Pernicious Literature

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

A VERY plausible case may be made out for the perniciousness of literature. Philosophically considered, of what do the great books we read for our education consist? Of ideals belonging to a culture different from ours; of a morality based upon different conditions; of standards of chivalry, romance, class duty, which, however applicable once, for us, at best, are arbitrary; of taboos, religious, ethical, social, which have lost their raison d'être.

And of what do the good books of this generation fundamentally consist? Of at-tempts to impose upon the imagination of the reader the ideas of contemporary life achieved by some partial observer; of an imperfect philosophy of living stereotyped in its imperfections and circulated widely.

The result (so it is said) is a cramping of natural development. Facts we feed and grow upon: but false ideas, stale principles, illusory ideals (like Scott's pseudo-mediaevalism) clog the digestion, set up mental aches and pains, cause abnormalities, and check growth or thwart it. We have to live in the present; but even the new books we read would persuade us to think like 1919 or 1920; indeed, the prejudices and prepossessions of these books belong roughly a decade earlier. If we take to the classics, Boswell argues a fantastic feudalism; Shakespeare a departed aristocracy; Milton a lost theology; Keats lives in a world where industrialism does not exist. We may enjoy their books, nourish our imaginations there, escape from life as it is. But we are marked by the experience; we are held back; we lose our mental freedom.

And therefore imaginative literature is pernicious, and the better it is, the worse for us!

There is no escaping this argument by denying it totally. It is through books which are the containers of tradition that the dead hand of the past reaches out to clutch. The merest popular novel in gay slip covers when analyzed reveals a complex of soul-numbing ingredients that is perfectly appalling. Ideas of honor drifted down from medieval France; vague religious beliefs, part Christian, part Hèbrew, part Mithraic; conceptions of a "gentleman" and a "lady" which belong to early Victorian literature ; a moral code which came from Switzerland via Scot-land and Ulster; neo-romantic sentimentalism left over from the 40's—this is just a beginning.

Do not think that you can read a book, even a bad book, without encountering conventions of thought which are as incongruous in this age as herds of bison or knights in armor. You take your sacred individuality in hand every time you open a book. You never shut one without having drunk in tradition with your draught.

All this is true, even if somewhat exaggerated in statement. But why have we be-come so arrogant about sacred individualities? Since when has a man ceased to take his ease in his Shakespeare—which he reads for the exalting of his spirit, and for the love of life, and for laughter and beauty—because he fears corruption from some slant on the mob, some hint of a trace of a moral code no longer workable ! Since when have we feared to share the spiritual experiences of our ancestors (and this is literature) lest these should persuade us to live, think, believe like them ! But if we have any individuality worth considering we cannot be like them; and our thoughts will be poor thoughts, and our life a thin one, if we are afraid of our past. Only a coward thinks that literature is pernicious because it is old.