STEFAN MORAWSKI

Art and Obscenity

i no, can obscenity arise in art and, if so, what place does it occupy in the artistic IN EXPLORING the relationship between structure as a whole? These questions are of art and obscenity it is easy to stray into a a structural nature, but to answer them we whole labyrinth of disconnected issues. The must also investigate the genesis and func- problem lends itself to examination from tion of the views which maintain there is a variety of viewpoints: the purely analy- such a thing as pornography, a designa- tic, the purely pragmatic (the moral, tion, be it noted, often applied to objects religious, or political angle, for example), which do not, from the aesthetic point of or a combination of the two when it is view, admit of qualification as obscene. hoped that theoretical inquiry will yield Our first task, then, must be to clarify the guidance for a working strategy. Here I two key concepts used in the title of this have chosen for the path of analysis, but essay, which, according to some, may be even this is far from being clear-cut since complementary and, according to others, there are a number of avenues to choose are mutually exclusive. Obscenity and from: sociology (or, in broader terms, pornography, let me add, are used here as culturology), psychology, ethics, aesthetics. synonymous terms. Though obscenity us- Finally, this field can be observed from a ually is understood in a larger sense, com- wider perspective, not so much scientific prising also description of acts which do in the strict sense as philosophical. It not necessarily arouse sexual desires (for seems essential, therefore, since this is to be instance, defecation) or any usage of words an essay and not a book, to narrow the sub- which are dirty but not leading directly to ject, define our point of departure, and sexual associations, I do not wish, for the clearly specify the questions to be asked. purpose of this essay, to draw this distinc- Thus, my frame of reference is aesthetics tion. Pornography is undoubtedly obscene, and, accordingly, the problem of art and and what shall interest us as obscene will obscenity interests me primarily in terms be only of pornographic character. of the structure of art-works. The ques- tions involved in a field of inquiry so limited may be posed as follows: 1) can art I I be pornographic or, in other words, is the aesthetic phenomenon compatible with Art can be defined in various ways. Since those products of culture commonly a discussion of this problem and the es- branded as filth? 2) Even if the answer is tablishment of my own position are be- yond the scope of this essay, let me briefly recapitulate the principles which readers STEFAN MORAWSKI, professor of aesthetics at the familiar with my earlier works will have University of Warsaw, Poland, taught at the Uni- 1 versity of California, Berkeley, Summer, 1966. He seen argued in full elsewhere. In my view, has published many works on aesthetics in Polish we should reject the two extreme ap- and English. proaches which have persistently recurred 194 STEFAN M O R A W S K I in the history of aesthetics, namely, the not only a strictly aesthetic one. It would absolutism which maintains that art is a be wrongheaded, however, to try to supra-historical phenomenon and as such arbitrate on what is or is not a work of has to fulfill certain a priori conditions, art simply on the basis of the nature of and the relativism which holds that the the ideas implied by its mimetic values. list of qualities considered definitive of art Equally questionable is the grading of is inexhaustible since different peoples, in- works of art according to the merits of deed different individuals, have taken a their moral, religious, political ideas. The different view of the extent and substance position to which I adhere might be called of artistic phenomena at different periods structuralist-historical, that is, in the of history. I think it more reasonable to course of historical-cultural processes we avoid either of these poles and look for note the emergence and establishment of certain constants arising out of the natural relatively autonomous objects which we dispositions of the human race and the ac- qualify as artistic and whose basic values cumulated social and cultural experience are of course aesthetic. These may be of mankind. Artistic values have emerged purely formal values but they might in a historical process of gradual de- equally well be mimetic or functional, or tachment from a tissue of magico-religious primarily expressive.2 phenomena, informational or purely rec- Obscenity seems a more straightforward reational pursuits, and technico-productive concept since indecency in art or life endeavors. Eventually they became discrete usually means the same thing to most and independent, as cohesive structures people. But unambiguity is only apparent. furnished either with purely sensory ele- Although the two international conven- ments or with mimetic or functional fea- tions on this subject—Paris, May 4, I9I0 tures. At the same time, each of these more and Geneva, December 31, 1924—seemed or less complex structures may contain ad- to express the conviction that pornography ditional, specific values denoted by the is readily recognizable, neither offered any term expression. The fundamental value clearly phrased definition which would of art, and so its constituent element, is distinguish pornography from art, for ex- thus what Gestaltists call a "pregnant" ample. As will be seen, the problems of structure. But artistic values are of many definition are hardly less formidable than kinds: the purely formal, the mimetic (in in the case of art. Let us take a closer look the representational arts), the functional at the conventional notions of pornogra- (in the applied arts), and the expressive. phy. Obscenity might be defined as the The work of art always recreates some representation or suggestion in words or quasi-real world, contrasted with actual images, with the help of objects, themes, objects, but it is also invariably a physical motifs, or situations, of all those elements or cultural article. For our purposes it is which belong to the sexual life. I have the mimetic values which form the crucial deliberately cast the definition in such layer. They are an integral part of su- general terms so that it can embrace perior artistic structures and it is in them every kind of socio-cultural stereotype. that moral, religious, political, philosophi- Questions, then, immediately come to cal, or other ideas are embodied through mind: what do we mean by "the sexual representation (modified, of course, by life"? Does it refer to displays of nudity, or form and the particular pattern of ele- to descriptions of intercourse, or perhaps ments) of the reality in which we live. to accounts of perversion? Again, where do Such ideas have frequently been the salient the limits of obscenity run in different cul- feature of an artistic structure. We cannot, tural configurations? These are good ques- therefore, exclude the reactions, usually tions, but before we tackle them let us try animated, of the public to these ideas, to improve our working definition of among other things because each work of obscenity. From judicial rulings and no- art is a socio-cultural phenomenon and torious acts of censorship it appears that Art and Obscenity 195 the touchstone is calculated salacity, that form of sexual contact among the lumpen is, deliberate excitement of the sexual proletariat. But, despite the undoubtedly imagination. These were the grounds on relative nature of the concept of obscenity, which Henry Miller's Sexus was confiscated I think the definition given above can be in Norway in 1958-9. Lady Chatterley's usefully adopted for our considerations. Lover was hounded for years on the charge Psychological and sociological factors do that Lawrence, for depraved purposes, was