Читать книгу The Literary Discipline - John Erskine - Страница 10

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On all this the moralist may comment that decency as a matter of art is one thing, and the protection of public morals is another; that however artists may be interested in the decorum of their medium, or in the general truth of their subject-matter, the public is also interested in the motives and the possible effects of their writing. Granted; but if the moral point is to be made, as against the artistic, the artist has his own conclusions to draw. The first is that one may as reasonably question the motives of the vice-suppressors as the motives of the artists. Better not to question the motives of either, but if the mean insinuation begins, it must in justice spread in both directions. The woman before the velvet curtain, described by the preacher, seemed a vision of loveliness; yes, you may say, but what would be the motives of those who produce such an exhibition—worship of beauty, or wish to capitalize our baser impulses? The question is unanswerable unless you can see into men’s hearts, but it applies also to the minister who preached the sermon; was he interested only in morals, or was he capitalizing to some extent our craving for the sensational? An artist would be content to answer that where the result is beautiful, in the decorum of the art, it is sensible as well as kind to suppose men’s motives of the best; and when the result is not beautiful, it is sufficient to condemn the result, without reference to the motives.

But the more actively censorious hold that the weak need to be saved from themselves; that a constant brooding upon indecencies is the death of the soul. Well, if it is obscenity that we war against, by all means root it out, for it can be recognized at a glance, and the reformer need not brood long upon it. But in the realm of art in which decency rises, the suppression of indecency involves as much brooding on it by the reformer as by the endangered public—in fact, the reformer must specialize in such brooding. Whether or not it is to the death of his soul, it seems to be to the impairment of his taste. You cannot give all your time to bad art and know much about good. The rôle of the censor would take on some dignity if there ever were a censor who was a connoisseur, who was the patron of good poets and painters, who actively supported a clean stage. But then, if you had the taste for the best, no inducement whatever would make you give your life to the detection of indecency.

Human nature is wiser in the long run than any censor; in the long run the books of the highest decency hold their place in fame by crowding out the others. The public suppresses indecent books by reading decent ones. Every artist would respectfully suggest this method to all censors. Perhaps the censors will say that the method is too slow—that it takes too long for the good books to crowd out the others. It does take too long now, but why not hasten the process by calling attention to the good books, instead of delaying it by advertising the bad? If the energy which now tries to suppress books sure to be forgotten in fifty years, were directed to the encouragement of the few books which after fifty years might still be worth reading, the final verdict of fame might be hastened. But there seems to be a decorum in morals too, or perhaps two decorums, a creative and a negative—one seeking to displace evil by a positive good, the other too much preoccupied with the evil to notice the good at all.