"Books are always being burnt"
“Never mind, one day we’ll have lots of books again.”
“No, never,” she said. “That will never be. I have no faith any more. In this world there’s neither goodness nor peace nor good sense. The world is governed by evil-minded idiots. And books are always being burnt. The library of Alexandria went up in flames, the Inquisitors had their bonfires, Radishchev was burnt, books were burnt under Stalin, there have been bonfires in the squares under Hitler, and there will be more and more of them burnt. There are always more people to burn books than to write them. You have your life ahead of you, Tolya, so just remember that this is the first sign of trouble—if books are banned, that means that things are going wrong. It means that you are surrounded by force, fear and ignorance, that power is in the hands of barbarians. My God, just to think. . . It’s bad enough when bands of vandals start throwing books on a fire in the main square, but that’s not the worst that can happen. It’s always possible that there is only a limited number of them—the vandals, that is. But when every single person in every home starts shaking with fright and burning his own books. . . to reduce a whole nation to that level! That takes some doing! I ask myself why on earth did I ever have you? To have to live in such a world. . . “
from Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel by A. Anatoli Kuznetsov, 1966
[Please consider supporting this publication by subscribing to it, by becoming a patron, and/or by patronizing our online store. And one more way to support this work is to buy books through The Great God Pan is Dead’s bookstore.]