Do you agree with this quote?

[kelby_lake]

“Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.”

[emily00]

“Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.”

In a word.....no! Sounds like a classic case of writer's block and he wants something to blame it on.

[jinjang]

I would disagree, too, because different times have different beauties and subjects. How would I know my great great grand father or mother felt or saw in their society, otherwise!

[meh!]

When i like John Donne's poems it's different from when another random person 30 years ago did so and it will continue to be so. The reader is as complicit in the act of... creating the experience of reading the poem as the poet is so, if done properly, i think it remains a new event every time someone else picks up a poem.

so in a word: no. That said people are often a little too conservative in their tastes, i feel.

[no one special]

“Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.”

No, I don't agree. Who said it? Sounds like someone with a problem with the past, which is what we're made up of.

And life's bigger than literature, Jin Yang? No, literature's life itself.

[grotto]

I don’t know who said it, but I agree. Coming from an eastern philosophical side, to me it says, hold no thought as the only, don’t become attached to others ideas, use what you can, let it penetrate you and don’t worship it, find your own thought.

As is relevant to many posts on these forums, there is a real lack of originality, a lot of quotes from long dead authors that people hide behind until the next convenient quip comes along.

Something to think about.

[Mr Endon]

It seems like the author of this quotation was just being something of a provocateur, like anyone who aspires to write an epigram must be. The point he's trying to get across, however, is worth a thought. I too am guilty of being shackled to the past, though I'm getting better.

And yes, life is much bigger than literature. I'd even call that a truism.
No one special: literature is life, but life is not (just) literature. See the difference? Sutble but all important.

[kelby_lake]

I don’t know who said it, but I agree. Coming from an eastern philosophical side, to me it says, hold no thought as the only, don’t become attached to others ideas, use what you can, let it penetrate you and don’t worship it, find your own thought.

As is relevant to many posts on these forums, there is a real lack of originality, a lot of quotes from long dead authors that people hide behind until the next convenient quip comes along.


Antonin Artaud said it. Though like much of what he said, it is rather extreme, but I understand the sentiment. We often just lump things into 'literature' and worship them so much that we forget their true meaning. Artaud used physical poetry in his theatre- Theatre of Cruelty. I agree with binning the purely nature- worshipping poems.

[JBI]

No. There is no new and old - it is all the same organism.

[BooK WorM 13]

i disagree, because some old poets can still make amazing points on veiwing the world. Like saying " You can never teach an old dog new tricks" thats a very discriminating on the old dogs part. U can teach an old dog new tricks but it takes time and focus. As well as old poets should write, but only share their points of veiw or somethin they think others should hear about or see. But they should concider weather they've thought it over enough.;)

[emily00]

I don’t know who said it, but I agree. Coming from an eastern philosophical side, to me it says, hold no thought as the only, don’t become attached to others ideas, use what you can, let it penetrate you and don’t worship it, find your own thought.

As is relevant to many posts on these forums, there is a real lack of originality, a lot of quotes from long dead authors that people hide behind until the next convenient quip comes along.

Something to think about.

If this made any sense, I would think about it, but it does not.

What on earth do you mean by 'an eastern philosophical side'? (Do you know?)

(A 'baffled' emoticon would be useful here).

It's also a bit 'deadist', if I may say so. The dead (whether long, or recently so) are the group most vulnerable to discrimination and prejudice, since they have no right of reply!

[Virgil]

“Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.”

Frankly Kelby, that quote is assinine. Destroy poetry? Sounds like book burning. And how does one maintain a continuity of culture if one destroys what has been done in the past?

[FallingWings]

Interesting...I'm on the fence. On one hand, there certainly is wisdom to it--getting stuck in the past and "venerat[ing]" what is old certainly can "petrify" us. However, I don't think that burning the old poems is quite right. "If we cannot learn from the past we are doomed to repeat it," yet "there is nothing new under the sun."

[jinjang]

My answer is still no. Imagine so many great poems lost to us that way!
Another art springs forth from art. The loss is so great that I keep thinking of it with horror.

