Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Quote of the Day (Joseph Conrad, on Books’ ‘Precarious Hold on Life’)


“It has been said a long time ago that books have their fate.  They have, and it is very much like the destiny of man.  They share with us the great incertitude of ignominy or glory—of severe justice and senseless persecution—of calumny and misunderstanding—the shame of undeserved success.  Of all the inanimate objects, of all men’s creations, books are the nearest to us, for they contain our very thought, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to truth, and our persistent leaning towards error.  But most of all they resemble us in their precarious hold on life.  A bridge constructed according to the rules of the art of bridge-building is certain of a long, honourable and useful career.  But a book as good in its way as the bridge may perish obscurely on the very day of its birth.  The art of their creators is not sufficient to give them more than a moment of life.  Of the books born from the restlessness, the inspiration, and the vanity of human minds, those that the Muses would love best lie more than all others under the menace of an early death.  Sometimes their defects will save them.  Sometimes a book fair to see may—to use a lofty expression—have no individual soul.  Obviously a book of that sort cannot die.  It can only crumble into dust.  But the best of books drawing sustenance from the sympathy and memory of men have lived on the brink of destruction, for men’s memories are short, and their sympathy is, we must admit, a very fluctuating, unprincipled emotion.”—Joseph Conrad, “Books,” in Notes on Life and Letters (1905)

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