an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another

[lemorttoussaint]

"Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books.  Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books:  it is as if they spoke among themselves.  In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me.  It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secretes emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors."

--Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose