24/12/2019
Obscenity in Literature
�—New Directions 16�
When I think of all I have set down on paper to express my attitude towards life, and the connection between art and life, I find it difficult to decide what to add, in a few pages, which will prove illuminating or convincing to those who now wish to pass judgment upon me. To start with, I think it appropriate to repeat what I have said in numerous ways throughout my works, namely, that it is from two inexhaustible Gallic sources, Rabelais and Élie Faure, I have drawn the fullest measure of courage, inspiration and sense of freedom. Nowhere in the works of these masters have I ever found excuses or apologies for the curtailment of freedom of expression in art. French to the core, humanists above all, these two figures have proved more liberating to me than the most flaming revolutionaries. There is, of course, another figure in our history, one still more liberating, still more passionate in his expression of truth, justice, freedom, and that is Jesus Christ. Morality, it would seem, never occupied his thoughts. We know this, however, that he particularly singled out for scorn and rebuke the true enemies of society, the Pharisees.
�I am only too keenly aware that we are living in the closing years of the twentieth century. I know too that throughout these last twenty centuries society has changed its ways, its habits, customs, laws, its morals as well, innumerable times. Calling itself a “Christian” society, it has transgressed and violated every tenet of its belief in a new way of life, the way ordained by the Saviour.�I am as much a part of the present order as any man alive. I have been molded and formed by it; I have revolted against it; and finally I have been forced to accept it or die of a broken heart. But to accept the condition of life in which I happen to find myself does not mean that I believe in or approve of it. I have always endeavored, and I still endeavor, to live my own life in my own way. I have no desire to kill my fellow-man nor to rob him of his possessions nor to persecute him for thinking or behaving other than I do. I am a man of peace whose sole aim is to enjoy life to the utmost. Simple and banal as it sounds, it has nevertheless taken me the greater part of a lifetime to make this a reality.
�To become a writer was not easy for me. It was not until my thirty-third year that I ventured it. Even then I did not really begin. From the year 1924, when I resolved never again to work for any man but to be my own master absolute, from that year when I began practicing the art, as they say, until the year 1934, nothing I wrote was ever published excepting three or four short texts in magazines of no importance. It was in Paris, in the year 1934, that my first published book was brought out by the Obelisk Press: Tropic of Cancer. It was in Paris, I may add, that I found myself, as a man and as an artist.�During those ten years in which I was acquiring mastery over my medium I remained unpublished not because my work was larded with po*******hy or obscenity but, as I am now convinced, because I had yet to discover my own identity. It was in writing the Tropic of Cancer that I found my own voice. The critics have coined all sorts of images to reveal the supposed character of this work. It could be described very simply, in my opinion, by saying that it was an attempt to blow off steam. If it was not a pleasant, conventional or decorous piece of literature it was at least normal and natural, given the circumstances which made its birth inevitable. After twenty years the critics, most of them at any rate, have conceded that it is a serious work, even a work of art.�In the intervening years I have written over twenty-five books, all of them published, and most of them translated into various languages. By the end of next year virtually everything I have written will exist in French. It is in France, I should like to point out, that I am most widely read and perhaps most deeply appreciated or esteemed.
