).
I, who had always thought of Paradise in form and image as a library ∼ Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) Poem. “Goodbyes”, in Dreamtigers first published as El Hacedor ("The Maker"), 1960.
“The Borges quotation was more problematic, as it is a translation, and in context it is actually a lament about Borges's blindness, which had the effect of removing libraries from his world...The first sighted form was: ‘I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library’. The final form selected is: ‘I, who had always thought of Paradise in form and image as a library’, the variation being caused by different translations.” From From Harboe Ree, Cathrine, Spring 2003, La Trobe Journal, no 72, pp 72-79.
The word is the making of the world ∼ Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) Description without place, Canto VII, Collected Poems, 1945.
A study lamp, a desk make two old friends … Rejoice — the ancient spirit thrives again. For those who read a word or two there's hope ∼ Nguyễn Trãi (1380-1442) Vietnamese poet, Confucian scholar and military strategist.
The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries ∼ René Descartes (1596-1650) Discourse on the Method, Part 1, paragraph 5, 1637.
Variant: “The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.’
You can make initial contact with someone who does not speak your language with signs or smiles, but to communicate you need words. So it is with a nation; to understand it you have to read its books ∼ Geoffrey Dutton (1922-1998) Dedication in The Australian collection: Australia's greatest books, [selected by] Geoffrey Dutton, 1985.
A person cannot contribute to humanity without knowledge … Only a person with a free soul, a person who has no use for fear, can contribute to this world's betterment ∼ Pramoeda Ananta Toer (1925-2006) “Science, Religion and Health Care”, Part 111: Lessons for my Children, The Mute's Soliloquy: A Memoir, 1995, p. 248. An autobiography based on the letters that he wrote for his daughter from imprisonment in Buru but was not allowed to send.
