The Bonfire of Inanities: Books as dangerous liaisons
Wind-flung, and towed briskly across miles of sleeping masses, the wreath of smoke hinting of the odor of charred vanilla rose to signal one of the most infamous acts of censorship in history: Nazi Germany’s book burning on the night of May 10, 1933.
This event spanned several townships all across the country. It was the brainchild of Nazi Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. His goal was to blend culture and literature with the Nazi ideology of a superior race. Any written material which even remotely suggested a deviation from this ideology was set ablaze.
Censorship has had a long history prior to 1933. The Christian Scriptures in its earliest form — as letters and epistles— were once deemed as subversive documents under the rule of the Roman emperors of the first century.
Soviet Russia, from the mid-1920s to the late 1950s, had banned the Qur’an and other holy texts as “socially-deviant” material.
When it comes to censorship, China was never far behind. As early as the Qin Dynasty of 220 B.C., China had allegedly banned reading materials penned by foreign authors. In 1931, China included Alice in Wonderland in its list of banned books. Its reason? “Animals should not use human language”.
In the wake of the recent Security Law imposed by Communist China on Hong Kong, Xi Jinping’s government threatened to pull out pro-democracy books from the city’s university libraries and popular bookstores.
The Philippines is no stranger to the bowdlerization of books. Dr. José Rizal’s Noli Me Tángere joined the list of banned books during the rule of the Spanish colonizers in the 19th century.
Historian José Victor Torres reminded me that Ferdinand E. Marcos’ martial law in the 1970s was no different. Besides The Conjugal Dictatorship authored by Primitivo Mijares, the biography, The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos by Carmen Navarro Pedrosa, joined the list of banned books. The Philippine Press Under Siege Vol. II published by the National Press Club’s Committee to Protect Writers was another.
John N. Schumacker’s book, The Propaganda Movement, was said to have courted the critical eye of the Philippine military due to its title.
We could go on and on as history is replete with lists of banned books — from the Bible and Qur’an to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.
Today, news of book banning seem to be something out of the dusty pages of history. Let’s not even tinker with the whys and wherefores which led the Marquis de Sade to write 120 Days of Sodom.
But when one is faced with the decision made by the Kalinga State University and Isabela State University to ban books penned by authors associated with or belonging to the National Democratic Front or the Communist Party of the Philippines, one begins to wonder: where are we going with this?
Must Filipinos now sit back and do nothing even as State forces impose their draconian policies on what we must read and what we should not? What’s next? Censor student publications? Register manuscripts for approval? Raid of one’s personal library for material deemed as national security threats?
Are we on the way to criminalizing reading, or what is believed in more profound terms as freedom of thought?
I am of the unbending opinion that if a book does not offend our sensibilities, it is not worth one’s time and energy at all. Novels, suites of poems, memoirs or essays, even bestselling potboilers which breeze through our heads without the slightest hint of offending anyone, may be hailed for their entertainment value, why not?
I don’t expect anyone to spend all their days chomping on such five-star meats as Derrida, Marx, Lenin, Foucault, Joaquin, Rosca, Hernandez, Arcellana, Cordero-Fernando, to name a few. For even the mind needs rest.
But books that open our eyes to the reality of our servility to the powers that be, transgressing ideas that chain us in our luxuries and conveniences, are works of a different mettle. They defy conventional thinking, and rip to shreds the narratives that imprison us in our ignorance.
These books lend color to what once were marred images of reality donned only in black and white. They open our eyes to the goings on around us, and paint a reality that is different from the vantage point of our comfort zones.
Without these books, as American novelist and journalist Joan Didion said, life would be impossible. “We tell stories in order to live.”
Must we now fall victim to the new phase of the tokhang campaign? To rid us of the life found in books? And for what “better” purpose than to make idiots out of us?
“A literature born in the process of crisis and change, and deeply immersed in the risks and events of its time, can indeed help create a symbols of the new reality, and perhaps — if talent and courage are not lacking — throw light on the signs along the road,” wrote Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano.
Every book is an act of solidarity, he said, each story or poem an attempt at social cohesion, may I add. The banning of books divides us at the core, and renders us unable to harmonize efforts to push back the claws of power in excess.
Whatever light we get from books read only with the permission of the powers that be is devoid of the heat we need to energize our efforts. For while light can show us the road, the journey itself requires energy, the heat of fervor. One cannot be possible without the other.
While I do not condone it, I can understand some people’s fear of knowledge. Ignorance is bliss, so goes the tongue-in-cheek axiom. That it’s said jokingly already tells us it should not be so. Like cancer, ignorance eats away at our chances at reform, at our sense of justice, at our dreams.
Ignorance chains us to our deathbeds with all our desires haunting us without the ability to fulfill any of it. It’s the sorriest state one can find himself in prior to actual demise.
It is true that books do not claim to have a monopoly on knowledge. Life itself is our best teacher. Books, however, allow us to commune with timelessness and eternity, the evolution of its thoughts and ideas, more so the authors, dead or alive, who defied conventions to risk sharing their insights on the unspeakable.
Books are not diseases to be shunned. If anything, they are good medicine. The really good ones are the quintessential bitter pill. The only “dangerous book” is the work that threatens the whims of unbridled power.
If you feel threatened by such books, then perhaps it’s time you look in the mirror and face the imbecile you’ve become.
