The Reading Room
One table, two columns: the text, and a margin to walk beside it.
Elsewhere in the library the entries are about the texts. In this room you sit with a text itself, whole, in a public-domain translation that is always named. The source keeps the left side of the table. The library's hand keeps the right, and never speaks over the original. Take one verse at a time; the room does not close.
❧
- The Golden Verses of Pythagoras Seventy-one lines on due reverence, self-command, the nightly reckoning, and the promise of becoming a god Pythagorean school · compiled by the Hellenistic period, from teachings of the 6th century BCE
- The Isha Upanishad Eighteen verses on seeing the Lord in everything Shukla Yajur Veda · India, first millennium BCE
The room is new and its first table is set. More texts will be laid out season by season, announced among the new acquisitions.