Los Angeles herald., 1891-02-21
THE EROTIC IN LITERATURE.

Literature with love taken out would
be as bald as the front row in a theater.
The two greatest main springs OF artistic
intellectual work, in prose or verse, are
love and war. The lines that divide
heathenism from Christianity serve also
as demarkations between two very broad
ly variant schools of artistic literary pro-
ductions. The Hebraism of the old
scriptures, too, is broader and freer than
the Christian thought of the new.
Again, from the beginning there was
puritanical or Pharisaical school inside
of the pure Christian culture OF the new
testament that was more Christian than
Christ himself. One phase of this Pbar-
iseeism was to discountenance every
particle of thought that trenched, how
ever remotely, on the erotic side of hu-
man nature. Tins extreme and un-
christian phase of Christian thought
reached a flood tide height after
the medieval reformation surpass-
ing anything that went before it.
There was always protest against it,
Shakespeare standing in the midst OF
Puritanic England as the greatest ex-
ponent of the more natural and more
wholesome condition of the human mind.
But the contest was severe. An age later
the antagonism to the lack-lustre tone
of pharisaic literature cropped out in
such efioresence of liberal thoughts as
are to be found in Wicherly, Vanbrugh
and Mrs. Aphra Behn, the woman
Bacchanal discounting' heavily the free
dom of expression and incident INDUCED
in by the boldest of her male callabor-
ateurs.
But passing by these historic incidents
in the history of literature and coming
down to the conditions of our own
century, the natural as opposed to the
hyper-religious school of thought
is found to diverge into two widely
variant branches. 1t is like stem on
which two buds of separate variety have
been grated. We do not refer to the
divergence of degree which mark all ex-
tremes in any line of thought, or of even
material existence. Ii we take the ex-
tremes OF the free school of artistic writ
ers, it will be found that they differ wide
apart as the poles in their method of
treatment.
Take Byron in verseea eand the elder
Bulwer in prose, as exponents of one off
shoot of what is called the modern
heshly" school of literature; and take
such writers as Edgar Saltus and Mr..
Ross of the present day as the expon-
ents of the other. No one, OF course,
will imagine for moment that there is
any intention of instituting any compar-
ison between these two pairs, from the |
standpoint of intellect, or of genius for
their art. But there is no exponent of |
this branch of literature who is OF high |
order of intellect. 1t is difficult to con-
ceive of man of brains turning off any
thing like the productions of Saltus and
Ross.
Don Juan is erotic. So is Ernest |
Maltravers. Saltus and Ross have made
SO imperfect an impression on our mind,
that at the moment we are unable to re-
call the names of many of their books.
Take Marriage Below Zero as a speci-
men. That is meant to deal with sub
jects erotc. Sexual passion as existing
in the human soul is the subject. But
while both off shoots deal with
this concrete subject in some
of its phases, these writer's ap-
proach the topic by very different
methods, and with very variant foims
of inspiration. Sexual love leading up
to its full fruition is the theme. Don
Juan is free indeed SO is Ernest NAL
travers. But in all their broad, free
treatment OF their Anacreontic material
how idealised, how poetized they always
are They are always absolutely free
from all coarseness, all grossness, all
and all filth. Love is there. All
heights and depths of human passion
are sounded and laid bare to the eye Of
the mind. Passion glows at a white |