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THE CAPTAIN'S LIBRARY
From the inside the cabin door looked entirely different from the outside.
Instead of the crude, gnarled beechwood, it was all polished mahogany,
inlaid with brighter materials and secured by ornamental brass rivets.
Such a door befits the premises of a sailing?ship captain who wishes to
uphold and assert his uniquely elevated status-even if that vessel is, in
fact, a pirate ship. Why should pirate captains be denied an appreciation
of beauty?
It is really only prejudice that holds them to be savage, primitive
cutthroats who belch at the table, wipe their mouths with their
coat?sleeves, and throw gnawed bones into every corner. Nothing could be
further from the truth! Among pirate captains one can find any number of
individuals whose manners are truly refined, cultivated and polite; men
who, moreover, have the ability to appreciate various of and, in many
cases, to create art themselves.
Although you will definitely never find this information in textbooks of
literary history, because it would be unedifying to mention such
uncomfortable truths, many a great poem, and even several excellent
novels, were written in just such cabins, during lulls between piratical
or corsairly activities. Likewise, there are countless still?lifes, some
of which have found their way into the galleries of great museums, that
were created in moments of inspiration after the division of booty
valiantly liberated from owners who, for obvious reasons, will have no
further use for it. It is only natural that on such occasions the captains
(at least those of finer propensities) are in no hurry to seize for
themselves the trifles which fascinate the common crewmen and perhaps even
the less educated officers. Gold and silver specie, and other such
blatantly valuable items, do not attract such captains strongly; but a
rare book, or a painting by an old master, can certainly appease a
delicate conscience, upset by the somewhat dishonest means whereby they
were obtained. In such matters, the ideal circumstance is for one pirate
ship to rob another; the question of honest acquisition having been
completely cancelled, the luckier and more capable captain can then enjoy
his newly acquired riches with a completely untroubled conscience.
That our present captain was of that special sort was demonstrated by many
unmistakeable signs in the cabin. Indeed, had it not been for a small,
black, triangular gonfalon bearing the device of a white
skull?and?crossbones, which stood on a heavy marble base on his ample
desk-a desk which required six legs, though they were slender, elegantly
curved and ornately carved-one might have fancied that this room was the
atelier or salon of a connoiseur who, for some eccentric reason, chose to
dwell on a sailing ship instead of, as might have been predicted, a remote
castle surrounded by carefully tended lawns hidden among shady, evergreen
forests.
It is also a vulgar prejudice, however, to assume that true devotees of
the arts invariably wish to retreat into such sheltered environments.
Quite the opposite is true: you are more likely to find them in quite
different places, some of which may not appear entirely suited to the
contemplation of artistic beauty. Don't let appearances deceive you!
Artistry, and its appreciation, may dwell where nobody suspects that it
might be found.
Even if you overlooked the white grand piano (on your right as you step
through the door)-from which occasionally flowed the sounds of elegies
measurelessly melancholy, causing shivers of nameless dread among sailors
unused to such things-and if you ignored the right?hand wall, almost
entirely covered with winter landscapes, the best that could be obtained
on the open seas, with frames curled into such arabesques as would provoke
envy in even the haughtiest art?collector, still there was no way that you
could fail to notice the vast library stretching along the entire
left?hand wall, from the ceiling timbers lying flush with their rounded
wooden beams down to the slickly polished deck.
What styles of binding and spine were to be seen there! On the higher,
less accessible shelves slept the captain's favourites, ancient
manuscripts from the days before printing, when they were painstakingly
copied. The antiquities did not, in fact, possess any binding in the usual
sense. Stiff leaves were constrained between thin tablets of stone or wood
which only hinted at a possibility of book?covers, and with no hint at all
of a spine. Only by lifting the book down could one find out what it was,
and that privilege was exclusive to the captain. Should any other person,
from some unthinkable degree of ignorance (or, even worse, malice) reach
out to remove a book from this library, that miscreant would suffer
immediate capital punishment, without hope of forgiveness or mercy. Not
that it had ever come to that; the inclinations of his crew lay in
fundamentally different directions.
The next highest shelves of the library mirrored the history of printing
skills. A row of precious incunabulas, both tabulary and typographic,
illustrated the early printers, the problems they faced and the processes
of trial and error by which they resolved them. What materials had not
been used for binding in those pioneering times? Almost anything which
seemed to offer sufficient firmness and durability, but leather most of
all.
Skin, that is; torn from every imaginable species of domestic and wild
mammal, and even from several birds, then specially processed and cured
for the purpose. After almost a century of experimentation, it had been
unequivocally proved that learned texts, whether religious or secular, are
best encased in leather from boars which, having been gelded when very
young, are then allowed to roam for a time through a fenced?off area of
oak forest, not too damp; while lighter volumes, whose contents are
directed more to the emotions (a category which includes devotional
poetry) are best clad in the leather of young pregnant cows, because of
its lighter nuance of colour, which will be found to lose none of its
virtue even when the mood of the contents is predominantly pensive or even
melancholy.
Among the uncouth and superstitious crewmen there sometimes-especially on
nights when the moon was full-circulated whispers that among the captain's
books were some whose leather originated from no animal whatsoever. Cruel
but brave, hardened sailors who had each stared death in the eye many
times, yet still they shivered with horror at the thought that some of the
books in the captain's library might actually be bound in human hide. Such
rumours considerably enhanced his authority, and induced the sailors to
look with a certain awe on the library, which otherwise might have become,
together with every person known to cherish books, the occasion for ironic
and disrespectful remarks. Nothing improves loyalty and obedience so
effectively as the thought that the punishment for rebellion or treachery
might be so horribly and literally visited on one's own skin.
