ART OR INDECENCY?

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18942, 5 March 1927, Page 13

ART OR INDECENCY?

THE PUBLISHING OF LOVE LETTERS. "Where art lenves off and indecent exposure begins (the "New York Times said lately) is a question often discussed in relation to the stage and frequently enough with regard to literature. Numerous anonymour works purporting to bo brutally frank and honest in their tales of people now or recently living have stimulated argument on both sides. The propriety of publishing letters, particularly lovo letters, has come up again in connexion with John Drinkwater's "Book for Bookmen, recently published in England. A critic refers to the author as "perverse' because he says that tho letters of Keats to Fanny Brawn should never have been published. This critic was on the side of those who are for publication of anything; Drinkwater finds it in better taste to draw tho line somewhere, and in a long defence of his position, printed in the "Manchester Guardian,' gives his reasons.

Admitting that private correspondence is often of groat interest and value in filling in tho character of veil-known person*, particularly writers, he insists that love letters do not bolong to the public in any sense or at any time. A hundred years later they remain as privato to the •writer and recipient as when they were written. Going still further, he maintains that it is impossible for any third person to comprehend them. Whatever allowances are made for the mood of the writer, ilio reader to-day cannot bo emotionally in accord with him. He, himself, reading them later might find his own words strange and out of keeping with what he believes of his normal character. So Drinkwater argues that they are of no importance to readers who want more light (;:i a beloved author, and in fact are positively misleading. Matthew Arnold said of the Keats letters that "they ought never to have been published." But he went on to remark that, since they had been published, one must take 6ome notice of them. He then deplored their "abandonment of all reticence and all dignity." This attitude reflects on Keats unhappily. Its assumption is that we nrc able to understand letters which possibly the poet himself could not have understood fully at a later date. Most renders "ill not agree with either Drinkwnter or Arnold. They mnv sav that, such letters ought never tii lie published, hut are nevertheless enormously interested in reading them. As for the former's contention that they ran l>e an accurate or important revolution of character, there is somethins to l>e said on the other side. They aiv an emanation of some portion of the writer's mind and heart, and even if tliev are on'y momentarily true, their quick' flush reveals something that no amount of other writing will light up. It is impossible to agree with Drinkwater that "there wa« in the real Iveats no shadow of justification" for the colour they give him.