Ancient peoples mistrusted writing as a means of transmitting knowledge. It is orality – they thought – that best guards the word from the risk of misunderstanding. From this point of view, the burning of books, which brutalised various pages of history, could not prevent the transmission of knowledge, the running of wisdom under the sky.
In Bradbury’s novel, too, there is a tension between the written and the oral. In a future, dystopian world, where literature is banned because it makes people think and opens up spaces of dangerous depth to the imagination, a few courageous dissidents preserve entire works in their memory, in order to hand them over to the civilisation of tomorrow. They have become true tabernacles of the word.
Memory and the depth of the heart are the fire to face the dark days. To keep oneself open to some tremor of revelation just when one risks drowning in superficiality.