Essays on Censorship and Art

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ESSAYS ON CENSORSHIP AND ART


By John Galsworthy



"Je vous dirai que l'exces est toujours un mal."
--ANATOLE FRANCE



TABLE OF CONTENTS:
ABOUT CENSORSHIP
VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART




ABOUT CENSORSHIP

Since, time and again, it has been proved, in this country of free
institutions, that the great majority of our fellow-countrymen consider
the only Censorship that now obtains amongst us, namely the Censorship of
Plays, a bulwark for the preservation of their comfort and sensibility
against the spiritual researches and speculations of bolder and too
active spirits--it has become time to consider whether we should not
seriously extend a principle, so grateful to the majority, to all our
institutions.

For no one can deny that in practice the Censorship of Drama works with a
smooth swiftness--a lack of delay and friction unexampled in any public
office. No troublesome publicity and tedious postponement for the
purpose of appeal mar its efficiency. It is neither hampered by the Law
nor by the slow process of popular election. Welcomed by the
overwhelming majority of the public; objected to only by such persons as
suffer from it, and a negligible faction, who, wedded pedantically to
liberty of the subject, are resentful of summary powers vested in a
single person responsible only to his own 'conscience'--it is amazingly,
triumphantly, successful.

Why, then, in a democratic State, is so valuable a protector of the will,
the interests, and pleasure of the majority not bestowed on other
branches of the public being? Opponents of the Censorship of Plays have
been led by the absence of such other Censorships to conclude that this
Office is an archaic survival, persisting into times that have outgrown
it. They have been known to allege that the reason of its survival is
simply the fact that Dramatic Authors, whose reputation and means of
livelihood it threatens, have ever been few in number and poorly
organised--that the reason, in short, is the helplessness and weakness of
the interests concerned. We must all combat with force such an aspersion
on our Legislature. Can it even for a second be supposed that a State
which gives trial by Jury to the meanest, poorest, most helpless of its
citizens, and concedes to the greatest criminals the right of appeal,
could have debarred a body of reputable men from the ordinary rights of
citizenship for so cynical a reason as that their numbers were small,
their interests unjoined, their protests feeble? Such a supposition were
intolerable! We do not in this country deprive a class of citizens of
their ordinary rights, we do not place their produce under the
irresponsible control of one not amenable to Law, by any sort of
political accident! That would indeed be to laugh at Justice in this
Kingdom! That would indeed be cynical and unsound! We must never admit
that there is no basic Justice controlling the edifice of our Civic
Rights. We do, we must, conclude that a just and well-considered
principle underlies this despotic Institution; for surely, else, it would
not be suffered to survive for a single moment! Pom! Pom!

If, then, the Censorship of Plays be just, beneficent, and based on a
well-considered principle, we must rightly inquire what good and logical
reason there is for the absence of Censorship in other departments of the
national life. If Censorship of the Drama be in the real interests of
the people, or at all events in what the Censor for the time being
conceives to be their interest--then Censorships of Art, Literature,
Religion, Science, and Politics are in the interests of the people,
unless it can be proved that there exists essential difference between
the Drama and these other branches of the public being. Let us consider
whether there is any such essential difference.

It is fact, beyond dispute, that every year numbers of books appear which
strain the average reader's intelligence and sensibilities to an
unendurable extent; books whose speculations are totally unsuited to
normal thinking powers; books which contain views of morality divergent
from the customary, and discussions of themes unsuited to the young
person; books which, in fine, provide the greater Public with no pleasure
whatsoever, and, either by harrowing their feelings or offending their
good taste, cause them real pain.

It is true that, precisely as in the case of Plays, the Public are
protected by a vigilant and critical Press from works of this
description; that, further, they are protected by the commercial instinct
of the Libraries, who will not stock an article which may offend their
customers--just as, in the case of Plays, the Public are protected by the
common-sense of theatrical Managers; that, finally, they are protected by
the Police and the Common Law of the land. But despite all these
protections, it is no uncommon thing for an average citizen to purchase
one of these disturbing or dubious books. Has he, on discovering its
true nature, the right to call on the bookseller to refund its value? He
has not. And thus he runs a danger obviated in the case of the Drama
which has the protection of a prudential Censorship. For this reason
alone, how much better, then, that there should exist a paternal
authority (some, no doubt, will call it grand-maternal--but sneers must
not be confounded with argument) to suppress these books before
appearance, and safeguard us from the danger of buying and possibly
reading undesirable or painful literature!

