A movie about Ginsberg’s “Howl” is officially underway:

“Howl” is a genre-expanding feature-length exploration of the courtroom drama of the obscenity trial over Allen Ginsberg’s poem, as well as an animated re-imagining of the poem.

James Franco stars as Ginsberg; Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman are directing; Gus Van Sant is co-executive producer.

The Ginsberg Project reports that the film’s animated version of the poem is being done by Eric Drooker, who graphically adapted “Howl” and other works from Ginzy in the book Illuminated Poems.

So, what works were on the Catholic Church’s infamous Index Librorum Prohibitorum? Wikipedia has the answers.

The final version (1948) contained around 4,000 works, most of which are extremely obscure. Among the the well-known writers with at least some forbidden works: Pascal, Voltaire, Rousseau, Casanova, Sade, Flaubert, Hugo, Zola,Rabelais, Sartre, Beauvoir, Copernicus, Defoe, Milton, Graham Greene, and Swift. (Obviously, the odds were stacked against the French.)

More surprising are those whoese works who never appeared on the lists: Marx, Darwin, Hitler, Aristophanes, James Joyce, DH Lawrence.

The scholarly book Translation and the Classic: Identity as Change in the History of Culture includes the fascinating article “Translation and the ‘Surreptitious Classic’: Obscenity and Translatability” by Deborah H. Roberts, Chair of Classics at Haverford College:

Euphemism by generalization seems to be particularly common in translations of Martial, where the frequency of obscenity poses a particular challenge to those who aim at complete editions. So, for Martial’s ‘cunnum Charinus lingit et tamen pallet’ (1.77.6, Charinus licks cunt and is still pale) Bohn’s version has ‘Charinus indulges in infamous debauchery - and yet he is pale’ and the Pott/Wright versified translation has ‘And e’en his vices do not make him blush.’ Similarly, where Martial has ‘Pedicatur Eroc, fellat Linus’ (7.10.1, Eros gets buggered, Linus sucks), we find ‘Eros has one filthy vice, Linus has another’, and ‘Eros and Linus are debauched, you say.’ …

We find similar vagueness in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, in the passage in which Lysistrata draws the other women’s attention to the absence of any source of sexual satisfaction (107-110):

[Greek text omitted]

“Not even s spark of a lover is left.
And ever since the Milesians betrayed us,
I haven’t seen a dildo eight fingers long

Which might have been a leather source of help.”

A number of stranslators omit the dildo altogether, but Rogers’s translation offers a kind of place-holder for the unnamed object:

“No husbands now, no sparks, no anything.
For ever since Miletus played us false,
We’ve had no joy, no solace, none at all.”

Lest you think that wimpy translations of Martial are relics of the prudish past, Joseph S. Salemi’s accurate, unblushing translations stirred things up in 1990:

Responses were predictable: after reading some of my Martial translations in public, I was excoriated by the usual contingent of born-again Christians and militant feminists. Some academic careerists quietly urged me to drop the project of translating so repellent an author, lest I offend those inscrutable forces that dole out promotion and tenure. Editors showed even less spine; only six American journals out of fifty-four would publish selections from Martial–and this from a literary establishment that proclaims itself a defender of artistic freedom against Senator Helms. Typical was the comment of one trendy New York editor: “I enjoyed your translations immensely, but I could never print them.”

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-day Iraq by Fernando Baez (Atlas & Co., 2008)

From the publisher:

See also: Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries throughout History by Lucien X. Polastron| Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections Since Antiquity, edited by James Raven [review]

School Library Journal looks at school and public libraries that aren’t adding potentially controversial books for young people to their collections.

In the first survey of its kind, School Library Journal (SLJ) recently asked 655 media specialists about their collections and found that 70 percent of librarians say they won’t buy certain controversial titles simply because they’re terrified of how parents will respond. Other common reasons for avoiding possible troublemakers include potential backlash from the administration (29 percent), the community (29 percent), or students (25 percent), followed by 23 percent of librarians who say they won’t purchase a book due to personal objections.

The Associated Press reports:

KABUL - No one knows who brought the book to the mosque, or at least no one dares say.

The pocket-size translation of the Quran has already landed six men in prison in Afghanistan and left two of them begging judges to spare their lives. They’re accused of modifying the Quran and their fate could be decided Sunday in court.

Many clerics rejected the book because it did not include the original Arabic verses alongside the translation. It’s a particularly sensitive detail for Muslims, who regard the Arabic Quran as words given directly by God. A translation is not considered a Quran itself, and a mistranslation could warp God’s word.

The country’s powerful Islamic council issued an edict condemning the book.

“In all the mosques in Afghanistan, all the mullahs said, ‘Zalmai is an infidel. He should be killed,’” Zalmai recounted as he sat outside the chief judge’s chambers waiting for a recent hearing.

{via Muslims Against Sharia}