![\"\"](\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/30000-Book-Tower-Of-Babel-2.jpg\")
<\/a>My first reaction was, Wow, books as public art! Followed by, Yikes! The destruction of so many books!<\/p>\nI needn\u2019t have worried. Each book was wrapped in plastic. The Tower of Babel stood for three weeks in a main square, and at the end, visitors were encouraged to take a book\u00a0home. What remained would become the basis of a new book archive, the Library of Babel, named for a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina\u2019s most famous literary son.<\/p>\n
The Book as\u00a0Freedom of Expression<\/strong><\/h3>\nMarta Minuj\u00edn<\/a> had done this before. In December 1983, a week after the restoration of democracy in Argentina, she created a\u00a0Parthenon of Books, built\u00a0of books banned during the military dictatorship.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/3252691f-f822-4d84-9023-c43e482d0cf2-300x200.jpg\")
<\/a>And now she is doing it again, this time on a grand scale in Kassel, Germany. 100,000 books for this new Parthenon were donated by the public\u00a0from a shortlist of over 170 titles of banned books, some of them still\u00a0on public must-not-read lists.<\/p>\nThe new Parthenon<\/a> was erected this spring in Friedrichsplatz Park, where 2,000 books were burned 84 years ago by the Nazis. The Buenos Aires Parthenon of Books was eventually tipped over by two cranes to allow the public to take the books they wanted. The same will happen in Kassel.<\/p>\nThe Book as\u00a0Destruction<\/strong><\/h3>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/220px-Bebelplatz_Night_of_Shame_Monument.jpg\")
<\/a>A more permanent monument to books is installed on Berlin\u2019s Bebelplatz, the square that was the site of the most\u00a0infamous of the Nazi book-burnings\u00a0of May 10, 1933. For days, students dragged the contents of the Institute for Sexual Science\u00a0library into the square, where some 20,000 books were burned.<\/p>\nThe\u00a01995 memorial created\u00a0by\u00a0Micha Ullman consists of\u00a0a glass plate set into the cobblestones\u00a0to give\u00a0an eerie view into a subterranean room of empty bookcases, enough to hold all 20,000 burned\u00a0books. Nearby, a plaque quotes Heinrich Heine\u00a0from his prescient 1821 play,\u00a0Almansor<\/em>: \u201cWhere they burn books, they ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/strange_2Dmonuments_2D24-245x300.jpg\")
<\/a>will in the end also burn people.\u201d<\/p>\nAt the edge of Bebelplatz is Buchdruck, a 2006 book sculpture that commemorates modern printing with a 12-metre stack of books weighing 35 tons. The spines are carved with the names of significant German writers from Goethe through Hesse, Boll, Marx, and Grass to the Brothers Grimm and Hannah Arendt, the only woman represented.<\/p>\n
The Book as Reconciliation<\/strong><\/h3>\nBooks have become almost iconic of the Second World War, appearing in many Holocaust memorials, and as a key element in the work of post-war artists such as Anselm Kiefer\u2014often with gigantic pages, tattered and defaced, their surfaces covered with ash.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/download-2.jpg\")
<\/a>But British artist Diana Bell used books to convey reconciliation. The\u00a0sculpture was commissioned as a thank-you from the city of Bonn, Germany, to Oxford, England, the first municipality to approach a German city after the war in a gesture of friendship and common concern.<\/p>\nThese bronze books are cast from real books and arranged in stacks around a town square, with small piles on benches, too, where people can interact with them. The spines are chiselled not with the names of actual books but with the optimistic titles: Knowledge, Understanding, Friendship, Trust, Wissen, Verst\u00e4ndigung, Freundschaft, Vertrauen.<\/p>\n
A nearby plaque writes the word Peace in Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and English. “To honour those who seek another path in place of violence and war.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Language of Book<\/strong><\/h3>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Book-sculpture-in-Bangkok-photo-Tom-Southam-2-172x300.jpg\")
<\/a>gr\u0101mata (Latvian)
\nksi\u0105\u017cka (Polish )
\nLlyfr (Welsh)
\n\u05d1\u05d5\u05da (Yiddish)
\nkirja (Finnish)
\nraamat (Estonian)
\nllibre (Catalan)
\nkitab (Azerbaijani)
\n\u4e66 (Chinese)
\n\u0d2a\u0d41\u0d38\u0d4d\u0d24\u0d15\u0d02 (Malaysian)
\nS\u00e1ch (Vietnamese)
\n\u06a9\u062a\u0627\u0628 (Persian)
\nBuug (Somali)
\nibhuku (Zulu)
\naklat (Filipino)
\nlibro (Esperanto)<\/p>\nBooks, Books, Everywhere Books<\/strong><\/h3>\nTwo children sit atop a tower of books balanced on a globe outside the Bangkok Arts & Cultural Centre.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/The-book-monument-on-the-University-Embankment-Saint-Petersburg-300x225.jpg\")
