(Photograph by Udo Breger).
Fascinating story today at The Paris Review about a first edition of Jorge Luis Borges’s early poems stolen—and then returned (perhaps?)—to the National Library of Argentina. Forgeries, facsimiles, and book thefts! The following paragraph points out that Borges himself was once director of the library:
The National Library is as old as Argentina: it was created in 1810, together with the first national government, and its first director was Mariano Moreno, one of the greatest national heroes and the founder of the country’s first newspaper. The library was, at one point, something to be proud of, and Borges’s name is inextricably linked to its history; he was its director for eighteen years, between 1955 and 1973. By then, books were already disappearing from its shelves. When asked whether this was true, he replied, in typical fashion, “I can’t tell whether books are being stolen, because I’m blind.”
From Joseph T. Shipley’s The Origin of English Words: A Discursive Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. I’ve found the book indispensable for years now—its discursiveness is a lunatic joy to get lost in. Anyway, the above passages extend/unwind from the root ap/apo; I found it while looking up the eytmology of poseur.
Biblioklept 