�I believe it no exaggeration to say that the French reading public has accepted me as a sincere and earnest writer. It is not out of egotism that I state this. I have just returned to my native land after eight months abroad, most of which time was spent in France, many parts of France. Nowhere was I treated as an emissary of the devil. On the contrary, and I say it with a full heart, my reception everywhere was such that I shall never forget it. To put it more accurately, I am tempted to say that I was treated “almost” as if I were a Frenchman myself. By that I mean that I was not looked upon as a freak from some outlandish quarter of the globe. Men spoke to me as if I spoke their own language, the language of free men, which is understood everywhere.�In the year 1927, while still in America, supposing myself like Abélard to have suffered more grievously than any ordinary mortal, I laid out the plan for a huge “book of mv life” which I purposed writing one day. It was only in 1939, in Paris, that the first fragment of this work—the beginning of a series of “autobiographical novels”—appeared. It was called Tropic of Capricorn. It was this book, together with Black Spring and Tropic of Cancer, which provided material for the celebrated “affaire Miller.” Thanks to the efforts of a group of French writers who had formed a “Comité de Défense,” I was eventually amnistié by the authorities. I have never understood how I could have been granted an amnesty, first because the case never came to court, and second because I had not been found guilty of committing a crime either against the people or against the government of France. Moreover, throughout this entire period of controversy, the books in question were never withdrawn from sale.�But to go on…. With the publication of Sexus, the first volume of a trilogy called The Rosy Crucifixion, I am accused of offending the morals of the French public. As a consequence I have been requested to explain my position—where do I, as a writer, stand with regard to morality?�
To begin with, I should say that my concern has never been with morals but with life, my own life more particularly. In the above named trilogy, of which two volumes have been thus far written and published, I dwell on the ten years preceding my voluntary exile in France. They are the crucial years of my life in more ways than one, and have, in my humble opinion, a significance far beyond the personal. In elaborating on the events of this decade when, it still seems to me, I endured nearly every form of trial and ordeal, I am persuaded that my example will offer hope and encouragement to other desperate souls.�That it has been no easy task to unburden and reveal myself may be attested by the fact that, twenty-five years since the projection of my plan, I have still to write the final volume. Nexus. It was never my intention, incidentally, to make this work a trilogy. My thought originally was to issue the entire work, when completed, under the caption The Rosy Crucifixion. But because of its great bulk, as well as the delay involved, this idea proved impracticable from a publishing standpoint.�
Meanwhile the second volume, Plexus4 has come out both in French and in English, and thus far there has been no question of censorship. Almost simultaneously with the French version of Plexus there appeared a short work called The World of Sex,5 written some ten years ago; in this book I endeavored to make clear my attitude towards s*x. In addition there exists a plaquette called Obscenity and the Law of Reflection,6 written expressly for my friend Huntington Cairns, our “unofficial” censor here in America.�In the course of the coming year Gallimard will issue the last book I have written—the first of a series—under the title The Books in My Life. This work must also be considered as forming a part of the autobiographical series, inasmuch as the books I have read constitute as important a part of my life as any other factors entering into it. In an Appendix to this work I list all the books I can recall ever having read since I first began to read. It may be of interest to observe how very few of the books listed fall into the category of the obscene or pornographic.�The preceding pages are preliminary, intended simply as an aid to those unacquainted with my life and work. To be more direct and explicit, let me begin by stating what I sincerely believe my purpose to be in expressing myself through words. It is this: to reveal myself as openly, nakedly and unashamedly as possible. If I be asked why I should want to do this I can only answer—because my nature or my temperament compels me to do so. I am interested in life, all life, and every aspect of it. The one life I know best of all is my own. Examining my own life, describing it in detail, exposing it ruthlessly, I believe that I am rendering back life, enhanced and exalted, to those who read me. This seems to me a worthy task for a writer and one for which I have had illustrious predecessors.