There are intellectual ailments. One of them is not wanting to finish a book. But not just any book – it is that book that one has chosen and that seems to have awakened a perpetual joy. It is the book to which I gave a new graphite pen (the sharpening is liturgy that seems to confirm the bet) and that I leave on the chosen table. There are bed or living room books, like there are summer ones (and one recovers them from summer to summer; they are then put aside like seasonal clothes) and that accompany you in other homes: at my mother’s house, when spending the night, finally During the week, there is always a book – about history – that awaits me and binds me, binds me closely, to my filial duty. I thought that not wanting to finish it was a reproach to the book itself, a disappointing, tiring and boring book, the duty of finishing it annoying. Until I realized that the book was good and that the problem was mine. Everything was in its place, the pencil sharpened, the book placed at the right angle (and no other) of the bedroom table, the bookmark protruding no more than a few centimeters – no less – and the liturgy lends itself to the celebration. The problem was mine. In general, reading – mine – is musical: it allows you to go from one thing to another – while reading – until you point out what is notable. Suddenly you are like in another place – and that doesn’t mean you stop reading – and you put yourself back together again, you sort of organize the reading, the act of reading (which is fierce and personal) precisely that book, is a healing and conciliation. And one day (ah, what a day that is already necessarily bearable) despite the sharp pencil and the adjusted page marker, one begins to get bored and doubt his choice (but he knows that the choice was unbeatable and good – a formidable inheritance – and he recognizes, with vital sadness, who no longer wants to finish the book. His reading is poor, he picks up nothing from one day to the next, he is unable to go to the other places while reading. I have lost musical notation and I deceive myself by starting another book that I sense. It will relieve me – I even take out a pencil of my favorite grade from the Faber-Castell case – You suffer from another ailment – this time intellectual – And you are grateful that the classics continue to be the great pharmacy that cures – or relieves – everything.
