By Lee Chang-kook
Enveloped with special emotion, recollection and pathos, I am currently reading a book for the very last time. It is a collection of English essays, entitled, ``The English Familiar Essay," edited by William F. Bryan and Ronald S. Crane, professors of English at Northwestern University.
This hardbound book was published in 1916 in the United States and came into my hands in 1960 when I entered college. The book has been with me for more than 50 years and it is the oldest book I have.
I bought this book from a man who sold second-hand books on the street near the entrance of my college. He always displayed only a few foreign books whose provenance was dubious as well as intriguing.
I am still curious about how he was able to come across those foreign books at that time. It was just after the Korean War when books written in English were very scarce. We could not afford to import them as freely and easily as we do today, and copy machines were not yet invented.
He was always poorly dressed but seemed a somewhat educated man, and his meager stock always included valuable classics of English literature. Back then, I bought several other books from him.
Up until now I have read all the essays in the book randomly, at least once, mostly out of a sense of duty and obligation. When I read some of them for the first time as a college student, I did not fully understand nor enjoy them, but I was just happy and proud to be acquainted with the great and famous essayists of English literature.
Whenever I came across some quaint old words or phrases or idioms with meanings that were unclear to me even after consulting the dictionary, I consoled myself by telling myself that there would be time to read them again later. And indeed I have returned to them frequently whenever I wanted or needed to reread them.
But, alas! No more further consolation is offered. I realize with sadness that I would not or could not read any of these essays ever again in my life. Five years have already passed since I retired and I will turn 70 this year.
I have to confess that most of the thrilling joy of reading escapes me now. And I must also admit that reading without any practical objective is, I find, less amusing. Reading for reading's sake is not impossible but pointless and hollow, like playing tennis without a net or shooting an arrow without aiming at the bull's eye.
Reading purely for your own personal pleasure is, like playing a soccer game without the roaring spectators, possible, of course, but empty. Like all human activities reading, I find, also needs some purpose, audience, or direction, even imaginary.
And my advanced age enjoins me to disengage myself from the lifelong addiction to reading. I am unable to read long at a sitting. My eyes get easily weary and blurry after a short time.
Moreover, I do not make reasonable progress. Like an old man climbing a long flight of stairs at the subway station, I take too many pauses in between.
Often I find I am reading the same paragraph twice or three times without realizing the fact. I cannot concentrate.
To make the situation worse, like my old body, the book itself is falling apart. The cover has nearly torn off and is just dangling from the spine.
The pages have become so dry and brittle with age that I have to be very careful when turning them. I had already patched many tears with Scotch tape, but the patches themselves have grown so old that they do not hold.
They are peeling off like old wallpaper. I know that Scotch tape can't solve the problem anymore. Definitely, I am reading this book for the last time.
Reading a book for the last time is a very strange experience. It had never occurred to me that there would be a time when I would read any book for the last time.
Until now it was always ``for the first time," or ``for the second time." Or I have postponed the reading of it to a later time, as if I could live forever and be forever young.
But now I can see the hourglass is running low right before my eyes and at my back I hear time's winged chariot coming closer.
But I have to say that the fate of this book of essays I am reading now fares far better than the others on the bookshelf. They seem to be awaiting my last touch or perusal, but I cannot give any of them my attention.
I wish I could read each of them at least once more for the last time, but I estimate that only a few of them will be lucky enough to receive my last benediction.
Presently, I am reading Charles Lamb's essay ``The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers" again. I have read it many times before with my students in the classroom so that I am thoroughly versed in it.
But the undeniable fact that I am reading it for the last time brings new reality to me, as if I had never read it before. I do not rush. There is no reason for that. Rather I deliberately linger over some of the passages I like as long as possible.
I savor and relish any rare and even obsolete words that I had hated because I had to consult a special dictionary. I find many traces of my previous readings throughout the book between the lines or on the margins of the page, which makes me wistful and nostalgic of the time when I was young and ambitious.
Reading individual essays included in the book slowly, carefully, appreciating, enjoying and thinking, for the last time, I find myself constantly pondering some big questions I have not asked myself before about my life and work.
What have I done with my work in my life? What is the use of it, if any? How different would my life be if I had chosen another subject, a more practical one such as law, economics or engineering, other than English literature?
With a sigh, so long after everything has been done, I ask these futile questions. And with a bitter smile I recite silently a line from the poem by Robert Frost, an American poet, ``The Road Not Taken": ``I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
Lee Chang-kook is a professor emeritus of English at Chung-Ang University. He can be reached at cklee@cau.ac.kr.