WORLD BOOK DAY

World Book Day or International Day of the Book is a yearly event on April the 23rd, organized by the UNESCO to promote reading, publishing and copyright. World Book Day was celebrated for the first time on April 1995.

The connection between 23 April and books was first made in 1923 by booksellers in Catalonia, Spain. The original idea was of the Valencian writer Vicente Clavel Andrés as a way to honour the author Miguel de Cervantes who died on this date. In 1995 UNESCO decided that the World Book and Copyright Day would be celebrated on 23 April, as the date is also the anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, as well as that of the birth or death of several other prominent authors (in a historical coincidence, Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same date -23 April 1616- but not on the same day, as at the time, Spain used the Gregorian calendar and England used the Julian calendar; Cervantes actually died ten days before Shakespeare did)

For celebrating the Book Day we would like to share with you a poem written by the author Walt Whitman:

O Me! O Life!

Related Poem Content Details

BY WALT WHITMAN

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

                                       Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.