"Murderers of books" by A. Perez Reverte kill a man, listening to screams of a woman raped or see a library burns three experiences are arguably desirable. Of all of them has the dubious honor of being witness. Mentioned here in cold, so barbaric activities seem to own the exclusive brutal and remote scenarios. You know, bearded, bloodthirsty types. And yet, all belong to the history of mankind to the point that often occur together in the same place and time, as an expression of horror and the same common the beating of the human condition. I will
shot in the neck and the women who scream for another time. After all, the books are burning are symptoms of the same, and launch a pulse infamous painting indelible anxiety in the eyes of a woman or man planting the cornfields of the throat open and their hands tied behind their backs. Everything is the same horrors. Everything is the same war.
few months ago I saw a library burning. It burned all night and morning, with papers and books like sparks flying between the walls on fire in all directions, falling on the city turned to ashes. The city is named - yet - Sarajevo.
For our shame, the centuries of mankind are obscured - worth the dubious pun - by flames that burn libraries: Alexandria, Constantinople, Cordoba, Cluny, Heidelberg, Zaragoza, Strasbourg. You knew all that by reading, by history. I had often imagined the soldiers with torches, the flames illuminating the shelves, the piles of books you lease. But never, to Sarajevo, I could imagine what impotence quédesolación man may feel at the sight of the destruction of the memory of his race. Long senseless destruction, infamous. Irrational.
I have the recorded image, indelible. This time there were soldiers torches, but modern wonders of technology. Artifacts designed by competent engineers, those who draw plans and sketches after they go home where they expected to Maripuri with dinner, happy for having earned the wages. That night in Sarajevo, the guns were not aimed at human flesh but to the matter that constitutes the soul and intelligence. Already during the previous campaign in Croatia - remember a town called Vukovar? - I saw that the conflict in the Balkans, the Serbian first bombs were always for the church archives, the museum's turn. And Sarajevo could not be the exception.
manual instructions: first, from the nearby hills, cañonéense the roof of the library. Best if it is a magnificent building, triangular, octagon-shaped atrium surrounded by marble columns. Then, as the fire lso lights in hundreds of thousands of books, whole collections of publications, manuscripts and unique editions, mortars and snipers skyrocket against the rescue teams. Then let fire burn on its own until everything is burning. As you see, is pure lying easy. Available to any son of a bitch. Rescuers
. That sounds organized, efficient. In fact they were neighbors of the old Sarajevo, the unfortunate starving, emaciated and exhausted, they left their homes, braving the fire, trying to salba the remains of his library ... ran the bullets and bombs into the building and out with manuscripts and books in her arms. The filmed weeping over the ashes made pages, useless and pathetic in its efforts. There was no water to douse the flames. And everything burned to the ground. As the Oriental Institute also burned with a thousand years of calligraphic gathered from Samarkand to Cordoba, from Cairo to Sarajevo. Unique issues invaluable. The effort, the lives of thousands of men who left them her eyelashes, her intelligence, her dreams. Everything was erased in one night, and no longer exists. Nobody will ever read it again. Never.
Let me tell you a secret. When a book burning, when a book is destroyed, when a book dies, something of ourselves to be irretrievably mutilated, being replaced by a dark lagoon, shaded by a stain that enhances the night, for centuries, man strives to keep at bay. When a book burning die all the lives that made them possible, all the lives he contended, and all the lives that could have given this book in the future, warmth and knowledge, intelligence, joy and hope. Destroying a book is literally killing the soul of man. What sometimes is even worse, more vile than killing the body. There
killings conscious volunteers, implemented conscientiously. Crimes that can result, perhaps, explained or discussed in a moment of passion, ignorance, anger, patriotism, hatred, jealousy, a utopia. But rarely does the death of a book, the destruction of a library, you can benefit from mitigation or explanation. On the contrary, it tends to be voluntary, conscious and cruel, full of symbolism and evil. No book is casual murder. Book no murderer is innocent.
Extracted from: Perez-Reverte, Arturo. Carte blanche (1993-1998). Madrid: Suma de Letras, 2001. P. 50-53