Archive for the Category »censorship «

28
May
Book Burning
Nina Munteanu

berlin book burning Book Burning

A really violent and disturbing form of censorship is, of course, book burning. Wikipedia defines ‘book burning’ as the “practice of ceremoniously destroying by fire one or more copies of a book or other written material.” The practice, usually carried out in public (like public hangings in Medieval times, eh?) is generally motivated by moral, religious or political objections to the material. Some notable and particularly destructive book burnings have included:

  • the destruction of the Library of Alexandria;

  • burning books and burying scholars (they mean ‘live burying’, folks!) under China’s Qin Dynasty (3rd Century);

  • Cathar texts in the Lanquedoc region of France in the 13th Century;

  • the Talmud in Paris by the French crown in 1242;

  • Arabic and Hebrew books at Andalucia, Spain, in 1499;

  • Servetus’s “heretical” writings along with the writer at Geneva;

  • Maya sacred books in Yucatan (1562);

  • Tyndale’s New Testament by the English authorities in 1525 and 1526;

  • Luthar’s Bible in Germany (1624) as ordered by the Pope;

  • Robespierre’s destruction of religious libraries in 1793;

  • anti-communist books by the Bolsheviks in 1917;

  • Jewish, anti-Nazi and “degenerate” books by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s;

  • Communist and “fellow traveller” books by Senator McCarthy in 1953;

  • The Satanic Verses by Muslims in the UK in 1988; and,

  • Harry Potter books at various American cities.
In his 1821 play, Almansor, the German writer Heinrich Heine (referring to the burning of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, during the Spanish Inquisition) wrote: Dort, wo man Bucher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen –”Where they burn books, they will end in burning human beings.” A century later, on May 6th, 1933, Heine’s books were among the thousands of volumes publicly hauled out and burned in the streets by the Nazis in Berlin’s Opernplatz. A violent outburst that, in fact, did foreshadow the blazing ovens of the Holocaust.

In the 1967 introduction of his novel, Fahrenheit 451 (based on his novella, The Fireman), Ray Bradbury implied that the Nazi book burnings inspired his story. I found this statement both eloquent and powerful: “It follows then that when Hitler burned a book I felt it as keenly, please forgive me, as his killing a human, for in the long sum of history they are one in the same flesh.” For those of you who haven’t yet read his novel (one of my favourite books, ever), this cautionary tale explores a fictional future society that has institutionalized book burning in an effort by authorities to maintain order and ‘happiness’. In this world, firemen don’t put out fires; they start them. By the way, 451 degrees F is the temperature that paper catches fire and burns. The story begins with Montag, an ordinary fireman:

“It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history…Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by the flame. He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror.”

Then he encountered an old lady who refused to leave her house when the firemen came to burn her books. And he met the girl, Clarisse, who knew something of the past, when firemen used to put out fires, there were no informers and people were not afraid. A master of metaphor, Bradbury weaves a multi-layered political and social tale that follows one man’s journey to find his soul and his ability to judge for himself.

I end with two quotes, one by Alfred Whitney Griswold: “Books won’t stay banned…Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.”

And one by Joseph Lewis: “The burning of an author’s books…has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time.”

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Category: Fahrenheit 451, Heinrich Heine, Ray Bradbury, book burning, censorship  4 Comments
26
May
Banned Books–How many did YOU read?
Nina Munteanu

banned books2 Banned Books How many did YOU read?

This Friday, in keeping with a literary theme, I’ve linked you to a Forbidden Library. This library boils overful with an oozing cornucopia of ‘demoralizing’, ‘blasphemous’, ‘racial’, ‘offensive’, ‘obscene’, ‘anti-Communist’, ‘Satanic’, and ‘anarchistic’ literature. Ah, yes, you say! How subversive. Check it out! Its librarian, Janet Yanosko, has indexed books by author and title with explanation of why the book was banned along with her own amusing rather pithy remarks. You’ll find books that people found offensive like:

  • Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: a book on censorship gets censored!