�That s*x is a vital part of life goes without question. It is also commonly acknowledged that the role of s*x, or the importance of it in one’s life, varies with the individual. The question seems to be—how much of the truth of life, in so far as it pertains to s*xual behavior, may be utilized in literature? Perhaps it is not even a question of this but rather of the manner in which the s*xual is introduced. In short, perhaps the question could be formulated thus: Is there a right and a wrong way in which to treat s*x in a work of art? Which immediately leads us to the next question: Is the right way the way of the moralist, the censor, the policeman? Or, if you like, is the State through its law-makers the final arbiter of what is right and wrong, good and bad, in questions of art?�To me it seems that the whole assumption on which the restrictive activities of our moral guardians rests is that access to forbidden literature may cause us to behave like animals. But to think thus is to cast a slur upon the animal kingdom. At the same time it makes of passion, man’s greatest attribute, a caricature. The gamut of human passion is almost without limits, reaching heights and depths unthinkable. Precisely because it embraces such extremes, passion is the very touchstone of our humanity, and perhaps of our divinity also. Of all the creatures of the earth man is the only one whose behavior is unpredictable. There is in us something of all creation. If we are denied the smallest measure of freedom we are spiritually thwarted and crippled. It is the full awareness of our diverse nature and the integration of the myriad elements of which we are composed that make us whole, make us human. Religion may make us saints, or just good citizens; but what makes us men, what makes us human to the core, is freedom. It is a terrifying word, freedom, for those who have lived all their lives in mental shackles.�
In an essay entitled “On Some Lines of Virgil,” Montaigne writes: “What harm has the ge***al act, so natural, so necessary, and so lawful, done to humanity, that we dare not speak of it without shame, and exclude it from serious and orderly conversation? We boldly utter the words kill, rob, betray; and the other we only dare to utter under our breath. Does this mean that the less of it we breathe in words, the more we are at liberty to swell our thoughts with it? For it is amusing that the words which are least used, least written, and most hushed up, should be the best known and the most generally understood. There is no person of any age or morals but knows them as well as he knows the word bread….”�
It is my honest conviction that the fear and dread which the obscene inspires, particularly in modern times, spring from the language employed rather than the thought. It is very much as if we were dealing here with primitive taboos. That certain words, certain expressions, usually though not always connected with s*x, have come to be thought of as “forbidden” is, at bottom, absolutely mystifying. Those who are shocked, pained, wounded or horrified by these written symbols are not unfamiliar with them in speech. We all hear these “foul,” “coarse,” “ugly” expressions daily, from the cradle to the grave. How is it, why is it, that we have not become immune to them? What magic do they possess against which we have no protection? Notice that it is particularly against their use in literature that the righteous ones object. But why should literature be more sacrosanct than speech? Is not writing another form of speech? Is youth being corrupted—that is the venerable term we are always trotting out—by obscene language alone? The corrupters of youth have been indicted throughout the ages on so many counts, such varied counts, that it is difficult to imagine how the list of “evils” might be amplified. And always it is against the life spirit itself that these indictments are aimed. Life, however, as is demonstrated again and again, refuses to be restricted or diminished by moral codes, by laws or ukases of any sort. What rules life is spirit, and the spirit of man, which is in essence divine, remains unassailable.�
As illustrative of a sound point of view, even if it be an exceptional one, I should like to cite a passage or two from the book called Hieroglyphics by the Welsh writer, Arthur Machen. He is referring to the Pantagruel of Rabelais…. “It is not in the least a ‘pleasant,’ or a ‘life-like,’ or even an ‘interesting’ book; I think that when one knows of the key—or rather of the keys—one opens the pages almost with a sensation of dread. So it is a book that one consults at long intervals, because it is only at rare moments that a man can bear the spectacle of his own naked soul, and a vision that is splendid, certainly, but awful also, in its constant apposition of the eternal heights and eternal depths.” And now, referring to Rabelais’ flagrant use of obscenity, Machen makes a point which cuts like a double-edged sword. He has been reminding us “never to forget that the essence of the book is its splendid celebration of ecstasy.” He goes on to speak of a symbolism of ecstasy—“in the shape of gauloiserie, of gross, exuberant