—Ibid
It is with the angelic eye that man beholds the world of his true substance.
—Plexus
“To you it may seem that way,” I said slightly nettled now. “To me it seems otherwise. I don’t intend to be a thinker, you know. I want to write. I want to write about life, in the raw. Human beings, any kind of human beings, are food and drink to me. I enjoy talking about other things, certainly. The conversation we just had, that’s nectar and ambrosia. I don’t say it doesn’t get anyone anywhere, not at all, but—I prefer to reserve that sort of food for my own private delectation. You see, at the bottom I’m just one of those common men we were talking about. Only, now and then I get flashes. Sometimes I think I’m an artist. Once in a great great while I even think I may be a visionary, but never a prophet, a seer. What I have to contribute must be done in a roundabout way. When I read about Nostradamus or Paracelsus, for example, I feel at home. But I was born in another vector. I’ll be happy if I ever learn to tell a good story. I like the idea of getting nowhere. I like the idea of the game for the game’s sake. And above all, wretched, botched and horrible though it may be, I love this world of human beings. I don’t want to cut myself adrift. Perhaps what fascinates me in being a writer is that it necessitates communion with all and sundry.”
—Ibid
The phrase so widely used today—the common man—strikes me as an utterly meaningless one. There is no such animal. If the phrase has any meaning at all, and I think Nostradamus certainly implied as much when he spoke of the Vulgar Advent, it means that all that is abstract and negative, or retrogresssive, has now assumed dominion. Whatever the common man is or is not, one thing is certain—he is the very antithesis of Christ or Satan. The term itself seems to imply absence of allegiance, absence of faith, absence of guiding principle—or even instinct. Democracy, a vague, empty word, simply denotes the confusion which the common man has ushered in and in which he flourishes like the weed. One might as well say—mirage, illusion, hocus-pocus. Have you ever thought that it may be on this note—on the rise and dominion of an anacephalic body—that history will end? Perhaps we will have to begin all over again from where the Cro-Magnon man left off. One thing seems highly evident to me, and that is that the note of doom and destruction which figures so heavily in all prophecies, springs from the certain knowledge that the historical or world element in man’s life is but transitory. The seer knows how, why and where we got off the track. He knows further that there is little to be done about it, so far as the great mass of humanity is concerned. History must run its course, we say. True, but only because history is the myth, the true myth, of man’s fall made manifest in time. Man’s descent into the illusory realm of matter must continue until there is nothing left to do but swim up to the surface of reality—and live in the light of everlasting truth.
—Ibid
It is almost as if our heroic figures had built their own tombs, described them intimately, then buried themselves in their mortuary creations. The heraldic landscape has vanished. The air belongs to the giant birds of destruction. The waters will soon be ploughed by Leviathans more fearful to behold than those described in the Good Book. The tension increases, increases, increases. Even in villages the inhabitants become more and more, in feeling and spirit, like the bombs they are obliged to manufacture.
But history will not end even when the grand explosion occurs. The historical life of man has still a long span. It doesn’t take a metaphysician to arrive at such a conclusion. Sitting in that little hole in the wall back in Brooklyn twenty-five years or so ago I could feel the pulse of history throbbing as late as the thirty-second Dynasty of Our Lord.
—Ibid
At the dawn of every age there is distinguishable a radiant figure in whom the new time spirit is embodied. He comes at the darkest hour, rises like a sun, and dispels the gloom and stagnation in which the world was gripped. Somewhere in the black folds which now enshroud us I am certain that another being is gestating, that he is but waiting for the zero hour to announce himself. Hope never dies, passion can never be utterly extinguished. The deadlock will be broken. Now we are sound asleep in the cocoon; it took centuries and centuries to spin this seeming web of death. It takes but a few moments to burst it asunder.
—Remember to Remember
The war-makers are all civilized peoples, all relatively old. If they cannot find the wisdom to establish life on a more sane and equitable basis than that which has obtained for the last ten thousand years, if they are unwilling to make the great experiment, then all the trials of humanity throughout the ages will go for nought.
Frankly, I don’t believe that the human race can regress in this manner. I believe that when the crucial moment arrives, a leader greater than any we have known in the past will arise to lead us out of the present impasse. But in order for such a figure to come into being humanity will have to go through an ordeal beyond anything heretofore known; we will have to reach a point of such profound despair that we will be willing at long last to assume the full responsibilities of manhood. That means to live for one another in the absolute religious meaning of the phrase: we will have to become planetary citizens of the earth, connected with one another not by country, race, class, religion, profession or ideology, but by a common, instinctive rhythm of the heart.
—Ibid
Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur. Faith has nothing to do with profits; if anything, it has to do with prophets. Men who know and believe can foresee the future. They don’t want to put something over—they want to put something under us. They want to give solid support to our dreams. The world isn’t kept running because it’s a paying proposition. (God doesn’t make a cent on the deal.) The world goes on because a few men in every generation believe in it utterly, accept it unquestioningly; they underwrite it with their lives. In the struggle which they have to make themselves understood they create music; taking the discordant elements of life, they weave a pattern of harmony and significance. If it weren’t for this constant struggle on the part of a few creative types to expand the sense of reality in man the world would literally die out. We are not kept alive by legislators and militarists, that’s fairly obvious. We are kept alive by men of faith, men of vision. They are like vital germs in the endless process of becoming. Make room, then, for the life-giving ones!
