On a 23rd of April

It was on a 23rd  of April that Shakespeare (1564) and Lolita´s author, Nabokov (1899), were born; that the Romantic poet Wordsworth died (1850); and, above all, in a year very easy to remember, 1616, that two of the greatest literary giants, Cervantes and Shakespeare, are said to have died. For that reason, this day has been designated as the World Book and Copyright Day by UNESCO.

It is not so important if research has shown that it was not the very same day when The Quixote´s author and the English bard passed away. Cervantes´ death date was based on the modern Gregorian calendar, while Shakespeare´s on the old Julian one, still being used in England at that time. Neither is it significant if the World Book Day is celebrated a few weeks earlier in the UK and in Ireland -on the first Thursday of March- because on the 23rd of April Saint George´s Day has priority.

What really matters is that, at least during these days, a world tribute is paid to books, its authors and the laws that protect them. One of the aims is to encourage everybody to discover and appreciate the sheer pleasure that reading can entail.

Bookcrossing, recitals, literary competitions, prizes, authors signing their work, British children dressing up as their favourite storybook characters... But what about that growing number of infrequent readers? I'm not sure if this worlwide celebration  succeeds in engaging them. If any, this year, they may take advantage of the bookstores discounts today and buy a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude to decorate their livingroom.

The Great Gatsby

So much violence and the nonsense of World War I left Americans in such a state of shock that those who could afford it turned to a wild life of excess to compensate. The unprecedented levels of prosperity of the nation enabled F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, icons of the Roaring Twenties, to live extravagantly staying out late and drinking heavily in continuous lavish parties. The couple, who idolized wealth and luxury, was really fascinated by the very rich and all their magic. Their sprees continued in Paris, so full of youthful idealism, where they soon became part of a celebrated circle of American expatriates. 

But F. Scott Fitzgerald could also see through all that glitter of the Jazz Age, discovering the moral emptiness and hypocresy beneath this pointless pursuit of pleasure. The Great Gatsby is the tragic hero, solely faithful to a dream. All the wealth he has been able to achieve has only one aim; to recover his former love Daisy. But the mistake is to try to recapture the past and carry it into the future. His spiritual quest, in a materialistic society,  is to be defeated by selfishness and indifference.

The story represents the disintegration of the American Dream and those times of economic growth and loss of moral values should sound familiar to us. They turned out to be a warning sign of harder times to come. 

Shakespeare & Company Bookshop in Paris

"On a cold windswept street, this was a warm, cheerful place with a big stove in winter, tables and shelves of books in the window, and photographs of famous writers both dead and living. The photographs all looked like snapshots and even the dead writers looked as though they had really been alive"

                                                                   Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

These lines depict Sylvia Beach´s Shakespeare & Company Bookshop, a haven for all English speaking writers in Paris during the interwar period and a gathering place for regulars like Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Scott Fitzgerald or James Joyce. With the German occupation of the city it was closed down, but a few years later, an American bohemian, George Whitman, would open another bookstore with the same name and the same ideals. It continued to be a free boarding house for aspiring and penniless writers and the new owner went on playing host to well known authors like Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett or the Beat poets W. Burroughs and A. Gingsberg. Whitman´s daughter runs it today, still managing to hold on its original principles.

I´ve recently visited it for the first time and I can assure you it´s worth it: on the floor, piles of second-hand books stacked there because there is no room left on the ancient wooden bookshelves; on the walls, old photos, drawings and newspaper cuttings yellowed by the years; an old typewriter, a piano waiting to be played, worn-out velvet armchairs for sitting and reading... An incredible place to hang out for those instilled with a deep and passionate respect for literature.

Take note! Facing Notre Dame Cathedral, on the left bank of the river Seine... It had to be situated in the legendary literary Latin Quarter..