Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed]

N. C. Wyeth's Colorful New Book Week Poster

The National Association of Book Publishers has prepared a glorious
poster in four colors which is going out this month to bookstores,
libraries and schools

of masterly use of the English language. Colum's mythological stories, such as "Children of Odin" and "The Golden Fleece," his wonder-tales like "The Forge in the Forest," and Ella Young's Irish stories in "The Wonder-Smith and His Son," are among the books that prepare the mind of a young reader to prefer the best forms of speech, and by the best I mean the simplest, the most vivid and vital. If you have learned to appreciate exquisite simplicity, language so clear that the meaning shines thru like a light in a crystal globe, you will be a long way on the road to an appreciation of the best in literature. If you have not, some of the best literature may slip by you unnoticed because it is so simple, while you have been looking for "fine writing."

Don't be impatient if you don't find all that I do, the first time you read any one of these, or others like them. Sometimes you find a different book when you come back to it later; perhaps with added experience, or just with a mind that has slipped to a higher plane, as our minds do once in a while if we keep them in good health and exercise. One way to exercise a mind is to try it occasionally on works of imagination that you "don't quite get" the first time: if you don't, put the book aside and try again some other time. It is no disgrace not to find the full beauty and meaning of a fantasy like "Where the Blue Begins" at the first glance, but it really is disgraceful to go about proclaiming that "you can't see what anyone sees in that book." For the high adventure of reading you need to develop not only sight but insight, and that sometimes comes slowly, partly by growth, partly by cultivation and partly by the grace of God.

In the library in which this chapter opened, I caught a glimpse of one young man not looking, like the others, at the open page of his book, but gazing straight ahead with the curious intent look that goes with long thoughts. He had gone further away than anyone else in the room. Something on the page had set him off on his own thoughts; some sentence, perhaps just some phrase, had been a springboard to send his mind flying. I do not know what it was, but from some book he was getting one of the best blessings a book can give. Take it from one who loves

to read, if you never lift your eyes from your reading and follow your own thought, your own dream, from the place on the page where something has given you a start for thinking, you are missing a valuable experience.

I suppose I read as rapidly as anyone I know: you would know why if you could see the print that must pass under my eyes in the course of my work. I have trained to it, and I hope that you too will train yourself to read not only accurately and understandingly but at a reasonably rapid rate of speed. It is largely a matter of practice; there is no rush, no hurry in reading like this; having learned to read accurately and determined to read understandingly, gradually quicken speed until you have reached the swiftest rate that will let you take it in. This rate, however, will vary greatly. You may be skimming along across pages of print like a railroad train gliding thru pleasant but not especially significant country, and find that you must reduce speed if you are to see this part of the landscape properly; you may even come to some point where you feel you must get off the train and go by yourself for awhile.

Rapidly as I read for the most part, it is when I must slow up that I best enjoy myself, and the books that I treasure most are those that most often make me pause completely, look off the book and think. Don't get the idea that you must wait until the end of a book to think it over, or to meditate upon something that it has suggested. Sometimes as you are reading you will discover that you are yourself following a parallel line of thought; if you are, put down the book and follow your own thought thru. If you don't do it then and there, the book may sweep you along with it, away from your idea altogether. The best that reading can do for you is to make you think, so if an idea of your own is almost up to the surface, don't lose time in laying hold of it, even if you have to catch it by the tail.

Some books have so much intellectual momentum that almost any sentence may whirl you out into your own meditations, as the last man on the line is snapped off in "crack the whip." "The Imitation of Christ" is like this: so are the essays of Emerson; so is Zimmern's "Greek Commonwealth."

[ocr errors]

Or it may be that you have been thinking about some subject for a good while, but incoherently, one idea contradicting another as ideas often do. Just then you may chance upon a single sentence that is like the one drop that makes a chemical experiment come out right. You might not have noticed that sentence especially, if you had not been just ready for it. Or it may be that some phrase, some description, some use of words, sets you off for no other reason than that it is beautiful; if you had had a good friend with you, you would have cried "Listen to this!", but being alone, you read it over, look off the book and think about it. I suppose I could give you samples of sentences that have made me pause like this: indeed I know I could tell you some that did so when I was in my teens and my twenties, for I then marked some of my books at such places I even copied out some of these paragraphs in a blankbook that still sur

vives. But I do not give you these quotations lest you think that I mean you too to ponder over them, and the only interest in some of them is that they show what I was interested in at that time. No, pauses like these come spontaneously, as you stop at the sight of a blossoming appletree, perhaps just long enough to think "How lovely!" perhaps long enough to make a poem; but you don't stop because you think you ought to, or at a place chosen for you by some one else.

