Mohammad Ahmad
12-17-2013, 02:55 AM
Collected Essays by Aldous Huxley \\ vulgar in literature - study & notices
(From "Vulgarity in Literature," Music at Night)
Vulgarity in Literature
I
Vulgarity in literature must be distinguished from the vulgarity inherent in the profession of letters. Every man is born with his share of Original Sin, to which every writer adds a pinch of Original Vulgarity. Necessarily and quite inevitably. For exhibitionism is always vulgar, even if what you exhibit is the most exquisitely refined of souls.
Some writers are more squeamishly conscious than others of the essential vulgarity of their trade — so much so, that, like Flaubert, they have found it hard to commit that initial offense against good breeding: the putting of pen to paper.
It is just possible, of course, that the greatest writers have never written; that the world is full of Monsieur Testes and mute inglorious Miltons, too delicate to come before the public. I should like to believe it; but I find it hard. Your great writer is possessed by a devil over which he has very little control. If the devil wants to come out (and, in practice, devils always do want to come out), it will do so, however loud the protests of the aristocratic consciousness, with which it uneasily cohabits. The profession of literature may be "fatally marred by a secret absurdity"; the devil simply doesn't care. Scribo quia absurdum. :
My comments:
I believe it because it is absurd
Disproof of a proposition by showing an absurdity to which it leads when carried to its logical conclusion
II
To be pale, to have no appetite, to swoon at the slightest provocation — these, not so long ago, were the signs of maidenly good breeding. In other words, when a girl was marked with the stigmata of anemia and chronic constipation, you knew she was a lady. Virtues are generally fashioned (more or less elegantly, according to the skill of the moral couturier) out of necessities. Rich girls had no need to work; the aristocratic tradition discouraged them from voluntarily working; and the Christian tradition discouraged them from compromising their maiden modesty by taking anything like violent exercise. Good carriage-roads and finally, railways spared them the healthy fatigues of riding. The virtues of Fresh Air had not yet been discovered and the Draft was still the commonest, as it was almost the most dangerous, manifestation of the Diabolic Principle. More perverse than Chinese foot-squeezers, the topiarists of European fashion had decreed that the elegant should have all her viscera constricted and displaced by tight lacing. In a word, the rich girl lived a life scientifically calculated to make her unhealthy. A virtue was made of humiliating necessity, and the pale ethereal swooner of romantic literature remained for years the type and mirror of refined young womanhood.
Something of the same kind happens from time to time in the realm of literature. Moments come when too conspicuous a show of vigor, too frank an interest in common things is signs of literary vulgarity. To be really lady like, the Muses, like their mortal sisters, must be anemic and constipated. On the more sensitive writers of certain epochs' circumstances, impose an artistic wasting away, a literary consumption. This distressing fatality is at once transformed into a virtue, which it becomes a duty for all to cultivate.
"Vivre? Nos valets le feront pour nous." For, oh, the vulgarity of it! The vulgarity of this having to walk and talk; to open and close the eyes; to think and drink every day, yes, every day, to eat, eat and excrete. And then this having to pursue the female of one's species, or the male, whichever the case may be; this having to cerebrate, to calculate, to copulate, to propagate. . . No, no — too gross, too stupidly low. Such things, as Villiers de l'Isle-Adam says, are all very well for footmen. But for a descendant of how many generations of Templars, of Knights of Rhodes and of Malta, Knights of the Garter and the Holy Ghost and all the variously colored Eagles — obviously, it was out of the question; it simply wasn't done. Vivre? Nos valets le feront pour nous. At the same point, but on another plane, of the great spiral of history, Prince Gotama, more than two thousand years before, had also discovered the vulgarity of living. The sight of a corpse rotting by the roadside had set him thinking. It was his first introduction to death. Now, a corpse, poor thing, is an untouchable and the process of decay is, of all pieces of bad manners, the vulgarest imaginable. For a corpse is, by definition, a person absolutely devoid of savoir vivre. Even your sweeper knows better. But in every greatest king, in every loveliest flowery princess, in every poet most refined, every best dressed dandy, every holiest and most spiritual teacher, there lurks, waiting, waiting for the moment to emerge, an outcaste of the outcastes, a dung carrier, a dog, lower than the lowest, bottomlessly vulgar.