I saw once a living art called Water Diary where the artist intentionally wrote the diary in water on a stone because it was his diary and it was private. The display had just the picture of the stone with water marks. It was interesting, though, it only applies to that living art and I could appreciate it.


And life's bigger than literature, Jin Yang? No, literature's life itself.


And yes, life is much bigger than literature. I'd even call that a truism.No one special: literature is life, but life is not (just) literature. See the difference? Sutble but all important.

I guess you are missing the complete quote and so I agree with you both:

Introduction by Michael Cunningham to "Death in Venice by Thomas Mann"

"A novel in its earliest form, before it begins to be rendered into language, is a cloud of sorts that hovers over the writer's head, a mystery born with clues to its own meanings but also, at its heart, insoluble. One hopes- a novel is inevitably an expression of unreasonable hopes- that the finished book will contain not only characters and scenes but a certain larger truth, though that truth, whatever it may be, is impossible to express fully in words. It has to do with the fact that writer and reader both know, beneath the level of active consciousness, something about being alive and being mortal, and that that something, when we try to express it, inevitably eludes us. We are creatures whose innate knowledge exceeds that which can be articulated. Although language is enormously powerful, it is concrete, and so it can't help but miniaturize, to a certain extent, that which we simply know. All the writers I respect want to write a book so penetrating and thorough, so compassionate and unrelenting, that it can stand unembarrassed beside the spectacle of life itself. And all writers I respect seem to know (though no one likes to talk about it) that our efforts are doomed from the outset. Life is bigger than literature."

[grotto]

If this made any sense, I would think about it, but it does not.

What on earth do you mean by 'an eastern philosophical side'? (Do you know?)

(A 'baffled' emoticon would be useful here).

It's also a bit 'deadist', if I may say so. The dead (whether long, or recently so) are the group most vulnerable to discrimination and prejudice, since they have no right of reply!

Yes, I do know. Eastern as in very simply stating, to not become attached to the written word, Hui Nang would be a good start in Chan literature, he’s direct and to the point.

I could have used western too, but Kierkegaard gets a little long winded and most can’t get a grasp on Nietzsche either. :idea:

I see no need to attack my opinion, but thanks for expressing your most important concern. No need to worry though, I shant attach to it.;)

[jinjang]

Water Diary was by a Chinese artist and possibly you, grotto, are talking about the same eastern philosophy.

[grotto]

I also don’t think the quote necessarily implies book burning, to me it says, rid yourself of cherishing one specific piece. You read it once and destroy it’s importance from your mind, not literally burn it. Just a thought.

[kelby_lake]

“Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.”

People seem to have been focusing a lot on the first half, which I did at first, but after a while you do start to think. Is it the emotions/expression you love, or the book? I think people are often unkeen on re-reading because they don't want to destroy their initial feelings of the book; and perhaps some of those have become exaggerated over time.

We do need to create new ways of expressing things, and Artaud certainly did that, albeit under the influence of drugs and insanity, using physical poetry in the theatre.

[Jozanny]

Mmm. Textuality does create its own problems. One need only venture into post-structuralist anxiety to get a feel for how nonsensical we are over meaning or lack thereof in language. We seem to forget that it's a tool, and like any tool, has limits, but on a practical level I do not see how you get *away* from recording cultural memory. We were discussing this issue in another thread, but even the T'ang poets recorded their poetry, despite their philosophy towards dissolution of individual identity. I know JBI highly respects oral mimetic transition from speaker to listener, but I doubt civilization would be what it is if Homer and Beowulf still had to depend on word of mouth. Ancient epics might have been lost entirely. The issue isn't easily resolved.

