退伍军人学技能:Book burning From Wikipedia

Book burning, biblioclasm or libricide is the practice of destroying, often ceremoniously, books or other written material and media. In modern times, other forms of media, such as phonograph records, video tapes, and CDshave also been ceremoniously burned, torched, or shredded. Thepractice, usually carried out in public, is generally motivated by moral, religious, or political objections to the material.

Some particular cases of book burning are long and traumaticallyremembered - because the books destroyed were irreplaceable and theirloss constituted a severe damage to cultural heritage, and/or becausethis instance of book burning has become emblematic of a harsh andoppressive regime. Such were the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, the obliteration of the Library of Baghdad, the burning of books and burying of scholars under China's Qin Dynasty, the destruction of Mayan codices by Spanish conquistadors and priests, and some seem more for publicity for a cause such as Nazi book burnings, the burning of Beatles records after a remark by John Lennon concerning Jesus Christ, and the destruction of the Sarajevo National Library.

Historical background

From China's 3rd century BC Qin Dynasty to the present day, the burning of books has a long history as a tool wielded by authorities both secular and religious, in efforts to suppress dissenting or heretical views that are perceived as posing a threat to the prevailing order.

When books are ordered collected by the authorities and disposed of in private, it may not be book burning, strictly speaking — but the destruction of cultural and intellectual heritage is the same.

According to scholar Elaine Pagels, "In AD 367, Athanasius, the zealous bishop of Alexandria… issued an Easter letter in which he demanded that Egyptian monksdestroy all such unacceptable writings, except for those hespecifically listed as 'acceptable' even 'canonical' — a list thatconstitutes the present 'New Testament'".^{[citation needed]}Although Pagels cites Athanasius's Paschal letter (letter 39) for 367AD, there is no order for monks to destroy heretical works contained inthat letter.^[1]

Thus, heretical texts do not turn up as palimpsests, washed clean and overwritten, as pagan ones do; many early Christian texts have been as thoroughly "lost" as if they had been publicly burnt.

In his 1821 play, Almansor, the German writer Heinrich Heine — referring to the burning of the Muslim holy book, the Qur'an, during the Spanish Inquisition — wrote, "Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings." ("Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.")

One century later, Heine's books were among the thousands of volumes that were torched by the Nazis in Berlin's Opernplatz.

Anthony Comstock's New York Society for the Suppression of Vice,founded in 1873, inscribed book burning on its seal, as a worthy goalto be achieved (see illustration at right). Comstock's totalaccomplishment in a long and influential career is estimated to havebeen the destruction of some 15 tons of books, 284,000 pounds of platesfor printing such 'objectionable' books, and nearly 4,000,000 pictures.All of this material was defined as "lewd" by Comstock's very broad definition of the term — which he and his associates successfully lobbied the United States Congress to incorporate in the Comstock Law.

The Ray Bradbury novel Fahrenheit 451 is about a fictional future society that has institutionalized book burning. In Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the euphemistically-called "memory hole"is used to burn any book or written text which is inconvenient to theregime, and there is mention of "the total destruction of all bookspublished before 1960".

The advent of the digital age has resulted in an immense collectionof written work being catalogued exclusively or primarily in digitalform. The intentional deletion or removal of these works has been oftenreferred to as a new form of book burning.^{[citation needed]}

Some supporters have celebrated book burning cases in art and other media. Such is the bas-relief by Giovanni Battista Maini of The Burning of Heretical Books over a side door on the fa?ade of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, which depicts the burning of 'heretical' books as a triumph of righteousness.^[2]