The Sorrows of Satan: or, The Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire: A Romance
John Stuart Mill · en
of loathing and contempt. Yet I had seen it praised in all the
leading journals of the day; its obscenities were hinted at as
'daring,'--its vulgarities were quoted as 'brilliant wit,'--in fact
so many laudatory columns were written about it in the press that I
resolved to read it again. Encouraged by the 'literary censors' of
the time, I did so, and little by little the insidious abomination
of it filtered into my mind and _stayed there_. I began to think
about it,--and by-and-by found pleasure in thinking about it. I
sent for other books by the same tainted hand, and my appetite for
that kind of prurient romance grew keener. At this particular
juncture as chance or fate would have it, an acquaintance of mine,
the daughter of a Marchioness, a girl with large black eyes, and
those full protruding lips which remind one unconsciously of a
swine's snout, brought me two or three odd volumes of the poems of
Swinburne. Always devoted to poetry, and considering it to be the
highest of the arts, and up to that period having been ignorant of
this writer's work, I turned over the books with eagerness,
expecting to enjoy the usual sublime emotions which it is the
privilege and glory of the poet to inspire in mortals less divinely
endowed than himself, and who turn to him
"for help to climb
Beyond the highest peaks of time."
Now I should like, if I could do so, to explain clearly the effect
of this satyr-songster upon my mind,--for I believe there are many
women to whom his works have been deadlier than the deadliest
poison, and far more soul-corrupting than any book of Zola's or the
most pernicious of modern French writers. At first I read the poems
quickly, with a certain pleasure in the musical swing and jangle of
rhythm, and without paying much attention to the subject-matter of
the verse,--but presently, as though a lurid blaze of lightning had
stripped a fair tree of its adorning leaves, my senses suddenly
perceived the cruelty and sensuality concealed under the ornate
language and persuasive rhymes,--and for a moment I paused in my
reading, and closed my eyes, shuddering and sick at heart. Was human
nature as base and abandoned as this man declared it to be? Was
there no God but Lust? Were men and women lower and more depraved in
their passions and appetites than the very beasts? I mused and
dreamed,--I pored over the 'Laus Veneris'--'Faustine' and
'Anactoria,' till I felt myself being dragged down to the level of
the mind that conceived such outrages to decency,--I drank in the
poet's own fiendish contempt of God, and I read over and over again
his verses 'Before a Crucifix' till I knew them by heart;--till they
rang in my brain as persistently as any nursery jingle, and drove my
thoughts into as haughty a scorn of Christ and His teachings, as any