These are not aimless day-dreams that I have been describing; they are little journeys of the mind. They are the great moments of a reader's day. If you rise to moments like these from the pages of a strong, sound book, you have a chance not only of seeing life but of seeing into life, not only of sight but of insight. The great books are the books with vision. It is this quality above all that makes greatness in literature.

[merged small][subsumed][merged small][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]

Eight important books of substantial content are featured in the colorful display sent by the Michael Gross Co. to a thousand dealers

W

The Clothing, of Books

And the Great Binders of Italy, France and England

William Dana Orcutt

Author of "In Quest of the Perfect Book"

II

The Binders of France

HEN a people have developed such a super-standard in manners and customs as had the Italians of the fifteenth century, with patrons such as the Medici, Orsini, d'Este, della Roveri, and the Gonzagas, to say nothing of the Popes and the cardinals, art could not do less than produce Michelangelo, and Da Vinci, and Raphael; printing had to have its Aldus; and binding its master workmen whose names unhappily are all too slightly recorded. Even when the decadence set in, in the sixteenth century, the style established by Italian artist binders dominated all European work in taste and design for nearly a century.

France filched preeminence in the art of binding from Italy just as she had earlier taken from her the supremacy in the art of printing; and she held it for over two centuries. By the middle of the sixteenth century all originality had disappeared from the Italian bindings, and workmanship deteriorated. Italy was content to have supplied the basic principles and the inspiration for what became in France a veritable fine art. It was only in France that binding was encouraged as an art and practiced continuously from the time of the Renaissance down to the period of the French Revolution. The expeditions of Charles VIII and Louis XII into Italy had given the French ample opportunities to appreciate the beauties of the Italian bindings, which they were not slow to appropriate. The early French work, except for the elaboration of the gilders, was based flatly upon these Italian models, and in spite of constant effort, it was nearly a century be

fore French workmen succeeded in developing a national style.

That sumptuous monarch, François I, included the covers of the book in his generous patronage, and encouraged the Royal binders to compete with the private volumes still being bound for that prince of booklovers, Jean Grolier-but now in Paris instead of Venice. In fact, many of the identical ornaments were employed, the Grolier inscription in the center of the cover being matched by the arms of France. The books executed for the King are more elaborate, for expense meant nothing to the luxurious François. There was gold enough and to spare, and this was drawn upon freely to enable the French gilders to develop their art. This profligacy led them, for the first time in the history of the art, to extend the use of gold even to the edges of books-the only French innovation Grolier ever accepted. The Royal covers possess a marked similarity-the floriated and interlaced fillets, within a border; the panel dotted with the crowned F and the fleur-de-lys; the King's arms stamped in the center, and the Royal device of the salamander in flames usually placed below.

While François was pursuing his own devious ways, and Grolier was steadfastly adhering to the principles he had learned in Italy, the splendid bindings of Geoffroi Tory flashed into competition. This artist made his impression on almost every element that entered into the building of books in his period. Everything he touched gave evidence of his taste and skill. The Petrarch in the British Museum is a splendid expression of himself on the cover of

[graphic][merged small]

a book. The volume was printed in Venice in 1525, brought into France in sheets, after the custom of the times, and was fortunate enough to be selected by Tory to receive his finishing touches. He supplied the designs for the stamps just as he provided drawings for decorations which appear in books on which his mark appears; but there seems to be no reason to think that he had anything more to do with the actual binding than to direct its execution.

In this volume the chief decoration of the boards consists of stamps forming

arabesque panels. The motifs are clearly traceable to Italian sources, but the designs themselves express the originality and personality of the artist. There is no need of signature: in the lower portion of the decoration that fills the center panel, Tory has worked in his famous mark, the pot cassé, as a part of the arabesque.

Some bindings call vividly to my mind interesting personages and events, none more so than those executed for Diane de Poitiers. The last time I went to Reims I had three definite objectives: to stand in

« AnteriorContinuar »