“Essentially, he carried out an act of post-mortem rape, and two volumes, in two libraries, are now its tangible witnesses.” He argues that the decent thing to do is to remove the human skin from the book and give the remains a proper burial. ![]() “The skin of a male would not have fulfilled his psychosexual needs in the same way,” Needham writes. In the article, Needham states that Bouland’s theft of the unknown woman’s flesh was a sort of exploitative power trip. Paul Needham wrote an article condemning Houghton’s refusal to remove the skin from the book’s binding. After tests conducted in 2014 concluded that the cover was made of human flesh, Princeton librarian Dr. The Houghton Library blog post says that there have been instances of anthropodermic bibliopegy where individuals have requested to be memorialized “in the form of a book.” In the case of Des destinées de l’ame, however, the skin was almost certainly obtained without the consent of the deceased. The issue most critics have with the book is not necessarily that it is covered in human skin, but the means by which that skin was obtained. While the story behind the book is interesting, Houghton Library has come under fire for keeping the book in its collection. ![]() first brought Des destinées de l’ame to Harvard in 1934, and his wife officially donated the book to the University twenty years later. According to Houghton Library, the book collector John B. Pinaeus de Virginitatis notis, a book about virginity. In the book, Boland left a note detailing his reasoning behind his decision to cover the book in human skin, writing, “A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering: I had kept this piece of human skin from the back of a woman.” That woman, according to the blog post, was a “mental patient who had died of a stroke.” Bouland went on to write that he enjoyed comparing the appearance of this book to another anthropodermic book which he tanned with sumac: Sever. Ludovic Bouland, according to a Houghton Library blog post, was, “a noted medical doctor and prominent bibliophile.” He was also a man with an interest in the macabre, an interest which critics say entered the realm of the fetishistic. Houssaye wasn’t the one who bound the book, but he did gift it to the man responsible. Des destinées de l’ame is a book about the human soul written by the French author Arsène Houssaye. One of the many books housed at the library is a 19 th century example of anthropodermic bibliopegy: the practice of using human skin to bind books. Houghton Library is home to Harvard’s collection of rare books and manuscripts. But the practice isn’t just a fictional trope, and, if you’re a Harvard affiliate, you’re not as far removed from it as you would like to be. ![]() Maybe you’ve encountered it being used comedically during stand-up performances and TV shows like The Office. You might only know of the practice as a horror movie trope used by films like Silence of the Lambs and Midsommar to frighten thrill-seeking audiences. The thought of human flesh being used for anything other than covering human insides is extremely unsettling. I’m not big on making universal statements of truth, but I’m about to do it anyway.
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