Magic among the shelves

Published: 2007 - October

“…if he finds his way through a labyrinth of alcoves and cubbyholes and climbs a stairway leading to my private residence then he can linger there and enjoy reading the books in my library and looking at the pictures on the wall of my bedroom.”
(George Whitman)

There are only few places in the world that seem to have a soul of their own when you come by them. They seem to tell you something, no matter whether little or a lot, but objects inside them seem to be speaking to each other, and at times to be watching you in order to determine whether you’d be interested in joining their conversation. You’re likely also to notice the smell of these seemingly inert objects or their rough surface under your finger tips. Wandering through the three floors of the Shakespeare & Company Bookshop in Paris, at 37 Rue de la Bûcherie, in the Left Bank, is a trip of the senses taking in culture through sight, hearing, touch and smell. Opened originally by the ingenious American intellectual Sylvia Beach, the small shop (then at 12 rue de l’Odéon) became a literary home away from home for an entire generation of British and North-American writers during the ‘roaring twenties.’ Following the War, the shop was opened again, in its current location, by the American bibliophile George Whitman, who transformed his house into the Shakespeare & Co. Bookshop, an international sanctuary for storytellers, aspiring writers, young artists and readers who would wonder through the small rooms and get to know each other.
Entering this “wonderland of books” (as Henry Miller called it), you get the impression you’ve just stepped into your own house and are about to find your personal things lying around. The cash register is not in sight, as if money must be kept hidden in a place that is halfway between passion and utopia. On the right you see a poster for the film “Before Sunset” evoking a love story that has now been dusted off for the introduction of a new book by an American writer. Then, a labyrinthine aisle takes you from one room to another, all packed with antique books, leather-bound yellowing pages, placed in no evident order on wooden shelves, resting randomly on chairs and solid tables, or tossed for the moment onto the rickety old wooden floor. The eye is drawn to a space filled entirely by papers and broken only by the presence of cots, covered by casual fabrics, used by workers at night and occasional visitors during the day. The first ramp up the narrow stairs is brightened up by black & white smiles of young writers who have stopped by to offer more than just an autograph: Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Miller and Durrel. The second floor strikes you immediately as a place inhabited by layers upon layers of history, examined over the years by thousands of pairs of eyes, attentively, passionately, and with curiosity.
In the three bedrooms, two small studios and canyons running between walls of books, the most inanimate thing is a black cat napping on a red chair, unmoved even by the far too jazzy flashes of the photocopying machine. Truth is, everything at Shakespeare & Co. moves to a slower beat, also visitors who are stuck in front of the shelves, languidly sprawled on the rumpled couches or gracefully seated at a desk by a window overlooking the Seine. A mirror over a porcelain sink reminds you that you’re there too, in that bookshop suspended in an indefinite space where time would seem to stand still were it not for the clicking of a computer keyboard, the peals of the Notre-Dame belltower and the buzz of whispering voices. Your eye is drawn to a large mirror covered by cards, photographs and mementoes of faraway people who have once stopped here to immortalize a thought, a fragment of life. In front of that small world you can happen upon anyone, also Gino Nitta, a young Neapolitan opera singer, and discover that he now lives in Venice after having studied in New York. His writing on the glass says “Every art form is made complete with an applause which marks the rhythm of life.” When you ask him what he is doing there, he answers that wandering through these rooms is a bit like getting lost in Venice, discovering things that are only imaginary, hearing the languages of the world and being welcomed with a familiar smile. He has come here to find among the 30,000 books something unique dedicated to his city. Italo Calvino’s “The Invisible Cities,”  Daphne du Maurier’s “Don’t Look Now and Other Stories,”  William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” John Behrendt’s “The City of Falling Angels” and Henry James’s “Italian Hours” evoke a magical vision of a city suspended between reality and fantasy, just like this bookshop. Books are covered with dust that, just like a stage curtain, should not be removed as it records the passing time that has deposited it over the years. For Gino, a symbol of the quest to escape banality through curiosity, art and books have an enormous benefit: they allow you to travel in your mind even before you do with your body and allow you to reach places that are far away yet close to your heart. This is the way anyone feels, and will feel, entering through the door of “Shakespeare & Co.”

SHAKESPEARE & COMPANY
37 Rue de la Bûcherie
Paris
Tel. 0033 (0) 143254093
Open noon to midnight.