THE GREAT MAGICIAN
It is springtime. I’ve just turned 8 years old. In the evenings, I still miss my home, since I’m living and studying in a strange big city. I attend Kaunas boarding school for the blind, yet I notice that during the day my longing for and memories of home are replaced by other things. I’m already quite good at writing and reading in Braille. I’ve even gone to the school library on several occasions and borrowed some children’s books with raised pictures. All these books are very thin, and to tell the truth, they are not so very interesting.
Older pupils read very thick, heavy books in Braille, and when they go to the library, they come back with lots of those. I can’t wait for the day when I’m able to read such books myself. At last, the day comes: my heart is beating fast as I open the library door while carrying in my hands the first thick and heavy book of my life: the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm. I then open it, read the first page, then the second and the third, and the world around me ceases to exist…
Enchanted kingdoms, old castles, witches, magicians, dwarfs, and giants —all this is so much more beautiful and magic than the reality I live in. The great wonder —Braille—dominates my thoughts and feelings; it enchants me and doe sn’t let me go.
Since that time, I’ve often taken that thick book in my hands, turned its pages, and travelled the forgotten fairytale roads. The stories woke my imagination and told about a different world where the small could become great and the weak could become strong. The next autumn, or perhaps the autumn after that, I discovered the adventures of Marco Polo. I learned about the existence of faraway countries, sea and sand storms, unbearable thirst, and mirages in deserts… I read about merchants’ caravans, the luxury surrounding the
Mongol rulers, and other strange things about faraway lands. I had my first geography and nautical lessons from the seamen of the wrecked ship in
Thomas Mayne Reid’s books and my first life lessons after reading the story about Tristan and Isolde.
There were few Braille books at the school library. Fortunately, they were enough for me to develop a love for books and for Braille. Fairy tales and stories about sea travel and brave knights were replaced by stories that seemed more realistic. A person cannot live in an imaginary world only. Yet that imaginary reality —fairytales and legends—is very important for children who are making their first steps into the world of books. My encounter with
Braille was a determining event for me: I dedicated my life to artistic and essayist language. When I was 15 or 16, I used Braille to write my first article for Mūsų Žodis, a magazine published by the Lithuanian Association of Blind

and Visually Impaired People. I don’t know whether it was a coincidence or not, but I started to work at the magazine 10 years later. Today, it is not only a magazine, but also a publishing house. Thus, I myself take part in publishing books in Braille for other blind people.
About 1 year later (as an adolescent), I wrote my first verse. Later, while studying at Vilnius University, I read my writings written in Braille at various student creative events, creative seminars, and poetry festivals. I still do it now: at poetry meetings and meetings with readers. A large-scale and meaningful poetry festival, Poetry Spring, is held in Lithuania on a yearly basis. I’ve had the honour of reading my verse twice at the closing event for the award winners of Poetry Spring. After I read one or two of my poems, almost always somebody approaches me and wants to know about the writing system and how it is used to read and write. Thus, public reading in the Braille system is the best evaluation and honour, as well as a kind of promotion, for the work done by Louis Braille.
Up to now, I was talking about reading in the Braille system and said almost nothing about writing, yet in my life these two things are inseparable. I wrote my first essays and my first book of poetry by using a tablet and a stylus.
When making notes in my years of studies, I almost always used Braille’s code. I had to make lots of notes, especially in literature and the history of philosophy. I used to fill in entire copybooks. I already had a voice recorder but didn’t use it during lectures. I understood very quickly that when a person takes notes himself instead of recording lectures using a sound recorder, he learns to choose what is most needed, to follow the lecturer’s thoughts, and to remain focussed for a long time. Yet the most important thing is that as we take notes, we learn. If we take good notes during lectures, we can almost be sure that we have learned one half of the subject. Thus, during my academic years, Braille helped me not only to write down the required information but also to select what was most needed and remember it.
When I was 13 or 14, my parents bought my first sound recorder and I immersed myself in audio books. About 15 years ago, I started using the computer, which has now become my everyday work tool. I now have an opportunity to read electronic versions of books published for people who do not have any vision problems. An increasing number of books and periodicals can be found online. Braille coded books therefore account for only a small part of the informational sources available to me. But it is an important part!
The famous French structuralist Roland Barthes in his book The Pleasure of the Text noted that reading is not just a manner of getting information and that books are not just tools for providing information. In addition to other sensations, reading provides some sort of physical pleasure. I get proof of the accuracy of this thought every time I open a book in Braille.

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were published in Lithuania in Braille. I have read these books both from beginning to end and in parts. Yet I often have an invincible desire to go the library for the blind and open those books once again. So I open them and read about the plague in the Greeks’ camp,
Achilles’ anger, the intrigues and love affairs of the gods on Mt Olympus, and the Odyssey’s journeys. It seems that I have never read those pages before and that they speak to me with their primordial beauty and the primordial mysteries living in each of the books. The pleasure of reading, which is hard to explain but which is always there, cannot be substituted either by audio books or the most advanced computers.
Knowing Braille’s code is also useful in practical terms, even in this age of information technology. Computers offer a number of great opportunities for blind people as well. The blind can write letters to people with no vision problems, and offer their articles and books to publishing houses publishing books for people with no vision problems. But if they do not know Braille’s code or know it poorly and have not experienced the beauty and internal logic of their native language, they can hardly take advantage of all available opportunities. Braille’s code and books help develop an understanding of this internal logic of language and to develop a feeling for language in one’s early years. When I myself do not read something in Braille for a long period of time, I start making writing and punctuation mistakes. Sometimes these mistakes are really stupid. This means that I need to open a Braille book.
In the fairy tales of many nations, an orphan child expelled from home by a stepmother, the third brother, or some other good-hearted protagonist is often rewarded with a magic box. I can guess that this box in its dimensions and form resembled a Braille book. Or it could be the opposite: Braille’s book resembles a magic fairytale box, while Louis Braille himself resembles a kind magician. Learning Braille’s code is not an easy task, especially for grownups. But as soon as you learn it, as soon as you open that box, you start taking never-ending gifts out of it.
Early this year, I had the honour to attend an international conference that took place in Paris and was dedicated to the 200 th anniversary of the birth of
Louis Braille. The conference was held at UNESCO headquarters, and it was attended by blind people from all over the world. When I was attending the first form of the school for the blind and was making my first Braille dots on a white sheet of paper, I could not even think that many years later I would go to that great city in which the French boy who left a priceless gift for blind people all over the world, including me, lived, dreamed, and was happy and sad.
Alvydas Valenta

Age: 46
Lithuania