A specious reason, however, is advanced for exempting Literature from the
Censorship accorded to Plays. He--it is said--who attends the
performance of a play, attends it in public, where his feelings may be
harrowed and his taste offended, cheek by jowl with boys, or women of all
ages; it may even chance that he has taken to this entertainment his
wife, or the young persons of his household. He--on the other hand--who
reads a book, reads it in privacy. True; but the wielder of this
argument has clasped his fingers round a two-edged blade. The very fact
that the book has no mixed audience removes from Literature an element
which is ever the greatest check on licentiousness in Drama. No manager
of a theatre,--a man of the world engaged in the acquisition of his
livelihood, unless guaranteed by the license of the Censor, dare risk the
presentment before a mixed audience of that which might cause an 'emeute'
among his clients. It has, indeed, always been observed that the
theatrical manager, almost without exception, thoughtfully recoils from
the responsibility that would be thrust on him by the abolition of the
Censorship. The fear of the mixed audience is ever suspended above his
head. No such fear threatens the publisher, who displays his wares to
one man at a time. And for this very reason of the mixed audience;
perpetually and perversely cited to the contrary by such as have no firm
grasp of this matter, there is a greater necessity for a Censorship on
Literature than for one on Plays.

Further, if there were but a Censorship of Literature, no matter how
dubious the books that were allowed to pass, the conscience of no reader
need ever be troubled. For, that the perfect rest of the public
conscience is the first result of Censorship, is proved to certainty by
the protected Drama, since many dubious plays are yearly put before the
play-going Public without tending in any way to disturb a complacency
engendered by the security from harm guaranteed by this beneficent, if
despotic, Institution. Pundits who, to the discomfort of the populace,
foster this exemption of Literature from discipline, cling to the
old-fashioned notion that ulcers should be encouraged to discharge
themselves upon the surface, instead of being quietly and decently driven
into the system and allowed to fester there.

The remaining plea for exempting Literature from Censorship, put forward
by unreflecting persons: That it would require too many Censors--besides
being unworthy, is, on the face of it, erroneous. Special tests have
never been thought necessary in appointing Examiners of Plays. They
would, indeed, not only be unnecessary, but positively dangerous, seeing
that the essential function of Censorship is protection of the ordinary
prejudices and forms of thought. There would, then, be no difficulty in
securing tomorrow as many Censors of Literature as might be necessary
(say twenty or thirty); since all that would be required of each one of
them would be that he should secretly exercise, in his uncontrolled
discretion, his individual taste. In a word, this Free Literature of
ours protects advancing thought and speculation; and those who believe in
civic freedom subject only to Common Law, and espouse the cause of free
literature, are championing a system which is essentially undemocratic,
essentially inimical to the will of the majority, who have certainly no
desire for any such things as advancing thought and speculation. Such
persons, indeed, merely hold the faith that the People, as a whole,
unprotected by the despotic judgments of single persons, have enough
strength and wisdom to know what is and what is not harmful to
themselves. They put their trust in a Public Press and a Common Law,
which deriving from the Conscience of the Country, is openly administered
and within the reach of all. How absurd, how inadequate this all is we
see from the existence of the Censorship on Drama.

