I Confess > IDEAS & IDEALS

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  IDEAS & IDEALS

I Confess

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As a man who is sixty this year and a professor of English literature at a university in Seoul, I have a confession to make. And like all kinds of confessions in the world mine is also made up of some kind of guilt and shame and is not fit for publicity. Since I am not a Catholic, I do not have a priest who will hear my troubled mind with care and love to the end. But to keep it bottled-up indefinitely within my mind without making a clean breast of it, I know, will cause harm to my mind and body. I have decided therefore, after some delay and hesitation, to come out and tell the world about it.

      I am not buying books any more. I have ceased to buy books. Among several changes that have sneaked up on me with the advance of my age, the remarkable decline of my passion for books is the one that I came to notice recently with a mild surprise. I came to realize that I had not bought anything for quite a long time from the roving bookseller who frequented my office quite regularly with the list of the new books mostly in English. Nor had I bothered myself to go to the foreign bookstores in the downtown for the last several years. I cannot remember or recall clearly from when this symptom of apathy towards books has set in. I feel puzzled by and ashamed of the undeniable fact and cannot be easy with myself.

      For a man whose profession is supposed to be inextricably as well as inseparably bound up with books, the public confession I made above is not only shameful but also very hazardous to my career. It is tantamount to a confession of impotence by an unmarried man, of adultery by a minister, and of bribery by a judge. It simply means I am finished with my job. Could there be a university professor, a scholar, who lost his love and passion for books? How can he then teach his students without the up-to-date knowledge that only the up-to-date books can provide? What is his so-called raison d'être minus books? Shouldn't he tender his resignation immediately?

      It never occurred to me that a time would ever come when I would ever lose my enthusiasm for books. There was a time indeed that my heart leapt whenever I beheld a new book that was related with my major field of study on display in the bookstore or on the catalogue of the imported new books. And there were many, nay, too many books to buy. I bought and bought. I bought for my immediate reading and more for my later use. I bought with cash but more often on credit or in monthly installments.

      It was an aching pleasure to touch, to smell and to open a new book. I was happy and proud to have more books than my peers in the same field of study. I loved to look at them neatly arranged on the shelves of the bookcases in my office room. It was a great feeling that they were always there awaiting my touch and caress. I also felt safe and secure with them as if they were a suit of armor. Once the books were my lover and my protector as well.

      Now I find most of the books I bought for my later use or later reading remain on the shelves unread and growing old with me. The sad as well as the frightening reality is that the possibility of their being read by me in the near future is almost nil. Up until last year I could be smugly optimistic and relaxed about this procrastination, but now I feel and hear time's winged chariot hurrying near me at my back and I know for sure that my postponement that has been made over my  untouched books until today will continue to the very end of my life. My tepid desire to possess more books indicates clearly that my romance with the books is over.

      Not only have I ceased to buy more books; I am tired with  the books I have already bought. They are no longer my lover or my protector. They are only sad reminders of my lost youth, unrealized dream and presumptuous ambition.  Sometimes they look pathetic and even ugly like the soldiers defeated in a battle. At other times they seem to challenge and taunt me to dare attack them. I am no longer the lord over them. I feel helpless before them. I am afraid of them. I am angry with them.

      One day last week, out of desperation and anger, I decided at last to take an extreme action. I decided to dispose of all those books which are definitely in no chance of being read by me in the future so that I might be left with only those few vitally important books for my job. By reducing the number of my books drastically to one tenth or below that, I thought, I could be free from the cumbersome burden of unread books that made me feel always guilty, and I could live free and light hereafter.  

      But to my great surprise and embarrassment, the task of getting rid of those supposedly unnecessary books proved to be much more difficult than I had expected. With easy mind I picked up a book that I thought I had never opened before. Before throwing it into an empty carton box that I had prepared for that purpose, I turned some pages and found, to my great surprise and delight, several lines in a page underlined in red by me. I had no slightest idea when they were made. I could not help but read the lines then and there and found them so good. I put it back where it was and took up another one but failed again in terminating the life of the book for another sentimental reasons. I tried and tried but failed and failed for the reasons that could not be enumerated here. I ended the day's work by throwing away several old magazines only. I did not know the affinity established between the books and me the moment I bought them was so tenaciously strong. Books I have, even unread, have been there silently with me for so long and become like meek friends during the time. We cannot force a friend to leave from a party for his silence and meekness.

      I know I cannot revive the old passion for books any more. It is time for me to be old. My youthful fancy for books has departed. I cannot stop the river of my energy and time from decreasing. The time of reaching out for more fruits is over and it is time to cherish and savour more what I have already gathered. Very fortunately my days in my office are numbered. I will only busy myself in gathering the fallen fruits and maturing them. As I followed the voice heard at my prime instinctively, I am ready to obey the voice in the evening with no regret.
                                                                                                      (January 3, 2000)

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