Io Leggo - I Read - a Declaration of Love
February 1, 2016A letter I sent to the New York Review of Books in March 2013. The subject is a text (not mine), part riff, part rant, and part love letter. It’s about books and the passion for reading, and it’s something worth sharing. Warm thanks to ”Il Circolo dei Lettori” (the Reader’s Circle) in Torino, Italy, for this.
Dear New York Review of Books:
The following text is simply for circulation among the NYR staff and anyone you know who might enjoy it. “Il Circolo dei Lettori” is an association here in Torino for people who love books; they have lots of events in a handsome old building. A dear friend of ours (a professoressa of American Literature at one of the universities here) gave a little lunch party there last year to celebrate a promotion. This text is printed on the placemats and paper napkins used in the dining room. I’ve been unable to determine who wrote it (the public information person perhaps reads too much to answer my e-mail), but I put it into English. (Original below.) Enjoy:
I read because I picked up the vice. I read because I have nothing else to do. I read because there are only a few of us who do. I read because I have time. I read little because I don’t have any. I’d like to read more. I read what you’re thinking. I read Braille, which is not a French author. I read fast. I read out loud. I read because I don’t like to raise my voice. I read to go to sleep. I read to dream. I read backwards. I read cards. I devour them. I reread. I read breathlessly. I even read the information slips that come with medicine. I read because it’s a pleasure. I read on my feet, in bed, on the tram, in waiting rooms, in the elevator, at the table, on the toilet. I read and annotate, underline, mark. I read secretly. I read for spite. I read because I write. I write because I read. I read because I grow. I read because I don’t like this world. I read to change it. I read to evade. I read because I’m alive. I’m alive because I read. I read when there’s a story. I look at the pictures. I skip pages. I read to form an opinion. I read because I already have an opinion. I read thoughts, eyes, the future. I read and I fall in love, I read to seduce, I read to know more than other people. I read and sometimes I laugh, sometimes I cry. I read and I think about it. I read and approve. Sometimes not. I read because there are those who’d like to prohibit it. I read because at least I learn something. I read because it costs me nothing. I read because I have fun, I relax, I get things off my chest. I read what I want to because it pleases me. I read because I can feel it’s good for me. I read, period. I go to the Readers’ Circle.
If I can play critic for a moment, I’ll say that when I first read it, only the last sentence seemed a little off-key, because it starts to sound like advertising. (The placemats are a sort of self-promotion, although no one sees them who doesn’t come to eat.) But then I realized it’s just a declaration of love.
Allen Schill, March 17, 2013
Io leggo perché ho preso il vizio. Io leggo perché non ho altro da fare. Io leggo perché siamo in pochi. Io leggo perché ho tempo. Io leggo poco perché non ne ho. Io vorrei leggere di più. Io te lo leggo negli occhi. Io leggo Braille, che non è un autore francese. Io leggo veloce. Io leggo a voce alta. Io leggo perché non mi piace alzare la voce. Io leggo per addormentarmi. Io leggo per sognare. Io leggo al contrario. Io leggo le carte. Io le divoro. Io rileggo. Io leggo tutto d’un fiato. Io leggo anche i bugiardini dei medicinali. Io leggo che è un piacere. Io leggo a piedi, a letto, in tram, in sala d’attesa, in ascensore, a tavola, al cesso. Io leggo e annoto, sottolineo, segno. Io leggo di nascosto. Io leggo per fare dispetto. Io leggo perchè scrivo. Io scrivo perché leggo. Io leggo perché cresco. Io leggo perché questo mondo non mi piace. Io leggo per cambiarlo. Io leggo per evadere. Io leggo perché sono vivo. Io sono vivo perché leggo. Io leggo quando c’è una storia. Io guardo le figure. Io salto le pagine. Io leggo perché mi faccio un opinione. Io leggo perché l’opinione ce l’ho già. Io leggo nel pensiero, negli occhi, nel futuro. Io leggo e mi innamoro, io leggo per sedurre, io leggo per saperne più degli altri. Io leggo e qualche volta rido, qualche volta piango. Io leggo e ci penso su. Io leggo e approvo. Qualche volta no. Io leggo perché c’è chi vorrebbe proibirlo. Io leggo perché almeno imparo qualcosa. Io leggo perché non mi costa niente. Io leggo perchè mi diverto, perché mi rilasso, perché mi sfogo. Io leggo quel che mi pare perché mi piace. Io leggo perché sento che mi fa bene. Io leggo punto e basta. Io vado al Circolo dei Lettori.
