.Pliny writes to a friend about a comedy that he heard the poet recite. He
does not write, ‘‘Come to Rome and hear it,’’ or ‘‘I’ll recite it to you the
next time we meet,’’ or ‘‘Have your lector read it to you,’’ not even ‘‘This
book will recreate for you the atmosphere of the original reading’’; but
simply ‘‘I’ll force him to cough up a copy and send you the book to read, or
rather to learn by heart; for I know once you pick it up you won’t be able
to put it down.’’^126
.Pliny comments after the two day recitation of thePanegyric: ‘‘Of course,
I am well aware that I have recited for a few what I wrote for everyone.’’^127
.Pliny writes, ‘‘I don’t want to be praised when I recite, but when I’m
read.’’^128 He could not be more explicit: the goal of literature is not a
transitory recitation but the permanent text.One short letter should be quoted more fully (9.27):
Quanta potestas, quanta dignitas, quanta maiestas, quantum denique
numen sit historiae, cum frequenter alias tum proxime sensi. Recitauerat
quidam uerissimum librum, partemque eius in alium diem reseruauerat.
Ecce amici cuiusdam orantes obsecrantesque, ne reliqua recitaret. Tantus
audiendi quae fecerint pudor, quibus nullus faciendi quae audire erubes
cunt. Et ille quidem praestitit quod rogabatur (sinebat fides); liber tamen ut
factum ipsum manet manebit legeturque semper, tanto magis quia non
statim. Incitantur enim homines ad noscenda quae differuntur.(‘‘I have often been aware of how much power, dignity, majesty and
even divinity there is in history, and just lately I have realized it again.
A man had been reciting a very honest book and left part of it for another
day. Up come the friends of so and so, begging and pleading him not to
recite the rest. So great is the shame of hearing what they had done, though
there was none at doing what they now blush to hear. And he did what they
asked; his loyalty to the truth allowed it.But the book, like their deeds,
remains; it will remain and will be read forever. All the more for not being
read immediately; for what is withheld only makes people want to know
it more.’’)^129voluptate? sine per ora hominum ferantur isdemque quibus lingua Romana spatiis
pervagentur.’’ The allusion inper ora hominumis to Ennius’s supposed epitaph. Notice the
way in which being ‘‘spoken’’ is a metaphor for an explicitlytextualdissemination. 2.10.6:
‘‘Et de editione quidem interim, ut voles. recita saltem, quo magis libeat emittere.’’ Cf. 9.1
on prose works.
- 6.21.7: ‘‘In summa extorquebo eilibrum legendumque, immo ediscendum mittam
tibi; neque enim dubito futurum, ut nondeponassi semelsumpseris.’’ Again, a reader with
the book in his hands as the norm. - 3.18.9: ‘‘memini quidem me non multisrecitassequod omnibusscripsi.’’
- 7.17.7: ‘‘Nec uero ego dumrecitolaudari, sed dumlegorcupio.’’
- Cf. the anecdote in Sen.Contr. 10 praef. 8 on Labienus and his soon to be burned
books and Tacitus on the survival of Cordus’s burned books (Ann. 4.35:sed manserunt,
occultati et editi). This is notFahrenheit 451: the way to stop a work circulating is to burn
it and if it escapes destruction it is becausetextshave survived.
216 Books and Texts