Below the incunabulas and other early printed books were those rare folio
editions in which the captain most frequently sought solace in those hours
of sombre lassitude which, as the years slipped by, came to bedevil him
more and more often. It is a falsehood that pirates, especially the more
educated among them, recoil from the ultimate questions of morality,
metaphysics and epistemology, particularly those which bear directly on
the meaning of life. Thinking of such matters, in the long and lonely
hours when the ship lay becalmed, without a breath of wind to tighten her
sails and propel them into new adventures, caused the captain to evaluate
very critically-indeed harshly-the course of his own life to date. At such
times it seemed to him that he could discern very few, if any, moments
when it had been touched by the sublime; which reflection offered so bleak
a prospect for the times to come, that he was assailed by the darkest
forebodings-even to the point of considering suicide as a means of
slashing swiftly through the mire of futility which constrained him. Many
pirate captains, shrinking from such an irreversible step, seek oblivion
in drunkenness, although it is well known to all that the false relief of
such transient amnesia leads deeper into the abyss. Many captains ... but
not this one.
When such dismal thoughts assailed him, the captain took up from its place
on his six?legged desk, hard by the small pirat's flag, a staff of old
wood, polished slick with long use, culminating in a sharply pointed hook.
It was the only golden object in his cabin, and he would use it to search
for salvation among those large books with very thin pages in which were
preserved the complete works of the great literary masters. Although at
such times it would soothe him the most to read about a kindred soul
tormented by similar sorrows, he had long ago resigned himself to the fact
that his honourable trade seemed rarely to offer inspiration to such
writers. Indeed, few authors ever wrote about pirate captains, even about
those who were enlightened by education; and those who did write about
them tended to do so without affection or understanding. But nothing could
be done about that: in a world so full of injustice, this latest instance
was matter only for regret, not wonder.
He derived some consolation for the lack of texts about his quite
unjustifiably neglected and undervalued profession in one verse form,
which he found only superficially inappropriate to its harshness and
cruelty. In the harmonious rhymes of sonnets, in the enchanting elegance
of that poetic form, in the endless scope for ingenuity which it offers
within such tight contraints, and most of all in the supremely delicate
feelings described by exquisitely chosen words, he found such balm that he
frequently read them aloud, quite enraptured and gesticulating vividly, as
if reciting for a large and avid audience.
Most affecting of all were the concluding couplets of sonnets; his tightly
controlled voice would then waver with emotion, and his eyes brim with
tears. On certain occasions the tears would gush openly, unrestrainedly,
especially when he chose to read the sonnets about his favourite heroine,
the Dark Lady, who seemed (because of her melancholy colouring, if for no
other reason) the object most suited to his admiration. It would
definitely not have done for any common seaman, or even officer, to see
him in such a state; he had therefore ordered very sternly that he was
never to be disturbed while reading aloud, by no person for any reason or
with any excuse whatever.
In fact, his readings brought life to a standstill throughout the ship;
everybody walked on tiptoe if they must walk at all, and such
conversations as could not be postponed were continued in whispers. The
only unsoluble problem was the totally inconsiderate screeching of the
gulls, especially when the ship lay at anchor or was close to land;
muskets and blunderbusses could not be utilized because of the
disproportionate noise they made, and none of the crew could boast the
Ancient Mariner's skill with bow and arrow.
Below the folio editions were rows of books published in times more and
more recent. Although he had personally selected them, the captain
accorded them less reverence than the works on the higher shelves. He was
aware that this laid him open to the charge that his tastes were
old?fashioned; this he did not bother to deny. Some of these younger tomes
were works of genius, no doubt; but they were rendered less worthy in his
eyes by the circumstance that, as their dates approached the present,
their initial print?runs became ever longer. That, in his view, was a
quite lamentable desecration and profanation of an art which should have
remained restricted to a small circle of the elite.
Occasionally a new edition of the Dark Lady sonnets came into his hands,
and some of these new renderings were printed more gracefully, and
arranged more tastefully than the first edition which he valued so highly,
but he flung them overboard in disgust. He knew that this is not a very
reasonable attitude, because the text was precisely the same, even
enriched with historical introductions, explanatory notes, and learned
commentaries, but he justified his actions with the old, powerful truth
that a book is not, after all, just "text." What, apart from text, a book
is, the captain perhaps could not have satisfactorily explained to anyone
else, but to him it seemed too obvious to require explanation; for was it
not noticed long ago that the most self?evident truths are sometimes the
hardest to explain?
In any case, the lowest shelves of his library, those below the knee, were
occupied by books from the age when publishing had ceased to be a
cultivated craft and become an industry. Although this part of the library
was of much livelier colour and appearance than the monotony of prevalent
grey which characterized the upper range, the captain's comparative
disrespect for them was expressed not only by the low place which he
assigned to them but also by a certain, for him uncharacteristic, neglect.
While he was fervent in his solicitude for the higher tomes, protecting
them especially from dust, that great enemy of books, he allowed the lower
shelves to accumulate dust over long periods, quite deliberately, as if
punishing them. And, of course, at the very bottom, almost on the deck,
were the editions which, by the captain's inflexible criteria, deserved
only the deepest contempt: the paperbacks. They were dusted off only
during the great seasonal cleanings, which were rare.
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