Christy mentioned the library should have its own post. I agree. It was probably my favorite thing about the book — that the library is a labyrinth, that it's in many ways more sacred than the abbey's church, that physically it's a just a fire hazard of mouse-chewed parchment and vellum — it's so heart-breakingly fragile — but it's the very foundation, the sum, really, of centuries and centuries of human knowledge.
And the fact that it houses the last copy of Aristotle's "Comedy." Brilliant. And the fact that old Jorge couldn't bring himself to just destroy the book. He could have just thrown it in the dung heap, but he didn't! But he had to poison the pages so anyone who read it would be destroyed. The book would live. But the reader wouldn't. I love that. And also the fact that it was Aristotle. Jorge knew that not even the church could offer up an authority to counter the wisdom of that eminent Greek philosopher. (The time setting is interesting, because the Renaissance was just around the corner, when all of that beautiful, pagan, humanistic Greek stuff would be rediscovered and flood the world of arts and letters and politics. So maybe the end of the world, at least Jorge's world, the world of the Middle Ages, really was at hand).
What were your impressions of the library?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
That's a wonderful description of it. The most fun part of the mystery to me was unraveling the secret of the labyrinth, with the code of the scrolls and secret passage to the hidden room.
Post a Comment