This article and accompanying Bertoon (click to enlarge) appear in today’s edition of The Malta Independent on Sunday.
The Word
You do not need to be of a bible-bashing persuasion in order to recognise that within “the word” resides a power that can never be taken away. Much before an evangelist named John placed “the word” at the very origins of the universe, humankind had recognised the innate power that the written word could have. You do not have to be a Tolkien fanatic to have heard of the magical powers ascribed to runes and writings. Nor would you necessarily have heard of the Discworld’s magical library in order to have at some time read about the very, very powerful qualities of books and their contents.
It helps of course if you have at some point in time read any of the texts in question, as you would be armed with the knowledge imparted therefrom. Which is basically the point – the arming business that is. Quite a pointed matter in fact, for say they not that the pen is mightier than the sword? (Although, as Terry would add, it would have to be a very, very big pen against a very, very puny sword.)
The written word is powerful. Very powerful. For centuries, a practice known as “book burning” was a constant reminder of the dangers that the written word would pose to the authorities. Written word, when set to slate, papyrus or paper by an intelligent free-thinking being was as dangerous as an army of ravenous barbarians at the gates – and much more difficult to destroy. As far back as 213 BC, a sneeze in time away from the spread of writing, Emperor Qin Shi Huang ordered the burning of all philosophy and history books as an appetizing prelude to the main course of “Bury Alive All Intellectuals Who Do Not Comply With State Dogma”.
For centuries thereafter, it has been one bonfire after another of texts considered to be heretical, dissident or merely unpleasant by whoever had the upper hand at that particular moment in time. It was not limited to tyrants and despots though. Take the cradle of democracy that was Athens. They may have been democratic but they sure loved their gods to the point of despising the work of the agnostic Protagoras who dared state: “Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life.” By some accounts (though not necessarily true), the Athenians expelled this doubting Protagoras and proceeded to burn all copies of his book (entitled “On the Gods”).
Burn and ban
Much of the history of the Jewish people is intertwined with the story of burning of texts such as when the Seleucid monarch ordered the burning of all versions of the Jewish book of laws thus provoking the revolt of the Maccabees. At the beginning of the first millennium, the Roman Emperors literally blazed a path for that mother of all burn-obsessed cultures that would be find its consolidation at the Council of Nicea. Before Nicea, Emperor Diocletian proved to be quite the pyromaniac by first focusing his attention on the alchemical books in the Great Library of Alexandria followed shortly by the burning of all Christian books as he stepped up the counterproductive persecution of the growing sect within the Roman Empire.
Following a couple of votes and earth-shattering arguments at Nicea (that make the Lisbon Treaty discussions look like a teatime chat), the scene was set for the orgiastic burning of all things heretical for over a millennium of activity. The Books of Arianism, the Library of Antioch, the Library at Alexandria, the Burning of Books at Toledo and more would fuel the flames of spiritual purification as religious intransigence threatened to turn the Old World into a barren landscape of cultural emptiness.
Catholicism brought a strong religious element to these purges. What had begun as the burning of texts considered heretical would shift to “morals” – what we translate today as offences against public morality. Cue Savonarola, who would lead a veritable crusade against pornography, lewd pictures, pagan books, gaming tables, cosmetics, copies of Boccaccio’s Decameron and all the works of Ovid which could be found in Florence. That was only five years after Chris Colombus landed on the shores of the New World. Half a century later, the Mayan sacred texts were ordered to be burnt by the Bishop of Yucatan. Twenty years after the event we know of as the Great Siege, a Maltese Dominican friar named Pasquale Vassallo wrote a series of poems known as “canzcuni”. The Dominican Friars denounced his poems as obscene literature and they were burnt in 1585 by order of the Inquisition.
Perish the writing
The burning of books is nothing less than an attempt at bending a defiant spirit – that which is considered by the burner as a revolutionary thought or idea. The banning of writings too has a long history. Consider that Lebanon, a Middle Eastern nation more easily associated with Islam, banned Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code because it was deemed offensive to Christianity.
The list of books banned through the ages is endless. Alice in Wonderland was banned in the Hunan province of China for its crime of anthropomorphising animals. Voltaire’s Candide, Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Nabokov’s Lolita and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary were all banned at one time or another for their content, which was considered obscene by the banners of the time. Unbelievably, James Joyce’s Ulysses was banned in the US for its sexual content and not because it is impossibly unreadable. Hitler’s Mein Kampf is still banned in many countries and, as you would imagine, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses still does not do too well in sales in Bangladesh, India, Singapore and Iran.
When the US was fixated with the commies we had McCarthyism – an obsession with everything commie and an ever growing list of banned red literature, plays and art. Nowadays, the idea of banning literature or works of art rarely surfaces in liberal democracies. The balance between freedom of expression and the welfare of individuals in society is often solved by allowing individuals the choice: “to read or not to read”. It is generally assumed that an adult individual is intelligent enough to discern between interesting material and rubbish. Often it is a matter of ensuring that your average Playboy magazine or Necrocomnicon is not peddled in children’s playgrounds. Apart from that, publish and be damned.
