Banned Books

Once upon a time there was a man called Girolamo Savonarola, who restored morality and righteousness to the city of Florence. He thought the way to go about it was by destroying the masterworks of centuries; whether Florence had gone from civilization to decadence is debatable, but returning to barbarism in the hope of eventually finding civilization again seems an unnecessarily complicated way to solve the problem in any case.

Consigning Botticelli's paintings and the plays of Sophocles to fire ended with Savonarola's excommunication; Pope Alexander VI had realized that his restraining orders were being thoroughly and decisively ignored.

It's amazing, though, how many books have been banned or challenged since then. It seldom does much good unless, like Savonarola, you destroy every existing copy of the book - something much harder today than it was in Renaissance Florence. It simply means that people who would have read the book casually in public read it with far greater attention in secret.

The Right to Freedom of Expression is universally applicable, although it might be better for the environment if people exercised it without building bonfires on the streets; if one wishes to express oneself by banning Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because it is "trash", one should have little objection to other people expressing themselves by reading it nonetheless.

At least Huckleberry Finn excited such controversy only at the time of its publication. When books written centuries ago are challenged and even banned because they reflect the attitude and customs of the times in which they were written, the logic seems a little skewed.

It is somewhat understandable, even if not ideal, when people want to judge their contemporaries by the standards of the present; to expect people who lived in the time of the old empires and military navies to see freedom and equality the way we do is distinctly unfair. There were days and ages when only the most enlightened philosphers and social reformers spoke of egalitarianism; you can't fault a playwright for not being an enlightened social reformer any more than you can for not being Albert Einstein.

Starting or even encouraging people to start cultural revolutions is not remotely a job for me, though; this was inspired by reading a list of challenged books that included some I could not imagine anyone having any conceivable reason for wanting off the shelves.