Bob Schwartz

Book and movie people associate “Bonfire of the Vanities” with the 1987 bestselling novel by Tom Wolfe or with the box office bomb released in 1990 based on the book.

The historic background of “bonfire of the vanities” is explained by Michael Dirda in the Washington Post:

“For approximately four years, from 1494 to 1498, a Dominican monk and preacher was first the conscience, then the virtual king of Florence. His admirers, indeed followers, included the Neoplatonic philosopher Pico della Mirandola, the young Machiavelli and the painter Botticelli. His two greatest enemies were just as eminent: Piero de’ Medici, that feckless son of Lorenzo the Magnificent and heir to his father’s dictatorship of the city, and that charming arch-sensualist Pope Alexander VI, among the most notorious of the notorious Borgias. The simple monk himself would pass into legend as the scourge of the rich and corrupt, a fanatical moralist, an accused heretic and, finally, a martyr.

Nowadays, though, people tend to recognize the name Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) chiefly because he instituted the original “bonfire of the vanities.” In 1497, this crusading prior of San Marco (blessed with paintings by Fra Angelico) berated the Florentines over the fripperies they wore, the salacious books they read, the provocative paintings they hung on their walls, the gold and silver jewelry that flashed even in the half-light of the sacred cathedral, all the gaudiness, luxury and lasciviousness of their sinful lives. Away with these snares of the devil! And so, rather than celebrate the last day before Lent with a lewd carnival, Savonarola called for the faithful to cast their “vanities” onto a great pyramid of holy fire. And they did.”

For those with biblical tendencies, vanities are associated with the famous line that opens the Book of Ecclesiastes, known in the Hebrew Bible as Kohelet [Preacher]. In Hebrew:

Hevel, hevel, amar kohelet, hacol havelim.

In the King James version:

Vanity, vanity, says the preacher, all is vanity.

But translation of the Hebrew hevel remains a challenge to modern translators. A number of English words have been proposed including:

Absurd
Futile
Senseless
Meaningless
Breath
Vapor

Each of these seems related to vanity, but each resonates differently to our ears.

Are we to burn the secular luxuries and distractions that pull us away from the divine, as Savonarola directed?

Or are we to keep those luxuries and distractions around—all of us are human and few of us are ascetics—provided we stay as unattached as possible, realizing that all of it is ephemeral. Like breath. And absurd. Like everything.

I’m going with hevel.

© 2023 by Bob Schwartz