  • James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl: promotes drugs and disobedience

  • Where’s Waldo by Martin Handford: for nudity

  • 1984 by George Orwell: for being pro-communist

  • The Lorax by Doctor Seuss: because it criminalizes the logging industry

  • Zen Buddhism: selected writings by D.T. Suzuki: because it portrays Buddhism as appealing

  • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut: for its foul language

Books have been banned (and burned) on many occasions by many societies over humankind’s history of existence for various reasons. Books considered critical of governments or societies with power were a common target. So were books that dealt with criminal matter or promoted views counter with popular worldviews, or were considered distasteful or disturbing.

The Bible, the Qur’an and other religious works were banned (and burned) over the years. In Medieval Europe, the Roman Catholic Church dealt with dissenting printed opinion through a program called the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (index of prohibited books). Okay, here’s a partial list I got off Wikipedia with reasons for banning. I’ve bolded the ones I’ve read. How many did YOU read?

  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: for portraying animals and humans on the same level
  • The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine: banned in UK for blasphemy in 18th C
  • All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remaraque: banned in Nazi Germany for demoralizing and insulting the Wehrmacht
  • Animal Farm by George Orwell: banned for anti-Stalin theme
  • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: banned in some U.S. schools for use of racial slurs
  • Bible: banned by the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in Catholic Church
  • Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: banned in South Africa for using the word ‘black’
  • Brave New World byAldous Huxley: banned for centering around negative activity
  • Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer: banned for sexual content
  • Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger: banned in some U.S. schools and libraries for sexual situations, immorality and other themes of impropriety and anti-Christian sentiments
  • Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: banned in U.S. during McCarthyism
  • Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel: banned because of hardcore graphic sexual content
  • The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: banned in anti-Communist countries during the Red scare
  • Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak: banned in USSR for criticism of the Bolshevik Party
  • Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: for issues on censorship
  • For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway: banned in Spain during Francisco Franco’s rule for its pro-Republican views
  • Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: banned in part of U.S. because of the use of the word ‘nigger’
  • Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck: banned in some U.S. schools for use of the name God and Jesus in a vain and profane manner along with inappropriate sexual references
  • Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift: banned in Ireland as wicked and obscene
  • Hamlet by William Shakespeare: banned in Ethiopia
  • Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling: banned in some U.S. school libraries for use of witchcraft and supposedly Satanic views
  • King Lear by William Shakespeare: banned in UK out of respect to King George III’s aleged insanity
  • Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence: banned in U.S. and UK for obsenity
  • The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis: challenged in part of U.S. for depicting graphic violence, mysticism and gore
  • The Lorax by Dr. Seuss: banned in parts of U.S. for being an allegorical political commentary
  • The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury: challenged in U.S. for profanity
  • Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler: reproduction and sale is forbidden outside Germany, Austria and Netherlands for promoting Nazism
  • Le Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory: challenged in UK as ‘junk’
  • 1984 by George Orwell: banned in USSR for political reasons; banned in U.S. for being pro-communist and for explicit sexual matter
  • Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck: banned in some U.S. schools and libraries for promoting ‘euthanasia’ and for profanity
  • The Odyssey by Homer: Plato suggested expurgating it for immature readers and Caligula tried to suppress it for expressing Greek ideals of freedom
  • On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: banned in various places for promoting the evolutionary theory
  • Paradise Lost by John Milton: listed on the Indx Librorum Prohibitorum in Rome
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: challenged due to racial themes
  • Ulysses by James Joyce: banned in U.S. for its sexual content
  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: banned in southern States and Czarist Russia for racist portrayal of African Americans and use of word ‘nigger’.

Okay, so I read a lot of them. Does that make me a subversive? How about you? I find it interesting to note that books published as recently as “Harry Potter” are banned as wicked or even evil.

This all begs the question of what art truly is and should be. Susan Sontag suggested that “real art makes us nervous.” The genius of art skirts the edge of propriety and comfort to ask the questions that help us define our own humanity. Oscar Wilde remarked, “an idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being an idea at all.” Benjamin Franklin suggested that, “if all printers were determined not to print anthing till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.“

Henry Steel Commager eloquently stated that, “censorship…creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.” John F. Kennedy further added that, “…a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

Lillian Hellman, who was subpoenaed to appear before the House of Un-American Activities Commitee in 1952, exclaimed, “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.”

Live and write from the heart.

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Category: banned books, censorship, friday feature, literature, writers, writing  12 Comments