It was supposed, at first, that the destruction of subversive political
tracts and the persecution of radical views would be enough. Yet,
of course, it was learned that as fast as these were cropped, growth
elsewhere had become vigorous. The human intelligence is natively prone
to look towards new things. Then it was that, after a long suspicion
of the origin of ideals, great statesmen were led to an examination of
classic literature and a study of the arts. Then they saw, what they
might have known sooner, that in the very institutions supported by the
State, the Public Libraries and Art Galleries, were actually preserved
the potent ideals which demeaned that general opinion which the State
was laboring to establish.
The famous Day of Release was ordered. This was ordained to free mankind
from its heritage of the spirit. A test was made, and by that test any
book or picture or poem which could not be approved or understood by
native deacons of Solomon Island missions (who were imported for the
purpose) was at once extirpated. This checked a great deal of the
troublesome growth of the mind. Music, however, was strangely forgotten;
and it was proved that the great revolution which burst out in Europe
120 years after the "Great War" began in the emotion occasioned by the
continued playing of the compositions of one Beethoven, whose work is
now fortunately lost, and other music which remained in favor in spite
of the official insistence on the use of the steam saxophone for public
concerts. Men, wherever they dared, insisted on having the best. And
though the records were at length destroyed, the tenacious memories of
a few fanatics and cranks preserved much of the old music, and that
usually of the worst and most disloyal.
Here we see another step had to be taken by men in control of the State.
The memory of what was classical was kept though in an ever-fading
condition, and now and again some point of memory fructified to almost
its original suggestive beauty in the fortuitously abnormal brain of a
genius, and thus the state work of hygiene had to be done over again;
for curiously enough people everywhere rose like a tide, and moved
spontaneously towards these manifestations of liberty and beauty, and
away from their loyalty to the God-State. A method, therefore, had to be
discovered, first for obliterating what remained in the public memory
of what was magical and rebellious, and then for the elimination of any
possibility of original genius arising; and genius was, it was seen,
first and last, the cause of all the trouble.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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