In one of Calvino's theoretical writings we find the suggestive and Borgesian proposal of the library not only as a collection of works, but as a crossed system of combinations. Literature itself would be nothing more than a library continually subject to changes aimed at undermining canonical authors to bring out the apocryphals. Since, if literature is born and nourished by desire, it cannot be satisfied with the given, but project itself into the place of what is not there, or which, even if there is, is hidden, still invisible and distant. Libraries then not only are infinite, but they change the meaning of a book according to the section in which they are placed, the location, the methods of consultation and use, the way of playing the spaces, of opening / closing to the light, shadow (in skyscrapers, underground), making the library a place where books and readers interact in sometimes mythical spaces. Libraries as they are collected, by interposed narration, not only of the books that have survived the catastrophes of history, but of those burned, lost, invented, which, by the mere fact of having been written or thought of at least once, have left traces. In this book, of great richness and suggestion, conceived and edited by Anna Dolfi, we reflect, with examples from great modern literature, on the relationship between paper and celluloid shadows, train conturnables and marginalia, in search of books in libraries and of libraries inside books. |