—The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
It is a dilemma of the first magnitude, a dilemma fraught with the highest significance. One has to establish the ultimate difference of his own peculiar being and doing so discover his kinship with all humanity, even the very lowest. Acceptance is the key word. But acceptance is precisely the great stumbling block. It has to be total acceptance and not conformity.
—The Time of the Assassins
We can never explain except in terms of new conundrums. What belongs to the realm of spirit, or the eternal, evades all explanation. The language of the poet is asymptotic; it runs parallel to the inner voice when the latter approaches the infinitude of spirit. It is through this inner register that the man without language, so to speak, is in communication with the poet. There is no question of verbal education involved but one of spiritual development.
—Ibid
A Columbus does not flout the laws, he extends them. Nor does he set sail for an imaginary world. He discovers a new world accidentally. But such accidents are the legitimate fruits of daring. This daring is not recklessness but the product of inner certitude.
—Ibid
DEFENSE OF THE FREEDOM TO READ
DEFENSE OF THE FREEDOM TO READ
On May 10th, 1957, the book Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion), by the world-famous American author, Henry Miller, was ordered by the Attorney General [of Norway] to be confiscated on the grounds that it was “obscene writing.”
Volume I of the Danish edition of the book had at this stage been available for over eigh
t months on the Norwegian market, and was on sale in a considerable number of the most reputable bookshops in the country.
Copies of the book were confiscated in a total of nine bookshops. Proceedings were instituted against two of these booksellers, chosen at random. . . .
In a judgment pronounced by the Oslo Town Court on June 17th, 1958, the two booksellers were found guilty of having “offered for sale, exhibited, or in other ways endeavored to disseminate obscene writing,” and this judgment has now been appealed to the Supreme Court.
It is and has been my pleasure and privilege to act as defending counsel. As a result of my official association with this case I have enjoyed a certain measure of personal contact, through the medium of correspondence, with that eminent author and warmhearted and talented fellow human, Henry Miller.
The letter addressed to myself which is reproduced in this document, and which constitutes Henry Miller’s ardent appeal to the tribunal of the Norwegian Supreme Court, is intended by him to assist in the defense of the most important bastion of freedom, democracy, and humanism: the freedom to read.
Trygve Hirsch
Barrister-at-Law
Big Sur, California
February 27th, 1959
Mr. Trygve Hirsch
Oslo, Norway
Dear Mr. Hirsch:
To answer your letter of January 19th requesting a statement of me which might be used in the Supreme Court trial to be conducted in March or April of this year. . . . It is difficult to be more explicit than I was in my letter of September 19th, 1957, when the case against my book Sexus was being tried in the lower courts of Oslo. However, here are some further reflections which I trust will be found à propos.
When I read the decision of the Oslo Town Court, which you sent me some months ago, I did so with mingled feelings. If occasionally I was obliged to roll with laughter—partly because of the inept translation, partly because of the nature and the number of infractions listed—I trust no one will take offense. Taking the world for what it is, and the men who make and execute the laws for what they are, I thought the decision as fair and honest as any theorem of Euclid’s. Nor was I unaware of, or indifferent to, the efforts made by the Court to render an interpretation beyond the strict letter of the law. (An impossible task, I would say, for if laws are made for men and not men for laws, it is also true that certain individuals are made for the law and can only see things through the eyes of the law.)
I failed to be impressed, I must confess, by the weighty, often pompous or hypocritical, opinions adduced by scholars, literary pundits, psychologists, medicos and such like. How could I be when it is precisely such single-minded individuals, so often wholly devoid of humor, at whom I so frequently aim my shafts?
Rereading this lengthy document today, I am more than ever aware of the absurdity of the whole procedure. (How lucky I am not to be indicted as a “pervert” or “degenerate,” but simply as one who makes sex pleasurable and innocent!) Why, it is often asked, when he has so much else to give, did he have to introduce these disturbing, controversial scenes dealing with sex? To answer that properly, one would have to go back to the womb—with or without the analyst’s guiding hand. Each one—priest, analyst, barrister, judge—has his own answer, usually a ready-made one. But none go far enough, none are deep enough, inclusive enough. The divine answer, of course, is—first remove the mote from your own eye!
If I were there, in the dock, my answer would probably be—“Guilty! Guilty on all ninety-seven counts! To the gallows!” For when I take the short, myopic view, I realize that I was guilty even before I wrote the book. Guilty, in other words, because I am the way I am. The marvel is that I am walking about as a free man. I should have been condemned the moment I stepped out of my mother’s womb.
