Today is World Book Day, in order to rub the heat, we must admit that strictly speaking, this article is the title party.
Because until now there is no direct information that this matter is related to Pushkin, the main object seems to be Dostoevsky (pushkin is mainly because he is also famous, and more importantly, the name is short) -
Several countries have "sanctioned" Russian literature: Italy's leading universities have postponed teaching Dostoevsky's courses; the mayor of Florence, Italy, has posted a post saying that he has been asked to remove local statues of Dostoevsky; Poland has banned the performance of Chekhov's works; the Harry Potter e-book has been removed from The Russian shelves; and the US streaming Netflix has called off a series based on Tolstoy's famous work "Anna Karenina" An exhibition on Russian literature held by a professor at a university in Japan (which mainly introduces how dostoevsky and Chekhov depict infectious diseases in literary works) was cancelled ...
Obviously, these actions are affected by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
"The infamous 'abolition of culture' in the West has become 'cultural abolition'. Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff were excluded from concert posters, Russian writers and their books were banned ... The last time the nazis had destroyed unpopular literature on such a large scale had been carried out in Germany nearly 90 years earlier. From footage from newsreels, we clearly know and remember how books were burned down in the square. This is unimaginable in our country. ”
Putin said this at a teleconference of Russian cultural celebrities.
Dostoevsky was a shining star in the 19th-century Russian literary scene
War is sinful, but literature is not.
Sanctions can be antagonistic between states, but literature cannot be blocked by national borders.
Some foreign netizens even asked: Do you want to burn Russian books next?
Nazi Germany in 1933 burned millions of books to the ground, an atrocity that has appeared in many literary works to warn future generations. For example, Max Susak's novel The Book Thief (later adapted into a film of the same name). The story is set in World War II Germany, 9-year-old Lisayle was taken to a book burning rally, people threw books into the fire, and it was very exciting to see the fire burning. After the fire, the crowd dispersed, and Lisayer secretly "stole" a half-burned book, Lighthouse, from the ashes. This is also one of Lisayr's many "book stealing" behaviors - after all, many books are banned or burned, and she can only steal books if she wants to read them. She also stole books from the mayor's wife's house.
Books helped Lisay survive the real-world hardships and comforted the people of wartime.
When the air raid came, Lisayle began to read "The Whistler" to everyone in the basement, and the noisy and panicked people suddenly fell silent, and after the air raid was lifted, people still listened to Lisayle read the first chapter. The neighbor's wife, who always spat at Lissell's adoptive father's house, took the initiative to come to the door in order to ask Lissell to continue reading "The Whistler" for her.
That's the power of books.
Another famous novel about restricted books is Fahrenheit 451 (also adapted into a film of the same name). The story takes place in a future era, books are forbidden, reading is a crime, and all books must be handed over and burned. 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the ignition point of paper, and the firefighter's duty is no longer to extinguish the fire, but to burn the book. "People of color didn't like The Story of Little Black Wave Mulberry and burned it. White people don't like Uncle Tom's Cabin, someone wrote a book about cigarettes and lung cancer, and the smokers cried and burned it. ”
Screenshot of the movie Fahrenheit 451
I don't know whether any of the countries involved in the "sanctions" of Russian literature this time do not like the American novel "The Old Man and the Sea", or whether anyone does not welcome the Ukrainian-born writer Gogol.
If you want everyone to be satisfied and happy, the end result can only be that there are no more books, or no books in the true sense.
The book in the famous Orwell's 1984 cannot be called a "book." Part of the "Ministry of Truth" in 1984 is responsible for the "transformation" of literature. Language, novels, etc. must conform to the rules before they can be published, otherwise they will be thrown into the shredder - "Whatever records and memories match each other, this is history." Since the Party has completely controlled all kinds of written records and the minds of the people, history is actually a thing that the Party has the final say and can be modified at will. Writing and literature have been reduced to tools of totalitarian ideological domination.
How terrible!
The poet Heine said that where they started burning books, they would eventually burn people.
Yan Geling's description at the beginning of "The Knowledge of Land Criminals" is impressive: "It is said that the horses on that big meadow were once free, and the yellow sheep were also free. Wolves have been delusional for millions of years, and they have not deprived them of their freedom. ”
When you still have freedom and books have freedom, read books.
Editor-in-charge | Lin Li loves