Erotic literature -- History and criticism; Psychoanalysis and literature; Sex in literature
Some authors who relax the censorship voluntarily and appear to be
without a sense of shame, give us some of the immoral literature
which the world publicly abhors, but which individuals often delight
in reading in private. I do not refer to the really great literature
which has been stamped "immoral" by prudish people, because its ideas
are too far advanced for them to appreciate, and are different from
the conventional morals of society. I do not refer to the hundreds
of great works which give us true accounts of the natural man, books
whose irresistibility cannot be evaded except by hypocrites. I do not
include novels and plays wherein the authors have realised that we
are exerting too great a sacrifice upon our emotions and that many
souls are starved by lack of normal gratification on account of the
harsh exactions of conventional society. But there is a real immoral
(or rather indecent) literature where the author allows his savage
instincts to come to the surface and trespass on those aspects of his
personality which civilisation should have tamed. He may suffer from
the vice of exhibitionism and think he is frank, when he is merely
showing he has no sense of shame; and he may cater to a market merely
for money, in which case he acts like a mercenary harlot. He may try
to gratify himself by sexual abandon in art because he has never had
the craving for love satisfied in life. He gives vent to instincts that
are still ruling him because of his own atavistic or neurotic state.
Psychoanalytic literature puts in a new light immoral literature, which
hitherto has been dealt with from a moral, and not a psychological,
point of view. This literature should be explained and its sources
traced; these will be found in the infantile love life of the authors.
Such writings should not be condemned offhand just because they stir
our moral indignation. They must be interpreted so that we may learn
the nature of their authors.
I have also made a study of so repulsive a feature in the lives of our
earliest ancestors as cannibalism. It is one of the most primitive
emotions. The discoveries of archæologists show that cannibalism
prevailed in Europe before the dawn of history; Greek plays show its
early existence in Greece; and we know that it still prevails among
savage tribes to-day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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