The Burning Question

What are the motives of those who burn books?

Fire is the most simple, direct, and primordial answer to contradictory opinion. If you want to make a strong statement, it is difficult to find a fiercer image to use. Fire is used not only to destroy, but also to symbolise abhorrence and animosity towards an individual’s work, thought, and even their living body. It is no surprise then, that fire was transferred for use in the destruction of books—the extension of man’s thought and communication. As Lucien X. Polastron observes, “the book is the double of the man, and burning it is the equivalent of killing him.” Often, the destruction, or ‘biblioclasm’, of books was in accordance with a general fear of particular nonconformities in thought. Severe action was taken in fields that contravened with beliefs that society felt most deeply. However, this does not encompass the entire scope of book burning, and defining the exact motivations and logic behind each case is especially difficult. While destruction was generally pursued under the auspices of censorship by churches and political authorities to maintain intellectual hegemony, it has also been carried out by mobs and individuals whose reasons have been to serve self-oriented agendas. Moreover, in some cases, book burning has had no emotional attachment at all; instead it has been used for apathetic utility. The motives, then, behind those who burn books can be separated into four distinct definitions: ideological hegemony, vindictive violence, reputation, and utility. These four definitions can be assigned relatively (in decreasing order of magnitude and scale) to religious and political institutions that sought to aid their own and cleanse nonconformist beliefs, to those that destroyed out of violent ignorance and malice, to those that burned to maintain reputation out of embarrassment, and to those who destroyed for function. It is important to note, however, that many of the reasons and motivations within these subsections often overlap, though the definitions hold true.

The historiography of book burning is rich and varied, and this essay would be sorely lost without much of the work that precedes it. By in large, most of the literature concerning the destruction of books follow a chronological course through history in different countries, sometimes combining the chronology with types of books destroyed. James Raven and Lucien Polastron’s works are prime examples. This approach, of course, enables the author to connect circumstances, causes and effects of each case. Other books, like Rachel Knuth and Kenneth Baker’s works, however, attempt to define the overarching motivations behind book burning, dividing the book into separate reasons for destruction. While Knuth divides motivations into political protest, control over society, and wartime aims, Baker simply divides into political, religious, and personal motivations. Overwhelmingly, though, all of these authors focus mainly on symbolism and censorship. Moreover, as Jeffrey Garret argues, authors like Knuth and Baez are largely opinionated and emotional (which Knuth readily admits), to the point where their “‘heartfelt’ predilections [about libraries and their destruction] interfere with thoughtful objectivity.” This essay attempts to be neither emotional nor vulgarised to an overarching theme. It lays out a general order of motivations, separated from the largest offenders to the smallest, encompassing examples from multiple countries and hundreds of years of history, aiming to gain a holistic view of the many reasons behind biblioclasm. People burn books for symbolism and control, but also for their own, personal—and sometimes apathetic—reasons.

Ideological Hegemony

The burning of books is a deeply symbolic gesture—it is an extreme form of censorship, defining what is, and what is not, acceptable or permissible. For religious and political institutions, it is of great importance that the ritual is performed publicly. As Murray argues, the ‘public relations’ aspect of book burning was not only essential, “it was even more important than burning the book.” Baez, moreover, encapsulates the entirety of this motivation:

The book is an institution of memory… Books are not destroyed as physical objects but as links to memory, that is, as one of the axes of identity of a person or a community. There is no identity without memory… At the root of book destruction is the intent to induce historical amnesia that facilitates control of an individual or a society.

While the destruction of other cultural monuments may strive to erase a certain religion or culture, the burning of books by political and religious institutions aims more specifically at knowledge itself. It aspires not only to keep books from a certain society, but to erase the opposing knowledge base, expunging its existence.

At the head of religious control, the Roman Catholic church had a deep interest in maintaining orthodoxy even before the Reformation. The church was motivated by a desire to “save men's souls” by “preventing the reading of material which might shake their faith and so lead to heresy and damnation.” Church control came through papal decrees that condemned writings or, as was more often the case, through inclusion in the indexes of the church, authorised by various councils and special boards. In some instances, the church not only burned books—and sometimes their authors—but immediately arranged and issued confutations against the dissenting arguments. This became more difficult in the Reformation, a subject which is too long and complicated for such an essay.

This essay would not be complete without mention of the Nazis and their attempt at ideological hegemony. When the Third Reich came to power, fire was used to purify. Starting in the universities and spreading up into government policy, the Nazis launched a campaign “action against the un-German spirit”, condemning Jews, liberals, leftists, pacifists, and foreigners. Burnings took place across all of Germany, and many writers, fearful of persecution, fled the country. Through the emblematic purity of fire, the Nazis managed to silence their political foes and nonconformists who didn’t meet their intellectual identity.

The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs uniquely combines both religious and political control. The Aztecs had huge wealth, temples, books, and a set of beliefs; the Spanish decided to destroy them. At Texcoco in 1530, books, idols and pictures were thrown onto a mass bonfire. At Mani in 1562, they burnt twenty-seven codices and idols were burnt. Systematically, the Spanish destroyed the culture and knowledge base of the Aztecs, further imposing their own religion and politics to gain hegemony of thought and memory.

These examples are short and succinct in order to show the lengths to which symbolic burning can go. Expunging knowledge from society allows for the hegemony of thought, and therefore control.

Vindictive Mob Violence

Kenneth Baker argues that those who organised the destruction and burning of books were, “not louts, looters or thugs, but well educated people.” This is not completely true, and his research respectfully fails to encompass the pillaging and destruction caused by many who were ill-educated or illiterate. In fact, in many cases, full libraries have been subject to mob force, burned for whose they were, or—by what was often the case—what they represented.

