To Hell with Culture

Abstract

As the last chapter described, a group of exiles founded the Library of the Burned Books in Paris in time for the first anniversary of the Nazi book burnings. Their early efforts would later have a decisive impact on the wartime memorialization of the fires, when the indelible connection between fascism and book burning was drawn. But while their efforts were relevant to the political history of book burning, many contemporary writers, even those vehemently opposed to fascism, continued to express a distinct longing for a conflagration. Most agreed on the vulgarity of the National Socialist pageants, but for every international report which dwelt on their childish barbarity, there were several others that understood how such an act could signify a refreshed commitment to art or politics. This diversity has been elided in more recent history, replaced with a sanitized version which imagines that book burning was instantly recognized as the emblem of fascism, when in fact, the hackneyed eloquence and official dogma of the Nazi critics and writers had faint international echoes. By exploring the fiction and political rhetoric of the 1930s, this chapter shows that the distaste for book burning did not banish the nostalgia for a good bonfire.

A burning of the books becomes at times a necessity.

Cyril Connolly