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Affirmations

Chapter 7: FOOTNOTES:
By Havelock Ellis
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British LiteratureEssays, Letters & SpeechesPhilosophy & Ethics

About This Book

A collection of critical essays that examine how literature reveals and disguises moral questions, distinguishing high art literature from the literature of life; the author interrogates controversial aspects of notable figures and works (Nietzsche, Casanova, Zola, Huysmans, St. Francis among others), argues for reclaiming simple eternal facts amid contemporary self-congratulation, and affirms personal, hard-won creeds rather than claiming universal truths. Combining biographical detail, psychological reading, and moral critique, the essays privilege the questionable and aim to stimulate readers toward forming their own convictions.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] I take the first example which comes to hand, for whatever it may be worth:—“Luttrell was talking of Moore and Rogers—the poetry of the former so licentious, that of the latter so pure; much of its popularity owing to its being so carefully weeded of everything approaching to indelicacy; and the contrast between the lives and the works of the two men—the former a pattern of conjugal and domestic regularity, the latter of all the men he had ever known the greatest sensualist” (Greville’s Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 324).

[6] For another side of life we may read his description of the English Sunday:—“On Sunday one dares neither to play at cards nor to perform music. The numerous spies who infest the streets of this capital listen to the sounds which come from the parlours of the houses, and if they suspect any gaming or singing they conceal themselves and slip in at the first opportunity to seize those bad Christians who dare to profane the Lord’s Day by amusements which everywhere else are counted innocent. In revenge the English may go with impunity to sanctify the holy day in the taverns and brothels which are so plentiful in this city.” One may compare with this Mme. de Staël’s almost Dantesque description—so at least it remains in the memory—of the gloom of the Scotch Sabbath in the days of Burns. This statement of the matter remained substantially accurate until almost yesterday. So long it remained for the English spirit to re-conquer Sunday! It must be remembered that Puritanism, while always a part of the English spirit, was not originally its predominant note; it only became so as an inevitable reaction against the exotic Renaissance movement. Mary Stuart made Knox, Charles I. made Cromwell, and both monarchs were intimately associated with the last wave of the Renaissance.