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The library in Egaeus’s family home represents his own mind, which he frequently retreats into both before and after his mental illness takes hold. Egaeus was born in the library, and he describes being born as “awaking” and coming into consciousness which mirrors the numerous times he returns to consciousness—always in the library—after one of his dissociative episodes when he loses “all sense of motion or physical existence.” A return to consciousness, then, is a return to the library. To Egaeus, the library is “a palace of imagination” and “the wild dominions of monastic thought” which, in time, bears a striking resemblance to the interior of his own mind: like the library, Egaeus’s mind becomes solitary and peculiar, devoted to thought and barring him from experiencing certain kinds of emotion. Just as Egaeus is irresistibly drawn to the library, he is also irresistibly drawn into his own mind, and he explores the “peculiar” books in the library in the same way he obsessively explores “peculiar” details in the margins of books or the sound of a word as his “monomaniac” mental illness takes control of his life.
The Library Quotes in Berenice
The Berenice quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Library. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Berenice
Quotes
Here died my mother. Herein I was born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before—that the soul has no previous existence.
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Explanation and Analysis:
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The Library Symbol Timeline in Berenice
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Library appears in Berenice. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Berenice
Egaeus describes the particular connection he has with his home’s library. It was the room in which he was born, and where his mother died. He...
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...from the long night of what seemed, but was not.” By being born in the library, he entered a “palace of imagination,” and believes this is part of why he spent...
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Shortly before their wedding date, Egaeus describes sitting in his library when Berenice enters and stands in front of him. Her appearance has altered: her black...
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Egaeus says he “[finds] himself” sitting in the library alone, feeling as if he has just woken up from a dream. He knows Berenice...
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