Adam Zagaiewski

Read, Memory, Ecstasy, Read

Read, Memory, Ecstasy, Read

For what, the narrator of Leonard Michaels's Sylvia asks, has all of his time reading literature prepared him? He describes himself as “an overspecialised man, twenty-seven years old, who smoked cigarettes and could give no better account of himself than to say ‘I love to read.’”

“But why do I read?” asks the Polish poet and essayist Adam Zagajewski in A Defense of Ardor. “Do I really need to answer this question?”