Octave Mirbeau’s brilliant 1901 essay exposing the absurd hypocrisy of French censorship laws. The satirist dissects how nude art in the Louvre is moral while the same image in a newspaper becomes criminal, mocking the arbitrary nature of public morality and artistic censorship.
Ah! I sincerely pity those good souls who go forever seeking, outside the realities of life… who go forever seeking joy or sorrow, comedy or tragedy, laughter or terror, and the improbable, the fantastic, the impossible, as if the poor imagination, so scarcely human, of the writer or artist could, in any matter whatsoever, create, invent, or dream anything better than what happens and what one sees, every day, all around us, on faces and in souls… False sublime, false farce, false sorrow, false joy, false laughter of dead romanticism and stillborn symbolism, how pitiful you are, poor masks, and how far you are from life, in which are all the abundant springs, bubbling and never dry, and ever renewed!
For instance, to stick to small things and small facts, to be accused of pornography by Mme Rachilde, as I was a few months ago, isn’t that an unexpected treat, strangely delicious?… To see oneself denounced — indirectly — but denounced all the same, to the Public Prosecutor, as I was the other day, by the Fin de siècle — yes, you read that right, by the Fin de siècle — for offences against decency and outrages to public morality, where could one find, I ask you, anything quite so absolutely delightful?…
I would have paid dearly, truly, for the Fin de siècle to print this sentence: “There is no writer who has reached greater criminal ignominies, who has wallowed, for sheer pleasure, in more immoralities and more filth than M. Octave Mirbeau. And yet, he has not been troubled for a single minute by the Public Prosecutor!” If I had needed justification, rehabilitation, there they were, complete… Well, this sentence, I had the joy — after similar ones from Mme Rachilde — of reading it in that adorable Fin de siècle, which thus judges in this summary but infinitely precious fashion my latest book: The Diary of a Chambermaid. An opinion, moreover, of which, I must say, the Fin de siècle doesn’t have the monopoly — for it doesn’t have the monopoly on virtue — and which it shares with certain very old gentlemen with schemes, and also with certain vaudevillists, in whom, at least, well-washed, well-groomed, well-perfumed indecency redeems itself through intransigent and fierce patriotism. And I remember that, a few days after the publication of my book, I met one of these vaudevillists… good-natured… but not to be trifled with… He was sincerely indignant, and he said to me:
“Oh! No, you know… I’m no prude… and I allow for many things… But that… it’s too much… it’s too disgusting!… Me… I respect the public… I wrap things up!…”
He wraps things up, the good fellow!… O mystery of the music halls!…
And to complete my joy… here comes M. Albert Guillaume getting involved… M. Albert Guillaume, the sympathetic author of Bonshommes Guillaume — ah! how Guillaume they are, those fellows! — and of a pile of drawings where naughty intention allies itself so frankly with the most complete — alas!… — ignorance of drawing… Good heart!… He needs virtue too, that one… and let it be merry!… As soon as there’s suffering somewhere, and it doesn’t happen as in the Guillaume Albums and the year-end revues, where the brothel, with its black stockings, its transparent gold-starred chemises, its painted flesh and its heavy stupidities, descends and swarms across the page and the stage… then they flee, the old gentlemen and the patriotic vaudevillists, and the Bonshommes Guillaume, and they cry out, veiling their faces: “It’s too disgusting!”
Eternal story, so sadly moving, of the prostitute who, her hard work done, needs the blue… the beyond… purity… little swallows… and beautiful moral stories that make one weep!…
I infinitely enjoyed the Fin de siècle article, not only in what concerns me, but also in that it poses an interesting question. The Fin de siècle would very much like to know what morality is, and asks that it finally be defined in a “legal” fashion. We could then know what is moral and what isn’t, what is permitted and what is forbidden to say… We have no other criterion in this matter than the mood, spirit or stomach disposition, more or less temporary, more or less reflexive, of a member of the League Against Street Licentiousness… It’s not sufficient, truly, and it’s often contradictory, and almost always arbitrary… The artist and writer depend therefore solely on something he is absolutely ignorant of, on a private misfortune, a loss on the Stock Exchange, a mistress’s infidelity, difficult digestion… all those external things that have such sway over men’s judgement… It would be desirable that morality not be exclusively left to the sole assessment, to the sole variable and unstable whim of a man or a League, but that its character, and consequently the guarantees of the writer and artist, be finally established on solid and fixed foundations, so that no one — judges and judged — could henceforth be mistaken.
It seems that’s where the difficulty lies, precisely, a difficulty as hard to overcome as squaring the circle, perpetual motion and dirigible balloons… All that the deepest psychologists have been able to understand thus far is that immorality is more especially visible and more intimately criminal in nudity, and only in the nudity of women… Why isn’t the nude man immoral?… No one knows… But he isn’t… And what’s even less known is this:
We have museums and public gardens, of which we are very proud, and where there are, in the museums, paintings, and in the gardens, statues… It happens that these paintings and statues represent nude women… It’s permitted, it’s decent, it’s even extremely moral and instructive that we go to the Louvre and admire these nude persons, that we stroll in the gardens and feast our eyes on the spectacle of nude statues… Not only is this moral, it’s free… But if these same nude persons from the Louvre, and these same nude statues from the Tuileries, we take it upon ourselves to reproduce them, by drawing, in a newspaper, they become, suddenly and mysteriously, immoral… and we fall under the law… Here is something it would be important to elucidate… For my part, I ask, I beg to be explained how it happens, how it can happen, that a moral thing becomes immoral in the journey from the Louvre to the newspaper!… Secret transformations of matter, what alchemist will ever illuminate your mysteries!…
There even happened, in this regard, an adventure, which the Fin de siècle recounts, and which troubles me, obsesses me, pursues me, like a tale by Edgar Poe.
You remember that, during the Exhibition, the great success of the collections assembled at the Petit Palais was Falconet’s clock, belonging to M. Isaac de Camondo, who had lent it to M. Émile Molinier while waiting for it to go definitively to add to the riches of the Louvre, to which M. de Camondo has, it seems, bequeathed it… All the newspapers spoke of it with ecstasy… They told us its history in detail… Enormous crowds, each day, stood before this object, which had become, in a way, national… and which represents the Hours… And how to represent the Hours other than by nude women, I ask you?… Naturally, it didn’t occur to anyone to protest against the nudity, somewhat plump, somewhat sausage-like, of these Hours… Everyone, moreover, would have burst out laughing… Encouraged by this enthusiasm and this success, the Fin de siècle reproduced, faithfully, on its front page, this much-celebrated, much-acclaimed clock… The next day, it received a summons to the correctional court, for offence against morals… They were prosecuting it for having reproduced an official, national thing, which, under government protection, at all hours of the day, received the homage of universal admiration… The Fin de siècle made its case; at first they wouldn’t hear it… The poor artist, who had copied as best he could this clock, so moral at the Petit Palais and so immoral on the paper of a periodical publication, was badly treated by the examining magistrate… Finally, from arguments to threats, the prosecution was dropped…
“Go!” said the examining magistrate… “You’re very lucky we’re in a time of appeasement… of wiping the slate clean… of universal joy… Go… but… you know… don’t do it again!…”
O good and honest morality, what stupidities… and also… what crimes are committed in your name!
1901.
This is one of 50+ rare French literary texts translated into English for the first time on this site.
Léon Hennique Novel 