--------------------------------------------------------
General comments:
1- Your great writer is possessed by a devil over which he has very little control.
I don’t know what is the point but to err is human!
2- The profession of literature may be "fatally marred by a secret absurdity"; the devil simply doesn't care. Scribo quia absurdum. :
Meanings:
I believe it because it is absurd
Disproof of a proposition by showing an absurdity to which it leads when carried to its logical conclusion.
3- In other words, when a girl was marked with the stigmata of anemia and chronic constipation, you knew she was a lady,
Why?
4- Rich girls had no need to work; the aristocratic tradition discouraged them from voluntarily working. (correct)
5- The Christian tradition discouraged them from compromising their maiden modesty by taking anything like violent exercise.
6- The virtues of Fresh Air had not yet been discovered and the Draft was still the commonest.
It maybe is useful…
7- The rich girl lived a life scientifically calculated to make her unhealthy.
8- The pale ethereal swooner of romantic literature remained for years the type and mirror of refined young womanhood.
How?
I think the chastity and the innocence of a girl in her childhood period sometimes will affect on her for prolonged time.
9- To be really lady like, the Muses, like their mortal sisters, must be anemic and constipated.
How?
10- The vulgarity of this having to walk and talk; to open and close the eyes; to think and drink every day, yes, every day, to eat, eat and excrete
I think it is nonhuman behaviour….
11-But for a descendant of how many generations of Templars, of Knights of Rhodes and of Malta, Knights of the Garter and the Holy Ghost and all the variously colored Eagles — obviously, it was out of the question; it simply wasn't done. Vivre? Nos valets le feront pour nous.
Of course, societies' culture differs from one to another or from one generation to another even if in the same society.
(From "Vulgarity in Literature," Music at Night)
Vulgarity in Literature
I
Vulgarity in literature must be distinguished from the vulgarity inherent in the profession of letters. Every man is born with his share of Original Sin, to which every writer adds a pinch of Original Vulgarity. Necessarily and quite inevitably. For exhibitionism is always vulgar, even if what you exhibit is the most exquisitely refined of souls.
Some writers are more squeamishly conscious than others of the essential vulgarity of their trade — so much so, that, like Flaubert, they have found it hard to commit that initial offense against good breeding: the putting of pen to paper.
It is just possible, of course, that the greatest writers have never written; that the world is full of Monsieur Testes and mute inglorious Miltons, too delicate to come before the public. I should like to believe it; but I find it hard. Your great writer is possessed by a devil over which he has very little control. If the devil wants to come out (and, in practice, devils always do want to come out), it will do so, however loud the protests of the aristocratic consciousness, with which it uneasily cohabits. The profession of literature may be "fatally marred by a secret absurdity"; the devil simply doesn't care. Scribo quia absurdum. :
My comments:
I believe it because it is absurd
Disproof of a proposition by showing an absurdity to which it leads when carried to its logical conclusion
II
To be pale, to have no appetite, to swoon at the slightest provocation — these, not so long ago, were the signs of maidenly good breeding. In other words, when a girl was marked with the stigmata of anemia and chronic constipation, you knew she was a lady. Virtues are generally fashioned (more or less elegantly, according to the skill of the moral couturier) out of necessities. Rich girls had no need to work; the aristocratic tradition discouraged them from voluntarily working; and the Christian tradition discouraged them from compromising their maiden modesty by taking anything like violent exercise. Good carriage-roads and finally, railways spared them the healthy fatigues of riding. The virtues of Fresh Air had not yet been discovered and the Draft was still the commonest, as it was almost the most dangerous, manifestation of the Diabolic Principle. More perverse than Chinese foot-squeezers, the topiarists of European fashion had decreed that the elegant should have all her viscera constricted and displaced by tight lacing. In a word, the rich girl lived a life scientifically calculated to make her unhealthy. A virtue was made of humiliating necessity, and the pale ethereal swooner of romantic literature remained for years the type and mirror of refined young womanhood.
