Fantastic Metropolis

Most affecting of all were the concluding couplets of Shakespearian or Spencerian sonnets; his tightly controlled voice would then waver with emotion, and his eyes brim with tears. On certain occasions the tears would gush openly, unrestrainedly, especially when he chose to read the sonnets about his favourite heroine, the Dark Lady, who seemed (because of her melancholy colouring, if for no other reason) the object most suited to his admiration. It would definitely not have done for any common seaman, or even officer, to see him in such a state; he had therefore ordered very sternly that he was never to be disturbed while reading aloud, by no person for any reason or with any excuse whatever.

In fact, his readings brough life to a standstill throughout the ship; everybody walked on tiptoe if they must walk at all, and such conversations as could not be postponed were continued in whispers. The only unsoluble problem was the totally inconsiderate screeching of the gulls, especially when the ship lay at anchor or was close to land; muskets and blunderbusses could not be utilized because of the disproportionate noise they made, and none of the crew could boast the Ancient Mariner’s skill with bow and arrow.

Below the folio editions were rows of books published in times more and more recent. Although he had personally selected them, the captain accorded them less reverence than the works on the higher shelves. He was aware that this laid him open to the charge that his tastes were old-fashioned, which he did not bother to deny. Some of these younger tomes were works of genius, no doubt; but they were rendered less worthy in his eyes by the circumstance that, as their dates approached the present, their initial print-runs became ever longer. That, in his view, was a quite lamentable desecration and profanation of an art which should have remained restricted to a small circle of the elite.

Occasionally a new edition of the Dark Lady sonnets came into his hands, and some of these new renderings were printed more gracefully, and arranged more tastefully than the first edition which he valued so highly, but he flung them overboard in disgust. He knew that this is not a very reasonable attitude, because the text was precisely the same, even enriched with historical introductions, explanatory notes, speculative and variant readings and learned commentaries, but he justified his actions with the old, powerful truth that a book is not, after all, just ‘text’. What, apart from text, a book is, the captain perhaps could not have satisfactorily explained to anyone else, but to him it seemed too obvious to require explanation; for was it not noticed long ago that the most self-evident truths are sometimes the hardest to explain?

In any case, the lowest shelves of his library, those below the knee, were occupied by books from the age when publishing had ceased to be a cultivated craft and become an industry. Although this part of the library was of much livelier colour and appearance than the monotony of prevalent grey which characterized the upper range, the captain’s comparative disrespect for them was expressed not only by the low place which he assigned to them but also by a certain, for him uncharacteristic, neglect. While he was fervent in his solicitude for the higher tomes, protecting them especially from dust, that great enemy of books, he allowed the lower shelves to accumulate dust over long periods, quite deliberately, as if punishing them. And, of course, at the very bottom, almost on the deck, were the editions which, by the captain’s inflexible criteria, deserved only the deepest contempt: the paperbacks. They were dusted off only at the great spring cleanings, which were rare.

This story is part of Zoran Živković’s novel The Book, available from Prime Books. Translated from the Serbian by Alice Copple-Tosić.