"On Guard a thought …"

From 12 January, the exhibition "On Guard a thought …" runs at the National Library of Belarus (Circular hall, 3rd floor)

At all times a censorial limiter exists with any creator. Viewing centuries of existence of censorship, you can see a huge list of books and authors whose works have been forbidden and you will be surprised that how absurd inefficient and useless these measures have been. The books such as "The art of Love" Ovid, "The Sorrows of Young Werther" Johann Goethe, "An American Tragedy" Theodore Dreiser, "The Gulag Archipelago" Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, "The Little Humpbacked Horse’ (Konyok-Gorbunok) Pyotr Yershov, ’One Thousand and One Nights" and others that are so different but at the same time they are connected because they have been undergone the prohibition on the publication, scandals, suits and prosecution of their authors.

thus prepared exhibition "On Guard a thought …" is based on the materials of the collection "100 zapreshchennykh knig. Tsenzurnaya istoriya mirovoy literatury" (100 banned books. Censorial history of world literature). Its sections include books which have been prohibited or undergone censorship on political, religious, moral and social motives. In the sections materials are located in alphabetical order of works titles.

Many of these books were justly forbidden "in the official order". In a more comprehensive sense they were moved away from school programs and library shelves, damned by churches and believers were prohibited to read them. Publishers rejected them and labeled as "exclude any mentions". Their authors were called to account in courts. Other people offended orally and attacked the authors of these books. Their families and society turned away from them. Authors were expelled from religious communities, shot, hung up and burnt on fires.

But these novels, stories, biographies, children’s books, religious and philosophical treatises, rhymes and poems are still alive even today. They are studied, read and re-read. A book cannot be killed, it lives and dies independently.

The exhibition is located on the 3rd floor of the Circular hall and will last from 12 January to 18 July, 2012.

Contact phone telephone: 293-28-86.