In that heart-rending account of my return to the bosom of the family which is given in Reunion in Brooklyn, I concluded with these words, and I meant them, each and every one of them: “I regard the entire world as my home. I inhabit the earth, not a particular portion of it labeled America, France, Germany, Russia. . . . I owe allegiance to mankind, not to a particular country, race or people. I answer to God, not to the Chief Executive, whoever he may happen to be. I am here on earth to work out my own private destiny. My destiny is linked with that of every other living creature inhabiting this planet—perhaps with those on other planets too, who knows? I refuse to jeopardize my destiny by regarding life within the narrow rules which are laid down to circumscribe it. I dissent from the current view of things, as regards murder, as regards religion, as regards society, as regards our well-being. I will try to live my life in accordance with the vision I have of things eternal. I say ‘Peace to you all!’ and if you don’t find it, it’s because you haven’t looked for it.”
It is curious, and not irrelevant, I hope, to mention at this point the reaction I had upon reading Homer recently. At the request of the publisher, Gallimard, who is bringing out a new edition of The Odyssey, I wrote a short Introduction to this work. I had never read The Odyssey before, only The Iliad, and that but a few months ago. What I wish to say is that, after waiting sixty-seven years to read these universally esteemed classics, I found much to disparage in them. In The Iliad, or “the butcher’s manual,” as I call it, more than in The Odyssey. But it would never occur to me to request that they be banned or burned. Nor did I fear, on finishing them, that I would leap outdoors, axe in hand, and run amok. My boy, who was only nine when he read The Iliad (in a child’s version), my boy who confesses to “liking murder once in a while,” told me he was fed up with Homer, with all the killing and all the nonsense about the gods. But I have never feared that this son of mine, now going on eleven, still an avid reader of our detestable “Comics,” a devotee of Walt Disney (who is not to my taste at all), an ardent movie fan, particularly of the “Westerns,” I have never feared, I say, that he will grow up to be a killer. (Not even if the Army claims him!) I would rather see his mind absorbed by other interests, and I do my best to provide them, but, like all of us, he is a product of the age. No need, I trust, for me to elaborate on the dangers which confront us all, youth especially, in this age. The point is that with each age the menace varies. Whether it be witchcraft, idolatry, leprosy, cancer, schizophrenia, communism, fascism, or what, we have ever to do battle. Seldom do we really vanquish the enemy, in whatever guise he presents himself. At best we become immunized. But we never know, nor are we able to prevent in advance, the dangers which lurk around the corner. No matter how knowledgeable, no matter how wise, no matter how prudent and cautious, we all have an Achilles’ heel. Security is not the lot of man. Readiness, alertness, responsiveness—these are the sole defenses against the blows of fate.
I smile to myself in putting the following to the honorable members of the Court, prompted as I am to take the bull by the horns. Would it please the Court to know that by common opinion I pass for a sane, healthy, normal individual? That I am not regarded as a “sex addict,” a pervert, or even a neurotic? Nor as a writer who is ready to sell his soul for money? That, as a husband, a father, a neighbor, I am looked upon as “an asset” to the community? Sounds a trifle ludicrous, does it not? Is this the same enfant terrible, it might be asked, who wrote the unmentionable Tropics, The Rosy Crucifixion, The World of Sex, Quiet Days in Clichy? Has he reformed? Or is he simply in his dotage now?
To be precise, the question is—are the author of these questionable works and the man who goes by the name of Henry Miller one and the same person? My answer is yes. And I am also one with the protagonist of these “autobiographical romances.” That is perhaps harder to swallow. But why? Because I have been “utterly shameless” in revealing every aspect of my life? I am not the first author to have adopted the confessional approach, to have revealed life nakedly, or to have used language supposedly unfit for the ears of school girls. Were I a saint recounting his life of sin, perhaps these bald statements relating to my sex habits would be found enlightening, particularly by priests a
nd medicos. They might even be found instructive.
But I am not a saint, and probably never will be one. Though it occurs to me, as I make this assertion, that I have been called that more than once, and by individuals whom the Court would never suspect capable of holding such an opinion. No, I am not a saint, thank heavens! nor even a propagandist of a new order. I am simply a man, a man born to write, who has taken as his theme the story of his life. A man who has made it clear, in the telling, that it was a good life, a rich life, a merry life, despite the ups and downs, despite the barriers and obstacles (many of his own making), despite the handicaps imposed by stupid codes and conventions. Indeed, I hope that I have made more than that clear, because whatever I may say about my own life which is only a life, is merely a means of talking about life itself, and what I have tried, desperately sometimes, to make clear is this, that I look upon life itself as good, good no matter on what terms, that I believe it is we who make it unlivable, we, not the gods, not fate, not circumstance.
Speaking thus, I am reminded of certain passages in the Court’s decision which reflect on my sincerity as well as on my ability to think straight. These passages contain the implication that I am often deliberately obscure as well as pretentious in my “metaphysical and surrealistic” flights. I am only too well aware of the diversity of opinion which these “excursi” elicit in the minds of my readers. But how am I to answer such accusations, touching as they do the very marrow of my literary being? Am I to say, “You don’t know what you are talking about”? Ought I to muster impressive names—“authorities”—to counterbalance these judgments? Or would it not be simpler to say, as I have before—“Guilty! Guilty on all counts, your Honor!”
The Henry Miller Reader Page 40