IN PRAISE OF TALK ABOUT BOOKS THAT NEVER READ "Who's eye is what they look even with eyes closed "
(Italo Calvino)
intellectuals, you know, facts are often subject of derision from those who are not intellectuals, they do not want, or may not be. Li laughs, usually, for sailing at the highest levels of their ridiculous and sciences have great difficulty in practical life every day. I'm not the Kantian a priori, the theory of relativity, the epistemology of Piaget, quantum physics or the theory of reception to embarrass an intellectual, but handles that lock, caps will not open, drawers that do not open and tires that will pierce. But even when freed from the burdens of daily engages in what best can do, ie speak or write is not difficult to find grounds for derision. His conceit and his need to show it no matter what, for example, it is easy occasion. How can you not laugh at his extraordinary ability to speak with great expertise in what you do not know!?! Only intellectuals can quibble long, seemingly convinced, for example, books that have never read. Evidently, it is thought, their vanity is so great that not escape the display of their knowledge even when nothing would be flaunted. What matters to them being successfully included, live and communicate with others? They care, they say, grinning, to be admired in all that they know and also what you do not know how skilled they are in their in their quackery and braggadocio. Not only that, he chuckles, the intellectuals know very well to hide their ignorance, but even have the audacity to pass it weird for wisdom and knowledge. From
fun of mocking the seriousness of the ethical arguments of the step is short then: what kind of professional ethics will guide the one who never, for example, with great condescension dares to explain the importance of 'Ulysses
Joyce in literature of the twentieth century without ever having read a line? What a miserable mindedness can lead to the categorical statement that only knowledge of this novel allows us to understand all the literature of the last century, if you have not ever even peeled? Even among the ethical and philosophical way is not so long: the intellectuals who invented what is written in books are the classic example of the triumph of imagination over reality, tangible experience of the dream and the interpretation given of fact. The arbitrariness of the subject becomes illusory and dangerous reality in the representation of a self-sufficient subjectivity irresponsible. An intellectual who imagines that he never read, pretending to be in possession of knowledge that has not and who wants to pass off as real a fictional world, it is therefore worthy of being mocked playfully, is denounced as a cheater and how seriously author's virtually non-existent.
In his defense, however, must first point out the fact, then not so minor, as the right to deceive the next on its own jurisdiction requires uncommon skill. But even without such a convenient argument, one can find many good reasons to defend the very thing which common sense takes reasonable distance. Indeed, it also reasonable demonstration of how to talk about books that have never read and do so with rigor, relevance and profit. We can even say that a player, a good player, to be able to know what is written in the book that never read. It is obvious that the skills of a good reader - like almost all the skills - do not improvise or be acquired immediately and easily. We need, among many other things, good though not necessarily extensive reading, listening to good preparation vigilant and creative and not obvious, not at all reassuring readiness to explore the boundaries of evidence.
There is, indeed, a space of time that the book offers us a unique experience, unique and very original: the moment of reading. In that moment all that we recognize, we think, imagine and understand is inextricably linked that book and the circumstances in which we read. There Bignami or taking filmic transposition: no experience can give us back the richness, complexity and intensity of reading. We know, however, because they do everyday experience, that the time flies, that time does not stop. Even the most intense and rewarding experience is no longer what it was when it moved: he reminded, has taken shape, texture and size different from what it was when it was. What was living like this, as the past comes to life and was confined spaces such as heavy fading memory. It reduces and becomes representation, ie in a form which is the presence of a surrogate existence is not what it shows but something that is put in place and replacing it, or rather trying to replace him as best he can. Yes we carry with us the experience of reading, but in a form that keeping it in its own way reveals, transforms it into what was not and can not be. The representations that replace the time unique, original and unique reading can crystallize both in stable forms, for example, shared stories and comments that reiterate always equal to themselves, is more fluid and extemporaneous occurring in the lability and in the indefiniteness of occasional reminiscences. In each case the experience as such remains inaccessible, any consistency has the mode of representation that the returns to the present. In its place we find a substitute for it, namely the memory in all forms in which it perpetuates.
