Classifying
Books is a Science,
But
Not to Classify Them is an Art
Lin Yutang
Mrs. Yao Ying wrote
a charming article on her way of arranging books in her library, which so
coincided with mine that, had I ever published a word on the subject or ever
seen her, I should have accused her of stealing my ideas. [1]
I therefore wrote a long editorial postscript to it -
I wish editors would write long postscripts - showing how dangerously near her
theory came to mine. In fact, we have only one common theory, which is roughly
as follows (translated from her article):
Of course, it’s all right for public and college
libraries to have a catalogue system, and have the books properly labelled and
classified, either according to the Dewey or the Y. W. Wong system. But this is
manifestly impossible with a poor scholar, who hasn’t complete library editions
to show off, and who often occupies a small terrace house in Shanghai or
Nanking. This terrace house generally consists of a dining-room, a parlour, two
bedrooms, two bathrooms, and he is lucky if he or she has a study of his or her
own [this grammatical nuisance exists only in the translation, and not in the
original]. Besides, his or her small collection is generally of the personal
sort, likely to be strong in his or her favourite authors and deficient in
others. What, then, is he, or she, going to do about it?
I don’t know about others, but this is my way [I am
glad of this transition from the third to the first person, for the English language
has unaccountably forgotten to distinguish a masculine and a feminine “I” and “my”].
My way is the natural way. For instance, when a book
or magazine comes by post when I am sitting at a desk, then I leave it at the
desk. If, in the midst of reading it, a visitor calls, then I bring it along to
the parlour, and share it with my friend. When the friend is gone, if I forget to
take it back, then I leave it in the parlour. But sometimes the conversation
has been so interesting that I am not quite ready for sleep yet, but only want
to relax a little; then I bring it upstairs and read it in bed. If the book can
sustain my interest, then I read on, but if the interest slacks, then I can
conveniently use it as pillow. This is what I call the natural way, which may be
roughly defined as “the way of leaving books where they are”. I can’t even say
there is any “favourite” place for my books.
The logical consequence of this system is, of course,
that there are books and magazines all over the place, on the bed, on the sofa,
in the dining-room, in the sideboard, near the washstand in the lavatory, etc.,
giving thus a richness of impression unattainable by the Dewey or the Y. W.
Wong system.
This System has three advantages to recommend it.
First, there is beauty of irregularity. The books thus stand side by side,
leather-bound editions, paper covers, Chinese, English, big heavy volumes, and
light artistic copies, some with pictures of medieval heroes, others with nude
modem girls, all mixed up in a wild profusion of learning, covering at a glance
the whole course of human history.
Second, there is richness and variety of interest. I
let a volume on philosophy stand side by side with a treatise on natural
science, and let a humorous booklet rub shoulders with some perfectly
well-meaning moral-uplifters. They just form a motley company, pretending to
hold diverse opinions with each other and get involved, in my fancy, in some
hot mythological debate for my amusement. Third, this system has the advantage
of obvious convenience. For if one were to put all the books in the library,
one would, obviously, have nothing to read in the parlour. With this system I
can always improve my mind even in the toilet.
Only I wish to say that this is merely my personal
way, and I am not seeking for other people's approval, or asking them to follow
my example. I am writing this merely because my visitors often shake their
heads or heave a long sigh when they see the way I live. As I have not asked
them, I do not know whether it is a sigh of disapproval or sigh of admiration….
But I don’t care.
The foregoing may well serve as a good example of the
familiar essay in China to-day. It has the lightness of touch of the old
Chinese essay and the careless ease of the modem. The following is a brief
translation of my long editorial postscript. I said:
When I received this manuscript, the title caught my
attention as if somebody had stolen a great treasure from me, and when I read
on, I discovered, to my great amazement, that my favourite theory on the
collection and arrangement of books had been already discovered simultaneously
by an independent worker. How can I therefore help saying something on the subject?
I know that reading is a refined occupation, but since reading came under the
control of college registrars, it has degenerated into a cheap, vulgar,
mercantile business. The collection of books, too, used to be a refined
pastime, but now things have sadly changed, since the nouveaux riches came in for this line of antiquarian business.
These people always have complete works of this author and complete editions of
that writer, bound in handsome morocco and so well kept in nice glass cases,
which form part of their show to their friends. But when I look at their
shelves, there are never any blank spaces or missing volumes, which fact shows
they have never been touched except by their servant for the purpose of cleaning
and dusting. There are no dog ears, no finger marks, no accidentally dropped
cigarette ashes, no carefully blue-pencilled emendations, and no maple leaves
between the covers, but plenty of uncut pages.[2]
So it seems even the collection of books has
degenerated into a vulgar fashion also. Hsu Hsieh of the Ming dynasty wrote an
article, “On Old Inkstones”, exposing the whole vulgarity of collecting curios,
and now Miss Yao has carried the idea forward to the collection of books, and
my heart feels tickled. It seems if only you would say what you really think,
there must always be others in the world who agree with you.
