In the above-mentioned essay the learned writer gives, on p. 5, a definition of the obscene, which shows that he had not thoroughly differentiated it from the erotic, but confused the two ideas under the same term. In his view, obscene writings are “all such writings whose authors use distinctly improper language, and speak plainly about the sexual organs, or describe the shameless acts of voluptuous and impure human beings, in such words that chaste and tender ears would shudder to hear them.”
But such improper descriptions might occur in a work without its being possible to designate this as obscene. A book can justly be called obscene only when it has been composed simply, solely, and exclusively for the purpose of producing sexual excitement—when its contents aim at inducing in its readers a condition of coarse and brutish sensuality.
This definition clearly excludes all those literary products which, notwithstanding the existence of isolated erotic, or even obscene, passages, are yet composed for purposes radically different from that above described—it excludes, for example, artistic, religious, and scientific works (the history of civilization, poetry, belles-lettres, medicine, folk-lore, etc.).
The question, namely, whether simple sexual relationships can properly be made the object of artistic or scientific representation, may be answered with an unconditional affirmative, if we presuppose a purely artistic or scientific critical representation and consideration of erotic objects; that is to say, in the work of art, or the scientific work, as the case may be, the purely sexual must completely disappear behind the higher artistic or scientific conception. This is possible only when that which is represented is completely devoid of actuality; when time and place are entirely ignored, so that the object is regarded rather from its general human aspect; and when, further, in the artistic representation of the purely sexual we find expression also, on the part of the artist, of a conception enlightening and to a degree overcoming the purely physical; or when, finally, on the part of the man of science, we recognize a critical point of view, by means of which the causal relationships of the sexual find expression.
The general tendency is determinative, not the shocking individual detail. I need not waste any more words upon the importance of medical, ethnological, psychological, and historical works upon the sexual life.[777] This fact is, fortunately, now fully recognized even by the greatest morality fanatics, and it would hardly now be possible in Germany that a law-court—as recently in Belgium[778]—should witness proceedings against a medical undertaking on account of pornographic (!) illustrations.[779]
The same is true of the artistic consideration of sexual matters. For example, how readily everything sexual lends itself to the humorous point of view! How short here is the step from the sublime to the ridiculous! In a copy which lies before me of Fr. Th. Vischers’ first work, “The Sublime and the Ridiculous” (Stuttgart, 1837), which was once in the possession of a friend of Goethe, the Driburg physician, Anton Theobald Brück, we find on p. 203, in his handwriting, the apt marginal note: “Wit gilds the nickel of the obscene.” Sexual matters actually provoke humour. This fact was enunciated by Schopenhauer, and was ascribed by him to the profound earnestness which underlies the sexual (“Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,” i., 330). For this reason, as Eduard Fuchs[780] rightly insists, the majority of all erotic creations are of the nature of caricatures. The most brilliant advocate of this humorous view of sexual matters is the brilliant English artist Thomas Rowlandson, whose works, both in England and in Germany, have long been kept under lock and key.
The mystic-satanic element in the sexual also stimulates artistic representations, and in the works of Baudelaire, Barbey d’Aurevilly, Félicien Rops, Aubrey Beardsley, Toulouse Lautrec, etc., we see that the “perverse” also is thoroughly capable of erotic representation. But even pure obscenity, without any underlying idea—as, for example, we see it to-day in the obscene drawings of Carracci—may have the effect of a simple artistic product, if the taste of the onlooker is so far matured that the purely sexual can recede completely behind the artistic conception. We must, generally speaking, not fail to take into account the individuality and the age of the spectator or reader. For children and immature persons, even works that are obviously not obscene, such as artistic, religious, and scientific literature, may, in certain circumstances, be dangerous—works which adults regard and judge in the spirit of their own time, as, for example, the Bible and the writings of the Fathers of the Church. John Milton, who was certainly not lacking in piety, wrote: “The Bible often relates blasphemies in no very delicate manner; it describes the fleshly lusts of vicious men not without elegance.”[781] Books which are to be read by children cannot be chosen too carefully, for a very large proportion also of the literature which is not, properly speaking, obscene, but which deals with sexual matters, has upon the childish imagination an effect equivalent to that of true pornography upon the adult.
