'The magic cabinet': when Paradise is a library

Professor Aronnax with Captain Nemo in the library of the 'Nautilus'.

Engraving from a drawing by Edouard Riou for an 1870 edition of 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea'.THE GRANGER COLLECTION /

After arguing that "everything written in books must have once existed in some brain," Lewis Carroll made the following prediction in

: “There will come a day, if the world lives long enough, when all possible melodies will have been composed, all possible puns will have been made and, what is worse, all possible books will have been written!

The number of words is limited.

And he concluded: "Instead of asking 'what book will I write' an author will ask 'which of the books I will write."

This prediction implies that the collection of our libraries is not endless.

Both the combinations that our imagination devises and those that the letters of the alphabet allow, although they are incalculable, are not infinite.

However, compared to the libraries that we can still imagine, the existing libraries are insignificant: even, for example, the National Library of Spain, which today houses more than 28 million works.

The earthly libraries, including the one on the Internet,

they have their limits;

those of the imagination, no.

A bold pirate of spaces beyond the physical horizon, Emilio Pascual has collected throughout his many literary forays a rich booty of libraries that, although no one can visit except between the covers of a book (or for Internet users, on the screen ), offer their audience unsuccessful delights comparable to those felt by a reader in front of those remote shelves that, although visibly tempting, will always remain out of reach of his greedy hand.

Under the banner of

Pascual has assembled a vast catalog of these magical cabinets, some better known than others, which exist made of words, for readers made of the same encouraged material.

From the labyrinthine library where the last copy of the second book of Aristotle's

will burn (in

) to Captain Nemo's underwater library where, its creator affirms, books on political economy are conspicuous by their absence .

There is, of course, the Don Quixote library famously subjected to an

by the priest and the barber;

there is the library of the Abbey of San Víctor that Pantagruel once visited;

there are the intimate libraries of Emma Bovary, of Colonel Koshkariov, of Mr. Shandy.

There are the shrewd libraries of Sherlock Holmes, Pepe Carvalho, Salvo Montalbano, and the youthful ones of Tom Sawyer, Matilda, David Copperfield.

There are atrocious libraries like that of the illiterate Mr. Todd with his reading slave, and that of the Man Without Qualities in which no book can be consulted.

There are libraries of a single book, such as the butler in

, and of all books, such as Borges's perhaps too famous Biblioteca de Babel.

Much of the charm of this book resides in that mixture of revelation and reluctance that keeps its readers in doubt: is this character, this title, real or imaginary?

But not only more or less well-known libraries are here.

One of the greatest pleasures that this book offers, whose archetype is

, is the discovery of wonders that until then the reader was unaware of.

A great connoisseur of Spanish-language literature among many others, Pascual includes in his learned and entertaining volume libraries dreamed of by Eugenio Noel, FG Orejas, Manuel Longares, Cristóbal Serra, libraries that I, in my ignorance, have not visited and that now I I have proposed to explore for myself.

If I find a fault in this splendid book, it is the modesty (to call it that) of its author.

Its many pages are teeming with names, but unless the reader knows whether or not Faustino Materucci or Peter Stillman or Rodrigo Sánchez Arévalo are imaginary, it cannot be surprising that their works share a shelf with those writers that literature manuals tell us that they are. They existed, like Saint John of the Cross or Gaston Leroux.

Despite the excellent index and the scholarly bibliography that complete this book, there are numerous references to characters and works that do not reveal their bibliographical sources.

Perhaps this sin (if it is a sin) of Pascual, of not wanting to share his bedroom secrets with readers,

However, much of the charm of this book resides precisely in that mixture of revelation and reluctance that keeps its readers in doubt: is this character, this title, real or imaginary?

I suspect that Pascual granted himself the poetic license of inventing some library, some author and the corresponding literary source for him.

When my

was reviewed in France by the great Angelo Rinaldi, after saying that he liked the book, he added that he regretted the absence of two fundamental texts: the

of the president of Brosses and the treatises of Simiacus of Paphlagonia, “who fought Arianism,” Rinaldi clarified, “with blows of papyrus.”

When I thanked Rinaldi for his review some time later, I confessed that I had heard of the president of Brosses, but never of Simiaco de Paphlagonia.

“No wonder,” he replied.

“I wanted to mention the absence of De Brosses in your book and I was missing a second term.

So I made up this Monkey to complete my sentence.

It was a matter of style."

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