Notas ou comentários pessoais escritos na margem de um livro, normalmente registando impressões de leitura, reflexões breves, anotações bibliográficas ou de carácter erudito, ou simples notas de interpretação textual, que podem constituir uma marca distintiva de um leitor. É possível reconstruir os modos de leitura de um escritor, por exemplo, a partir das suas anotações a certas obras, como aconteceu nos casos mais conhecidos de Coleridge ou Melville. Edgar Alan Poe confessou a prática de anotações nas margens dos livros e distinguiu-a do memoradum, num texto intitulado “Marginalia”:
“In getting my books, I have been always solicitous of an ample margin; this not so much through any love of the thing in itself, however agreeable, as for the facility it affords me of pencilling suggested thoughts, agreements, and differences of opinion, or brief critical comments in general. Where what I have to note is too much to be included within the narrow limits of a margin, I commit it to a slip of paper, and deposit it between the leaves; taking care to secure it by an imperceptible portion of gum tragacanth paste.
All this may be whim; it may be not only a very hackneyed, but a very idle practice;— yet I persist in it still; and it affords me pleasure; which is profit, in despite of Mr. Bentham, with Mr. Mill on his back.
This making of notes, however, is by no means the making of mere memorandum — a custom which has its disadvantages, beyond doubt “Ce que je mets sur papier,” says Bernadine de St. Pierre, “je remets de ma memoire et par consequence je l’oublie;” — and, in fact, if you wish to forget anything upon the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
But the purely marginal jottings, done with no eye to the Memorandum Book, have a distinct complexion, and not only a distinct purpose, but none at all; this it is which imparts to them a value. They have a rank somewhat above the chance and desultory comments of literary chit-chat — for these latter are not unfrequently “talk for talk’s sake,” hurried out of the mouth; while the marginalia are deliberately pencilled, because the mind of the reader wishes to unburthen itself of a thought;— however flippant —- however silly — however trivial — still a thought indeed, not merely a thing that might have been a thought in time, and under more favorable circumstances. In the marginalia, too, we talk only to ourselves” (Democratic Review, Novembro de 1844).
A anotação marginal de um texto é um trabalho solitário. Na maior parte das vezes, a marginalia está destinada ao domínio privado do leitor e não tem como objectivo ser divulgada.
H. J. Jackson: Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books (2001).
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