Morality in Literature
November 26, 2020 at 8:29 pm
(This post was last modified: November 26, 2020 at 8:30 pm by Belacqua.)
adapted from On Difficulty and Other Essays, by George Steiner:
In 1857 Gustave Flaubert was put on trial for his novel Madame Bovary. The prosecution argued that the book was an “outrage to public morality and religion.”
At the trial, Flaubert argued that artistic excellence, the high seriousness of the true artist, carries its own complete moral justification. Even though the work of art lies in a sphere strangely between truth and falsehood, it lies outside any current ethical code. In fact a work of art is meant to influence that code, to qualify and re-shape it towards a more universal response to human diversity. But the work of art itself is outside of the ethical code; its true morality is internal.
The justification of a work of literature is technical — in the wealth, difficulty, and suggestive force of the medium.
Trashy writing, even if it is intended for a good and moral purpose, should be censored.
Because the methods of trashy writing are inferior, it decreases the range of a reader’s sensibility. It lies by substituting false simplicity for the true intricacy of human fact. Serious fiction or poetry cannot be immoral, even if it describes sexual or immoral acts. The guarantee of a work’s morality is in the text itself — in the resources of metaphor used, in the carefulness and originality of its linguistic statement. No “content” can corrupt a serious reader’s mind. Whatever enriches the adult imagination, whatever complicates consciousness and thus breaks down the cliches of daily habit, is a high moral act. Art is privileged, indeed obligated, to perform this act. It is the live electric current which smashes and then reassembles the frozen units of conventional feeling.
This is the meaning of “art for art’s sake,” not a fashionable pose of escape.
In 1857 Gustave Flaubert was put on trial for his novel Madame Bovary. The prosecution argued that the book was an “outrage to public morality and religion.”
At the trial, Flaubert argued that artistic excellence, the high seriousness of the true artist, carries its own complete moral justification. Even though the work of art lies in a sphere strangely between truth and falsehood, it lies outside any current ethical code. In fact a work of art is meant to influence that code, to qualify and re-shape it towards a more universal response to human diversity. But the work of art itself is outside of the ethical code; its true morality is internal.
The justification of a work of literature is technical — in the wealth, difficulty, and suggestive force of the medium.
Trashy writing, even if it is intended for a good and moral purpose, should be censored.
Because the methods of trashy writing are inferior, it decreases the range of a reader’s sensibility. It lies by substituting false simplicity for the true intricacy of human fact. Serious fiction or poetry cannot be immoral, even if it describes sexual or immoral acts. The guarantee of a work’s morality is in the text itself — in the resources of metaphor used, in the carefulness and originality of its linguistic statement. No “content” can corrupt a serious reader’s mind. Whatever enriches the adult imagination, whatever complicates consciousness and thus breaks down the cliches of daily habit, is a high moral act. Art is privileged, indeed obligated, to perform this act. It is the live electric current which smashes and then reassembles the frozen units of conventional feeling.
This is the meaning of “art for art’s sake,” not a fashionable pose of escape.