The wholesale destruction of books has often been accompanied by wars, invasions and revolts. Historians and scholars have often lamented the great loss; some have imputed to the demolishers deliberate and overarching attempts to replace a culture for their own, or to destroy proof of an enemy’s mental superiority. This sort of purposeful and grandiose ideological destruction are exceptions that deserve to be left in regard to the previous section. There are many subtexts to war that affect the fate of books—oftentimes libraries are lost during the chaos and anarchy that prevails as distinctions between combat zones and civilian areas become obfuscated. At the same time, books were also destroyed in a vindictive and malicious manner through self-centred actors angered by what the books represented and who owned them.

Perhaps the clearest representation of vindictive violence against books comes in the sacking and pillaging of monasteries. In the German Peasant’s War, peasants rose in rebellion against the ruling church and nobles, wreaking havoc by burning their property in an act of vengeance. In burning down churches and palaces, manuscripts and books burned too. Yet the peasants also specifically aimed to destroy written and printed works for two reasons. Firstly, the peasants knew that inscribed in the documents (kept in the same archive as books) were contracts describing their dues, debts, and obligations; written works that maintained their servile condition. Secondly, they destroyed in bitter protest against a society and culture whose benefits they weren’t able to attain or share. The libraries obliterated by this protest reached the hundreds.

A similar account is recorded in England during the early 14th century, albeit on a smaller scale. As an abbey administrator in Suffolk, John Lakenheath devised a register after the abbey had been sacked in 1327—an act that left many of its documents burned in the process. John was not liked for his work, and in 1381, the towns people, again seeking a perpetrator for their subjugation, beheaded him. Much the same as in Germany, this monastery was pillaged to destroy documents peasants thought upheld their servitude. The books were not destroyed because of their meaning or ideological underpinnings; they were destroyed for what they represented. The remark F.S. Merryweather makes about the general destruction of monastic libraries is applicable to such events described: "The ignorant thus delighted to destroy that which they did not understand, and the factional spirit of the more enlightened would not allow them to make one effort for the preservation of those valuable relics.” Much of mob violence was vindictive, and had no higher ideological cause than to simply destroy that which they saw as contemptible.

Reputation

While religious and political institutions and mobs have taken collective action against books, individual authors also partake in the burning of books. Many writers, nearing the end of their lives, sought to destroy their remaining diaries and letters containing personal information in order to save face. Either by individual action or leaving instructions to their executors or families, they revised their own past. Thomas Hardy, for example, burned in his yard vast amounts of his works including early drafts of poems and notebooks. Moreover, Mrs. Kipling burnt much of her husband’s material after his death, including some alleged anti-Semitic writings. John Murray, Byron’s publisher, chose to burn the poet’s memoirs in the fireplace of his house in London. Either out of fear or embarrassment, these authors used fire to revise the past and maintain their reputation into the future.

Many writers also chose to repudiate their earlier works through fire. In his autobiography, Borges admits to burning his earlier books: “About a few years ago if the price wasn’t too high I would buy and burn them. Gibbon’s burnt The History of Civil Liberty in Switzerland (his first attempt at history) after it met poor reception from his friends. Alcander, a 400-line epic poem by Alexander Pope also met a swift demise. While their motivations surely varied, all the writers in some way sought to scorch their works in order to retain privacy and discretion, rather than face honesty and exposure. As is made apparent, burning books was not just an activity to suppress individuals or cultures and the books they produced; in a number of cases, burning was the activity of the producers themselves, often out of fear for their own reputation.

Utility and Functionality

Although history is fraught with such sacrosanct instances of symbolic burning, the burning of books can also be a decision over utility. As I hiked the West Highland Way at the end of my first year, I came across an older English couple. In discussing weight of our packs, as hikers do, they mentioned that as they read their books along the hike, they would periodically rip out all of the pages they had read. This not only saved them precious weight on their backs, but also provided them with easy kindling for fires while camping. While this anecdote provides little in the way of historical fact, it goes to show that sometimes books are burned for utility, rather than for symbolic or malicious reasons. The mind does not have to wander far to imagine weary travelers in any age using the highly flammable material to save themselves from the cold. Though setting a book on fire may appear to most to be an act of wanton barbarism, to others it can be an act of survival. Quite recently in 2010, pensioners in Swansea, south Wales, were allegedly buying cheap charity shop books and taking them home to use as fuel. As temperatures plummeted and energy costs rose, books—particularly thick encyclopedias—were sought after for the home fireplace. As one charity-shop assistant notes, "Book burning seems terribly wrong, but we have to get rid of unsold stock for pennies and some of the pensioners say the books make ideal slow-burning fuel for fires and stoves." The burning books quite rightly has a stigma of negative human emotion, but their destruction can also be apathetic and mundane.

Conclusion

Through distinctions in motivation based upon definitions of ideological hegemony, vindictive violence, reputation, and utility, it becomes clear the varying degrees to which burning books occurred. In brief form each motivation has been proven from the macro scale (through religious and political institution’s actions to maintain intellectual hegemony over a populace and malicious and directed mob violence), to the micro scale (in which authors seek to preserve their reputation, and others burn books for function). If at any point a motivation seems too shallow, short, glossed over, or has too few examples, it is to give credence to the motivations that are rarely discussed by scholars. Moreover, although there is much overlap between and within the definitions, they still hold as markers for motivation in a systems level analysis that permeates down to the individual. Burning something is an emotional process that highlights our lowest animalistic behaviors—as Guy Montag of Fahrenheit 451 expounds: “It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.” As Vernon Allen notes, the act of destruction can be intrinsically enjoyable in linking both creation and destruction through an aesthetic experience. All book burners may have felt this feeling, but to varying degrees and under different impetus. In this modern age of E-books, how are we meant to feel such emotion, such rush? Closing a tab or deleting a PDF just doesn’t compare.