[Madame X]

So...in disagreeing with Artaud, one must acquiesce to his point? :D

[JBI]

Mmm. Textuality does create its own problems. One need only venture into post-structuralist anxiety to get a feel for how nonsensical we are over meaning or lack thereof in language. We seem to forget that it's a tool, and like any tool, has limits, but on a practical level I do not see how you get *away* from recording cultural memory. We were discussing this issue in another thread, but even the T'ang poets recorded their poetry, despite their philosophy towards dissolution of individual identity. I know JBI highly respects oral mimetic transition from speaker to listener, but I doubt civilization would be what it is if Homer and Beowulf still had to depend on word of mouth. Ancient epics might have been lost entirely. The issue isn't easily resolved.

Oh, no doubt they would have been lost, but what was important within them would have been passed down anyway, just altered - society has a way of creating what is relevant to itself in forms of icons, and I'm just of the mind that oral-based society creates more lasting, meaningful, dynamic forms.

Take for instance a totem pole. The totem pole has images carved into it, representing stories, but not words. A wise person, traditionally, would be able to assemble the narrative from the wood carving, keeping the tradition and the mythology alive. The connection then between the society, and the carving then, is one of two way communication. The totem pole stands as testament, but the narrative it holds and represents is within the consciousness of the people, and fluctuates with the speaker and listener in a mode of capturing the 'wisdom' for lack of a better term, or perhaps 'important aspect and reasoning for the creation of the totem pole, and its cultural relevance to the society'. The totem pole then, can be compared to, for instance, a classical holiday, such as the Jewish Passover, which uses highly traditional symbols to narrate a story (though, the story was eventually standardized and the symbols lost their significant importance as meaningful cultural specimens, and were replaced with a function of creating cultural distinction within the diaspora).



But lets just add a better point for thought. Since Homer was written down, he has been subjected to the limitations of language, whereas if he was past down, his narrative would have been able to bend itself with changing language. In the end, even he is time beaten, as the words on the page no longer sound the same, or perhaps carry the same meaning or feel, even to people reading the text in the original. In truth, the act of reading it itself takes something away, whereas if it was sung to you, your reaction would probably be very different.


The way then that text really bends things, is by creating models, blending, subverting, adding to, and taking away from them, and also slightly modifying and revamping (as well as "rediscovering") them, in order to make a slight change, based on the changes in perspective over time and on desired changes of the author, in a cycle. But the change is not made naturally - the narrative does not bend and reshape the old one, but rather has a cleaner breaking point, and is reliant on the old one as a starting point. It is necessary then, that we have what came before, when dealing with written text, in order to begin to explain the evolution of the narrative cycle over time - since, you cannot really understand Pope without reading Milton (amongst others, including classical authors). You cannot understand Milton without Virgil. You cannot understand Virgil without Homer (note, this is basic, the lines come from literally everywhere). From there then, you can get splitting points coming off too, you can say, you cannot understand Wordsworth without Milton Either, and Byron requires an understanding of Pope, in addition to other materials. But the problem remains, that to understand Milton on Pope, you must understand Milton's Virgil and Milton's Homer, which means you need to understand both Virgil and Homer in their contexts, and in Milton's. The web is nearly endless, that a certain boundary has been established, to salvage what is truly important in bending the tradition, notably the major innovators - those who we call classic, more or less - and we codify systems of symbol, image, content, and ideas in order to fix the dialogue to an understandable centre.

That all more or less tried to blow itself up in post-modernism, but that ultimately failed, as it just established new models. You subvert the great codes of literature, by blending, or ironizing them, but in the end that ironizing is dependent on the codes themselves as well. You cannot parody, or attack something, without that something being strong enough to attack. If I were to write real criticism on the poems posted under personal poetry, the result would be pointless, as they aren't relative to the discussion.

So in order to write poetry, it can be said, one needs to try and establish a new sort of code, with the old one chiefly in your head. After all, ideas do not come from nowhere, and only can gradually move (though the ability to conquer spacial barriers has sped up innovation quite a bit from older oral models, which only could innovate in baby steps). In the end though, a sense of model behind everything is required, so that, the most radical of writers even end up playing with familiar structures.