Something of the same kind happens from time to time in the realm of literature. Moments come when too conspicuous a show of vigor, too frank an interest in common things is signs of literary vulgarity. To be really lady like, the Muses, like their mortal sisters, must be anemic and constipated. On the more sensitive writers of certain epochs' circumstances, impose an artistic wasting away, a literary consumption. This distressing fatality is at once transformed into a virtue, which it becomes a duty for all to cultivate.
"Vivre? Nos valets le feront pour nous." For, oh, the vulgarity of it! The vulgarity of this having to walk and talk; to open and close the eyes; to think and drink every day, yes, every day, to eat, eat and excrete. And then this having to pursue the female of one's species, or the male, whichever the case may be; this having to cerebrate, to calculate, to copulate, to propagate. . . No, no — too gross, too stupidly low. Such things, as Villiers de l'Isle-Adam says, are all very well for footmen. But for a descendant of how many generations of Templars, of Knights of Rhodes and of Malta, Knights of the Garter and the Holy Ghost and all the variously colored Eagles — obviously, it was out of the question; it simply wasn't done. Vivre? Nos valets le feront pour nous. At the same point, but on another plane, of the great spiral of history, Prince Gotama, more than two thousand years before, had also discovered the vulgarity of living. The sight of a corpse rotting by the roadside had set him thinking. It was his first introduction to death. Now, a corpse, poor thing, is an untouchable and the process of decay is, of all pieces of bad manners, the vulgarest imaginable. For a corpse is, by definition, a person absolutely devoid of savoir vivre. Even your sweeper knows better. But in every greatest king, in every loveliest flowery princess, in every poet most refined, every best dressed dandy, every holiest and most spiritual teacher, there lurks, waiting, waiting for the moment to emerge, an outcaste of the outcastes, a dung carrier, a dog, lower than the lowest, bottomlessly vulgar.
--------------------------------------------------------
General comments:
1- Your great writer is possessed by a devil over which he has very little control.
I don’t know what is the point but to err is human!
2- The profession of literature may be "fatally marred by a secret absurdity"; the devil simply doesn't care. Scribo quia absurdum. :
Meanings:
I believe it because it is absurd
Disproof of a proposition by showing an absurdity to which it leads when carried to its logical conclusion.
3- In other words, when a girl was marked with the stigmata of anemia and chronic constipation, you knew she was a lady,
Why?
4- Rich girls had no need to work; the aristocratic tradition discouraged them from voluntarily working. (correct)
5- The Christian tradition discouraged them from compromising their maiden modesty by taking anything like violent exercise.
6- The virtues of Fresh Air had not yet been discovered and the Draft was still the commonest.
It maybe is useful…
7- The rich girl lived a life scientifically calculated to make her unhealthy.
8- The pale ethereal swooner of romantic literature remained for years the type and mirror of refined young womanhood.
How?
I think the chastity and the innocence of a girl in her childhood period sometimes will affect on her for prolonged time.
9- To be really lady like, the Muses, like their mortal sisters, must be anemic and constipated.
How?
10- The vulgarity of this having to walk and talk; to open and close the eyes; to think and drink every day, yes, every day, to eat, eat and excrete
I think it is nonhuman behaviour….
11-But for a descendant of how many generations of Templars, of Knights of Rhodes and of Malta, Knights of the Garter and the Holy Ghost and all the variously colored Eagles — obviously, it was out of the question; it simply wasn't done. Vivre? Nos valets le feront pour nous.
Of course, societies' culture differs from one to another or from one generation to another even if in the same society.