Having observed that there is no reason whatever for the exemption of
Literature, let us now turn to the case of Art. Every picture hung in a
gallery, every statue placed on a pedestal, is exposed to the public
stare of a mixed company. Why, then, have we no Censorship to protect us
from the possibility of encountering works that bring blushes to the
cheek of the young person? The reason cannot be that the proprietors of
Galleries are more worthy of trust than the managers of Theatres; this
would be to make an odious distinction which those very Managers who
uphold the Censorship of Plays would be the first to resent. It is true
that Societies of artists and the proprietors of Galleries are subject to
the prosecution of the Law if they offend against the ordinary standards
of public decency; but precisely the same liability attaches to
theatrical managers and proprietors of Theatres, in whose case it has
been found necessary and beneficial to add the Censorship. And in this
connection let it once more be noted how much more easily the ordinary
standards of public decency can be assessed by a single person
responsible to no one, than by the clumsy (if more open) process of
public protest. What, then, in the light of the proved justice and
efficiency of the Censorship of Drama, is the reason for the absence of
the Censorship of Art? The more closely the matter is regarded, the more
plain it is, that there is none! At any moment we may have to look upon
some painting, or contemplate some statue, as tragic, heart-rending, and
dubiously delicate in theme as that censured play "The Cenci," by one
Shelley; as dangerous to prejudice, and suggestive of new thought as the
censured "Ghosts," by one Ibsen. Let us protest against this peril
suspended over our heads, and demand the immediate appointment of a
single person not selected for any pretentiously artistic feelings, but
endowed with summary powers of prohibiting the exhibition, in public
galleries or places, of such works as he shall deem, in his uncontrolled
discretion, unsuited to average intelligence or sensibility. Let us
demand it in the interest, not only of the young person, but of those
whole sections of the community which cannot be expected to take an
interest in Art, and to whom the purpose, speculations, and achievements
of great artists, working not only for to-day but for to-morrow, must
naturally be dark riddles. Let us even require that this official should
be empowered to order the destruction of the works which he has deemed
unsuited to average intelligence and sensibility, lest their creators
should, by private sale, make a profit out of them, such as, in the
nature of the case, Dramatic Authors are debarred from making out of
plays which, having been censured, cannot be played for money. Let us
ask this with confidence; for it is not compatible with common justice
that there should be any favouring of Painter over Playwright. They are
both artists--let them both be measured by the same last!

But let us now consider the case of Science. It will not, indeed cannot,
be contended that the investigations of scientific men, whether committed
to writing or to speech, are always suited to the taste and capacities of
our general public. There was, for example, the well-known doctrine of
Evolution, the teachings of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russet Wallace, who
gathered up certain facts, hitherto but vaguely known, into presentments,
irreverent and startling, which, at the time, profoundly disturbed every
normal mind. Not only did religion, as then accepted, suffer in this
cataclysm, but our taste and feeling were inexpressibly shocked by the
discovery, so emphasised by Thomas Henry Huxley, of Man's descent from
Apes. It was felt, and is felt by many to this day, that the advancement
of that theory grossly and dangerously violated every canon of decency.
What pain, then, might have been averted, what far-reaching consequences
and incalculable subversion of primitive faiths checked, if some
judicious Censor of scientific thought had existed in those days to
demand, in accordance with his private estimate of the will and temper of
the majority, the suppression of the doctrine of Evolution.

Innumerable investigations of scientists on subjects such as the date of
the world's creation, have from time to time been summarised and
inconsiderately sprung on a Public shocked and startled by the revelation
that facts which they were accustomed to revere were conspicuously at
fault. So, too, in the range of medicine, it would be difficult to cite
any radical discovery (such as the preventive power of vaccination),
whose unchecked publication has not violated the prejudices and disturbed
the immediate comfort of the common mind. Had these discoveries been
judiciously suppressed, or pared away to suit what a Censorship conceived
to be the popular palate of the time, all this disturbance and discomfort
might have been avoided.

It will doubtless be contended (for there are no such violent opponents
of Censorship as those who are threatened with the same) that to compare
a momentous disclosure, such as the doctrine of Evolution, to a mere
drama, were unprofitable. The answer to this ungenerous contention is
fortunately plain. Had a judicious Censorship existed over our
scientific matters, such as for two hundred years has existed over our
Drama, scientific discoveries would have been no more disturbing and
momentous than those which we are accustomed to see made on our nicely
pruned and tutored stage. For not only would the more dangerous and
penetrating scientific truths have been carefully destroyed at birth, but
scientists, aware that the results of investigations offensive to
accepted notions would be suppressed, would long have ceased to waste
their time in search of a knowledge repugnant to average intelligence,
and thus foredoomed, and have occupied themselves with services more
agreeable to the public taste, such as the rediscovery of truths already
known and published.

Indissolubly connected with the desirability of a Censorship of Science,
is the need for Religious Censorship. For in this, assuredly not the
least important department of the nation's life, we are witnessing week
by week and year by year, what in the light of the security guaranteed by
the Censorship of Drama, we are justified in terming an alarming
spectacle. Thousands of men are licensed to proclaim from their pulpits,
Sunday after Sunday, their individual beliefs, quite regardless of the
settled convictions of the masses of their congregations. It is true,
indeed, that the vast majority of sermons (like the vast majority of
plays) are, and will always be, harmonious with the feelings--of the
average citizen; for neither priest nor playwright have customarily any
such peculiar gift of spiritual daring as might render them unsafe
mentors of their fellows; and there is not wanting the deterrent of
common-sense to keep them in bounds. Yet it can hardly be denied that
there spring up at times men--like John Wesley or General Booth--of such
incurable temperament as to be capable of abusing their freedom by the
promulgation of doctrine or procedure, divergent from the current
traditions of religion. Nor must it be forgotten that sermons, like
plays, are addressed to a mixed audience of families, and that the
spiritual teachings of a lifetime may be destroyed by ten minutes of
uncensored pronouncement from a pulpit, the while parents are sitting,
not, as in a theatre vested with the right of protest, but dumb and
excoriated to the soul, watching their children, perhaps of tender age,
eagerly drinking in words at variance with that which they themselves
have been at such pains to instil.

If a set of Censors--for it would, as in the case of Literature,
indubitably require more than one (perhaps one hundred and eighty, but,
for reasons already given, there should be no difficulty whatever in
procuring them) endowed with the swift powers conferred by freedom from
the dull tedium of responsibility, and not remarkable for religious
temperament, were appointed, to whom all sermons and public addresses on
religious subjects must be submitted before delivery, and whose duty
after perusal should be to excise all portions not conformable to their
private ideas of what was at the moment suitable to the Public's ears, we
should be far on the road toward that proper preservation of the status
quo so desirable if the faiths and ethical standards of the less
exuberantly spiritual masses are to be maintained in their full bloom.
As things now stand, the nation has absolutely nothing to safeguard it
against religious progress.

We have seen, then, that Censorship is at least as necessary over
Literature, Art, Science, and Religion as it is over our Drama. We have
now to call attention to the crowning need--the want of a Censorship in
Politics.

If Censorship be based on justice, if it be proved to serve the Public
and to be successful in its lonely vigil over Drama, it should, and
logically must be, extended to all parallel cases; it cannot, it dare
not, stop short at--Politics. For, precisely in this supreme branch of
the public life are we most menaced by the rule and license of the
leading spirit. To appreciate this fact, we need only examine the
Constitution of the House of Commons. Six hundred and seventy persons
chosen from a population numbering four and forty millions, must
necessarily, whatever their individual defects, be citizens of more than
average enterprise, resource, and resolution. They are elected for a
period that may last five years. Many of them are ambitious; some
uncompromising; not a few enthusiastically eager to do something for
their country; filled with designs and aspirations for national or social
betterment, with which the masses, sunk in the immediate pursuits of
life, can in the nature of things have little sympathy. And yet we find
these men licensed to pour forth at pleasure, before mixed audiences,
checked only by Common Law and Common Sense political utterances which
may have the gravest, the most terrific consequences; utterances which
may at any moment let loose revolution, or plunge the country into war;
which often, as a fact, excite an utter detestation, terror, and
mistrust; or shock the most sacred domestic and proprietary convictions
in the breasts of vast majorities of their fellow-countrymen! And we
incur this appalling risk for the want of a single, or at the most, a
handful of Censors, invested with a simple but limitless discretion to
excise or to suppress entirely such political utterances as may seem to
their private judgments calculated to cause pain or moral disturbance in
the average man. The masses, it is true, have their protection and
remedy against injudicious or inflammatory politicians in the Law and the
so-called democratic process of election; but we have seen that theatre
audiences have also the protection of the Law, and the remedy of boycott,
and that in their case, this protection and this remedy are not deemed
enough. What, then, shall we say of the case of Politics, where the
dangers attending inflammatory or subversive utterance are greater a
million fold, and the remedy a thousand times less expeditious?

