thereto ferment. No wonder he was always indulging in orgies of
forbidden words. Consider the famous book, 1601, that fireside
conversation in the time of Queen Elizabeth: is there any obsolete verbal
indecency in the English language that Mark Twain has not painstakingly
resurrected and assembled there? He, whose blood was in constant ferment
and who could not contain within the narrow bonds that had been set for
him the roitous exuberance of his nature, had to have an escape-valve,
and he poured through it a fetid stream of meaningless obscenity–the
waste of a priceless psychic material!” Thus, Brooks lumps 1601 with
Mark Twain’s “bawdry,” and interprets it simply as another indication of
frustration.
FIGS FOR FIG LEAVES!
Of course, the writing of such a piece as 1601 raised the question of
freedom of expression for the creative artist.
Although little discussed at that time, it was a question which intensely
interested Mark, and for a fuller appreciation of Mark’s position one
must keep in mind the year in which 1601 was written, 1876. There had
been nothing like it before in American literature; there had appeared no
Caldwells, no Faulkners, no Hemingways. Victorian England was gushing
Tennyson. In the United States polite letters was a cult of the Brahmins
of Boston, with William Dean Howells at the helm of the Atlantic. Louisa
May Alcott published Little Women in 1868-69, and Little Men in 1871. In
1873 Mark Twain led the van of the debunkers, scraping the gilt off the
lily in the Gilded Age.
In 1880 Mark took a few pot shots at license in Art and Literature in his
Tramp Abroad, “I wonder why some things are? For instance, Art is
allowed as much indecent license to-day as in earlier times–but the
privileges of Literature in this respect have been sharply curtailed
within the past eighty or ninety years. Fielding and Smollet could
portray the beastliness of their day in the beastliest language; we have
plenty of foul subjects to deal with in our day, but we are not allowed
to approach them very near, even with nice and guarded forms of speech.
But not so with Art. The brush may still deal freely with any subject;
however revolting or indelicate. It makes a body ooze sarcasm at every
pore, to go about Rome and Florence and see what this last generation has
been doing with the statues. These works, which had stood in innocent
nakedness for ages, are all fig-leaved now. Yes, every one of them.
Nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can help noticing
it now, the fig-leaf makes it so conspicuous. But the comical thing
about it all, is, that the fig-leaf is confined to cold and pallid
marble, which would be still cold and unsuggestive without this sham and
ostentatious symbol of modesty, whereas warm-blooded paintings which do
really need it have in no case been furnished with it.
“At the door of the Ufizzi, in Florence, one is confronted by statues of
a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with accumulated grime–they
hardly suggest human beings–yet these ridiculous creatures have been
thoughtfully and conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidious
generation. You enter, and proceed to that most-visited little gallery
that exists in the world…. and there, against the wall, without
obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the
vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses–Titian’s Venus. It
isn’t that she is naked and stretched out on a bed–no, it is the
attitude of one of her arms and hand. If I ventured to describe the
attitude, there would be a fine howl–but there the Venus lies, for
anybody to gloat over that wants to–and there she has a right to lie,
for she is a work of art, and Art has its privileges. I saw young girls
stealing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gaze long and absorbedly
at her; I saw aged, infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic
interest. How I should like to describe her–just to see what a holy
indignation I could stir up in the world–just to hear the unreflecting
average man deliver himself about my grossness and coarseness, and all