The paper burns, but the books do not burn, just as the passion does not burn for many embers that are close to it and no matter how much it is blown, that feelings and emotions do not burn, that experiences that men and women do not burn. women – all who we are, those who will be and those who have been – we have throughout our lives. No, books do not burn. At 451 degrees Fahrenheit, at 232.8 degrees Celsius, the paper in books ignites and burns, but books do not burn. A book is much more than the paper that supports it.
Ideological, religious, political fanaticism has obfuscated the reason and compassion of men throughout history and has made them confuse the innocent role with which books are made with books themselves, and thus, the fruit of This barbarous ignorance fueled the bonfire of Nazi Germany in Berlin’s Bebelplatz in 1933, and the bonfire of Franco’s Spain at the Central University of Madrid in 1939, and the bonfires of the military coup in Argentina, in 1976, and in Chile, and Paraguay …, and the one carried out by the Islamic State in 2015. And much earlier, in millenary China and in the library of Alexandria, and in medieval France, and in the “bonfire of the vanities” promoted by Savonarola, in Florence, and in the Bib-Rambla square in Granada, where the entire Nasrid library was burned, by order of Cardinal Cisneros …
A few days ago, the fire – apparently caused by an electrical short circuit – was badly pawned with the Proteo Prometeo bookstore in Malaga, and thousands of books burned. About 50,000. A paradoxical tragedy, since it was precisely Prometheus, the Titan who did not fear the gods, the friend of mortals, the protector of human civilization, who did not hesitate to steal the fire of the gods (that is, light, heat , culture and knowledge), to put it at the service of men, although that cost him the worst of punishments.
But, as we have said, truth, beauty, life, light, heat and culture, all that nests in books, does not burn, because they are the compendium of concrete answers to the questions that man asks. it has posed throughout its existence, when it has resisted dissolving itself into the nothingness of boredom or silly distraction, forgetting the true mud from which it is made, neglecting its own humanity; that is to say, fatuously forgetting his fragility, his fears, the inevitable threat of death …, and upsetting all that in a passion for living and enjoying the beautiful, the good and the just. Wasn’t that fire the one that Prometheus stole? to the gods? And isn’t it precisely that fire, that passion for life and beauty, in general, and for beautiful literature, in particular, that beats in the entrails of humans?
Fire, the best of us, is made of fire, and fire does not burn. And it will be what does not burn, together with the earth, air and water -the other three elements-, which will re-build the Proteo Prometeo library in Malaga. Good health, good courage and enjoy the books!
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