The ‘No Sex Please We’re Maltese’ conundrum
Which brings me to the predicament in which ex-blogger and current author Alex Vella Gera finds himself after having published an article of not so mild a content in a magazine at tal-Qroqq. Let me first of all declare that I have read the first of a two-page print-out of the article as sent to me on request by Alex when my curiosity was piqued by the whole controversy. I read the first page because I could not really read the rest of it. If Alex wanted to provoke with his uncouth descriptions of sexual fantasies, he managed to do so in the first few paragraphs.
I could not read further because it was not exactly the kind of literature I prefer to read and, frankly, if my literary evaluation were worth anything, I would classify it as a gratuitous foul description of a reality best swept under the carpet of society’s collective conscience. Somehow it reminded me of that French pseudo intellectual Michel Houellebecq – that not too fine balance between literary provocation and “peddler of sleaze and shock”(read “Plateforme” for an idea – if it escapes the long arm of Maltese criminal law of course). It was as heavy as heavy can get and, contrary to public perception, it was not just the Maltese Z-word that slipped in.
So, as we all know, the university chaplain read the student magazine and informed the Uni’s authorities, who demonstrated a Savonarolan zeal in dispatching the beadle to destroy all copies of the confounded publication while also informing the police about a possible breach of Maltese law.
The student magazine Rejalta, that had probably boasted a circulation of five on campus and beyond, was suddenly propelled to the top of the wish lists of the curious. Worse was still to come as the Judge Dredds of the police force, fresh from their combats with lewd mannequins, scantily dressed pole-dancers and topless sunbathers, were offered another opportunity to enforce that enigmatic law protecting official public morals.
Like I said, the story, if story it may be called, was not to my liking. Yet I like to be the judge of that, and so long as it is kept away from the hands of the young and easily impressionable, then I would like to remain the judge of that and not let an enforcer of the law or an over-prudent Rector take my place in that decision. I want to be the one to bin Alex’s work after having evaluated its content for provocative relevance. I don’t want the beadle to burn it without my having had the chance to reject it myself. And that is the crux of it all. Somehow the whole ban smacks of overcautious fear and the explanation of the “minors that need to be protected at Junior College” a mere excuse.
For heaven’s sake, for my Ordinary Level exams I read a book about a band of kids brutally murdering one of their own before standing before an allegorical representation of Beelzebub himself, replete with flies and all. Thank God that no senseless censor chose to decide how impressive the content of Golding’s Lord of the Flies would be on young 14-year-olds and I got to learn valuable lessons from Mr Briffa (God bless his open-minded soul). Now Alex Vella Gera is about as ‘O’-level reading material as Damien Hirst would be suitable to replace Ernst Gombrich as an introduction to Art, yet even Alex has his place in the minestra of ideas that is Maltese literature. And if Vella Gera chose to be deliberately provocative with a story replete with obscenity then so be it: it does tell an uncomfortable truth but that does not mean that we must criminally inculpate the kid who yells that the emperor has no clothes.
We are never wrong (or different)
If there was something criminally wrong in the press this week it was the Times of Malta’s breaking news coverage of what I shall call the Crucifix Issue. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg held that an Italian classroom was no place for crucifixes. It’s an interesting decision that will merit much more discussion than you will find here. What was interesting to me when I read about it was how The Times managed to bungle the whole business up with that most typical of reporting cock-ups. You see, The Times had attributed the decision to the ECJ that happens to be an EU institution and not to the Strasbourg court.
Inevitably, the comment boards were immediately stuffed with anti-EU rhetoric, which only abated after I wrote in a comment to rectify the glaring error (J’accuse saves the day). My comment was duly published, only The Times’ elves decided to rub out all references to the fact that the erroneous discussion that had wasted most people’s time was due to an error committed by the very geezers at The Times. The title of the piece would change too as The Times mended its ways. Their censorship is mostly harmless and self-protecting but it does go to show how manipulation wielded by the powerful can have awkward results – there we were blaming commentators for jumping to wrong conclusions when the blame should have lain at the foot of the paper itself.
As for the crucifix issue. It’s only round one boys. Italy for one is sure to appeal. It will also be interesting to see what happens in other states that have a concordat with the Vatican or, in certain cases like the United Kingdom where religion and state are one and the same. It may come as a huge surprise, but while we may feel that it is our duty as the last bastion of Catholicism to “do something about this”, it is actually an issue that concerns all of Europe and the very foundations of its identity. We may have problems with explicit sexual language, we may still like our crucifixes hanging prominently, but surprise, surprise “we are not a unique and beautiful snowflake”.
And finally
I promised to be a faithful reporter of the Maltese soccer league in Luxembourg. Here are the first round results: S.K.W.A.D.R.A fc 13 – Boom Boom Lailalila fc 10. Atletico Micatanto 7 – Red Star 21. More next week!
Jacques blogs on a regular basis at www.jacquesrenezammit.com/jaccuse. Are you a publisher or a banner? Come share your thoughts on j’accuse.