In passing judgment on an erotic work, we must, finally, take into consideration the standard of the epoch to which the work belongs; we must bear in mind the nature of the contemporary moral ideas. Much which to us to-day appears obscene was not so in the middle ages. On the other hand, we must not excuse everything on this plea, for our forefathers were also familiar with pornographic and utterly obscene books. Works such as those of the Marquis de Sade or of Nicolas Chorier (“Gespräche der Aloysia Sigaea”) have not only an importance in the history of civilization: they also have an interest for anthropologists and medical men. They constitute remarkable documents of the nature and mode of manifestation of sexual perversities in earlier times. Moreover, all pornographic writings afford us valuable assistance in our study of the genesis of sexual perversions. But while we admit the importance of such writings—for example, those of de Sade—to learned men and bibliophiles, we cannot condemn in sufficiently strong terms the insane undertaking of translating de Sade’s books in our own day. This is simply pornology; for all those who, as medical men, psychologists, or historians of civilization, are occupied with pornographic literature, are—or, at any rate, should be—competent to read these authors in the original tongue.[782] I feel therefore that the mass of recently published German translations of the pornographic writings of John Cleland, Mirabeau, Nerciat, de Sade, of the “Antijustine” of Rétif de la Bretonne, of the “Portier des Chartreux,” of Alfred de Musset’s “Gamiani,” etc., can only be described as pornography, although I must admit that the original editions are often inaccessible to the scientific student interested in the matter, who in such cases must, faute de mieux, content himself with translations.
These obscene writings may be compared with natural poisons, which must also be carefully studied, but which can be entrusted only to those who are fully acquainted with their dangerous effects, who know how to control and counteract these effects, and who regard them as an object of natural research by means of which they will be enabled to obtain an understanding of other phenomena.
The pornographic element of literature and art[783] has an ancient history. In Greece, Rome, and Egypt, but more especially in India, Japan, and China, there existed an extensive obscene literature. In Europe the French, Italian, and English obscene literature occupies the first place as regards comprehensiveness and wide diffusion. Exceptionally dangerous in their effect are French pornographic writings, because their mode of expression is so elegant, whereas the English obscene books, with the single exception of Cleland’s “Fanny Hill,” are positively deterrent, on account of the coarse phraseology employed in them. The German writings in this department are not much better than the English, and consist to a large extent of bad translations of foreign pornographic works—if we except a few older writings, which are repeatedly reissued, such as the “Denkwürdigkeiten des Herrn von H.,” by Schilling, or the “Memoiren einer Sängerin,” the first part of which is ascribed to the celebrated Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient. Speaking generally, it is a remarkable phenomenon (and one which is in flat contradiction to the assertion so frequently made that pornography and true art cannot possibly be associated) that so many spirits of the first rank, great artists either in literature or plastic art, have enriched pornography themselves by works of their own, or, failing this, have at least been notorious lovers of pornography. This fact was clearly manifested at the time of the Italian renascence, but it can be traced down to the present day. Men like Voltaire (“La Pucelle d’Orléans”), Mirabeau (“L’Éducation de Laure,” “Ma Conversion,” etc.), Alfred de Musset (“Gamiani”), Guy de Maupassant (“Les Cousines de la Colonelle”), Théophile Gautier (“Lettre à la Présidente”), and Gustave Droz (“Un Été à la Campagne”), have written indubitably pornographic books. But the heroes of our own German literature have not been free from such tendencies. Goethe not only wrote the “Tagebuch,” but composed other (still completely unknown) erotica, which, by command of the Grand Duchess Sophie, were sealed and hidden away.[784] Schopenhauer,[785] who said to Frauenstädt that a philosopher must be active, “not only with his head, but also with his genital organs,” was a lover of pornography, even of a skatological character, and was fond of telling “bawdy stories which will not bear repetition”—for example, he would enumerate the different kinds of kissing, describe the varieties of the sexual impulse, etc.[786] Schiller and Goethe enjoyed reading Diderot’s “The Nun” (“La Religieuse”) and his “Bijoux Indiscrets,” Rétif’s “Monsieur Nicolas,” and the “Liaisons Dangereuses” of Choderlos de Laclos, books which would nowadays be suppressed as “immoral.” Lichtenberg also was a very zealous reader, and a connoisseur, not only of erotic, but also of pornographic literature. In his letters he alludes to reading such pornographic works as Cleland’s “Woman of Pleasure” (“Letters,” edition Leitzmann and Schüddekopf, vol. ii., p. 187) and “Lyndamine,” etc. Talented women of that period also read pornographic works. Pauline Wiesel, the beloved of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, greatly admired Mirabeau’s obscene writings, as we learn from a letter of Friedrich Gentz, in which the latter decries them as “cold libertinage,” and recommends to his friend similar products of Voltaire, Crébillon, and Grécourt.[787]