reading – hidden pilcrow

Conversations

Published on 09/06/2025 by Maciej ModzelewskiLeave a comment

I find reading The Letters of Lytton Strachey a great deal of pleasure, and yet it is like listening to a telephone conversation where all you can hear is the man standing in front of you with the receiver in his hand. For that reason, I look back on reading the correspondence between Stanisław Lem and Sławomir Mrożek with all the more nostalgia. It has been a solid ten years since I last held this voluminous tome in my hands. Perhaps it’s time to return once again to their wit and wisdom.

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The bibliophile’s sin

Published on 26/05/2025 by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Books have been at the centre of my life since I was ten and recognised the library as my temple, but it was only as an adult that I realised that my bibliotheca had become a well-curated dichotomy between what I buy and what I read—Japanese call it tsundoku.

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Artificially induced

Published on 19/05/2025 by Maciej ModzelewskiLeave a comment

Being alive by proxy—
subject to semantic bleaching—
is the one particular burden that is mine
and mine alone, yet
since I mostly read old men
with long beards and moustaches,
I don’t feel particularly overwhelmed.
That is, until I’m singed by the flare
of tone contagion, which leaves no choice
but to close the book and get out
in the real world.

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Human connection

Published on 19/05/2025 by Maciej ModzelewskiLeave a comment

If I so desperately yearn for human connection, where does that constant trepidation come from every time I have to meet an actual living human being? Why do people seem to be so much more captivating in their refined, textual form? Is it because books don’t exhibit annoying habits or have foul breath, or is it all down to my own shortcomings that I try to hide?

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Late rereadings

Published on 21/04/2025 by Maciej ModzelewskiLeave a comment

Sometimes I return to the books of my youth.
They are the same and yet not quite,
partly because I read them in a different language then,
but also I have long since parted ways
with that whippersnapper.

Marble bas-relief depicting a Greek god reading a book

The benefits of reading classic literature

Published on 21/07/2024 by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

The heaviest book I own
is ‘The Norton Anthology of English Literature,’
a whole nine—well, almost—pounds of great texts,
starting with ‘Cædmon’s Hymn.’
With all my love for books, I never imagined
that these two volumes would work so well
as dumbbells.