Destroying books a unique tragedy

I was about 14 years old when, in search of a new Enid Blyton book, I stumbled upon my father’s teenage diaries wedged into the back of a bookcase in his library. There were several plastic shopping bags stuffed full of old school notebooks, home to pages and pages of dad’s neat cursive. I was intrigued. Here was a unique opportunity to learn more about what my father was like as a teenager.

I had, of course, caught glimpses of his past-self over the years, but never had I been privy to such a baring of the soul.

And so, with little heed for his privacy, I flicked through the pages, reading about his unrequited teenage crushes, his anger and angst, his climbing of the pear tree to smoke cigarettes away from the prying eyes of my grandmother, his high school friends — many long dead now — his hopes for the future, and his frustration with the church.

Years later, I asked my father if I could borrow his teenage diaries again, for an essay I was writing.

I wanted to write about the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand and what it was like growing up as a child of the manse, sneaking around under the watchful eyes of ministerial parents, hiding nicotine-stained fingers under hymn books, and nursing a hangover during Sunday sermons.

But the diaries no longer existed. Dad, in a fit of ruthlessness, had driven them to the dump, and tipped them unceremoniously into the landfill, alongside old couches, soiled nappies, and plastic bags bulging with rubbish. I was devastated.

There’s something powerful about the act of destruction, but especially if that which being destroyed is a treasure — a book. The intentional taking of a human life is murder; the killing of animals is slaughter, the toppling of buildings, monuments and temples is desecration. What word is there for the death of the written word?

Poet and philosopher John Milton puts it this way: "Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are." Anyone who kills a man, according to Milton, kills "a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself".

Authorities around the world have long recognised the singular power of book-burning and the destruction of knowledge, from the Chinese Qin dynasty to the Nazi book burnings.

Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huanh ordered a gargantuan bonfire in 213BC as a means of consolidating power in his new empire. The emperor targeted books of poetry, philosophy and history, so that he might not be compared to more successful, virtuous or beloved rulers of the past.

The burning of books and media can also amount to cultural genocide. Perhaps the most obvious example of this occurred during the Nazi regime, which sought not merely to eliminate the Jewish people, but to erase any and all record of them. Beginning on the night of May 10, 1933, Nazi-dominated student groups conducted a series of public book burnings wherein works of prominent Jewish, liberal, and leftist writers were sacrificed to the flames, accompanied by the cheers and chants of thousands of onlookers.

There have been stranger instances of book burnings. In the early 1840s, Pierre-Armand Dufau, head of the French School for the Blind, burnt more than 70 Braille-embossed books. Rather than fascism or a fear of forbidden knowledge, Dufau was motivated by pettiness and a sense of rivalry. Sighted himself, Dufau preferred a different embossing method that was easier for sighted teachers to teach. Dufau worried that Braille’s method would render him obsolete.

Indeed, there have even been institutions dedicated to book burnings, such as Anthony Comstock’s New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, founded in 1873. Armed with significant legal influence and an overinflated sense of moral righteousness, Comstock destroyed a whopping 15 tons (13.6 tonnes) of books, 284,000 pounds (129,000kg) of plates for printing such "objectionable" books, and nearly 4million pictures during his lifetime.

What I find most interesting, however, is the phenomenon of people destroying their own writings for a variety of reasons, ranging from embarrassment to, in my father’s case, an irresistible ruthless urge to purge and clean his bookshelves. Ukrainian novelist Nikolai Gogol, for example, burnt the second half of his magnum opus Dead Souls after a priest persuaded him that his work was deeply sinful. Gogol later regretted this decision.

I can understand, however, the desire to start afresh and to destroy past selves. Some years ago, I discovered my own teenage diaries and was immediately overwhelmed by a sense of shame and embarrassment at the shallowness of it all — my silly high school crushes, my pettiness and overblown fears about what people thought of my admittedly eccentric family.

But there was wit and insight there too — a series of biting limericks about each member of my family, passages about my relationship to the church and Christian faith in general, and my frustrations with all the responsibilities heaped on the shoulders of a preacher’s daughter. Like my father did with his diaries, I destroyed mine. I took a big pair of scissors and hacked away at each notebook before shoving them to the bottom of the kitchen rubbish bag, beneath potato peelings and cold soggy porridge scraps. I wholeheartedly regret this now. Memory is fallible — without the written words, I cannot recall so vividly my teenage self, as embarrassing as she might have been.

There is some hope, however. With new technological advances offered by the Internet, it is becoming harder to erase the written word. There is a new immortality to knowledge — and new responsibilities — and for this I am thankful.

To quote author Barbara Tuchman, "Books are the carriers of civilisation. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilisation would have been impossible."

 - Jean Balchin, a former English student at the University of Otago, is studying at Oxford University after being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship.