Wallace Stevens, in the exquisite couplets of “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm,” provides a particularly memorable and moving portrayal of the kind of reading Levy is talking about: The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm. The words were spoken as if there was no book, Except that the reader leaned above the page, Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom The summer night is like a perfection of thought. The
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