"Had I any happy hours at Sherborne School? A
few. It was for example an enchanted
pleasure to me, on certain Sunday afternoons, to sit for hours in the school
library, a lovely, old, medieval building, with deep window seats that had
leather cushions, searching through all manner of ancient and modern volumes,
if so be that I might find some paradisic passages of sweet immorality. O
books, O book-shops, O libraries, - how, all my long life, have ye, like great
Nature herself, fed the desires and nourished the feelings that the stupid
brutality of a false morality would fain stamp out! No wonder every tyranny
that has ever existed has suppressed, censured and burned books! For in books,
and in books alone, save for the indulgent solitudes of Nature, can the individual
soul disport itself in sweet security, and laugh at the moral censor. No
bullies ever came near this noble and ancient school library. It was, no doubt,
to perpetuate and eternalize a sanctuary of this very kind, that the young
bookish Tudor—.Vivat Rex Edwardus Sextus! —re-endowed the old monastic
institution of St. Aldhelm.
In this mellow retreat I was as much secluded in a
fabulous castle of my own as when I was hidden in the branches of that Druid
oak-tree, or climbing amid the precipitous tree-roots above Lovers’ Lane. The
sun might fall in warm slanting rays through the mullioned windows, or the rain
might stream down the diamonded panes, I was ensconced here in an oasis of
happiness where no enemy could find me, where no barking dogs could leap at me
and where the loud laugh of the tormentor was reduced to silence."
(John Cowper Powys, Autobiography)
No comments:
Post a Comment