Silva rerum they were called, commonplace books that contained a “forest of things”. Excerpts of exceptional thought were dutifully copied into these bound books for further reflection and digestion. Commonplace books were considered necessary tools for learning that commonplacing was taught in universities such as Oxford. Milton, Hardy, Emerson, and Thoreau all kept their own commonplace books.
Commonplacing wedded reading and writing as necessary ingredients, they were inseparable. Bits and pieces from one book joined with other excerpts from elsewhere. The way the ideas were assembled revealed the personality of the commonplacer…what topics interested him, what key arguments did he find cogent that he could build upon…what turns of phrases could he learn by heart so that he, too, could express himself with clarity and winsomeness.
I often wonder, if in our present day, we have that same kind of joy in approaching new ideas. If in encountering a novel thought, we are moved to write them down by our own hand. Or if, because we are so inundated with information, we even have the ability to discover what is astonishing and clever.
In our present time, information is readily had at the touch of keystrokes. ”Googling” is as ordinary as breathing. I wonder what we lose in having a near-instantaneous access to information on almost anything. How do we use the information once we find it? I imagine us consuming the information as we would any fast food, quickly and without tasting.
I have read that weblogs can be considered as commonplace books. In a sense, electronically, one is able to keep a voluminous amount of information in one place for easy reference. For my part, the gathering and posting can consume one’s time and overcome the reflection that real live commonplace books demand.
Recently, my parents gave me a boxful of my old commonplace books spanning from childhood to collegiate life. Leafing through the old pages where I scribbled down passages from Don Quixote or Henry V or Pied Beauty and sprinkled with my own prose or poetry showed the themes that have remained constant in my life. The literary influences that have shaped my thinking and sparked an interest in the intellectual life were easily traced through these friends, my commonplace books from another time and place.
As I begin this new incarnation for me, I’ve chosen as my nom de plume of St. Hilary of Poitiers, not so much that he was the hammer of Arian heretics, but first, that I may not forget who I am, as he charitably said of the Arians, and second, to attempt to contemplate the greatness of God through the written word. He wrote:
For one to attempt to speak of God in terms more precise than he himself has used: — to undertake such a thing is to embark upon the boundless, to dare the incomprehensible.
He fixed the names of His nature: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Whatever is sought over and above this is beyond the meaning of words, beyond the limits of perception, beyond the embrace of understanding.
I don’t know how daring I am, but this Christian enterprise draws me outside of the comprehensible. Whether I find the words to express my own understanding remains to be seen. But I close with this prayer of St. Hilary’s which I hope can serve as my own manifesto here on Lightly Locked:
Bestow upon us, O Lord, the meaning of words, the light of understanding, the nobility of diction, and grant that what we believe we may also speak.
Hillary Poyters is Abbess of her Domestic Cloister. Whether her family agrees or not is beside the point.
Recent Comments