In the end, it really just comes down to language. You can only bend language so much, and that is what the cycle ends up doing - bending our understanding of language, most notably metaphor. Our sense of communicating is rooted in our sense of metaphor, so when stretches and changes are made to it, if they are too unrooted, they do not catch or make sense. The poet must stretch things, but stretch them within the limits of comprehension, remaking and destroying what they can get away with.

[stlukesguild]

Artaud, eh? Typical iconoclastic Surrealist. It sounds a bit like the Futurist, Tomasso Marinetti:

The past is necessarily inferior to the future. That is how we wish it to be. How could we acknowledge any merit in our most dangerous enemy: the past, gloomy prevaricator, execrable tutor?

We declare that the world's wonder has been enriched by a fresh beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car with its trunk adorned by great exhaust pipes like snakes with an explosive breath ... a roaring car that seems to be driving under shrapnel, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

We want to glorify war -- the only hygiene of the world --

We want to demolish museums, libraries, fight against moralism, feminism, and all opportunistic and utilitarian cowardices.

Italy has been too long a great secondhand brokers' market. We want to rid it of the innumerable museums that cover it with innumerable cemeteries.

Italy has been too long a great secondhand brokers' market. We want to rid it of the innumerable museums that cover it with innumerable cemeteries.

Museums, cemeteries!... Truly identical in the sinister jostling of bodies that do not know each other. Great public dormitories where one sleeps forever side by side with beings hated or unknown. Reciprocal ferocity of painters and of sculptors killing each other with line and color in the same gallery.

To admire an old painting is to pour our sensitiveness into a funeral urn, instead of throwing it forward by violent casts of creation and action. Do you mean thus to waste the best of you in a useless admiration of the past that must necessarily leave you exhausted, lessened, trampled?

Let the good incendiaries come with their carbonized fingers!... Here they are! Here they are!... Set the library stacks on fire! Turn the canals in their course to flood the museum vaults!... There go the glorious canvases, floating adrift! Take up the picks and the hammers! Undermine the foundations of the venerable cities!

I highly doubt Artaud had anything like a Chan/Zen philosophy in mind. And I more than question the notion that such a concept is innately Eastern. The Chinese are more than respectful of their literary predecessors and have preserved and kept alive many more of their ancient poets than we have in the West. This, undoubtedly, may have much to do with the fact that the ancient Chinese were experienced in just what the destruction of literature can entail under the Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi. Artuad's thought was rooted in Dada, iconoclastic Surrealism, and nihilism. His is the immature ranting of the young (and not all that brilliant) artist against his predecessors for not getting out of the way and assuring him his "deserved" place among the immortals.

Having said this much, I'll note that the latter half of Artaud's quote: "we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us." sounds rather like Bloom's anxiety of influence... or the Freudian struggle that most artists undertake in an effort to overcome or work through those influences most dear to them. To suggest that one might gain an artistic freedom or originality by destroying or forgetting the past is rather simplistic in my view. Historically, the vast majority of the greatest artistic innovators were those who also had a deep veneration and profound understanding of their artistic predecessors: T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Picasso, Michelangelo, Dante, etc...

[Jozanny]

JBI: For the moment, I'll just say I get my primitivist sympathies through the prism of the academics who distill it for me, like Levi-Strauss. I realize some of us are over-educated, but part of the problem with that is the anxiety of never having education enough. When did I discover Lampedusa? Maybe 2004. I started an essay about The Leopard simply on the basis of the fact that I decided I liked Italian modernism better than the modernism of Joyce, and was going to advocate that point for the pretension of my ethnicity. But in the process of my researches, I was able to actually email Coletta, had to get her book, and can now say nothing until I meld her thesis, and Manzoni, and Eco, and try not to come off like a bloody fool when I resume said writing of said essay on which I will never recover my monies spent on buying my own texts, so I am not entirely unsympathetic to your chisel marks on the masonry. But you cannot simply chuck all frames of reference and leave that as an answer, even if the edifice on which we build is a chimera.

[Don Quixote Jr]

“Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.”