gaiety, expressing itself by outrageous tales, outrageous words, by a very cataract of obscenity, if you please, if only you will notice how the obscenity of Rabelais transcends the obscenity of common life; how grossness is poured out in a sort of mad torrent, in a frenzy, a very passion of the unspeakable…” Referring to the “lists” (the word lists) in the Pantagruel, he says: “Consider these ‘lists,’ that more than frankness, that ebullition of grossness, plainly intentional, designed: it is either the merest lunacy, or else it is sublime …” Nor does he stop here. As if to clinch the matter once and for all, he adds: “The Persian poet expresses the most transcendental secrets of the Divine Love by the grossest phrases of carnal love; so Rabelais soars above the common life, above the streets and the gutter: he brings before you the highest by positing that which is lower than the lowest, and if you have the prepared, the initiated mind, a Rabelaisian ‘list’ is the best preface to the angelic song …”�
Is it not possible, I sometimes ask myself, that there be a deeper reason for the proscribing of “immoral” books? I have observed that more often than not the author of an “obscene” work is a man of truth. Frequently he has employed his objectionable “licentious” language in order to expose the evil of our ways. His truths come as a shock because truth always goes naked. Deceit and hypocrisy, such as are prevalent in our time, have a way of provoking honest men to explosive language, to shocking language. They, however, who welcome truth, who believe in life, find nothing loathsome in such language. To be truthful, I myself find very little in life that may be considered “loathsome,” unless it be stark evil, which is rare. It is certainly beyond my comprehension to understand how subject, style or treatment can be condemned of itself or in itself. If our daily life is full of ugliness it is inevitable that men will arise to describe it and reveal it in all its manifold details. The truth about life can no more be throttled than the spread of knowledge. All that censorship may hope to accomplish is to delay the inevitable. For books, like everything else in this universe, are created in answer to our needs, our inner needs. They are part of the time spirit. Thought will out. If it does not find its way to the surface, through the various media of art, it will dig under, follow subterranean channels, and eventually poison the very springs of life. Moreover, it is hardly likely that ideas, however abhorrent, are the product of certain monstrous individuals. Ideas are in the air, as we say, and the artist does but make use of them. It is also a most curious phenomenon that so-called obscene literature is the hardiest of all forms of literature. It has existed from most ancient times, and it endures, without protection, without ballyhoo, despite all that may be said against it. Only one other class of literature is admittedly as durable, and that is the occult. The one obviously corresponds to some vital need which no amount of moralizing or penalizing can eradicate, while the other answers to that sense of mystery in us which no scientific or religious explanations ever satisfy.�Every day in the forest, on the farm, under the ground, in the air, everywhere throughout this planet, the creatures of this earth, as well as men and women, are indulging in the s*xual act, and, if we are to believe a writer like Rémy de Gourmont, often in ways that would stagger the imagination. The only permissible word language with which to describe this cosmic state of rut is, at present, scientific language. The cattle breeder may write his pamphlets and treatises; the physician may detail his psychopathic case histories; the anthropologist may describe his researches into the s*xual habits of primitive peoples—but the writer who is interested purely in creative literature, the writer who would like to describe the life about him fully and freely, is forbidden to speak. Yet he is the only one who can write passionately and meaningfully, the only one who is truly detached, free in spirit, who sees life in its entirety and can therefore be honest, truthful, gay, and ultimately therapeutic.�Though we no longer believe in alchemy, our age is nevertheless the one in which the art of transformation manifests itself in every realm. Almost everything we touch, eat, drink, smell has undergone an amazing process of transmutation. Everything we have learned about the “secret processes” derives from a study of nature. From eternity nature has been transforming everything—always in terms of a richer, more complicated life. In studying nature’s ways we observe that everything is necessary and indispensable, or, as the mystics put it, that “everything has been given.” Man can not alter nature, try as he will. He is not even able to subdue or chasten her. He can merely quicken or re**rd her processes. Despite himself, despite his petty, vain will, I mean, he is obliged to act in conformity with her laws. The more closely he studies her ways, the more obedient he becomes, the better and speedier his results.�
