BOOK WEEK AT SAINT JOHN'S COLLEGE

 

“Thank you for coming,” Leading Teacher Kristian Raspa offered a greeting. “You know, one of the most enduring memories our alumni tell us they have of their time at our school, is Book Week.”

I was attending Saint John’s College in the capacity of guest author, invited to speak to Year 5 and 6 students about my recently published children’s book, “The Librarian of Cappadocia.”  As I watched the students file into the room, some smiling, others looking at me with curiosity, I was seized with misgivings. How would it be possible for me, in a short space of time, to through my own publication, attempt to cultivate a love for reading among them and hopefully along the way, ignite their imagination, creativity, and cognitive growth? These are of course ambitious undertakings, and I decided that if the students were at least able to enjoy the story, then their time would not have been wasted.

My first question to them was whether they had heard of Cappadocia. This question, asked of other students, usually and understandably draws a blank, even of students of Greek heritage who struggle to remember, let alone pronounce their grandparent’s place of origin. Yet here, several hands were raised and I decided to investigate.

“It’s a place in Asia Minor,” one girl replied. Not Turkey, mind you. Asia Minor.

“Isn’t it that place where there are all those icons in those caves?” another boy asked.

“The word for painting icons is iconography,” a boy seated at the back informed me solemnly.

“I think Cappadocia is the birthplace of Saint George,” a student offered. In reference to the Greek tradition, he was of course, spot on.

“Does Santa Claus come from there?” came a question out of nowhere, causing the entire class to erupt with laughter, and the enquirer to turn bright red, that is, until I explained that Saint Basil, the Greek version of ‘Santa’ did indeed come from Cappadocia.

“He is important in our Church, isn’t he?” the same child asked. “I think he is called a Church Father.”

Getting the students to enter the world in which the book is set thus required no effort at all, for thanks to a curriculum that provides them with a holistic view of the Greek world over millenia, they did not just only appreciate that world, it was already a part of them.

I beamed as we went on to focus on the main characters of the book. “Sir,” a bespectacled boy enquired. “Is the bearded old man on the front cover Gandalf?”

I did my best to do my famed, at least in my own mind impression of Sir Ian McKellen shouting “You shall not pass,” but it fell flat as the reference was not understood and I suddenly became acutely aware of my age. I spoke to the children of the maze of subterranean tunnels that existed under the surface of the caves of Cappadocia, some of which could house a city and asked them to imagine how an entire library could be hidden within them. Subsequently, I asked them to imagine what manner of things could be secreted down there.

“Treasure,” was one response.

“Books,” was another.

“Books ARE treasure,” the first student replied.

“Livestock,” was another suggestion. When asked why, the student in question explained that his grandparents had told him tales of a time long ago when things were bad and people sought refuge in caves and in secret places and had to take their livestock with them. This then was having recourse to a hive mind of inherited memory and identity and I shuddered in reverence and awe.

“Would Smaug the Dragon be down there?” the Gandalf fan asked.

“Why not?” I smiled. “Anything is possible.”

The Librarian of Cappadocia commences with a foundation myth involving a race of arrogant giants who, in their presumptuous task of attempting to understand the cosmos, block out the rays of the sun, causing humanity to suffer. For their indifference to the suffering of others, they are turned into the rock caves that dot the landscape of Cappadocia today. This was an opportune time I felt, to discuss the connotations of the words light and darkness.

“Illumination is light,” one girl informed me.

“How about illuminated manuscripts?” came another student’s contribution. We spoke of the Byzantine tradition of illuminated manuscripts and I read them passages of the book that place such texts within its vast subterranean library.

“Light also means knowledge,” another girl contributed. I could not suppress a smile, as the students identified and decoded one motif after another. “If the giants are blocking out the light, then are they ignorant or are they making the people ignorant?” she supplemented her response. This was one of the key questions posed by the book. “How do you stay in the light if people are trying to block it?” I pointed to the classroom all around them. “It is quite possible that you find yourselves in the most brilliantly lit place of them all.” They giggled.

The plot of the “Library of Cappadocia” is a simple one and takes the form of a parable. A solitary monk, left abandoned in a desolate landscape is single-mindedly engrossed upon the task of finding the One Book that contains all the knowledge, all the truth of the world..

“Sir, is that like the One Ring that Frodo is trying to find?” my Lord of the Rings buff interrupted me.

“Quite possibly,” I smiled.

“But the One Ring was bad. It had to be destroyed.” In a few brief sentences, I explained to him J RR Tolkien’s own ethical concerns and the way these were incorporated into the world that he created.

“I think it is a tragedy that he died in 1973,” the boy mused. “Does your monk die?”

The monk in the story, I continued to recount, is interrupted in his task three times by a strange young boy who appears at the mouth of the cave and craves that he be granted access to a book.

“Is that Plato’s cave, sir?” a girl asked.

“Wow, what do you know of Plato’s cave,” I stammered, flabbergasted.

“I’ve heard about it, that’s all,” she responded, embarrassed. Yet again, another reference, nailed, as they say in the vernacular.

The boy in the story appears to the monk three times and three times he is rebuffed in the most dismissive and downright abuse way by a monk intent only upon his task and oblivious to the feelings of those around him.

“He is like those giants,” a boy observed.

“He is like Saruman?” Lord of the Rings buff corrected him.

“Can I make a prediction?” a girl interjected. “Will the boy find the One Book and bring back all the people to that place?

“Is the little boy Jesus? That’s my prediction,” another girl suggested.

The story resolves itself in a place that does not appear to be on earth. The monk, who has fallen from a ladder in the library, finds himself before a gate that will not open. There is darkness behind him and he is desperate to escape it. The young boy to whom he denied entry to the cave appears behind the gate and asks him why he should let him enter when the monk denied him three times…

“I told you, its Jesus!” the girl exclaimed enthusiastically.

“I’m not convinced,” a boy considered.

The monk is now reading words of the One Book on the robes of the young boy.

“Sir,” a girl asked tentatively. “I remember reading somewhere that there is the Word and the Word has something to do with being God?”

I barely suppressed my whoop of excitement as I referred the class to the opening verses of the Gospel of Saint John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

“Yeah, that’s it, sir. So you are trying to tell us that books are holy?”

“No, he is saying that God can be found in a book.”

“No, its how Gandalf the Grey was really Gandalf the White.”

There was something very special about this gifted group of students debating the nuances of a text that I, in my giant-like arrogance, presumed would pass them by. To know that within our community but also within the mainstream, there exists a school that draws upon our heritage in order to infuse its students with analytical tools necessary to make sense of the modern world so effectively, providing them with a unique world-view steeped in precedent but positive and open to all and to witness this being negotiated before me is an experience the oft-cliched word privilege, fails to qualify nearly enough.

As I took my leave, I was accosted by my new Tolkien-loving friend. “I hope you didn’t mind me asking so many questions about the Lord of the Rings. I just really love it.” I confessed that I shared his love of Tolkien, pointing out that the best authors read as widely as they can and then try to give their ideas their own voice. “Can I have your book?” he asked. “I would really love to read it.” As I placed my copy of the “Librarian of Cappadocia,” into his hands, he held it reverently and then clutched it to his chest in a warm embrace. It was this embrace that I felt from all his classmates and from the entire school community. Mr Kristian Raspa was right. Book Week at Saint John’s College is an experience you do not forget.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 31 August 2024.