Addendum, February 2023
For the past year I have been frequenting the Circolo dei Lettori. I wanted a little book chat, some brain fodder. The Circolo occupies a wonderful old building, il Palazzo Graneri della Rocca, planned in 1680 in the Baroque style, with magnificently-appointed rooms - ornately decorated ceilings, bookshelves (with rolling wooden ladders for access), and fine old paintings and sculptures. In the room we usually use for English Tales (in which, led by our genial professor Guy Watts, we read together from a selection of short stories in English), there is a gilded Chinese sculpture of a chubby little boy with his arms spread wide in a gesture of welcoming affection. One hand is open, the other in a fist. In the anteroom there is a very large plate decorated with another big-bellied baby with a sublime, deeply loving expression, his arms also spread wide, and a motto in Latin along the rim. He wears an outfit with ruffles on the sleeves and at the collar. The painting is clearly an allegory of the fine arts - there’s a painter’s easel and a palette daubed with colors, a sculptor’s stand with a bust on it, and a geometer’s compass. A truly (and literally) brilliant touch is what appears to be a flame emerging from the crown of the baby’s head - a perfect symbol of creativity. (I don’t think it’s a topknot. The Chinese baby also has something on the top of his head, and this I think is indeed a topknot.) Inexplicably, it was a month or more before I noticed the extraordinary similarity between the two works; it can’t be a mere coincidence that they are so close together.
The ceiling of this room - la Sala Biblioteca, with bookshelves from floor to ceiling - displays a fresco of Apollo and Marsyas. The satyr is bound to a tree branch; Apollo wields a big knife, with which he will flay Marsyas. He had challenged Apollo to take part in a musical contest - he on his flute (which Athena had discarded because it made her cheeks puffy), and Apollo with his lyre, the winner to be declared by the Muses. The stakes were a forfeit, and having won, Apollo demanded to skin Marsyas alive. The tears of Marsyas’ many admirers were so copious that they flowed together to create what is still known as the River Marsyas.
In nearby rooms there are many other works, mostly genre paintings from the 1800s, some older. One very modern work - which still seems to belong perfectly in this setting - is a bronze bust of the proud and defiant Cora, the chief protagonist of Colson Whitehead’s excellent and moving novel, The Underground Railroad. It could almost be a work from the late 1800s.
Once recently I was rather early for the reading group I’m involved in, and so I took the opportunity to wander around the rooms that I hadn’t seen much. A painting in the dining room sent my eyebrows way up. If I were the sort of person who gets scandalized, I wold definitely have been scandalized by this work, from the Victorian era but not of the Victorian ethos. It is a scene of a satyr - who seems to know his business - performing cunnilingus on a woman, who for her part seems totally involved, not trying in the least to get away. The setting is vague, but could be at the edge of a body of water, a suitable location for this scene. I really didn’t expect to see such a painting here - I’d have thought one would have to visit the secret rooms of the Vatican Collection, where for centuries they have stored the works of literature, sculpture, and painting deemed too indecent to be viewed by the common folk - but acceptable for bishops and cardinals, and their trusted friends, all decent people without a shred of prurience in their hearts. I am reminded of the famous attempt in 1964 by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to define “hard-core pornography” - he said that, although he would not attempt to define it any further, and perhaps never could, “I know it when I see it”. (He was concurring in the Court’s ruling that Louis Malle’s film of 1958 The Lovers (Les Amants) was not obscene.)
I, too, would certainly give this painting a pass, if I were the judge, for its artistic value, if perhaps less for its redeeming social importance. But I feel strongly that we must not always demand “social importance” for art, as if it were an item on a checklist. I also insist that there is nothing inherently indecent in the erotic - that eros is a perfectly legitimate artistic theme. It has been present in art from ancient times, the world over. This work partakes of the taste, in the art of the Baroque as well as other periods before and since, for high drama and sensuality. (In this sense it certainly surpasses Gustave Courbet’s ”L’Origine du monde” of 1866, which is more simply voyeuristic, although far superior for its execution.) Speaking of the execution of this painting of the satyr and the woman, which is largely a question of technique, I can’t rate this work as highly as a work by Rubens or Watteau. The brushwork here is rather smudgy. I don’t know who the artist was, but I am curious to know how this painting came to be a part of the collection of the Circolo dei Lettori.
Allen Schill, February 2023
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