Lost Libraries

A personal library begins as an act of passion before becoming a great sacrifice. I refer only to private libraries, cultivated by someone who, like a small demiurge, founds and nurtures them in their own image. Institutional libraries are different: their coldness and specialization lend them the corporate, bland air of a telephone directory.

During my student days, I wandered through Havana’s second-hand bookshops. Among their eclectic clientele, novice writers often searched for Les Fleurs du Mal, Ulysses, or The Glass Bead Game. If, after much toil, they found their Holy Grail—sometimes sacrificing basic needs—they insisted such acquisitions were essential to forge a literary project that would bring fame. These cherished books fueled the bonfire of their creative passion.

Other patrons were collectors, distinct in their approach. They rarely rummaged through shelves. Instead, they approached the shopkeeper with a specific request, seeking the rarity of an edition rather than its literary merit. Some pursued Libro de los ingenios, written by the upstart doctor and landowner Justo Germán Cantero and illustrated by Laplante; others sought memoirs of forgotten judges or confessions of flamboyant senators. These collectors amassed multiple editions of the same monograph or letter collection, valuing a couple of extra pages, a limited print run, or a legendary collector’s bookplate. I knew some who caressed embossed leather or hardback covers, as if longing to taste the gold edging. They resembled widowed marchionesses who compulsively buy jewelry, locking it away in a safe deposit box, never to be worn or shared, destined to be sold by their heirs.

Most who undertake the laborious task of founding a personal library dream of its immortality. They believe they have imbued it with their incorruptible soul, ensuring that, even after they descend to Hades, their libraries will grow in number and selectivity. Only divine mercy spares them from learning the true fate of such collections, often undone by family crises, humidity, hurricanes, economic depression, or political turmoil. The Library of Alexandria’s destruction was merely a warning of the Exterminating Angel’s passage through humbler cabinets.

Some writers are tied to collections that memory exaggerates. Biographers of Julián del Casal emphasize the influence of his friend Ramón Meza’s rich library. While undeniable, the poet’s bohemian lifestyle meant he owned few books, allowing him to boast of an exceptionally curated collection. José Martí, another wanderer, lacked overflowing shelves. He left books behind in every place he lived and died with only a Life of Cicero in his rucksack, likely not his favorite. Some naïve readers of Lezama assume he needed a vast, multiform library to craft Analecta del reloj or Paradiso, citing his essay “La biblioteca como dragón” from La cantidad hechizada. Yet, the cataloged volumes from his Trocadero home reveal no grand Havana library. Many inspiring titles came from loans, fleeting readings at the Real Fuerza castle, or his boundless imagination, where a dragon’s tooth sufficed to lecture on the monster’s fiery physiology. To claim Lezama’s work emanated solely from a bookshelf is like asserting Borges’ oeuvre stemmed from his role as director of Buenos Aires’ National Library.

Libraries are challenges, incitements, starting points, and sometimes mirages. Great writers do not mirror a nation’s bibliographers. They read enough to create something new, unbound by books like scribes endlessly annotating a single verse. Consider Teresa of Ávila, who collected many devotional books in her cell. When the Holy Office banned them, seizing every volume, she feared she had lost her source of devotion and writing. Yet, in a vision, Jesus Christ told her, “I will give you a living book.” Trading textual study for spiritual experience, she penned the least bookish works—from her wandering life’s story to the chiseled Interior Castle—and her verses, where longing for God dances like a bull in the soul’s arena.

I write this from Extremadura, where life—beyond books—has brought me. In my Havana home, two rooms barely contained my library: childhood gifts like La Edad de Oro, Platero y yo, and Alice in Wonderland; adolescent treasures, including Juan Chabás’ anthology of Spanish literature, Amadís de Gaula, and Enrique Piñeyro’s Vida y escritos de Juan Clemente Zenea; and decades of accumulated finds. Now, only a meager shelf in my apartment-turned-office holds the complete works of San Juan de la Cruz, Santa Teresa’s Aguilar edition, a gifted copy of María Zambrano’s Claros del bosque, and a Bible. I take comfort knowing others thrived with less. I also know my library, built over nearly six decades, will never return. Even if I salvaged a dozen books, they would only remind me of loss. Now, I seek the living book. Holy Doctor, guide me.

Years ago, I completed a poetry collection I wanted to call Lost Libraries—a prophetic title, I now realize. Its closing poem bears that name. I place it here, amid these and other losses, feeling that spirituality and fantasy, not printed books, must guide my new life.