My apologies for the scarcity of posts recently. I am occupied with two things at present: editing my first novel and helping friends organize a cross-country cycling event.
In the next couple of months, I hope to have some more information about this first novel that I can share here. In the meantime, I am going to post some oldies but goodies. It might be something from my previous travels, a poem I wrote or something from the archives of a blog I kept several years ago.
With that introduction to this new Thursday theme here is the first throwback piece.
My previous blog was titled While I’m Still Breathing (there is so much of life to experience… I hope I can fit it all in…while I’m still breathing.)
I shut that blog down when I was at University. I just didn’t have the time to keep it updated.
The following post was published on 23 January 2011. If you read my previous post about book collecting, this certainly fits into that theme.
Early book collectors…my inspiration and heroes.
My reading schedule this term is absolutely crazy which will make my posting rather few and far between I’m afraid. So, every once and a while I’m going to post something interesting I come across in my readings. Hopefully, this won’t bore too many of you.
With my love for collecting books this quote from An Introduction to Manuscript Studies by Raymond Clemens & Timothy Graham really tickled my fancy.
The Italian humanist Petrarca (1304-74) …” was inspired by his love of the classics to become a tireless collector, seeking out texts wherever he could find them and adding them to his personal collection. He called upon friends to help him in the task. On one occasion (perhaps in 1346) he wrote to the Dominican friar Giovanni dell’Incisa:
“I am still in thrall of one insatiable desire, which hitherto I have been neither able nor willing to check…..I cannot get enough books. It may be that I have already more than I need, but it is with books as it is with other things: success in acquisition spurs the desire to get still more…Books delight us through and through, they talk with us, hey give us good counsel, they enter into a living and intimate companionship with us…Now do you, as you hold me dear, commission turstworthy and competent men to go through Tuscany for me, examining the book-chests of the religious and of other studious men, searching for things that might serve to alleviate or to increase my thirst. And although you know in what streams I fish and in what woods I hunt, nevertheless, to avoid error I enclose a list of the things I chiefly desire; and that you may be the more eager, let me tell you that my sending similar request to friends in Britain, France, and Spain. So then, in order that none may surpass you in faithfulness and diligence, do your best – and fairewell.” (pg 63 of above noted test)
What a delightful man Petrarca was. I must investigate him further.