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The CML Councilor for Culture, Catarina Vaz Pinto, told the PÚBLICO newspaper that CEHL will be “a meeting point between authors and intellectuals and the reading public”, that “it will be at the level of Lisbon as a literary city.”
It is a life of reading and handling books. And although we call him a librarian, in “Packing my library” he confesses that he never was because none of his libraries had a catalog, the sections were “crazy” and the order was between alphabetical and random, which made it so. the only one to find a particular book.
In this new chapter, Alberto Manguel will direct the Center for the Study of the History of Reading and, in fact, the internationality is well illustrated knowing that already confirmed for the Honorary Council of the future Center of Studies are renowned authors, such as La polaca Olga Tokarczuk, 2018 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature; Salman Rushdie, who won the Booker Prize in 1981, and Canadian Margaret Atwood, winner of the Booker Prize last year.
But the Lusophony is also on the board. The Portuguese poet and cardinal Tolentino de Mendonça, currently Vatican Archivist and Librarian, and the Brazilian Chico Buarque, 2019 Camões Prize winner, are also part of the Study Center.
Alberto Manguel, Borges’s eyes
Manguel, born in Argentina and of Canadian nationality, is the author of books such as “Natural History of Curiosity”, “Fabulous Monsters – Dracula, Alicia, Superman and Other Literary Friends” and, this year, he saw the book “Com Borges”. published with Tinta-da-China.
In “Com Borges” he describes parts of his relationship with the writer Jorge Luis Borges, Manguel’s compatriot author and his teacher in many aspects. We can lift the veil of this literary novelty and underline the history of these two great lovers of the library.
credits: OTHER JOCARD / AFP
“data-title =” Alberto Manguel in 2007 in France – He grew up with books and read to Jorge Luis Borges. Who is Alberto Manguel, the writer who will donate his library to Lisbon – SAPO 24 “>
At age 16, Manguel had his first job as an accountant. He was working in the Pygmalión bookstore in Buenos Aires, when the writer Jorge Luís Borges, author of “Ficções”, already with progressive blindness, recruited him to be his eyes when reading to himself at home.
In 1964, Manguel became one of Borges’s readers. He also pointed out the words that the “old man” dictated to him, as he calls it in this new report. He read and wrote for Borges for four years. In 1969, he moved to Europe, some time before the military dictatorship in Argentina, leaving “most of the books behind.” In a way, he saved his library because, if he had stayed in the country, he probably would have been free of books, since at that time, as reported in “Packing my library”, who was seen reading a book by The “suspicious appearance” could be stopped.
A library that is a “lush jungle of paper and ink”
He lived in Spain, France, Italy and England, where he was a reader, of course, but also a translator for various publishers. Manguel’s library, both in boxes and on shelves, has always been “a fantastic creature made up of the different libraries” that he built and abandoned.
We can also think of a library as a kind of biography; at least that’s how the owner of this “lush ink and paper jungle” likes to think of it, as he describes it in “Packing my library.” The library is a “multi-layered autobiography,” in which notes written in the margins of the books or a note between the hidden pages make the reader remember who he was when he first read the book.
Manguel’s volumes were preserved for nearly 15 years under the worn-out beamed ceiling of an ancient stone chancel in the Loire Valley, France. In the book “Packing my library”, Manguel writes that Zola, Jules Verne, Verlaine, Shakespeare, Marguerite Yourcenar, HGWells, Cervantes, Kipling, Stendhal, Nabokov coexist in his library.
Manuel Alberto Valente tells the SAPO24 who imagines that “in Manguel’s library there is everything that is important in world literature” and imagines it well: characters such as Ulises, Madame Bovary and Josef K. live in it, but also the different philosophical schools, ancient mythologies and the beliefs of different religions.
And of course, there are encyclopedias and dictionaries, one of Manguel’s favorite sections in his library. Dictionaries, the author writes in “Packing my library”, were important in his generation: “[P]For those who liked to read, the dictionary was a magical object ”, as it already contained a whole language in its pages.
credits: OTHER JOCARD / AFP
“data-title =” Alberto Manguel in 2007 in France – He grew up with books and read to Jorge Luis Borges. Who is Alberto Manguel, the writer who will donate his library to Lisbon – SAPO 24 “>
This was the beginning of Manguel’s career as director of the National Library of Argentina -as Borges was-, an award-winning essayist and novelist. But we can go much further back in time to meet little Manguel, who grew to be the Premio Formentor das Letras (2017), Gutenberg Prize, Medicis Prize, among others.
He says he was about four years old when he learned to read by himself. By this time, he was already ordering the books meticulously. “I remember packing and repacking my books according to secret rules I made up: all the books in the Golden Books collection had to be together, the thick fairy tale collections couldn’t touch the tiny Beatrix Potter books, and the stuffed animals they cannot be put on the same shelf as books. “It was his first library.
The toughness of packing books may come to an end
Over the years, Manguel’s library has ceased to be a floor-level shelf and has taken the shape of a whole house with walls lined with books. Thousands of accumulated books. I couldn’t live without them. Packing the copies in France to house them in Canada seemed to get something out of it.
The ceremony that makes the donation of the bibliophile’s personal book collection official will take place this Saturday, at 6 p.m., at the Lisbon Book Fair, where the protocol between the writer and the mayor of Lisbon, Fernando Medina, will be signed.
Manguel writes that unpacking a library is “a savage act of rebirth,” in which he awakens the books from their hibernation days. And if the entire library is autobiographical, the act of unpacking it seems a bit to be reborn. Even if the owner is 72 years old.
Research and testimonials collected by Magda Cruz
