We submit that, having in mind the context, there is nothing in “Jurgen” which is indecent. A man studiously on the alert for the indecent can put his finger on certain words in the book; but the very meaning of these words is decent if we will but read them in the connection to which they are meant to refer. And other things that are said, so far from being indecent, are things lawfully to be said, unless the body of our literature should perish from the earth.
All of this is illustrated by the bill of particulars which Mr. Sumner, one of the prosecutors in this case, furnished when he filed a complaint in the Special Sessions. Mr. Sumner there enumerates the pages containing, as he thinks, lewd and obscene matter. We shall now deal with the particulars thus furnished.
What is there to complain of on pages 59, 88, 99, 114, 134–5, 275? Pages 88 and 99 require no discussion. On pages 134–5 Guenevere takes leave of Jurgen, that is all. On page 59 occurs “temptress”, which is not obscene. On page 114 the ghost of Smoit tells Jurgen that he is his grandfather, instead of the putative ancestor whom Jurgen had always accepted. But if this is lewd, then we must stop the sale of such books as Thackeray’s “Henry Esmond”. On page 275 Jurgen stops his vampire wife from sucking his blood through biting his chest. Burne-Jones’ painting “The Vampire”, is familiar,—even to those of us who never frequent galleries at home or abroad,—through Kipling’s famous poem.
But as perhaps it is not suitable thus to summarize the particulars which Mr. Sumner was at such pains to gather, we will take the other pages which he mentions and deal with them seriatim.
Pages 57–8—Jurgen’s conversation with Dorothy in the garden. A kiss is not indecent. Temptation came, but it was dispelled.
Page 61—Reference to “the bed” is made—But for whom? The bride. A bridal bed is not obscene or lewd. Vide wedding march in “Lohengrin”, and the relative chapters in Scott’s “The Bride of Lammermuir”.
Page 63—“Had wondered if he were really the first man for whom she had put a deceit upon her husband”, etc. If this is obscene, then nearly all current fiction is, to say nothing of the classics, ancient or modern.
Page 64—Jurgen counts up his conquests. But so did Don Juan. “The end of all is death”—but so said Villon—“Ou sont les nieges d’antan?”
Page 67—Speaks simply of a kiss. Whether long or short, a kiss is not lewd.
Page 80—Jurgen is talking about Guenevere to her father—“I can get justice done me anywhere, in all the bed chambers of the world.” If this is lewd, then we should abolish Ophelia’s mad song in Hamlet. Anyhow, Jurgen goes on to say (same page) “I only meant in a manner of speaking, sir.”
Pages 84–6—Jurgen tells Yolande she must reward him by candle light, etc. This contains no description of any offensive act. There is nothing explicit.
Page 89—Guenevere’s father suspects that she was not entirely chaste while in the giant’s cavern. Has literature, ancient or modern, never previously exposed a father’s doubt of his daughter’s chastity? Did no one ever study the Greek tragedies?
Page 90—The King wonders whether “a thing like this is happening” in his city in many places, and Jurgen says that it probably is. Sinclair Lewis has similar speculations in “Babbitt”. The references to a “breakage” refer to infractions of moral law.
Page 92—The King says that, if Jurgen has had improper relations with Guenevere, he should lie like a gentleman. Where is the obscenity? Has not that phrase become time-worn, in literature and conversation, since the late eighties?
Page 98—Jurgen looks forward “to more intimate converse” with the lady. Entirely compatible with just what it says. The dreadful word “liaison” also is used. But the late war has brought it into such use—“liaison officer”; “liaison between the Y. M. C. A. and the chaplains’ corps”, etc.—that the word now has Anglice the extensive meaning that the French always allowed it.
Pages 100, 102, 104–8—These deal with Jurgen’s affair with Guenevere. If read as a whole, bearing in mind the outstanding point, that Guenevere’s characteristic was “her innocence, combined with a certain moral obtuseness” (108) there is nothing lewd or obscene in this any more than in Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”. Reference may be made to page 102, where Jurgen had his answer to the question, what sort of service did women most cordially appreciate. He believed they did not really desire to be served as (103) a symbol of Heaven’s perfection, as (336) half goddess, half bric-a-brac. But this opinion was not suitable for a mixed audience in Glathion, where people believed otherwise (104–108). They are not said to have done anything but kiss and talk. The reasons for their talking in privacy are logical. If any improprieties took place the text nowhere alludes to them. Compare the first part of Goethe’s “Faust,” Scott’s “The Heart of Midlothian,” George Eliot’s “Adam Bede” and “Middlemarch,” or Stevenson’s “Weir of Hermiston,” for precisely similar seductions.
Page 120—Jurgen gets into the bedroom of the Bishop. “His eminence was not alone, but as both occupants of the apartment were asleep, Jurgen saw nothing unepiscopal”.—If we are to be literal, then let us observe that this passage does not say (a) that the other was a female; (b) that they were in bed together. Sterne’s “Sentimental Journey” has passages much more explicit.
Page 144—Jurgen talks concerning Guenevere and Lancelot. Tennyson, in verse, discoursed of the same thing.
Pages 161–8—Deal with Jurgen’s matrimonial quarrels with Anaitis, who, for all she is a nature myth and believes in symbolism, is quarrelsome. She does not like Jurgen to “talk so flippantly about her religion” (165) and regrets his dislike of his “in-laws”, such as Apis, the well-known Egyptian god, who “will go about in public wearing a bull’s head”. What is lewd or obscene here? Surely not the terms “sacti-sodhana” and “muntrus”. They may look obscene because they are in an unfamiliar language, but in that language, Sanscrit, counsel are informed, they refer to religious rites of the Brahmins, who are not commonly rated as lewd.
Pages 170–1—Shows that nature myths last only as long as the philologists let them, hence they are Epicureans. But Jurgen, being a doubter, is not sure that death ends all. Is there anything Lewd or obscene in this quaint turning of the tables on the materialists?
Pages 174–7—Continues the matrimonial life of Jurgen and Anaitis, ending with the conviction, forced on him, that the ruling spirit of this land of hers is nothing else but Cybele, the Roman goddess of earth, or Æsred, or Sereda, as she is variously called. And so he became convinced “that all such employment was a peculiarly unimaginative pursuit of happiness” (177). Surely a good moral lesson, if anything.
Page 186—Simply a symbolic way of telling us that “Time begets nothing”. He sleeps in Atlantis, while Briareus watches. Life is a ceaseless round, history is a ceaseless round, of old things. It is a commonplace of Greek mythology that Chronos, [Time] was mutilated by his son Zeus.
Pages 186, 321, 154—Carry reference to the fact that there are such things as eunuchs. If it is wrong to refer to eunuchs, then most literature, not only of the East, but referring to it, should be expunged. St. Philip’s first convert was an eunuch (Acts VIII, 26–40). In “Innocents Abroad” Mark Twain gives the story of the revenge which Heloise’s uncle caused to be taken upon Abelard.
Page 211—Refers to the priests of Cybele. If they were eunuchs, that would not be, as said above, an obscene fact. But they were not eunuchs, as it happened. The priests of Cybele were madmen: that is, they had been deprived of their wits, and had thus “parted with possessions which Jurgen valued”. Above all things the practical-minded Jurgen valued sanity. See Tooke’s “Pantheon,” p. 172: “The Priests of Cybele were named Galli, from a river of Phrygia. Such was the nature of the water of this river, that whoever drank of it immediately grew mad. The Galli, as often as they sacrificed, furiously cut and slashed their arms with knives; and thence all furious and mad people were called Galantes.”
Pages 196–200, 203, 206–7, 124–8, 148–150—References to objects:—
(a) Jurgen’s staff (196–200, 203). The answer to this, like the answer to the insinuations about the lance in chapter 22 (vide supra) is that it was a staff, and nothing else (see p. 95).