Now, who exactly was dedicated to good books can not do so not to mention Proust noted that the memory be made of the same field of dreams, as, ultimately, between memory and imagination the border is very uncertain and very fluid. Of course, even those who can do instead of
Recherche read something else that led him to the same awareness, for example, the novel by Gesualdo Bufalino
Argo or the dreams of the blind memory.
But not only Proust and Bufalino, or who for them, to bring key topics to the thesis of the substantial difference between a book not a book remembered and imagined. Too brief and superficial basic knowledge of the phenomenology of reading can make us understand that it can not be otherwise.
Among the experiences that make reading a single year, alive and exciting is the discovery of traces of other books, ie like a book to refer to other books taking up themes, motifs, narrative devices, characters and everything 'altro.Già having to ask the question how and why the author prefers to write down things that have been written instead of thinking about his work
scratch , means that it can be considered the product of a unique gesture that should be strictly respected and preserved its originality. What sense would require a book by the speaker of a foreign form of rigor to the book itself? It is foolish to expect from the summary and commentary on a work by the fidelity to a source that does not exist? Originally a book it is only when reading, because it is at that moment to happen something unique: the recognition of sources for the model, the reasons for and the themes that recur in the final creative construction to which the work beckons letting it unfold through the knowledge, imagination and sensitivity the reader. From this awareness we can not then do not come to the conclusion that, through continued exercise of reading the books and learn to imagine the reality of the imagination to words that represent them.
Another fundamental skills acquired by reading books and useful to invent what is in the books never read, is the ability to retrieve and reuse their knowledge. The busy reading to discover traces of other books, allows you to discover what the author has previously read (or which has already heard), but also what the reader already knows (or which has already heard ). It 'obvious that a fundamental experience of reading - just to open the
link to other texts - not so much and lead to not only discover new things, but to discover, perhaps in different ways, what you already know. Who has made good reading so that you can learn to recognize only what is already known. It is therefore the knowledge acquired, not the new one, which brings into play every time you want to read a book unknown. Who does the same thing about a book you read?
Read a book, then, means coming to know so many books that have never read and that maybe it is not printing more now for a long time (one might even dare to claim that you read well books ever written, although in this case, you can not expect to be understood in its bold exploration of the boundaries of evidence).
What remains of a book, then, is not exactly what this is, but the product of the experience of finding everything in it's potential, unexpressed, latent experience, in short, to create one work, an experience, therefore, quite similar to those works if images. The ambition to take possession of its original substance, or claim to having the expert says, is a clear symptom of unsatisfactory experiences with books and their reading of course means that they have always sought what was not in them and even if there was it would not be accessible. In contrast it was left out just what they can offer with both hands: the opportunity to discover how many other books contain only a book, play, and the trouble of searching, freedom and responsibility to create their own work.
This, then, that is available and that remains of each book, is not its original substance, but the experience - or rather its representation in the forms of memory - the discovery of their previous readings and the ability to build a new work from the many fragments of past readings. In this sense, the reader
of Faust that does not ask what's in the drama written by Goethe, but which can work to rebuild thanks to his knowledge, has the power to create every time a
Faust scratch. So why expect something that you can not have - the original
Faust - where there is always the possibility of having so many new
Faust? Who can therefore claim the exclusive right to speak and should do this in one way only, namely in the way of those who have actually gone with the eyes word by word?
The search for an answer to these questions can not but raise a suspicion: those who claim to know only the books they have read, are lazy readers who seek only the evidence, what we understand with certainty and that everyone must understand the same way. Readers, in short, who have neither the interest nor the will, and perhaps even the ability to look how many books are there in one book. Readers, poor people, who concealed the effort to learn even from the books that have never read, give up the pleasure of talking about everything they know.
