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Showing posts from September 23, 2012

Book City (Vitezslav Nezval)

There are times in our life of reading where the book seems more than the squarish paper object that presents the information. Times when the book, through the transformative process of intent reading, becomes something other, something strange or new or mysterious or intensely desirable, simply through its effect on imagination. Times when awake world and dream world merge in the process of reading the book, so that where we were before and where we might be afterwards have been suspended by the experience of reading. Such is the effect being elucidated (if that is the word) in the wondrous poem ‘Book City’ by the Czech poet Vitezslav Nezval. Without the book we could not enter into the other world that the book evokes. Then also, the very existence of books is a reality of our world. Books confront us with their presence. Books are objects of desire. Books meet us with their own beauty, their own possibilities and demands. Their very existence tests our self-awareness, our ps