Harvard SquareHarvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The dream place for anyone looking for freedom of spirit. It’s in the air there, the liberty of mind, it’s so strong you feel like drunk. It’s the place where all ideas meet, whatever radical, whatever crazy, whatever different. It’s the spirit of Quartier Latin (however, prends garde, it’s America).
I’m dreaming at a book not yet written, Love in Harvard Square. Marquez, and Pamuk, and Boell, and Pavic, all together. No, only Marguerite Yourcenar. When I was in Harvard Square for the first time, I met a guy from Montreal, we spoke about Yourcenar.
It was in 1997, my first trip to America. My son and my daughter-in-law were living by that time in Watertown. I went for a walk and took the Mount Auburn Street up. After one hour I was in Harvard Square. Love at first sight.
A very small coffee & tea house was in front of the square. A narrow room, half of it occupied by the counter. A map of the world hanging on the wall. I spent there fine moments. It’s no more, out of business.
A guy was selling a Communist tabloid. I started to laugh. I knew too well what Communism meant. The guy was trying to explain to me that the experiment had failed because the bad guys had forgotten the purity of ideas, I was keeping on laughing.
The other day Tibetans were demonstrating in the Square against the Communist government from Beijing. There is a small Tibetan store, beyond the square, close to a tiny bookstore selling Marxist literature. Both of them fighting to remain in business, without success. Business is harsh: America is a free country, however it’s America.
Love in Harvard Square. I’m drinking a cup of coffee just beyond the square. A large terrace, this is really Quartier Latin like. The same kind of folks, the same look and feel.
I’m dreaming. My travels, real or imaginary, in geography or in time, in China, or in Turkey, or in search of the lost kingdom of Khazars, or in Macondo, or following the books of Zora, or following Kapuscinski in Africa and in Russia – or in Yugoslavia, together with Anthony Loyd, My War Gone By I Miss It So – Piano Carpini or Marco Polo, or the old Milescu… and Pamuk, and Pavic, and Marquez, and Zora Neale Hurston, and Kapuscinski, the wizard of the narrative (when he was forgetting that he was a journalist). Dreaming at remote places, where I would dream at Harvard Square. Dreaming at books to be read while dreaming at Harvard Square.
The book of Loyd: discovering that nobody remains innocent in a conflict, predators and victims together; discovering in true honesty his vitality only in the morbid attraction to be there, on the field of war; honest to himself up to cynicism; you cannot witness a war without being implied. Philip Caputo in A Rumor of War comes somehow to the same feeling: you cannot be true in blaming the war if you are not there, on the field.
How would it sound a story of Eileen Chang taking place here, in Harvard Square? Lust, Caution placed here in Cambridge? The movie of Ang Lee is two hours long. The story of Eileen Chang is ten pages. Focused on one moment, that’s it, everything else thrown in rapid flashes. Ang Lee created a whole universe from a book that had concentrated the whole world in a kernel.
Or Henry Miller and his correspondence with Anaïs Nin?
Jhumpa Lahiri writes about folks living here, not far from Harvard Square, and torn between their lost Indian identity and their new American one. A new book of her comes by the end of this month, a collection of short stories.
Harvard Square, bordered by two book temples: the COOP, the Harvard Book Store. And the antiquarian, close, on a small street. You get down several steps, you find French books, German, Russian. Living in the whole universe there, in Harvard Square…
The Singer sewing machine in a window, and all kind of stuff, old cameras, fishing tools…, close to the Harvard Book Store.
To travel through the Book of Psalms, with Freemantle, dreaming at long journeys in India and Arab countries. The Freemantle edition of the Psalms, illustrated with drawings of extraordinary animals, real or imaginary, with exotic flowers and trees, with images of vivid cities from Thousand and One Nights. Freemantle worked on his edition for thirty years: a love gift for his wife.
And the entrance in the campus of the University, the small wooden house where Washington spent one night. A bit farther, beyond the campus, the museum of glass flowers, the work of a life of two glass workers, crazy botanists. They had lived in Prague, among other dreamers, their work was bought by another crazy lover here in Cambridge. The Science Center, hosting MARK – I, the computer of Howard Aiken, from 1944: its devices along a whole wall.
The Swedenborgian church: well, that’s another story. All in due time.
Love in Harvard Square. I’m a crazy dreamer.