(b) Harpocrates, “who held an astonishing object” (206–7). This is attacked along with the reference to the People of the Fields, who practise eudæmonism. Jurgen sees the People of the Fields, “who dwell between the forest and the city of Pseudopolis” (204). These people “did one and all what they had always done” (204) whereas, “whoever heard of the People of the Wood doing anything useful?” So Jurgen, after being informed that the People of the Field never take a holiday (206) decides to see what the People of the Wood do about it (206). He finds them practicing eudæmonism outdoors instead of indoors. Eudæmonism: “The type of utilitarian ethical theory that makes the pursuit, enjoyment and production of happiness the supreme end in moral conduct.”—Funk & Wagnalls’ Dictionary. This was of course the creed of Cocaigne—“Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” The point here is that satyrs do not go indoors, for the reason that for a satyr to go indoors is unheard of. If it is indecent to mention a satyr, then not only should Keats and Swinburne be destroyed, but Elizabeth Barrett Browning should be reprimanded for writing that poem “A Musical Instrument”, which is all about “The Great God Pan”, chief of Satyrs. As to Harpocrates, we refer to Tooke’s “Pantheon of the Heathen Gods”,—a most respectable authority. It is there said (p. 352): “The Egyptians worshipped Harpocrates as the god of Silence * * * They consecrated the tree persea to him; because the fruit was like a heart * * * He was painted with a finger upon his lips, thereby commanding silence.” It is, therefore, probably the persea fruit which Harpocrates is carrying, and the astonishment of Jurgen at seeing the human heart thus publicly displayed is equally nature and good allegory. The custom that led to stiffness was of course Harpocrates’ custom of not speaking to or answering the remarks of others.
(c) Jurgen’s sword (124–8, 148–150). Mention is made of Jurgen’s sword. But, like the staff and the lance (vide supra) all that need be said is that it really is a sword, Caliburn. The book tells just where and how he got it (72, 76).
(d) The doorknocker on the entrance to Cocaigne (150). These were simply the nude figures of Adam and Eve. Jurgen, being conventional, and yet seeking sin, is embarrassed at the nude, and thinks it is indecent; so he talks about it.
Pages 196–200, 203—Jurgen’s meeting, and marriage, with Chloris, the Hamadryad. There is nothing in this does not bear comparison with the “Endymion” of Keats, or the Chorus from Swinburne’s “Atalanta in Calydon”. As to the marriage, see two books in common publication:—Flaubert’s “Temptation of St. Anthony,” Modern Library, p. 226: “These are the deities of marriage. They await the coming of the bride. Domiduca should lead her in,—Virgo unfasten her girdle,—Subigo place her in the bed,—and Praema open her arms, and whisper sweet words into her ear.” Tooke’s “Pantheon of the Heathen Gods, Adapted for the Use of Students of Every Age and of Either Sex,” p. 281: “Jugatinus joined the man and the woman together in the yoke of matrimony. Domiducus guided the bride into the bridegroom’s house * * * Priapus, or Mutinus was also reckoned one of the nuptial gods, because in his lap the bride was commanded to sit.”
Pages 271–2, 286—The marriage with the vampire goes no further than passages in Sterne’s Sentimental Journey and the novels of Fielding. The conversation of the vampire leaves things unsaid rather than said. There is no reason for taking in a wrong sense the reference to the sceptre.
Pages 236–9, 241–2. Jurgen’s conversation with the Queen of Philistia is nothing but a take-off on the mediæval—occasionally modern—belief in the magic of numbers. See Baring-Gould’s “Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,” Appendix E, p. 651: “Pythagoras taught that each number had its own peculiar character, virtue and properties. The unit, or the monad, he says, is the principle and the end of all; it is this sublime knot which binds together the chain of causes; it is the symbol of identity, of existence, of conservation, and of general harmony * * * The number Two, or the dyad, the origin of contrasts, is the symbol of diversity, or inequality, of division, and of separation. Two is accordingly an evil principle, characterizing disorder and confusion * * * Three, or the triad, is the number containing the most sublime mysteries, for everything is composed of three substances * * * Nine, or the ennead, being the multiple of Three, should be regarded as sacred. Finally, Ten, or the decad, is the measure of all, since it contains all the numeric relations and harmonies.” “Eight (p. 652) is the number of the Beatitudes.”
Pages 340–3—contain nothing but a statement of the fact that Venus, as a cult, has her followers and her temples,—nothing that poets of times past have not told us again and again. The temples existed, and are mentioned freely in all books of classical mythology.
We are almost at the end of Mr. Sumner’s particulars; but there are two that deserve notice.
He finds obscenity on pages 228–9. There we find Jurgen standing at the bed of the sleeping Helen, but leaving her untouched, because he wants to retain his “unreasonable dreams”. If this is obscenity, then indeed Keats wrote in lewdest mood the “Eve of St. Agnes”.
And Mr. Sumner finds obscenity on page 142. What do we find there? We find Jurgen kneeling before a crucifix!
And there let us leave the case.