NO! Nein! Nyet! Jo! La! Ne! Non! Ma! Nun! Yok! Ni! Ez! Ani! Halo! Wake! Amo! Se! Ko! Kai! Kus! Kue! Eka! Sa! Su! Data! Ai! etc.

[kelby_lake]

I'm liking the language :)

Artaud is number one tortured artist. Clearly he feels he feels there are things which are inexpressible: Actions speak louder than words.

You kind of have to dilute the ideas of what he's saying because they are kind of illogical, but some of the ideas behind them are interesting.

I had an interesting encounter with the whole 'how important is the written word?' debate. For the first time today, I started reading untranslated French poetry (Verlaine to be precise). I got an A at GCSE so obviously I wasn't going to be fluent, so I checked my translation against others. The poetry is just so much more beautiful in his own language, and primarily it's the sounds and rhythm that are attractive. Good poems are ones that stay in your head.

[Mr Endon]

I've just come across a nice rant which I think ties in nicely with that quotation:


Or is literature alone to be left behind on that old, fould road long ago abandoned by music and painting? Is there something paralysingly sacred contained within the unnature of the word that does not belong to the elements of the other arts? Is there any reason why that terrifyingly arbitrary materiality of the word surface should not be dissolved, as for example the sound surface of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is devoured by huge black pauses, so that for pages on end we cannot perceive it as as other than a dizzying path of sounds connecting unfathomable chasms of silence?

Samuel Beckett's letter to Axel Kaun, written in German in 09/07/1937.

[My apologies, you people must be tired of my always quoting Beckett, but I can't help it - I'm doing a dissertation on him, and will read him and him only for the next six weeks.]

[librarius_qui]

“Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.”

In a proper context, it makes sense.

In the religion of the Christ, for instance, there are things not even supposed to be written:

"(...) like a lion roaring. When he [an angel with a little scroll in hand] called out, the seven thunders sounded. And when the seven thunders sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, 'Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down'."

...

:crash:

[Jozanny]

[My apologies, you people must be tired of my always quoting Beckett, but I can't help it - I'm doing a dissertation on him, and will read him and him only for the next six weeks.]

This makes me smile with respect to how people intersect in various inverses, as Beckett is my most yawning blank spot. I know almost next to nothing about why his achievements are what they are.

[Mr Endon]

Oh, Jozanny, I'd say his greatest achievement was to be a blank spot to some readers. He's the writer of the blank, of silence, of the unnameable or, better still, the nothingness.

[kelby_lake]

Yes, that is what I heard, but really, why would I want 'nothingness'? That makes for dull indulgent theatre. At least Artaud's ideas are interesting to watch (although The Cenci does not sound like the loveliest play in the world).

[Mr Endon]

kelby_lake, I want 'nothingness' mostly because it's a reality that most people seem to refuse to acknowledge.

Also, as I've quoted in another thread, "who may tell the tale / of the old man?" This may sound corny, but he speaks for the voiceless, for the outcast, the old man, the tramp, the mad.

Of course, Beckett works for some people more than for others, depending on their beliefs. I, for one, believe that language is an imperfect form of communication, usually being actually misleading and thus defeating its own purpose. I believe that knowledge is much more limited than most would care to admit. So basically I like him because he talks about failure, that inconvenient truth.

This, however, is not at all as gloomy and incompatible with joie de vivre as a lot of people seem to make out; his philosophy, in my view, is perfectly summed up in this quotation: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better".


I'm sorry to have deviated so from the OP, but I guess discussions have lives of their own.

[kelby_lake]

kelby_lake, I want 'nothingness' mostly because it's a reality that most people seem to refuse to acknowledge.

Also, as I've quoted in another thread, "who may tell the tale / of the old man?" This may sound corny, but he speaks for the voiceless, for the outcast, the old man, the tramp, the mad.

Of course, Beckett works for some people more than for others, depending on their beliefs. I, for one, believe that language is an imperfect form of communication, usually being actually misleading and thus defeating its own purpose. I believe that knowledge is much more limited than most would care to admit. So basically I like him because he talks about failure, that inconvenient truth.