<\/a>An enormous book spreads its pages on the University Embankment in St. Petersburg, Russia.<\/p>\nA \u201cBook of 98 Patriots\u201d stands open in Erbil, Kurdistan, in Sami Abdulrahman Park, built on the site of Saddam Hussein’s former military base and detention camp. It lists the names of almost a hundred people killed in a 2004 terrorist attack.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/merilynsimonds.com\/books-unpacked-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/printed-word-book-300x200.jpg\")
<\/a>A pavilion<\/a> outside the Cheongju Art Centre in South Korea is in the shape of a giant butterflied book about to be set on the ground, a memorial to the Jikji, a book printed with a version of movable type seventy years before Gutenberg.<\/p>\nA\u00a0statue in Sevilla, Spain, honours of a young girl\u00a0reading honors\u00a0Clara Campoamor\u00a0<\/a>and her contribution to women\u2019s freedom.<\/p>\n
The new Parthenon<\/a> was erected this spring in Friedrichsplatz Park, where 2,000 books were burned 84 years ago by the Nazis. The Buenos Aires Parthenon of Books was eventually tipped over by two cranes to allow the public to take the books they wanted. The same will happen in Kassel.<\/p>\n The\u00a01995 memorial created\u00a0by\u00a0Micha Ullman consists of\u00a0a glass plate set into the cobblestones\u00a0to give\u00a0an eerie view into a subterranean room of empty bookcases, enough to hold all 20,000 burned\u00a0books. Nearby, a plaque quotes Heinrich Heine\u00a0from his prescient 1821 play,\u00a0Almansor<\/em>: \u201cWhere they burn books, they At the edge of Bebelplatz is Buchdruck, a 2006 book sculpture that commemorates modern printing with a 12-metre stack of books weighing 35 tons. The spines are carved with the names of significant German writers from Goethe through Hesse, Boll, Marx, and Grass to the Brothers Grimm and Hannah Arendt, the only woman represented.<\/p>\n Books have become almost iconic of the Second World War, appearing in many Holocaust memorials, and as a key element in the work of post-war artists such as Anselm Kiefer\u2014often with gigantic pages, tattered and defaced, their surfaces covered with ash.<\/p>\n These bronze books are cast from real books and arranged in stacks around a town square, with small piles on benches, too, where people can interact with them. The spines are chiselled not with the names of actual books but with the optimistic titles: Knowledge, Understanding, Friendship, Trust, Wissen, Verst\u00e4ndigung, Freundschaft, Vertrauen.<\/p>\n A nearby plaque writes the word Peace in Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and English. “To honour those who seek another path in place of violence and war.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Two children sit atop a tower of books balanced on a globe outside the Bangkok Arts & Cultural Centre.<\/p>\n A \u201cBook of 98 Patriots\u201d stands open in Erbil, Kurdistan, in Sami Abdulrahman Park, built on the site of Saddam Hussein’s former military base and detention camp. It lists the names of almost a hundred people killed in a 2004 terrorist attack.<\/p>\n A\u00a0statue in Sevilla, Spain, honours of a young girl\u00a0reading honors\u00a0Clara Campoamor\u00a0<\/a>and her contribution to women\u2019s freedom.<\/p>\n<\/a>And now she is doing it again, this time on a grand scale in Kassel, Germany. 100,000 books for this new Parthenon were donated by the public\u00a0from a shortlist of over 170 titles of banned books, some of them still\u00a0on public must-not-read lists.<\/p>\nThe Book as\u00a0Destruction<\/strong><\/h3>\n
<\/a>A more permanent monument to books is installed on Berlin\u2019s Bebelplatz, the square that was the site of the most\u00a0infamous of the Nazi book-burnings\u00a0of May 10, 1933. For days, students dragged the contents of the Institute for Sexual Science\u00a0library into the square, where some 20,000 books were burned.<\/p>\n<\/a>will in the end also burn people.\u201d<\/p>\nThe Book as Reconciliation<\/strong><\/h3>\n
<\/a>But British artist Diana Bell used books to convey reconciliation. The\u00a0sculpture was commissioned as a thank-you from the city of Bonn, Germany, to Oxford, England, the first municipality to approach a German city after the war in a gesture of friendship and common concern.<\/p>\nThe Language of Book<\/strong><\/h3>\n
<\/a>gr\u0101mata (Latvian)
\nksi\u0105\u017cka (Polish )
\nLlyfr (Welsh)
\n\u05d1\u05d5\u05da (Yiddish)
\nkirja (Finnish)
\nraamat (Estonian)
\nllibre (Catalan)
\nkitab (Azerbaijani)
\n\u4e66 (Chinese)
\n\u0d2a\u0d41\u0d38\u0d4d\u0d24\u0d15\u0d02 (Malaysian)
\nS\u00e1ch (Vietnamese)
\n\u06a9\u062a\u0627\u0628 (Persian)
\nBuug (Somali)
\nibhuku (Zulu)
\naklat (Filipino)
\nlibro (Esperanto)<\/p>\nBooks, Books, Everywhere Books<\/strong><\/h3>\n
<\/a>An enormous book spreads its pages on the University Embankment in St. Petersburg, Russia.<\/p>\n<\/a>A pavilion<\/a> outside the Cheongju Art Centre in South Korea is in the shape of a giant butterflied book about to be set on the ground, a memorial to the Jikji, a book printed with a version of movable type seventy years before Gutenberg.<\/p>\n