Cooper’s Virgil

Why do we need to name? What do we gain by calling a bird a vireo? Or an early printed book an incunabulum? Why does anyone need to know what to call that space between the upper lip and the nose (philtrum)? I understand why we need to name poison oak or almonds: words can be warnings. But they’re also invitations to come closer and see more. Like prisms, they turn otherwise invisible stuff into rainbows.

They are plagued by cockling, dampstain, foxing, nicks, paste-action, rubs, spill burns, tanning, worms, and more. While I love the restraint of the antiquarian’s designation of a “fine copy,” I relish how my books show their age. Naming gives value to each of these things, whether they’re the better or worse for the wear.

Walter Benjamin again:

“…to a true collector the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth. This is the childlike element which in a collector mingles with the element of old age. For children can accomplish the renewal of existence in a hundred unfailing ways. Among children, collecting is only one process of renewal; other processes are the painting of objects, the cutting out of figures, the application of decals — the whole range of childlike modes of acquisition, from touching things to giving them names.”

Naming is a species of collecting. I drag in a net full of bibliographic terms and trailing along with my catch come new species of knowledge, from the manufacture of kraft paper to the localization of printing, the education of women and the origin of pencil-and-paper games. I’m delighted with this collection of books because I didn’t know I was looking for them. They’ve given me a series of questions I never knew to ask, in a language I didn’t speak. It is a kind of rebirth, beginning with that most human task: the acquisition of language.