Gyorgy Faludy, When I’m 96 I hope to be like you
Wednesday, June 7th, 2006I like this guy, and not just because he’s named Gyorgy. (Can a 29 year old get away with patronizing a nonagenarian? Not likely, but where’s the harm in trying?) I like him because he’s a true blue bibliophile. He’s obviously read everything you can imagine reading and quite a lot more that you can’t even imagine. And I like him because he’s a duece of a raconteur. You know he’s told this story about a thousand times. It’s got a kind of nacreous perfection to it:
… in March 1938, I offered some of my poetry translations to the publishers Uj Idok. They offered me a contract to translate the 1000 most beautiful poems in world literature. When the publisher’s head, Miss Andrassy, who looked rather like a woman from an Italian renaissance painting, asked me when I’d have it ready, I asked for four years. “I have a lot of reading to do: I’ll submit the manuscript after the World War,” I said. She replied: “After the World War? It’s already been.” She couldn’t believe there’d be another. In the end, we agreed on a deadline of 1942. I finally completed the first version of the anthology in spring 1988. It’s now being reissued, with another 500 poems. I don’t regret chasing down great poems all my life. I learned something that few people know: that Japanese, Chinese, Persian and Arab poetry has just as much value as European poetry.
That’s what I want to learn! But does he actually read all of those languages? Amazing. Meanwhile my Spanish, rarely used even in its heyday, quietly gathers dust in some climate-controlled storage of the mind. And that’s not all the sad news. Faludy points out the grim fact that my generation is sinking into an age of darkness–as if I didn’t know it already.
In the US, people read 35 to 40 per cent fewer books now than 20 years ago. And the numbers continue to fall. Of courses, we’ve seen this before. Around 350AD, people stopped reading. At the time of Marcus Aurelius, there were 88 libraries in Rome. Under Constantine the Great there was only one. I think we stand before a great crisis, which is consuming literature.
Oh! when will I be able to recount the sociological trends of the ancient world with such assurance? There’s only one thing for it: I’ve got to hit the books. And it’s true what they say, nature helps the one who helps one’s self. Call it a minor miracle if you wish, but the local library actually has one of Faludy’s books in circulation. It’s a biography of Erasmus, with the pithy title of… Erasmus. Which is perfect because I know next to nothing about Erasmus. That’s one of the few benefits of ignorance, pretty much everywhere you turn there’s something to be learned. So the too-be-read list gets a little bit longer. [Link is from The Literary Saloon]