A quest for knowledge - Ep. 3: Et voilá, Paris!

I left. I travelled. And I arrived!

I arrived at the new center of my world, for the days and nights to come. The university, the Sorbonne and the other colleges, the astronomical observatory, the libraries. I was starting to feel at home in the modus parisiensis of college life, spending my time in slots, between the time to get up and bedtime : the lessons, the study, the reading and memorization, the conversations with other students, the teachers, the meals.

I was also beginning to know the city. The Seine and its banks, the island and the cathedral, the streets and alleys, the inns, the taverns, the people.

Of no lesser importance, at least for me, were those moments when I wandered into the typographies and the booksellers, leafing through both legal books as, in a stealthier way, books that only circulate underground, avoiding the scrutiny of the authorities.

“The whole town acts like a book and the Citizens walk through it reading it, soaking up civil lessons at every step they give”, E. Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, in Homens Bons [free translation from the Portuguese version].

I did not know for how long I would stay. But of one thing I was certain: I would return to the open road, in search of other places, wishing to live other experiences, aiming to find new wisdom. Maybe, too, in search of myself.

(to be continued)


On a journey, riding with Newton, a game of Nestore Mangone and Simone Luciani, Ediciones Mas que Oca (2018) under license of Cranio Creations. 

Homens Bons [Good Men] (2015), Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Edições ASA.
Uma História da Universidade na Europa [A History of the University in Europe], Vol. II – As Universidades na Europa Moderna (1500-1800), Coordenação de Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda (2002).