The Gifts of Reading | Book
A gift that cannot move loses its gift properties,
says Hyde, Lewis
Hyde, in his motivational book titled,
The Gift.
[you may want to
read our past post on The Gift here].
In simple terms, if say, for example, I share a gift - (could be a book!) ;-) - with my friend, and my friend in
turn shares it with their friends, who in turn shares it with their friends,
the gift thus shared has a great transformative appeal to it, enriching and enlightening manifold times, both the receiver and the sender
in the process!
Now, let’s quick
fast-forward together, to this last past week, May 2020!
Well, I was
reading my way through Robert Macfarlane’s book titled, Underland: A Deep Time Journey, [again, gifted to me by my lovely cousin],
a book that’s touted to be ‘an epic exploration of the Earth’s underworlds as
they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself’.
After having done with
reading through this delightful book, I was busy checking out on more of
Macfarlane, Robert Macfarlane’s books, for the weekend, when I chanced upon a
priceless little treasure that he’d written, exclusively for charity sake!
And it’s titled, The Gifts of Reading.
‘This story, like
so many stories, begins with a gift. The gift, like so many gifts, was a book –
and the book was given to me by a man called Don, with whom I became friends in
Beijing during the autumn and winter of 2000’,
he begins the
book, and adds,
A book was given to me by a man called Don, with whom I
became friends in Beijing during the autumn and winter of 2000. Don and I were
working as English literature teachers in a University.
Don had
been his able ‘friend, philosopher and guide’ during his pretty little stint at
a University in Beijing. Now, after his tenure in Beijing is up, Robert
Macfarlane heads back to Cambridge to work on his PhD in Victorian Literature.
Interestingly,
Don comes over to Cambridge to visit Robert on a short sojourn of sorts. And while departing, he leaves behind a few presents for Robert Macfarlane on his table. The
presents include, a copy of Snyder’s Mountains
and Rivers Without End, and a paperback copy of a book by Patrick Leigh
Fermor titled, A Time of Gifts!
Says Macfarlane,
Robert Macfarlane on the book –
A Time of Gifts is filled with gifts and acts of
giving – it is a book, we might say, that is rich with generosity. Among its
gifts is the gift of time:
Leigh Fermor did not publish it until 1977, forty-four
years after beginning his walk, and a result of that long and thoughtful delay
is a narrative voice which possesses both the joyful wonder of youth, and the
wisdom and perspective of later age.
And among those wisdoms is its reflection on the nature
of gift: what it might mean to give without expectation of recompense, and what
types of kindness might stand outside the reciprocal binds of the cash economy.
One of the first things Leigh Fermor is given in A Time of Gifts is a book: the first
volume of the Loeb edition of Horace. His mother (‘she was an enormous reader’)
bought it for him as a farewell present, and on its flyleaf she wrote the prose
translation of an exquisite short poem by Petronius, which could hardly have
been more appropriate as a valediction to her son:
Leave thy home, O youth, and seek out alien shores …
Yield not to misfortune: the far-off Danube shall know thee, the cold
North-wind and the untroubled kingdom of Canopus and the men who gaze on the
new birth of Phoebus or upon his setting.
The journey of A
Time of Gifts is set going by the gift of a book – and it is a book that
has in turn set going many journeys,
says Robert
Macfarlene.
Reading through A Time of Gifts, was an invigorating
experience, he adds.
‘It made me want to stand up and march out – to walk
into adventure’. The comforting rhythm of his journey – exertion, encounter,
rest, food, sleep; exertion, encounter, rest, food, sleep – rocks its readers
into feelings of happiness and invulnerability. I could do this, you think, I
could just start walking and keep going for a day or two, or three, or four, or
more.
Again, poring
over Lewis Hyde’s The Gift was a
transformative experience, says Macfarlane –
I was given a copy of Hyde’s The Gift – and I don’t have that copy any longer, because I gave it
to someone else, urging them to read it. Gifts give on, says Hyde, this is
their logic. They are generous acts that incite generosity. He contrasts two
kinds of ‘property’: the commodity and the gift. The commodity is acquired and
then hoarded, or resold. But the gift is kept moving, given onwards in a new
form.
I am particularly moved by his deep interest in what he
calls ‘the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and
irresistibly moves us’.
The outcome of a gift is uncertain at the time of
giving, but the fact that it has been given charges it with great potential to
act upon the recipient for the good.
Because of the gratitude we feel, and
because the gift is by definition given freely, without obligation, we are
encouraged to meet it with openness and with excitement.
Unlike commodities,
gifts – in Hyde’s account and my experience – possess an exceptional power to
transform, to heal and to inspire,
says Macfarlane.
Today,
Macfarlane is known the world over, for his enthralling books on landscape, language,
nature, places and people.
However, it was the sweet impact of
that one book gifted to him by his friend Don, that had quite turned his life a full 360
degrees for the better - for a richer and a fuller life!
Exactly what
Lewis Hyde says, about the power of the gift –
Only when the increase of gifts moves with the gift may
the accumulated wealth of our spirit continue to grow among us, so that each of
us may enter, and be revived by, a vitality beyond his or her solitary powers.
Yes!!!
So let me put it
this way, this simple way –
Patrick Leigh
Fermor was gifted the first volume of Horace:
Odes and Epodes, by his mother, which acted his spontaneous spur and immediate impulse to become one of the best known travel
writers from around the world.
Robert Macfarlane
was gifted a book on Patrick Leigh Fermor by his friend Don, and titled, A Time of Gifts, which in turn had
motivated him to develop an engaging and rewarding relationship with the
landscape.
Rufus (me) ;-)
was gifted this Robert Macfarlane’s book titled, The Underland, by my cousin, which in turn motivated me bigtime to
write this post!
And.... well... the gift
moves on and on and on!
So yup!
Today is a gift.
That’s why it’s called the ‘present’.
How have you been
using/sharing your gifts?
Remember, Lewis
Hyde says: A gift that cannot move loses
its gift properties!
So why wait?
Start using your
gifts!
Right away at
that!
Before it loses
it properties! ;-)
Bonne chance!
image: amazondotcom
