LITERATURE AND PUBLIC MORALITY

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9022, 7 April 1888, Page 4 (Supplement)

LITERATURE AND PUBLIC MORALITY

The length to which "realism in art" has been pushed by a certain school of French litterateurs has brought so much reproach on the French nation that a " League" has been formed for the " Elevation of the Public Morality," in "the interest of democracy and of the honour of the national genius." " The question is," its promoters say, "the frightful spread of immoral and demoralising literature." What has brought about this crisis is probably Zola's latest effort, •which is having an immense sale, and is probably the filthiest and most disgusting production of the human mind either in ancient or modern times. A lecture has just been delivered under the auspices of the League, by M. Pressensee", one of the senators, at Lyons, in which he draws a terrible picture of the condition of French light literature ; but this, as the Temps points out, is a comparatively easy thing to do. What is needed is a remedy, and the suggestions made on this lint are not very valuable. One writer, . Loliee, in a book on "Literary Men" (Gens de Lettres), says the cause of the evil is that whereas writers used to be amateurs, who never expected to make I money out. of their books, they are now professionals who want to make all "the money they can, and manufacture whatever they find will sell best. This may be an explanation, but it is not a cure. The Temps says that the only way to abate the nuisances is to induce "the public to become disgusted with the products which are furnished to it, instead of eagerly buying them," but this does not differ greatly from the plan of getting the legislature to ordain virtue, at which the same journals' laughs. The fact is that both filthy books and filthy newspapers owe their prosperity to the existence and rapid growth in all countries of an immense public which has acquired the art of readinjr without any intellectual tastes or culture, and therefore seeks from the types simple entertainment of any kind. He would be a very wise man who could tell how this class is to be cut off from what it finds the cheapest form of excitement).— New York Evening Poet. : , , , j