ЧИСТКА БИБЛИОТЕКИ Недавно мне вновь пришлось провести чистку...

LIBRARY CLEANING

I recently had to clean my library again. Under pressure from external circumstances, I had to part with part of the books. I stood in front of the shelves, step by step went around the book rows, wondering: "Do you need, for example, this book? Do you love it? Will you probably read it? Do you really want to lose it?"
I belong to those people who have not learned to "historical thinking" even when he was officially given preference to more than human thinking. So I started with history books, and there were few difficulties. Beautiful editions of memoirs, Italian and French biographies, court stories, diaries of political figures - to hell! Have politicians ever been right? Is not one Hölderlin verse more valuable to me than all the wisdom of those in power? Down with them!
There is also the history of art. Vasari’s good books about Italian, Dutch and Belgian paintings, collections of letters from artists are not very pitiful. Away!
The line reached the philosophers. Did you really need a Mautner dictionary? Not. Will I ever read Edward von Hartmann again? No. And Kant? I hesitated. Unknown, maybe I will. And left him on the shelf. Nietzsche? Necessary, and all his letters too. Fechner? It would be a shame to lose it, even if it’s worth it. Emerson Ah, not needed! Kierkegaard? No, we still hold it. Schopenhauer - even more so. True, the collections and anthologies also seem pretty: “The German Soul”, “The Ghost Book”, “The Ghetto Book”, “The Germans in the Mirror of the Cartoon” - but do I really need them? Down with! Down with it all!
But here are the writers! I will not talk about the latest. But Goethe's correspondence? I sentenced some of her to exile. Well, what to do with Grilparzer’s books? Are they all needed? No, not all. And the full Arnim? That is still a pity. Arnim remained all. Teak remained, Wiland remained. I have done significant damage to Herder. Balzac was in doubt, but in the end remained. Anatole France made me rack my brains. In relation to the enemies must behave chivalrously, and he was saved. Stendhal? His books are many, but all are necessary. Montaigne even more so. But Meterlink was reduced. Four editions of the Decameron Boccaccio! Only one thing remains. Now a regiment of East Asia. I said goodbye to a couple of books by Lafkady Hörn, the rest remained.
The British found some doubts on me. So many show books! Some need to be eliminated. A complete Thackeray? Half is enough. Fielding, Stern, Dickens remain to the smallest detail.
Remained almost all and Russian. As for Gorky and Turgenev, there were vacillations and indecision. Greatly cleaned Tolstoy's treatises. He overthrew some Scandinavians, Strindberg remained, Bjørnson decreased, Geyerstam disappeared.
Well, who collects literature about the war? These are the centners of cheap things. I bought it a little, most of it fell into the house somehow myself. I have not read the twentieth part. But what good paper was back in the fifteenth and sixteenth year!
And only a few days later, having finished, I saw how much my attitude towards books has changed over the years. Entire literary genres have come to light that I previously endured through friendship, but now I parted with them laughing. Authors have come to light who can no longer be taken seriously. But how comforting that Knut Gamsun still lives! How good that there is Jamm! And how wonderful it is to get rid of all the thick biographies of writers with their boring and wretched psychology. It will be brighter in the rooms. The treasures remained, and now they sparkle even brighter. Here Goethe, here Hölderlin, all Dostoevsky. Smiles at Merika, cheerfully sparkles Arnim, the Icelandic sagas overcame all the problems. Stay indestructibly tales and folk books. And the old, read-out, theological-looking books in pigskin bindings, often looking much more fun than all modern publications, are also here. It’s good if they outlive their current owner.

Hermann Hesse