There is a cosmic elasticity, if I may call it such, which is highly deceptive. It gives man the illusion, for a time, that he has the power to alter things. In the end, however, he is always brought back to himself. There, in his own nature, is where transmutation may be practiced, where indeed it should be practiced, and nowhere else. And when man perceives the truth of this he becomes reconciled to all apparent evil, ugliness, falsehood and frustration; thenceforth he ceases to impose upon the world his private picture of grief and woe, of sin and corruption.�I could, of course, put it more simply by saying that in the eyes of God all is divine. And when I say all I mean all. Looking at things in this light the word transmutation carries still greater significance: it implies that our welfare is dependent upon our spiritual understanding, on the use we make of the divine vision which we possess. With this as criterion, what could possibly shock us?�This word morality! Whenever it comes up I think of the crimes which have been committed in its name. Almost the entire history of man’s persecution of his fellow-man is embraced by the confusion engendered by this term. Aside from the fact that there is not just one morality but many, it is evident that in all countries, whatever the prevailing morality, there exists one morality for peace times and another for war. In times of war everything is permitted, everything condoned. That is to say, everything abominable and infamous committed by the winning side. The vanquished, always the scapegoats, possess “no morality.” One would think, if we really worshipped life and not death, if we valued creation and not destruction, if we believed in fecundity and not impotence, that the supreme task we would set ourselves would be the elimination of war. One would think that, sick of butchery, men would get after the butchers, i.e., the men who plan to make war, the men who decide the modes of warfare, the men who command the manufacture of war materials, materials now unspeakably diabolical. I say “butchers,” because in the ultimate such men are nothing else. In cold blood, years before any outbreak, they prepare to make others do their bidding; mentally they embrace every conceivable form of horror and destruction, and they set about their business calmly, deliberately, ruthlessly, waiting only for the opportune moment to put their plans into ex*****on. The men who are called to arms, the men who are obliged to put this inhuman machinery into operation, though not entirely innocent, are nevertheless not guilty of planning and preparing the butchery. They are simply the victims who subsequently, according to the hazards of fate, will be dubbed cowards or heroes. Their role is to obey. And, even though their lives should be spared, even though they be not mutilated in the flesh, they who survive will most certainly be maimed in spirit. Faced with a new war—for one war breeds another and another—it is unthinkable to expect of these ‘‘victims” that they be charitable and magnanimous. Having suffered unwillingly, it is inevitable that they will exact the same toll of their sons and daughters. … I say, then, that if this bo***ge of sacrifice and vengeance is not immoral, if it is not the last word in immorality, then the word has no meaning. We are not being destroyed or undermined by pornographic or obscene writings; we are being destroyed and damned in every way by making war or planning to make war.�
And now to come to the point of this seemingly gratuitous tirade. Thinking as I do, feeling as I do, about war, I would nevertheless refuse to destroy books dealing with the manufacture of war materials or war machines, or with the manufacture of poison gases or the creation of destructive bacteria, or any other of the fiendish inventions of the military-minded; I would not destroy books dealing with military strategy or with the rules and conventions governing “civilized” warfare. On the contrary, I would wish to see the distribution and circulation of all such literature increased. I would have children informed as to these matters as well as grown-ups. I would have every man, woman and child throughout the land become as familiar with these words as they are supposed to be with the Holy Bible. I would go yet further. I would put the Bible on one shelf and all this homicidal literature on another shelf. I would say: If you look at the one, then you must look at the other also. I would make a clean cleavage between the book in which it is commanded not to kill and all the other books in which human slaughter, slaughter en masse, is taught, explained, approved and exemplified. I would divide family against family, brother against brother, on this single question. Act according to your conscience, I would urge. Either it is going to be one world or no world before long. If you are for the world of death, enlist in it immediately! Do not confound us with your indecision. Do not speak of morality if your ultimate aim is to collaborate in the destruction of our world.
