from monocle magazine
In France, all the naughty books go to Hell. L'Enfer, as French bibliophiles call it, dates back to the 1830s when La bibliotheque Nationale de France set aside a room to house its growing collection of obscene and pornographic literature, most of it seized from private collections by zealous police and customs officials .
two hundred books out of this collection which has since grown to 1,7000 tomes in total and has never been seen by the public are included in an exhibition which runs until March 2nd
http://www.bnf.fr/pages/zNavigat/frame/version_anglaise.htm?ancre=english.htmFor the general public today, Hell (L’Enfer) at the French National Library is a legend, a fantasy, the very place for forbidden thoughts, which fuels in return a broad amount of curiosity. Yet, there is a wide gap between myth and reality. This is why the BnF has decided to unlock this hidden part of its collections, aiming to lift the veil on Hell. First of all, one should relate the history, full of surprises, of the place and how it was set up; an abstract and psychological area –a call mark, a classification number referring to « reserved items »– a place where the texts and images collected are reputed to be contrary to good morals.
The exhibition is divided in two parts, the first one focusing on history: how did the collections build up both at the Department of Printed Books and at the Department of Engravings? How did they evolve? On the second hand, the visitor is invited to focus on the content of Hell: what are the books, the documents, the images that were classified there?
Taking non-academic ways to discover literary works allows to reach a world of imagination whose characters satisfy all whims of the desire, where an excessive use of language becomes a pamphlet and where political speeches turn into pornography. This world is the one of anonymity, pseudonyms, wrong addresses and dates, illegal publishing, closed places, convents, boudoirs, bordellos, jails, but also the world of libraries. It includes writers like Sade, Apollinaire, Lou˙s, Bataille and some others who are the everlasting anonymous actors of the celebration of eroticism and sex between the 16th and 20th century. The exhibition is largly devoted to early pornographic photography; in the same way, the japanese prints are presented that were donated to the library by the first western collectors.