This, however, is not at all as gloomy and incompatible with joie de vivre as a lot of people seem to make out; his philosophy, in my view, is perfectly summed up in this quotation: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better".


I'm sorry to have deviated so from the OP, but I guess discussions have lives of their own.

No, you're very relevant.

[emily00]

kelby_lake, I want 'nothingness' mostly because it's a reality that most people seem to refuse to acknowledge.

Also, as I've quoted in another thread, "who may tell the tale / of the old man?" This may sound corny, but he speaks for the voiceless, for the outcast, the old man, the tramp, the mad.

Of course, Beckett works for some people more than for others, depending on their beliefs. I, for one, believe that language is an imperfect form of communication, usually being actually misleading and thus defeating its own purpose. I believe that knowledge is much more limited than most would care to admit. So basically I like him because he talks about failure, that inconvenient truth.

This, however, is not at all as gloomy and incompatible with joie de vivre as a lot of people seem to make out; his philosophy, in my view, is perfectly summed up in this quotation: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better".


I'm sorry to have deviated so from the OP, but I guess discussions have lives of their own.

I would like to endorse everything you have written about Beckett. He's the biz. The older I get, the more I understand 'Happy Days' and (terrifyingly) the more I recognise in it of my life.

What is the theme of your dissertation, exactly?


Yes, I do know. Eastern as in very simply stating, to not become attached to the written word, Hui Nang would be a good start in Chan literature, he’s direct and to the point.

I could have used western too, but Kierkegaard gets a little long winded and most can’t get a grasp on Nietzsche either. :idea:

I see no need to attack my opinion, but thanks for expressing your most important concern. No need to worry though, I shant attach to it.;)

I am sorry if you interpreted my comment as an attack on your opinion. It wasn't. I merely questioned your meaning, since it was unclear. I'm still not entirely sure, but I'll let it drop :)

[kingpython]

“Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.”

sometimes poetry's real beauty is being taken out again and appreciated time after time until it grows into something beyond mere words. sometimes we don't understand the meaning the first time, sometimes it takes time.

the second argument, too, is invalid. we may well be afraid of what is already created, but surely this drives us on to greater creativity, forces us to be take poetry in a new and more personal direction? with the guiding influences of the great poets the new great poets can grow. many poets write as reactions to another; look at how macniece and heaney have reacted differently to yeats' dominance of irish 20th century poetry, look at how macniece's generation deliberately and consciously eschewed the romanticist to create poetry they saw as fit for their time.

poetry is, as ever, a continuous process. to destroy that would be to destroy the seemingly eternal power of words written by, for example, shakespeare 400 words ago.

[quasimodo1]

It is patently ridiculous to destroy the poetry of the past; a poet writing today has as free a hand as any of the progenitors. When writing poetry you are on your own and whatever debt or influence may arrise from previous writings is marginal at best.

[kelby_lake]

sometimes poetry's real beauty is being taken out again and appreciated time after time until it grows into something beyond mere words. sometimes we don't understand the meaning the first time, sometimes it takes time.

the second argument, too, is invalid. we may well be afraid of what is already created, but surely this drives us on to greater creativity, forces us to be take poetry in a new and more personal direction? with the guiding influences of the great poets the new great poets can grow. many poets write as reactions to another; look at how macniece and heaney have reacted differently to yeats' dominance of irish 20th century poetry, look at how macniece's generation deliberately and consciously eschewed the romanticist to create poetry they saw as fit for their time.

poetry is, as ever, a continuous process. to destroy that would be to destroy the seemingly eternal power of words written by, for example, shakespeare 400 words ago.

I hate Heaney's poetry :)

I personally think good poetry is the poetry you can learn by heart- that sticks into your brain.

I really don't think poor Artaud wanted to ban old poetry- I think he just didn't want people to be tied to it. In his head there appears to be a fight between killing and clinging:

"So long as we have failed to eliminate any of the causes of human despair, we do not have the right to try to eliminate those means by which man tries to cleanse himself of despair."