not change the fact that pornography is soliciting readers to follow the example of commonly regarded as flagrant erotic dis- his characters. The same fate was suffered play designed to excite the spectator, by Ulysses.3 reader, or listener. We should, however, There is, however, a more subtle thread remember that the statement "such-and- running through the court cases. This is such a work is obscene" must always be the argument that pornography deals with subjected to specific historical and psycho- the private side of sex. Thus coitus is logical analysis. Otherwise we will not be private but not kissing, homosexual urges able to appreciate why, for instance. Judge but not teenage love-play, masturbation Lockwood sentenced Oscar Wilde to two but not the caresses of husband and wife. years in prison for an offense which for the The reverse side of this argument is the Greeks of Plato's and Alcibiades' day was assertion that the pornographer's handling a socially approved practice, or why the of sex is vulgar and explicit: explicit be- German parliament at the close of the cause of the naturalistic description, vul- nineteenth century banned the Venus de gar because of the deliberate inflation of Milo while the sixteenth, seventeenth, and sex to the exclusion of all the other re- eighteenth centuries had revered the Venus lationships between men and women or of Medici as a pure and matchless monu- human beings in general. ment to feminine beauty. If we adopt these qualifications, we shall mean by obscenity, not the sugges- Ill tion or representation of erotic motives or situations, but a specific kind of treatment, I shall now try to answer the first of the namely, their exploitation for the pur- two questions posed at the beginning of poses of arousing the sex instincts of the this essay. In my view, a work of art is not reader or spectator with the help of and cannot be an object of an obscene symbols, objects, or scenes of an utterly nature. The mutual exclusiveness of art private nature shown in a vulgar and and obscenity is apparent in the three explicit way. This definition is an advance fundamental aspects in which all artistic on the previous one since it lends more phenomena are examined, namely, the substance to the concept. But it, too, raises genetic, the structural, and the functional. doubts, since we immediately have to rela- In other words, I take into account both tivize such terms as "arousing the sex the structure of the work and its creator instincts," "private," "vulgar." Here we and audience. But a test of pornographic are encroaching on the domain of psy- content cannot be conducted purely on chology and social anthropology. It would the basis either of the reaction of the not be hard to find a host of examples to audience or of the intention of the artist illustrate that what is a sexual stimulus to as explained in some separate text. This some leaves others cold, that the private is all secondary evidence, whereas the basic sphere in French and English civilization criterion, in my contention, is the struc- is wholly dissimilar, and different again in ture of the work. Identification of a European culture as a whole from what is particular work as pornographic, however, recognized as such in Trobriand. The can never be reduced simply to a demon- same applies to vulgarity. Behavior which stration of its structure. Definition usually in middle or upper class company would depends on a combination of syndromatic be regarded as shockingly gross is a natural elements: either the intention of the artist 196 STEFAN M O R A W S K I or the mode of reception, or at times both, certain periods of European art (for in- are the controlling check, substantiating stance, the fourth century Sicyon school, the accuracy of the decipherment of its French Rococo painting, or the oeuvre of structure. Thus, if the structure is taken Félicien Rops) the pursuit of an erotic ap- as an independent variable, then in the peal was very pronounced. But it would be definition of the pornographic quotient of wrong to interpret this unqualifiedly, in a work here proposed, the intention of the each case, as an attempt to arouse sexual artist and the method of perception act excitement. Malinowski emphasized the as dependent variables. As a result of the magico-religious significance of the sexual interaction between the independent varia- games and themes in Trobriand folklore ble and the dependent variables, we ob- which he described in his Sex Life of the tain alternative pornographic readings, Savages. These elements served to uphold and works classified in this category can cultural bonds, to fortify social approval be graded according to whether their in- for the acknowledged ideal of beauty in terpretation as pornographic is more or both sexes, and finally to reaffirm ritually less strong. Be it added that this defini- the primacy of life over death, of procrea- tional construction has to be devised in tion over sterility. In Indian as in African relation to a particular historical period, or Brazilian art the erotic intertwines with that is, the one in which the work was the religious. We have here, I think, a produced. Any subsequent patterns of per- special mimetic content, special because ception must be referred back to the the mentality and emotional responses, the original circumstances, to the original con- customs and moral standards of primitive text. men or others living in a world of specific religious canons incorporate sexual motifs Seen thus, the antithesis between art 4 and pornography emphasized a moment as an organic part of them. With Boucher ago becomes perfectly clear on all three or Rops the position is different, but here, counts, genetic, structural, and func- too, a distinction should be drawn. In the tional: genetic, since it is not the artist's first case, the deliberate stimulation of the intention to arouse sexual excitement; sexual imagination appears to have been structural, since the erotic elements of a in harmony with the psycho-social climate work are never the chief or dominant prevalent among Boucher's audience, and values, nor even of equal weight to the in addition—which seems to me the crucial aesthetic ones; functional, since the aes- point—nudity was for Boucher simply a thetic experience proper consists precisely modish and popular subject which he in the elimination of a practical, opera- cultivated for artistic purposes. We can tional attitude involving us in the work of see, then, that it is not only the structure art as if it were a real person or situation. of a work, but also its superstructure (that It might be retorted that in primitive art, is, its socio-historical context) which de- and not only there, the erotic stimuli termines its character and its degree of art obliterate or at least eclipse all others, that or obscenity. There is a comparison here throughout the centuries sexual motifs with the behavior and acting styles of the have been embodied in artistic structures Italians which strike the non-Italian as un- in scatological form without being in any duly flamboyant but which seem wholly way purely secondary elements, and that natural to their compatriots. appreciation of a work of art which sees Rops is another matter, since the pur- only its aesthetic values is lopsided, while veying of sexual thrills is with him all too advocation of such a response sounds re- transparent. But this problem goes beyond markably like aestheticism. I will try to the scope of the questions now under con- answer these charges and so buttress my sideration since Rops is a borderline case own position. which requires separate scrutiny. In any There is no denying that not only in case, it is bound up with the second primitive but also in Indian art and at counter-argument concerning the erotic as Art and Obscenity 197 a dominant feature of certain artistic misleading the interpretation of art given structures. If examples are actually to be by Edward Fuchs in his remarkable and found of this, then we have to decide still interesting work, Geschichte der eroti- whether they are really artistic or at least schen Kunst (1912). Here we can leave to what degree. This problem will be dis- aside the fact that he proceeded from the cussed in the next section. The third ob- methodological assumptions of historical jection has to do with the mode of per- materialism to state—without any regard ception of a work of art. The accusation to the inherent contradictions of this posi- of aestheticism has already been parried, tion—that the regular and fundamental since under purely aesthetic values we also impulse of art was the sexual impulse. For subsumed mimetic ones and the moral, our purposes what is more relevant is his political, religious, philosophical, or other contention that the basic law, Lebens- ideas planted in their tissue. It is obvious gesetz, of art is employment of erotic that we respond differently to Rembrandt's motifs and his argument that the stronger Return of the Prodigal Son than to the erotic effect of a work the more artistic Mondrian's Boogie Woogie, to the Sienese it is. Yet Fuchs himself talks of the degra- Madonnas than to Renoir's nudes. We do dation of art at least since the Rococo not read Rabelais' Gargantua et Panta- period because of its decadent treatment of gruel or Brantôme's Dames galantes in the sex. He emphasizes several times that the same way as the novels of Richardson only feature of art is a "healthy sensu- or Dickens. Similar variations appear in alism." In this connection he stresses the the aesthetic experience engendered by the point that the erotic motif, das Stoffliche, plays of Wycherley and that produced by should be controlled by artistic means to Goethe or Hugo. But this does not alter the extent that "das gemein Sinnliche the fact that in each case we are reacting to aufgelöst und völlig überwunden ist." The mimesis, that is, to a specific quasi-world weakness of Fuchs's case lies in his failure represented in the work within the limits to explain what this "healthy eroticism" of its structure. The moment that the implies and to draw the conclusions from ideas plucked from the mimetic fabric this sensible reservation about formal ar- loom larger in our response than the tistic predominance in the presentation of structure of the work taken as a whole we sexual elements. It is impossible to react pass into the sphere of non-aesthetic ex- sexually, though this is the response postu- periences of which sex is one. The differ- lated by Fuchs, to works in which the ence with which I am here concerned was erotic has been in a sense neutralized by fully grasped by Freud, though he had the artist. As a result, from Fuchs's highly little reason indeed to accept a condition instructive book we learn a great deal of the neutralization of the libido. In his about the unending obsession with sex in theoretical writings on the relationship be- works of art, but the evidence adduced has tween art and sex he revealingly classifies not been properly classified. Fuchs has aesthetic experiences proper under Vor- completely failed to see that the works lust. Poetry, like children's games and day- quoted by him can be arranged in a dreaming, gratifies our deepest sexual de- continuum: from the blatantly porno- sires, but the poet not only condenses his graphic, like the priapic statues in Pompeii material, not only hides the real longings and the frescoes in the Casa Vetii, or the behind symbols, but also to some extent sixteenth-century painting by Van Orley purges these drives of the libido, arranging showing Neptune having intercourse with the psychic contents connected with them a nymph, through works like Poussin's into artistic form. This operation releases Satyr Discovers Venus Sleeping or Rem- in us not only enjoyment of the cathartic brandt's etching The French Bed, to works type but also and above all pleasures of in which the erotic is only a means to- a strictly aesthetic nature.5 wards different artistic objectives. This applies, for instance, to Fouquet's well- I regard, therefore, as inconsistent and 198 STEFAN M O R A W S K I known portrait of Agnes Sorel, the mistress denda, and Botticelli's Venus is more a of Charles VII, which showed her as a poetic symbol than a flesh-and-blood Madonna with one breast exposed, with woman; but even before Rubens, the great Rubens' portrait of his wife, Helene Venetians (Titian, Giorgione, Tintoretto) Fourment, in the nude, with the anti- were bringing out a pagan and sensuous papist Dutch etchings decrying the lasciv- beauty in their women's bodies, while in iousness of monks and nuns, among them the same century Rembrandt did not balk a little known copper engraving by Rem- at showing ugliness of the nude. In none brandt, Monk with Girl among the Reeds, of these cases is sex the keynote of the and finally with the English cartoons of work; thus it cannot be claimed that the Gillray, Rowlandson, and Cruikshank artist was seeking to arouse the sexual where too great play is made of sexual imagination. The further history of Eu- elements for the purposes of caricature. ropean painting corroborates this diagno- If my arguments carry conviction, we sis. Ingres' Turkish Bath caused as great should—all rejoinders to the contrary— a scandal in its time as did Manet's Lunch- uphold the proposition that art and eon on the Grass, but the erotic motif here obscenity are mutually exclusive. Now let was no more than a peg for an exercise in us take some examples which will illus- aesthetics. The modernist period—in the trate the conflict between the aesthetic nudes of Toulouse-Lautrec, Marquet, or posture which seeks to do justice by a work Friesz—favored ordinariness in its choice and the non-aesthetic attitude which trims of model; in its works we can detect a it to the needs and prejudices of the specific sexual tantalization and an un- perceiver. Let us begin with the simplest disguised earthiness of situation. Yet these problem: the portrayal of the nude in the artists, too, achieved primarily painterly European tradition. In Greek art represen- values. From Renoir's and Cezanne's tations of Venus were, as I have remarked, Bathers and Degas' Woman at Her Dress- a natural occurrence. The point, however, ing Table these subjects have been a staple is not that Greek custom licensed public of avant-garde art, modified in keeping displays of the nude, since it might be with the programmatic rules of each school countered that the Greeks may have seen and gradually loosing their suggestiveness nothing wrong in such works, but for us in the swing to non-figurativeness (as in after centuries of Christian, or rather Delaunay's Three Graces), decorativism Puritan, civilization they are utterly in- (Miro's Nude before Her Mirror), or decent. What is relevant is that the Venus finally to surrealist metaphysics (Coutaud's 6 Anadyomene, like the Venus de Milo, was Erotic Magic). Certain social groups, in- above all else an ideal expression of fem- spired by certain institutions, have always inine beauty cast in harmonious forms. jibbed at such works—at least the repre- Anyone who looks at the sleeping figure of sentational ones—and denounced their the Hermaphrodite in the Rome National authors as debauchers. But this is running Museum purely from the sexual point of ahead. We will come back later to the view, engrossed by the erect phallus and identity, the motives, and the credentials lost to the expression and formal rhythms of those who tax portrayers of nudity with of the sculpture, is quite simply aestheti- sowing corruption. cally blind and nothing can be done about Literature is, of course, a far riper source him until he is taught to see. When Ru- for the student of these conflicts between bens painted the encounter between the the legitimate and the distorted response King and Queen in his Maria de Medici to art. We could go back to Flaubert's cycle, he bared her bosom, but the whole Madame Bovary, Baudelaire's Flowers of body had already been shown naked since Evil or Zola's Earth to turn up examples the times of Masaccio and Botticelli or of the classic misunderstanding between Van Eyck. True, Adam and Eve in the the work expressing not the slightest at- Ghent Altar modestly conceal their pu- tack on the sexual imagination and a Art and Obscenity 199 group of readers who judge it by non- on the still fashionable concept of in- aesthetic standards from the angle of their stinctivism as the only antidote to the false own moral taboos. But let us confine our- ideas and words borne in the head. Despite selves to the most notorious twentieth- its tone of nihilism. Tropic of Cancer was century controversies. In Lady Chatter- the revolt of a deeply lacerated man. ley's Lover Lawrence championed man's Paraphrasing Marx in the Economic and right to full personal happiness against Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), we middle-class prudery. This cause had al- might say that Miller simply wanted to see ready been taken up by Freud who tren- man return to himself, to his own dignity; chantly demonstrated that the mental he longed for a release from capitalist ailments of the patients under his observa- alienation, but not fully grasping the proc- tion had their roots in sexual disturbances. esses in which he was trapped, he could find Lawrence made a religion out of sex but a way out only in a reversion to barbaric his assault on the moral cobwebs of his day existence. Miller's book does not titillate; was highly salutary. Henry Miller is a it appalls. Its persuasive function is purga- thornier problem. Tropic of Cancer was an tive; it belongs in the Dionysian element. artist's revolt against capitalist civilization Nabokov's Lolita is in a somewhat differ- in all its forms. At the beginning of the ent category. Here, as in Lawrence, we book, he writes of the need to shock are back in Freudian territory. Nabokov readers, of the necessity of a blood transfu- defends Humbert as a man who is sick but sion, and this injection of fresh blood whose intentions merit sympathy; he shows could be found only in the primitive, di- the mechanism of his genuine passion and rect experiencing of his own existence. In love for Lolita. Although in Part 2 (Chap- this, sex occupies a central place. Through ters 31, 32, and 36) he makes Humbert his hero Miller confesses: "I am spiritually admit that his behavior deserves censure, dead. Physically I am alive. Morally I am this act of self-accusation is extenuated by free. The world which I have departed is a the portrayal of Lolita as a tease with a menagerie... If I am a hyena I am a lean natural bent for seeking premature pleas- and hungry one. I go forth to fatten my- ures. Nabokov is, therefore, a humanist self." 7 Miller's hero feels utterly isolated. writer in the nil humanum sense. People Paris is for him an escape from humanity; suffer from various infatuations and fight he is an outsider in the city which is "a their passions in various ways. On this blind alley at the end of which is a reckoning, Humbert is, if different, no scaffold." 8 An exile from the human world worse than Othello or Werther. Lolita is he hates, he tries to return to the earth not a protest against a whole civilization ("I belong to the earth"), the symbol of nor does it expound a personal philosophy durability. Sexual passion, he claims, is like Tropic of Cancer. Nevertheless it, too, the only way of revitalizing existence, of cries out against a restrictive moral code returning to natural drives, to elemental which stigmatizes certain ailments of a desires and urges.9 One can, of course, read sexual nature (as natural in the end as Tropic of Cancer as pornography, but healthy responses since Freud has said that only by going against its grain. For it is we are all in some sense sick) and the be- a philosophical book, encapsulating the havior to which they lead as immoral and rebelliousness of the artists of the thirties. their inclusion in a work of art as obscene. Its climate is similar to that of Joyce and Those who tried to read Lolita "for the Kafka; all three protested with the same dirty bits" must have been quickly dis- violence against the realities of their enchanted. It is a serious and difficult times, although each of them sought to book, distanced from its theme and written resolve his dramatic situation in a different with profound compassion for its self- way. A kindred world to Miller's can also tortured hero. In 1956 Nabokov wrote of be seen in the oppressive, harshly tense Lolita: "For me a work of fiction exists paintings of Soutine. This world abuts only insofar as it affords me what I shall 200 STEFAN M O R A W S K I bluntly call aesthetic bliss..." 10 Elsewhere the storm center of a controversy through- he observes of pornography: out the European press: Bergman's The Silence. Some denounced it as filth, pe- Obscenity must be mated with banality because riod. A meticulous score was kept of the every kind of aesthetic enjoyment has to be en- tirely replaced by simple sexual stimulation... . offending passages: copulation (twice), Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be masturbation. The people drawn to this limited to the copulation of clichés. Style, struc- film for the same prurient motives as the ture, imagery should never distract the reader readers of Tropic of Cancer or Lolita were from his tepid lust. The novel must consist of an alternation of sexual scenes." in no mood to notice the philosophical subtleties or the artistic merits. In fact, all An even richer vein of inquiry is the the erotic episodes are essential counter- film. If it is fairly easy to distinguish liter- points to the film's central theme of total ature with a capital L (that is, books of isolation. The two heroines live in a world serious artistic purpose) from the second- so alienated that any kind of communica- rate production, in the cinema this line tion, even with those closest to them, has tends to be blurred. The film is one of the been severed. Sex seems to be the only life- mass media and in the vast majority of line left, the only hope of making contact cases it is two-faced, its loyalties divided with other people, if only through a between art and entertainment. As the moment's gratification. And when this epigraph for his three-volume L'Erotisme chance has failed, there remains only one's au cinéma (Paris, I960), Lo Duca took own body, and the pleasures it can yield, Malraux's aphorism that the East has as an escape from the depths. Both sisters opium and the West has women; he con- lose; sex proves a hollow salvation. If the cludes that eroticism is so characteristic world is empty, if it alienates (symbolized a feature of contemporary European cul- by the endless, labyrinthine corridors of ture that a highly realistic, "documentary" the hotel, by the dwarfs ostracized from art form like the cinema would be sailing society, by the parallel figures of the old under the falsest colors if it fought shy of waiter and the small boy, both of them sex. But if we think of films with a distinct equally alone and hungry for affection), and outspoken sexual bias, like Autant- then an attempt must be made to break Lara's Le Diable au corps, Malle's Les out of this situation. A note written by the Amants, Vadim's Et Dieu créa la femme, dying aunt to the boy is Bergman's porte- Clouzot's La Vérité, Fellini's Dolce Vita, or parole. Whether his philosophy is con- Antonioni's L'Aventura, we will see that vincing is beside the point. All that mat- in none of them was the erotic an end in ters here is that this is a film which strikes itself, that none of these directors was seek- one of the most dramatic chords of our ing to titivate the audience. Fellini rakes times, a film which is shatteringly true on over his orgy scenes with the cold eye of a its own terms and handles its subject with moralist; Antonioni shows up the hero's consummate artistry. dramatic emptiness by the frantic pursuit It might be answered that Bergman has of kicks, his emotional crippledness in a deliberately set out to shock. Be that as it shipwrecked world without personal ties; may, it does not undermine our argument. Autant-Lara and Malle extol the passions Even if he was trying to shock, there was which lend life richness and poetry; Va- nothing lubricious in his motives. The dim's film is a paean to "dem ewig Weib- worst we could say is that he has not lichen," to the feminine abandon and in- scrupled to show a woman in so un- nocent charms of a modern Aphrodite as conscionably intimate an act as masturba- elemental as nature herself; Clouzot traces tion. But this betokens only intellectual the tragic search for love in a world with- and moral courage, not an intention to out bearings or directions which can only deprave and corrupt. On the contrary, if offer temporary unions. I will now deal nil humanum alienum est, there is no sub- with another film which has recently been ject on earth off limits to the genuine Art and Obscenity 201 artist. Let me repeat once again: it is not Lady Chatterley's Lover by the United content but presentation which is the test States Postmaster General. This opinion of the obscenity of a work. In other words, repeats the argument that the author's in- it is necessary and reasonable to dis- tent must be judged by the structural tinguish between eroticism and obscenity. content of the work. While conceding that This point was firmly stressed in (from my an author might write an obscene book perspective) an excellent book by Eberhard despite the best of intentions. Judge and Phyllis Kronhausen, Pornography and Bryan made the point that literary and the Law (1959). I have to assent to the intellectual merit is sufficient evidence on distinction made by them, namely that which to decide whether it is porno- obscenity can only be tested when the graphic. Lawrence's book was recognized reader or the beholder is incessantly at- as exceptionally fine. The same point of tacked by erotic stimulants, and the prod- view was persuasively defended by E. uct is used exclusively or almost solely as and Ph. Kronhausen. Their argument an aphrodisiac. Erotic literature or art, on addressed against arbitrary labelling some the contrary, presents sex and its concomi- artists as lewd, lascivious, predominantly tants in the rich life-frame. appealing to prurient interests in nudity, This sentiment is shared by the liberal etc., on the basis that someone or some judges who have stood out against the group is sexually frustrated brought them persistent attempts to ban works dealing to the following, radical conclusion: No with the subjects regarded as taboo by cer- penal code can be modelled in respect to tain sections of society. Let me take two judging obscenity on "community stand- cases quoted in Alec Craig's book, one of ards." Those standards are always vulnera- which represented a real breakthrough in ble; therefore the only verifiable criterion obscenity legislation. This was Judge can be the structure and within it first of Woolsey's clearance of Ulysses in 1933, a all the content of the examined work. judgment subsequently upheld by the Both these cases and the opinions of United States Court of Appeals. Its opin- authorities on the legal issues, as well as ion, delivered by Judge Hand, declared, the view of such experts as the Kronhausens, "whether a particular book would tend to that the acid test is the intention expressed excite [the sex] impulses must be tested... in the work and not the tendency imputed against its effect on a person with average to it, support my contention. Thus I can sex instincts—what the French call l' now rest my case that art and obscenity homme moyen sensuel." What is even are incompatible.13 I propose to make more important, points 3 and 4 of the only certain modifications in order to be opinion clearly imply that the author's in- able to answer the second of our questions: tent is to be deduced from the structure of can obscene elements operate in a work of the work itself. Arguing that literature art and, if so, how? should enjoy the same immunity as works of science, the judgment states: I V

The question in each case is whether a publica- In arguing the antithesis between art and tion taken as a whole has a libidinous effect.... obscenity I have been invoking an ideal or, In applying this test, relevancy of the objection- strictly speaking, an optimal model. In able parts to the theme, the established reputa- tion of the work in the estimation of approved actual fact each cultural product is artistic critics, if the book is modern, and the verdict or obscene to a varying degree. The ef- of the past, if it is ancient, are persuasive pieces fect of this relativism is to admit the of evidence, for works of art are not likely to sus- presence of the lewd in artworks. Its place tain a high position with no better warrant for in art depends on the kind of work, and their existence that their obscene content.13 on the proportion between the strictly The second case was the decision of aesthetic and the dirty elements. I shall Judge Bryan revoking the confiscation of try to isolate some of the main types. 202 STEFAN M O R A W S K I In a work of art, as my analysis has and that which definitely falls on the far shown, the erotic features are so resorbed side of this line. I am thinking of Félicien by the aesthetic values that they cannot Rops, not the whole of his work, of course, play a separate and relatively independent but its most popular products. Although it role. But there have been and are works seems a little fulsome to compare his gifts, which contain certain obscene portions as Baudelaire did in a sonnet in 1865, with elevated sometimes even into obscene se- the Pyramid of Cheops, although Rops quences, retaining a certain measure of himself was surely exaggerating his autonomy. They are either so obtrusive achievements in claiming to have found that they burst out of the total structure, "une formule nouvelle," the artistic merits or they are interpolations or even in- of his drawings and etchings are beyond crustations unconnected with the concept dispute. Nor can we deny him a certain of the work. One could point to a fair philosophy of life, idiosyncratic though it sprinkling of such obscene portions in was: his guiding lights were Baudelaire, Aretino, and certain passages in Henry Poe, and Huysmans, and he shared their Miller more than hold their own on this dandyism and misogynism, contempt for score. Smaller but equally striking gob- the mob and hatred of the bourgeois. His bets of this kind can be found in Rabelais, sexual obsessions were fundamentally Sa- in Casanova's Memoirs, in Diderot's Jac- tanic: we have only to recall his Porno- ques le Fataliste, in Faulkner's Sanctuary, cracie, a symbol of the blind lusts which and in Lolita. On the other hand, they drive men to destruction, or his "Le vol et are notably missing from Laclos' Liaisons la prostitution dominent le monde," or his dangereuses. It is enough to think back visions of men and women ravaged by over Letters LXXIX and LXXXV, relat- syphilis and drink.14 Nevertheless, the ing the adventures of Chevalier Prévan, to majority of his water colors, prints, and see that the overriding tone here is a kind drawings are lewd. The women are shown of intellectual naughtiness, a delight in from the back, with their legs apart and the art of cynical seduction. This mood bending forward; invariably they sport has, for that matter, nurtured one of the Folies-Bergère-type black stockings and chief strains in French literature, one gloves, which luridly point up the naked- which ought not to be confused with ness of their breasts, thighs, bellies; usually pornography, although the ambience of there are men present at these brazen, such books makes for the evocation of a frequently disgusting displays. At times sexual atmosphere. Rops deliberately stressed the narcissism of women by making them hold or cup In all the works cited in the previous their breast and eye it winsomely. Le paragraph, the obscene portions are re- miroir de la coquetterie. Seule, le Maillot, lated to the artistic design. But this cannot Nubilité, Impudeur, Suffisance—these are be said of a film like Sjöman's 491. This just a random sample of works which con- has two scenes (homosexual intercourse found an aesthetic response but invite an and bestialism) whose showing cannot be erotic one. True, the climate of Rops's justified by the needs of the storyline or pictures has a smack of the whole period— as dramatically necessary. The film is Toulouse-Lautrec, Strindberg, Przybyszew- about juvenile delinquents and an experi- ski. Women were looked upon as incarna- ment in re-education. The episodes in tions of the devil and, since "am Anfang question can only be regarded as dirt for war des Geschlecht," eroticism was at once dirt's sake; they pander to the baser in- demonized and exposed in a gross and stincts and are bound to stimulate a larger naturalistic manner. AH that can be said, measure of sexual than aesthetic sensa- then, is that obscenity fitted in with the tions. artistic vision of the time, but even so, no The case I now want to deal with is a one presented it so furiously and aggres- kind of halfway house between the work sively, or in such abundance, as Rops. In which is closer to art than pornography Art and Obscenity 203 the pictures quoted, he seems to me more counterfeit filled with a carefully balanced of a pornographer than an artist but not mixture of sex and sadism. This litera- because he drew attention, as Huysmans ture of the gutter is unfortunately a staple wrote, to the apocalypse of prostitution. of an ill, neurotic system of culture. The The whore has been a heroine of drama obscenity here lies in the general atmos- and literature since the beginning of the phere of the product: the writing is blunt nineteenth century and in our day has had and nasty, studiously bent on arousing the a remarkable run in the cinema. She be- reader. Apart from this pulp fiction with longs with the dispossessed and the rebels its scabrous stock-in-trade, the market is of capitalist society. From Fleur de Marie flooded with other appeals of a tamer but in Mystères de Paris to Fellini's Cabiria no less lubricious nature: most magazines and the Mercouri character in Dassin's are crowded with pictures of artfully Never on Sunday she has even been r e p posed, naked girls, and the majority of resented as one of the select company of advertisements use the same kind of sexual the pure in heart. Once again it is not the hard sell. subject which matters but the presentation. In this same class we should also include The nearest approach to Rops's trollops the would-be artistic strip-tease (with its in the cinema has been Marlene Dietrich's elements of mock-copulation and mock- wanton in The Blue Angel. fellatio). Paris teems with shows of this A different kind of proportion between kind, of various degrees of quality. I am obscenity and aesthetic values arises when concerned here only with the best produc- the latter are either unremarkable or tions in which each number is preceded by downright exiguous. In these cases, even an intelligent line of patter, skillful mu- themes of no great piquancy take control sic and lighting, plus graceful and attrac- and distil an atmosphere more sexual than tive performers, the whole of which adds artistic. A film like Gilda is a typical ex- up to something like art. But it will al- ample. The film industry has, in fact, made ways be no more than a sham, since in a specialty of this kind of pabulum since the main the only purpose is to put the it has a ready-made appeal for the less audience into a sexual trance. The strip- discriminating public, purveying as it does show, even when it aspires to theater, a glib illusion of art and more or less tellingly demonstrates exactly what por- calculated doses of sexual stimulation. It nography is. In primitive art—in Brazil, was in films of this sort that Marilyn Mon- Africa, India—we also come across erotic roe and Brigitte Bardot were launched— dances built around the same motives as and duly dismissed by serious critics as in the sophisticated striptease: women nothing more than sex symbols; more dancing with sticks and imitating the act substantial scripts brought out a latent of sex. Yet the primitive dance is either dramatic talent. Other actresses have re- part of a ritual in which all members of mained glorified pin-ups, press-button the tribe participate, or it is a rudimentary dummies put through their erotic paces in form of theater or mime in which socially one piece of mass-produced hokum af- important phenomena are enacted. In the ter another.15 In art there seems to be a strip-tease only the aphrodisiac function counterpart here in such works as the is left: for our benefit it is a demonstration Venus Callipygos, Museo Nationale, Na- of ari amatoria or else a preparation for it ples; the Renaissance woodcut by P. Flöt- with measured stimuli. ner, Eroticum, Friedrich-Museum, Berlin; Of course this kind of production can or the Dutch work, Monk and Nun, c. be found in earlier centuries. I have 1600, Haarlem Museum, in which a monk mentioned the statues in Pompeii with fondles the bare breast of a nun and leans their accent on erection and illustration of lustfully over her. intercourse in various positions. Edward The final kind of work is that which Fuchs in his already quoted study, vol. I, masquerades as art but is really a tawdry has collected reproductions of many works 204 STEFA N M O R A W S K I in which para-erotic stimulation of the only ways of offsetting lewdness but they spectator was the main purpose. It is re- serve to sum up our point of view on the vealing that in the Middle Ages this kind mutual exclusiveness of art and obscenity. of feature appears in architecture, in It should be added, however, that on the obscene jokes. Some of the Renaissance various rungs of the pornographic ladder copper engravings of Hans S. Beham and the qualification of obscene may be at- above all the countless etchings of the tached to passages which were never in- Rococo period with their titivating style tended as such by the author. Here we galant could serve as copybook examples have to do with the mechanism of the of a quasi-artistic but at bottom porno- actual structure of the work in which graphic communiqué. The same could be artistic values may be overshadowed by said of some English cartoons of the late extremely forceful erotic themes or, as a eighteenth century. Fuchs reproduces, for result of the inadequacy of the artistic instance, a lampoon of flagellations values, even commonplace varieties of the which plays entirely on the coarsest sexual latter appear in a much stronger light. associations—a man with his trousers down Before passing on to the next section, straddling a woman while a second woman we ought briefly to examine the relation- with bared breasts flogs him, the whole ship between the particular arts and scene lit by a candle shaped like an erect obscenity. So far I have omitted all men- phallus. tion of the non-representational arts. Archi- Thus we have the answer to our second tecture and music provide too scant question. The obscene can have a place in material for scrutiny of their obscenity quo- art-works in various make-ups depending tient. Although the applied arts have had on the expressiveness and aggressivensss their share of mimetic features (Greek of the lewd portions and on the weight of vases, for example), although it is possible the artistic values. Culture products can be to regard free-standing sculpture of an graded along a scale running from those erotic character as an architectural com- in which the obscene is almost wholly im- plex (for instance, the thirty phalluses and mersed in the artistic tissue to those in twenty vaginas in Dinapur on the India- which the reverse is true, that is, from Burma border), although music in con- works of art in the strictest sense to un- junction with a libretto or ballet can en- abashed pornography. We can distinguish gender sexual associations, these are all four basic creative methods by means of borderline cases. Primitive architecture which even a considerable stock of obscene and sculpture have been explained away portions is, so to speak, neutralized. First, as symbolic manifestations of the libido,16 the erotic elements may be treated meta- but in the process it is forgotten that physically. In this case sex is regarded as architecture derived from certain needs the absolute or related to some other and the technical resources available, while absolute. This was the approach of Law- sculpture has a magico-religious nature. rence, and in Polish literature of Przybys- Music is an a-semantic art and so multi- zewski and Witkiewicz. Second, the sexual valent that its texture alone, without any may be poeticized, that is, invested with a additional elements, is incapable of sug- pronounced emotional charge. The love- gesting anything erotic. Certain parts of making scenes in Malle's Les Amants or the Warsaw production of Luigi Nono's Clouzot's La Vérité are precisely of this Red Coat (October, 1962) worked on the kind. Third, the description of sex may be sexual imagination since the choreog- intellectualized through a distancing of the rapher, Françoise Adret, played up the characters from their behavior. Aldous scene of Don Perlimplino's impotence and Huxley was the past master of this tech- Belisa's five adventures on her wedding nique. Finally, the most frequent method, night. This was a classic example of what aestheticization, that is, the accenting of we have called obscene portions. On the such values as sound, color, shape, move- other hand, in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, ment, etc. These four devices are not the the erotic hints which lie in the ballet are Art and Obscenity 205 so submerged in the musical conception pornography frequently is accompanied that the artistic values dominate the whole by purgative cathexy. Granted even that structure of the performance. catharsis of the kind conjectured by the In conclusion I stand by my contention Kronhausens does actually take place with that it is above all the representational the very young or the very old, or in per- arts referring as they do to real equiva- sons suffering some sort of sexual dis- lents (objects and situations) which are turbance, it is still impossible to abandon most liable to be invaded by obscene por- the position that hard-core pornography is tions or sequences.17 Let me add, though, harmful.19 that not knowing the historical back- Here are the arguments against tolerat- ground of particular works, that is, their ing pornography: 1) In the overwhelming magico-religious symbolism, we are often majority of cases it is by no means con- prone to sniff out the presence of obscenity nected with natural needs but is a cul- where no such intention was conceivable tural product; in other words, a peculiar and no traces of it are noticeable in the system of stimuli backed by certain insti- structure of the art-work. This, I feel, ac- tutions is contrived to overpower the peo- counts for the reputation surrounding the ple on whom it operates and create in 18 Pompeii frescoes among the uninformed. them a regular additional compulsion of In other cases, ignorant of the erotic the same kind as gambling. 2) Pornog- motivations current in a particular cul- raphy as a social product is a very frequent ture, we never suspect the existence, in a feature of many models of contemporary symbolic and camouflaged form, of obscene culture; it is therefore a fact of social con- motifs where they are barely visible, that sequence whose range and influence can- is, precisely in works of non-representa- not be discounted. 3) The stimuli supplied tional art. But this problem goes beyond by pornography not only undermine the our frame of inquiry, for it touches on the cultural impulses offered by art and study, interpretation of all works of art regard- or even interesting entertainments, but, less of their content and meaning. systematically applied, they also com- pletely numb perception of genuine cul- tural values: in short, pornography stifles V people's chances of full cultural develop- I think my theoretical conclusions are ment and impoverishes their inward life. clear. As for the practical lessons, these 4) Pornography frequently—as in comic boil down to recommendations which are strips—goes hand in hand with a cultiva- not, unfortunately, truisms for everybody. tion of brutality and amorality as prin- We must draw a line between hard-core ciples in life, and is an invariable con- pornography and art, however loaded comitant of prostitution. with obscene portions. The first should be Of course, underlying the belief that eliminated with all the weapons at our pornography is mentally and socially command; the latter should be defended harmful is an axiological conviction which against the attacks of unqualified persons might be rejected. Nevertheless, this con- and institutions. Now this conclusion viction which takes as its ideal a man of might be challenged, not for its distinction rich endowment, and considers such val- between art and pornography but because ues as art and scholarship to be superior to of its assumption that pornography is purely hedonistic values, and these in turn pernicious. So far little is known of what to be superior to the gratification of effect pornography really has. Psychologi- artificially stimulated needs, seems to have cal and sociological studies have been in behind it all the arguments accumulated progress for many years, but their findings by axiology, and not only in Europe at are not of a piece. In the highly authorita- that. tive, already referred to, book by Eber- Particularly revealing from this point hard and Phyllis Kronhausen, it is of view is the strip show which in our day claimed, for instance, that even hard-core is enjoying a fantastic boom. An excellent 206 STEFAN M O R A W S K I analysis of this phenomenon can be found The ability to distinguish between these in an essay by Leszek Kolakowski,20 treat- two different phenomena requires above ing it in relation to the nature-culture all aesthetic sensibility and knowledge, antinomy. I feel, however, that in this supported by a general grasp of sociology. case the chief oppositions are those lying The aesthetic education of society seems within culture itself. The strip-tease makes the only effective way of meeting these re- for a debasement of intimacy, bringing quirements. I am wholeheartedly in favor into a bright public light what we con- of educational programs of the kind pro- sider to be an utterly private business. posed by Herbert Read. But I must confess Second, it is connected with male domina- that I think it more likely that a solution tion, demonstrating that women are or of the conflicts between the mechanisms may be commodities to be bought and sold which drag art into the cogs of ideological after prior inspection. Third, the strip prejudice and those which seek to protect tease by belittling the beauty of the fe- its independence from the former will be male body—since it often shows down- attained following social revolution and a right ugliness—reveals at once that it is thorough transformation of the total struc- not concerned with an aesthetic spectacle ture of society than as a result of aesthetic but with sexual excitement. Even if Ro- education programs, however enlightened. land Barthes21 is right in stressing that If we are to stop people being fed daily generally strip-tease desexualizes woman— doses of pornography and if we are to which I doubt—he himself emphasized prevent great artists from being accused the cheap "magic" of this show. It is a of seeking to deprave and corrupt, shock mock-myth answering the lowest needs. In treatment needs to be administered to short, any systems of values which treat society from the roots up. How right Marx the human individual as an absolute good was when he wrote in the I840's that are here blatantly scouted. humanity would throw off its shackles Does this imply a need for a radical ban once homo economicus had been super- on pornography? No, since this is not a seded by a man pursuing the complete question of sanctions which might have harmonious fulfillment of all the riches the same unintended consequences as pro- of the natural needs of the human race. hibition in America. The strategy and Among them are his various sexual im- tactics in any campaign should follow pulses. It is worth remembering that this those used by abolitionists in dealing with man of the future, inwardly balanced and prostitution. What is needed is to cure the in tune with his surroundings, was to be causes, not the symptoms. This means an homo aestheticus. effective and sustained curtailment of the range and influence of pornography to the point of its complete eradication. One of the weapons which could be employed ^Ct S. Morawski, "O wartofci artystycznej" (On might be the satisfaction of those needs artistic value), Kultura i Spoleczénstwo (1962), 4, SS- which are asserted to be indispensably SS, and "A Scheme for Criteria of Evaluation," Pro- linked with pornography, through an art ceedings of Fifth International Congress of Aes- thetics (Amsterdam, 1965). itself saturated with erotic themes. Thus, 2 The view expounded here seems consistent with in this respect, I totally agree with the the methodological directives of Marx and his re- persuasive arguments set out in Jerome marks on aesthetic axiology, few and uncoordinated Frank's essay "Obscenity and the Law." 22 though they are. In the Marxist tradition this argu- Frank is perfectly right in protesting ment has rarely been advanced since it was the ideas of Plekhanov which dominated the field. Re- against conviction as the proper punish- cently a similar interpretation of artistic values has ment for spreading obscenity. But it is one been put forward by other Marxists. See G. Lukacs, thing to convict and quite another not to Die Eigensart des Aesthetischen (Neuwied, 1963); stand passively by observing the corruption L. Goldman, Recherches dialectiques (Paris, 1959); E. Fischer, Von der Notwendigkeit der Kunst (Dres- of culture. den, 1959). Art and Obscenity 207 3 See Alec Craig's instructive book. The Banned Ramiro, Félicien Rops (Paris, 1905); C, Lemonnier, Books of England and Other Countries (London, Félicien Rops, l'homme et l'artiste (Paris, 1908); G, 1962). Kahn, F. Rops. L'Art et Le Beau, numero special I Cf. T. Hakenssen, "Art and Dance, Sex in Prim- (Libraire artistique et littéraire, 1965), pp. 5-59; itive," and A. Ellis, "Art and Sex," The Encyclo- R. Klein, F. Rops, ibid.. I l l , numero special, 5-63. pedia of Sexual Behaviour (New York, 1961), pp. Each of them concedes, however, that the obscene is 154-179. the dominant feature of Rops's work. 5 See Freud's essays, "The Poet and Daydream- 15 Cf. A. Kyrou, Amour—erotisme et cinéma ing" (1908), and "The Uncanny" (1919), Cf. B. (Paris, 1957). Kyrou maintains that since the last Nelson, ed.. On Creativity and the Unconscious war the film has been taken over by the ideal of a (New York, 1958), pp. 53-54, 155-161. In his only woman practising sex mechanically and impersonally other works concerned with aesthetics (the books since the act of love itself has come to be treated as about Leonardo and wit) Freud developed this view one of many consumer activities. A similar observa- and used it to show that psychoanalytic methods of tion is made in a sharply critical tone by Carlo study stop on the threshold of art. Of the Freudians Lizzani through his hero in the film La Vita agra, I have read, this subject has been best and most 1964. profoundly analyzed by Ernst Kris. Following Freud 18 Cf. the Freudian interpretation in E. von closely, I feel, he indicated that the art-world-like Sydow, Primitive Kunst und Psychanalyse (Leipzig- dreams not only mask genuine material from the Wein-Zürich, 1927). sphere of the libido but also re-mask the dream 17 It would require a separate discussion to answer material through formal devices. Since the ego par- the question which of the representational arts, if it ticipates in the artistic and aesthetic process, cathexis introduces obscene portions, is most open to the of psychic energy is changed. Cf. Psychoanalytic charge of being pornography plain and simple. I Explorations in Art (London, 1953), pp. 13-63. personally feel that parasexual responses are most 6 Cf. V. George, Corps et visages féminins (Paris, likely to be stimulated by the theater, mime, and 1955). dance because of the direct physical presence of the 7 Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (New York, performer. But the matter is complicated by the 1961), p. 90. fact that in films and literature the absence of this 8 Miller, p. 164. physical contact makes identification with a char- "Miller, pp. 229-233. Compare also his The acter or situation easier. World of Sex (New York), esp. pp. 1&-27. 18 Cf. the analysis of the frieze of the Dionysian 10 Nabokov, Lolita (New York, 1959), p. 286, mysteries in the Villa dei Mysteri in A. Maiuri, II Nabokov, p. 284. Pompei (Rome, 1938, and 1952), and K. Schefold, "A. Craig, pp. 145-46; my italics. Pompejanische Malerei, Sinn und Ideengeschichte 13 Craig, p. 214, rejects, as I do, the view that (Bale, 1952). literature of a genuine kind can be pornographic. 191 think that the Kronhausens are not quite sure This position is shared by D. Loth in The Erotic in if their psychiatrists' point of view is on the whole Literature (London, 1962). But neither of these defensible. They are for erotic art and literature as writers offers any theoretical underpinning to sup- I am, because it does not block the sexual drives port their belief. When they argue quite reasonably or cause frustrations. The therapeutic function of that the author's intentions themselves are not suf- erotic and aesthetic appeal cannot be, as I under- ficient grounds for judging whether a book is ob- stand it, compared to the worthless, aesthetically of- scene or not, they forget that 1) the intention can fensive, vulgar stimulation of hard-core pornog- be reconstructed from the structure of the work, raphy. For the latter, even if it gives some relief, and 2) the intention, if it has been enunciated in a reaffirms the dreadful taboos and deepens the im- separate commentary, as Thomas Mann did with maturity and the pathological status of the culture Doctor Faustus, provides important interpretative which so badly needs pornography. See Pornog- material and makes it possible to compare intention raphy and the Law (New York, 1964), pp. 325-5S with execution. My point of view on artistic intent and 386-89. differs, therefore, from that expounded in the well- 20 L. Kolakowski, "Epistemologia strip-tease u," known essay by M. C. Beardsley and W. K. Wimsatt, The Epistemology of Strip-tease (Twórczoéc, War- Jr., "The Intentional Fallacy"; cf. Wimsatt's The saw, April, 1966). Verbal Icon (New York, 1958), pp. S-18. 21 R. Barthes, Mythologies (Paris, 1957), pp. 165-8. "All the main writers on the work of Félicien 22 J . Frank, "Obscenity and the Law," in M. Rops have defended him on these grounds against Levich, ed„ Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Criti- accusation of decadence and pornography. Cf. E. cism (New York, 1963), pp. 418-440.