英语词汇book burner的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

book burner. The term book burner, meaning “self-appointed censor” and worse, didn’t arrive until 1933 when thousands of pro-Nazi students ended a torchlight parade at the University of Berlin by burning a pile of 20,000 books while Nazi propa- ganda minister Joseph Göbbels proclaimed: “The soul of the German people can express itself. These flames . . . illuminate the . . . end of an old era and light up the new.” But the first mass book burners in American history were, oddly enough, the anti-mail-order small merchants at the turn of the century who burned mail-order catalogs to censor not the free expres- sion of ideas, but free enterprise. Local merchants persuaded or arm-twisted people into tossing their catalogs into a bonfire in the public square every Saturday night. Prizes of up to 50 dol- lars were offered to those who brought in the greatest number of catalogs to be burned. This practice seemingly descended to its nadir in a small Montana town where a movie theater gave free admission or 10 cents to any child who turned over a cata- log to town authorities for public burning. Yet the Montana orgy of destruction was repeated in other states, all in the name of insuring a continuance of “freedom of opportunity in Amer- ica.” The world’s worst book burner was probably China’s first emperor, Shi Huang Ti (259–210 b.c.). Shi, who buried alive 460 scholars in the process, burned all the books in his king- dom, except for one copy of each deposited in the royal library, which he planned to destroy before his death, reasoning that if all records were destroyed history would begin with him. For generations after, the Chinese expressed their hatred of Shi by “befouling his grave.”

词汇	book burner
词源	book burner. The term book burner, meaning “self-appointed censor” and worse, didn’t arrive until 1933 when thousands of pro-Nazi students ended a torchlight parade at the University of Berlin by burning a pile of 20,000 books while Nazi propa- ganda minister Joseph Göbbels proclaimed: “The soul of the German people can express itself. These flames . . . illuminate the . . . end of an old era and light up the new.” But the first mass book burners in American history were, oddly enough, the anti-mail-order small merchants at the turn of the century who burned mail-order catalogs to censor not the free expres- sion of ideas, but free enterprise. Local merchants persuaded or arm-twisted people into tossing their catalogs into a bonfire in the public square every Saturday night. Prizes of up to 50 dol- lars were offered to those who brought in the greatest number of catalogs to be burned. This practice seemingly descended to its nadir in a small Montana town where a movie theater gave free admission or 10 cents to any child who turned over a cata- log to town authorities for public burning. Yet the Montana orgy of destruction was repeated in other states, all in the name of insuring a continuance of “freedom of opportunity in Amer- ica.” The world’s worst book burner was probably China’s first emperor, Shi Huang Ti (259–210 b.c.). Shi, who buried alive 460 scholars in the process, burned all the books in his king- dom, except for one copy of each deposited in the royal library, which he planned to destroy before his death, reasoning that if all records were destroyed history would begin with him. For generations after, the Chinese expressed their hatred of Shi by “befouling his grave.”
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