During my adolescence and youth, I spent thousands of hours reading literature—day and night.
To this day, I still wonder: did I steal those hours from life, or did I add them to it?
Most of the time, they feel like added hours. Through reading, I escaped my provincial life and traveled the world, ventured into the depths of oceans, journeyed to the moon, the catacombs of Paris, Russian aristocratic salons, and even Eldorado in search of gold.
But reading didn’t feel like escaping my surroundings so much as escaping from myself. At times, I became Thumbelina; other times, Hercules, Martin Eden, Bazarov, Don Quixote, Romeo, and others.
Paradoxically, these escapes from myself were the greatest investment I ever made in my being. They remain the most valuable education I’ve received.
It was a school that taught me to be human: not just to like and love others, but to step into their shoes, to suffer and rejoice with them. Emotions aren’t like money; the more you spend them, the richer you feel.
Reading was also an education in another sense. At a time when I had little knowledge and experience, reading taught me to see the world through the eyes of others. And they were not ordinary people, but some of the brightest minds in human history.
For me, it was a privilege to see the world through the eyes of Cervantes, Shakespeare, Dante, Aeschylus, and Homer.
Through Homer’s eyes? You may laugh. What could you see through the eyes of a blind man? But here lies one of literature’s greatest magic tricks: the alchemy of words. It offers a text composed of words and compels you to recreate people and events, almost without the constraints of painting, theater, or film. That’s why Joyce said: “Close your eyes and see.”
Today’s youth live in an abundance of images and information, but they read less.
Yet I still wonder: do they gain or lose from this?