Our Legislators have laid down Censorship as the basic principle of
Justice underlying the civic rights of dramatists. Then, let "Censorship
for all" be their motto, and this country no longer be ridden and
destroyed by free Institutions! Let them not only establish forthwith
Censorships of Literature, Art, Science, and Religion, but also place
themselves beneath the regimen with which they have calmly fettered
Dramatic Authors. They cannot deem it becoming to their regard for
justice, to their honour; to their sense of humour, to recoil from a
restriction which, in a parallel case they have imposed on others. It is
an old and homely saying that good officers never place their men in
positions they would not themselves be willing to fill. And we are not
entitled to believe that our Legislators, having set Dramatic Authors
where they have been set, will--now that their duty is made plain--for a
moment hesitate to step down and stand alongside.

But if by any chance they should recoil, and thus make answer: "We are
ready at all times to submit to the Law and the People's will, and to bow
to their demands, but we cannot and must not be asked to place our
calling, our duty, and our honour beneath the irresponsible rule of an
arbitrary autocrat, however sympathetic with the generality he may chance
to be!" Then, we would ask: "Sirs, did you ever hear of that great
saying: 'Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you!'" For it is
but fair presumption that the Dramatists, whom our Legislators have
placed in bondage to a despot, are, no less than those Legislators, proud
of their calling, conscious of their duty, and jealous of their honour.
1909.




VAGUE THOUGHTS ON ART

It was on a day of rare beauty that I went out into the fields to try and
gather these few thoughts. So golden and sweetly hot it was, that they
came lazily, and with a flight no more coherent or responsible than the
swoop of the very swallows; and, as in a play or poem, the result is
conditioned by the conceiving mood, so I knew would be the nature of my
diving, dipping, pale-throated, fork-tailed words. But, after all--I
thought, sitting there--I need not take my critical pronouncements
seriously. I have not the firm soul of the critic. It is not my
profession to know 'things for certain, and to make others feel that
certainty. On the contrary, I am often wrong--a luxury no critic can
afford. And so, invading as I was the realm of others, I advanced with a
light pen, feeling that none, and least of all myself, need expect me to
be right.

What then--I thought--is Art? For I perceived that to think about it I
must first define it; and I almost stopped thinking at all before the
fearsome nature of that task. Then slowly in my mind gathered this group
of words:

Art is that imaginative expression of human energy, which, through
technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile the
individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal emotion.
And the greatest Art is that which excites the greatest impersonal
emotion in an hypothecated perfect human being.

Impersonal emotion! And what--I thought do I mean by that? Surely I
mean: That is not Art, which, while I, am contemplating it, inspires me
with any active or directive impulse; that is Art, when, for however
brief a moment, it replaces within me interest in myself by interest in
itself. For, let me suppose myself in the presence of a carved marble
bath. If my thoughts be "What could I buy that for?" Impulse of
acquisition; or: "From what quarry did it come?" Impulse of inquiry; or:
"Which would be the right end for my head?" Mixed impulse of inquiry and
acquisition--I am at that moment insensible to it as a work of Art. But,
if I stand before it vibrating at sight of its colour and forms, if ever
so little and for ever so short a time, unhaunted by any definite
practical thought or impulse--to that extent and for that moment it has
stolen me away out of myself and put itself there instead; has linked me
to the universal by making me forget the individual in me. And for that
moment, and only while that moment lasts, it is to me a work of Art. The
word "impersonal," then, is but used in this my definition to signify
momentary forgetfulness of one's own personality and its active wants.