�Between the Bible and the slaughter-house manuals lies the world of literature, evolved through human passion, hunger and imagination, and dealing with human thought, deed, dream and aspiration. It is a world drawn from life, concerned only with life, and sustaining life. If there is death in it it is but to the extent that it lacks fire, depth, freedom and choice. If this vast product of creative energy were a celebration of death it would be nothing more than a mockery. We know full well that, whatever its defeats or limitations, this great body of creation represents the triumph of life over death. And so I make bold to say that no matter how vile, filthy, scabrous, scatalogical or obscene a book may be, if it serves life, if it aims at the cancer which is eating out the heart of the world, it is a good book, a righteous book, a holy book. To say of it that it is immoral, to call it pornographic or obscene, is like talking of spittle in connection with the hydrogen bomb. There is no book yet written devastating enough to wipe from the consciousness of living man the horrors to which he is now privy, the horrors which he is being asked to accept in advance in return for the privilege of belonging to a civilization which has virtually converted him into an unthinking, unfeeling monster.�
Monster, robot, slave, accursed one—it makes little difference which term one uses to convey the picture of our dehumanized condition. Never was mankind as a whole in a more ignoble condition than ours. We are all bound to one another in a disgraceful master-slave relationship; we are all caught in the same vicious circle of judge and be judged; we all aim to destroy one another if we cannot have our way. Instead of respect, toleration, kindness and consideration, to say nothing of love, we view one another with fear, suspicion, hatred, envy, rivalry and malevolence. Our world is grounded in falsity. In whatever direction you venture, into whatever sphere of human activity you pe*****te, you encounter nothing but sham, fraud, deceit, falsehood.�Cognizant of the fact that, no matter how highly placed, men can not, dare not, think freely, independently, I almost despair of making myself heard. And if I speak at all, if I venture to hazard my point of view about matters fundamental, it is because I am convinced that, however black the picture may be, a drastic change is not only possible but inevitable. I feel that it is my right and my duty as a human being to further this change. Without in the least wishing to glorify myself I should like to point out that there is evidence throughout my work that I myself have undergone a change; I say it is evident and obvious that the man who relates the story of his life is not the same as the “hero” who stalks the pages of these autobiographical novels. The man who confesses his sins, his crimes or his misdeeds is never the same as the one who committed them. Is it necessary for me to underline the fact that the author, in exposing his guilt and suffering, his fears and his triumphs, is but announcing his liberation and emancipation? And as to the element of “evil” itself, how can I be more explicit than to say that the narrative is armed with double truth. The seeing eye will perceive in this long narration not only the historical facts of one man’s life but a reality going far beyond thought, word and deed. Long before I began this work I was conscious of the justice of the Tibetan view which insists that a man be more severely punished for misdemeanors committed in his dream life than for those committed in waking life. In exposing myself as fully and completely as possible I have pronounced sentence upon myself, and in advance, beyond any that could be meted out by a worldly court. I am living not “this side of Paradise” but in a world of my own making—where punishment and reward seem alike futile. I have still a road to travel, but I see clearly what the goal is. And seeing it clearly, I can only say that I value more than ever truth and freedom.�I would like to go one step farther, in closing. It is to say this: if all that I have set forth herein is not clear from the reading of my books then I have failed utterly. In which case I beg to be condemned not only as an “immoral” writer but as a stupid and impotent one. I had thought to join with this testimony a selection of letters, unsolicited letters, culled from the thousands I have received from my readers all over the world. I no longer believe it worth while to make this effort. I realize that it is too easy to object that all these (largely) unknown individuals are simply “fellow travelers,” or, to put it more harshly, emotional cripples. If I knew I were addressing myself to men who believe in the power of truth I would say: “Put my work to the test! Let it be read openly, freely, everywhere, by all classes of men and women. Let them be my judges!”
�And this is not my last thought on the subject. Let us look at it in the worst light. Supposing that tomorrow, as a result of reading Henry Miller, everyone began talking freely, talking gutter language, if you will, and acting according to his own beliefs and convictions. What then? My answer is that no matter what took place, it would be as if nothing had occurred, nothing, I want to emphasize, in comparison with the effect of a single exploded atom bomb. This, I must confess, is the saddest admission that I, a creative individual, can make. It is my belief that we are now passing through a period of what might be called “cosmic insensitivity,” a period when God seems more than ever absent from the world and man doomed to come face to face with the fate which he has created for himself. At such a moment the question of whether a man be guilty of using obscene language in printed books seems to me thoroughly inconsequential. It is almost as if, while taking a walk through a green field, I espied a blade of grass with manure on it, and, bending down to that obscure little blade of grass I said to it scoldingly: “Naughty, naughty!”
Henry Miller
