Ashes from Libraries

…like amnesiacs
in a ward on fire, we must
find words
or burn.
              Olga Broumas, Artemis

Every totalitarian seeks to destroy the knowledge of alternatives. Islamists, like the self-labelled 'man of God' Terry Jones and the medieval Catholics, burn books, burn schools, burn girls who try to attend school. They smash artworks – sculptures and paintings in the Kabul museum, the Bamiyan Buddha statues – following the example of the 9th century Christian iconoclasts. People of this ilk burned the libraries of Alexandria, where many of the hand-inscribed works existed as single-number copies. As a result of this destruction, most ancient writers, scientists and philosophers are known to us only as names or sentence-long fragments.

This loss, the systematic burning of all prior knowledge in all its enormity and poignancy, has been portrayed only three times in contemporary popular media. It is the center of Fahrenheit 451 and of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, a thinking person’s mystery-cum-novel of ideas. The film Agora, a romanticized version of the life of the legendary mathematician and philosopher Hypatia, depicts the burning of the library at Saramis, the sister-library to that at Alexandria.

Socrates Scholasticus wrote of Hypatia that 'she far surpassed all the philosophers of her time', and was greatly respected for her 'extraordinary dignity and virtue.' (Ecclesiastical History) Hypatia's house was an important intellectual centre in a city distinguished for its learning. Damasius described how she 'used to put on her philosopher's cloak and walk through the middle of town' to give public lectures on philosophy (Life of Isidore, in the Suda).

Hypatia was one of the most politically powerful figures in Alexandria. She was one of the few women who attended civic assemblies. Magistrates came to her for advice, including her close friend, the prefect Orestes (Damasius, Socrates Scholasticus) In the midst of severe religious polarization, Hypatia was an influential force for tolerance and moderation. She accepted students, who came to her without regard to religion.
 
Inevitably Hypatia’s story has been appropriated by anyone whom it would serve. Enlightenment thinkers, including Voltaire and Gibbons, used her story to castigate religionists and the Catholic Church in particular. In the 19th century Romantic writers took her story to hark back to the wonder of the golden age of Antiquity and mourning the loss of knowledge in the Dark Ages,  Charles Kingsley’s mid-Victorian romance being the most egregious example of that. 20th century feminists adopted Hypatia. She shows up as the name of a philosophy magazine; a 'plate' in Judy Chicago’s feminist art project The Dinner Party; and in Uppity Women of Ancient Times.

Hypatia met a bloody death - hacked to death or dragged through the streets behind a chariot - at the hands of a mob stirred up by accusations of witchcraft levelled at her by Bishop Cyril, a man vigorously working to bring Christianity to Alexandria by attacking paganism and Jews.

But it's not necessary anymore to burn libraries, murder philosophers or persecute heretics in order to suppress knowledge. There are far more subtle ways of creating an enforced forgetting of undesirable thought, by making thought 'elitist', by outsourcing it to an army of experts, by not permitting an individual to rummage in ‘the stacks’ of dusty tomes in forgotten basements.The ageing paper would burn beautifully, but no need anymore, since their existence is largely forgotten.