Le livre des livres
The Book of Books
Jean Bonnerot
FRAGMENTS
To Edmond-Maurice Levy, in homage of friendship, Christmas Day 1906. — Jean Bonnerot
GRANDMOTHER, who in the evening, by the ruddy glow of logs, Would tell your memories of younger days With words trembling with fear and yet so singing That they seemed a joyous humming of hives In an enclosure of sun and rising sainfoin,
I remember your words of invective That cursed the age while mourning yesterday. Your hair was white with the snows of winter; And, beneath the widened orb of pensive spectacles, Your eyes no longer saw except very far into the ether.
It is because morose old age has knotted round your temples The blind black blindfold Love sets on lovers; Days seem to you as short as moments; The real grows exaggerated in the lamplight: Only the past is beautiful, clad in its blazing finery.
Grandmother, if it is true that your time was grave And noble as a dream and beautiful as love, It is not in the uncertain life of a single day, But in old books where the past is engraved More immortally than a name upon a tower.
For a Bibliophile
To Felix Chambon
You love them with love, as one loves the things That destructive and rough time has consecrated, Your old books dressed in robes of state, Who no doubt dream again with enchantment, In the blue calm of your closed chamber, Of the past that resembles beautiful charming tales.
And you love also those in new robes, Like the flowering laughter of spring gardens, Who dream of old age and of schoolboys’ hands, Books gleaming with the imprint of gold, To have the softened shimmer of rivers, And the soft sweetness of dreams that have died.
They are all there in a fine museum order, The wrinkled moroccos like ancient paintings, The shagreens stippled with droplets of water, The rough basane and the soft parchments, With the title embossed in crushed letters, And the printer’s ornament intertwined with holly.
You know them all as old friends, your books, Some bloodied like a setting sun, Others with the tawny glow of field ears, And these of a tender and clear primitive blue, And those shimmering and white as frost, Or of a darkened green of captive foliage.
Your hand grows gentle like a caress When you open with your loving fingers Some book slumbering in happy dreams, Because on the red and faded boards, Among the blond gold of ivy and braided roses, A crown with interlaced initials smiles…
You love the past in your artist’s soul, Like those bright paradises of ancient missals, The beautiful past of which books are the guardians, The golden-age past, the only one that is real… Today is but a dream… it scarcely exists. Tomorrow is the reflection of the eternal mirage…
Binding Medallions
[The collection continues with further poems celebrating books, bookbinding, reading, and the life of the mind, including “Binding Medallions” and other sections devoted to the material beauty and spiritual significance of books.]