The Y. W. Wong system is all very fine for public
libraries, but what have they to do with a poor scholar’s study? We must have a
different principle, that pointed out by the author of Fou-sheng-liu-chi, namely, that of “showing the small in the big,
showing the big in the small, meeting the real in the unreal and meeting the unreal
in the real”. The mentioned author was giving his private opinions on a poor
scholar’s house and garden arrangements, but the principle really holds good
with regard to the arrangement of books. With the wise application of this
principle, you can transform a poor scholar’s library into a veritable
unexplored continent. My theory is this:
Books should never be classified. To classify them is
a science, but not to classify them is an art.
Your five-foot bookshelf should be a little universe
in itself. This effect is achieved by letting a book of poems incline on a
scientific paper, and allowing a detective story to keep company with a volume
of Guyau. So arranged the five-loot shelf becomes a rich shelf, intriguing your fancy. On the other hand, if the shelf
is occupied by a set of Ssema Kuang’s Mirror
of History, then in moments when you do not feel inclined to look into the Mirror of History, the shelf can have no
meaning for you, and it becomes a poor shelf, bare to the bones. Everyone knows
that women’s charm lies in their mystery and elusiveness, and old cities like
Paris and Vienna are so interesting because after staying there for ten years,
you never quite know what may turn up in a narrow alley. The same thing is true
of a library. There should be that mystery and elusiveness which comes from the
fact that you are never quite sure what you have hidden on that particular
shelf some months or years ago.
All books must have their individuality and must not
have the same binding. That is why I never cared to buy the Sse-pu-pei-yao or Sse-pu-ts’ung-K’an. Their individuality partly comes from their
appearance and partly from the circumstances of the purchase. You may have
picked the volume up casually in a small town in Anhui while on a summer tour,
or someone may have been trying to bid higher than you did for the volume. Now
suppose the books have been bought and placed on a shelf in their natural way,
and you have an occasion to look up Wang Kuowei’s History of Yuan Dramas, a small, tiny volume. You start out as if
on a hunt, and look for it on top and below, on the east and on the west, and
when you have found it, you have really found
it, and not just taken it. A few drops of perspiration are already formed
on your brow and you feel as happy as a hunter on a lucky trip. Or perhaps, you
have just tracked it down to its lair, and just as you are looking for the
volume three you want, you discover it has disappeared again. You stand there,
transfixed for a moment, wondering whom you have lent it to, and heave a great
sigh of regret, like a schoolboy just missing a bird he nearly caught in his
hand. In this way, a veil of mystery and charm will for ever hang over your
library, and you will never know what you are going to find. In short, your
library will possess the elusiveness of women and the mystery of great cities.
Some years ago I met a fellow teacher in Tsing Hua,
who had a “library”, which consisted only of one case and a half of books, but
which were properly labelled and classified, from one to one thousand,
according to the American Library Association system. When I asked him about a
history of economics, he could at once tell me, with great pride, that it was “580.73A”.
He was very proud of his American efficiency. He was a true American-returned
student, and by that I mean no compliment, either.
NOTES:
[1] I published in Jen
Chien Shih an article by Miss Yao Ying - she is really a Mrs., but she is not Mrs. Yao Ying, and in English
there seems no way to refer to a lady’s name without revealing whether she is
married or not. There is the further nuisance of referring to a well-known
woman writer and having to drop her first name the moment you introduce the
word “Mrs.”. In China, at least, we can use the term nu-ssu without thus committing ourselves, in the same way that we
can refer to a third person without distinguishing between “he” and “she” -
measure of sexual equality which obtains only in the land of Cathay. Couldn’t
we, I wonder, just address a person by a generic “M” and leave out of our
curiosity whether it’s a married or unmarried “he” or a married or unmarried
“she”? (Lin Yutang)
[2] “Uncut pages”. It was usual up to the 1960s to sell
books with leaves folded but uncut. The books were printed in large leaves
which included up to 8 pages each. The volumes were bound with uncut pages.
Before reading them, the reader had to use a knife to separate the pages. (CCA)
000
A
book with uncut pages
The above article
was published by the associated websites on 01 August 2020. The text is
reproduced from the book “With Love and
Irony”, by Blue Ribbon Books, Garden City, New York, 1945 (copyright 1934),
291 pp., see pp. 92-98. In our transcription, the first lines of Lin Yutang’s
article are included as Note [1].
Some of the longer paragraphs are divided into smaller ones. (CCA)
000
On 14 September 2016, a group of students decided to
found the Independent Lodge of
Theosophists. Two of the priorities adopted by the ILT are learning from the past and building a better
future.
000
