The order of books: digressions on Come ordinare una biblioteca by Roberto Calasso

Abstract

The article expands, enriches and updates an earlier review by the author published in Il tascabile. In his booklet, Roberto Calasso does not explain how a library should be ordered, but instead tells how he has ordered his own, through the stories of the authors, the books, the fortuitous events that brought a certain book to a specific shelf. Calasso tells us how he embraced the ‘rule of the good neighbour’, previously elaborated by Aby Warburg for his own library, and how this principle facilitates serendipity, that is, the discovery of books one did not know one was looking for. Every reader builds his own library as a carapace: every library is a portrait of his own reader.
On the basis of the ideas offered by Calasso, the author finally reflects on the applicability of Ranganathan’s Five Laws to a personal library, proposing a new reading.