Beauty is a concept rather hard to pin down. It has to be something profound, but likewise unusual, something that one does not often encounter. It has to be punchy, memorable, a slap across the face, even. Yet this phrase is so often incorporated into literary criticism that it begs the question: what is a ‘beautiful’ book? Google provides a rather monolithic definition of beauty as being something that ‘pleases the senses or mind aesthetically’. Whilst the likes of Austen and Alcott certainly abide true to this with their bewitching descriptions that gives their characters life, literature that lacks such romance and flare are arguably all the more beautiful. The green light slipping through Gatsby’s hand, Esther’s self destructive fig tree, the toxicity and rawness of Heathcliff, these books hardly provide a happy retreat. If anything, it leaves you numb. Leading more often than not into a reader’s slump, but this exact quality is what I find so very ‘beautiful’.
The Secret History
A more melancholic stance is taken in The Secret History in which “beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it”. This definition, albeit one of the best quotes of the novel, presents the two as being identical and thus interchangeable. But surely this take is not a sustainable one. For though it does ascertain beauty as having a shock factor, one does not experience the beauty of a Monet painting as one does a Francis Bacon painting. Where one is aesthetically pleasing, the other is gut-wrenching, but both beautiful nonetheless.
However, not all of The Secret History revolves around a misguided and likely sardonic interpretation of beauty, for the two do share vast similarities. The feeling of terror often mimics the emotions one experiences when faced with great beauty. The jaw dropping, mind-racing, even numbing sensations. Rilke described beauty as “but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so, because it serenely disdains to destroy us” and perhaps this is a far more pragmatic definition for though beauty in itself proves no immediate bodily or emotional threat, it may give rise to terror. At the same time, however, it may not. It has the power to be a pretty flame or a roaring blaze.
A Double-Edged Sword?
With this, beauty in literature acts as a double edged sword, for on the one hand it soothes and provides the mind with solace, but on the other, it can give way to new thought, ideas, and of course, revolutions. The words on paper are but a little flame, but depending on the interpreter, it may in due course become forest fire, burning through customs, norms, and thus transforming landscapes.
This is indeed what makes literature so dangerous. This power to spark change led many rulers to the same solution: censorship. The Japanese did it during the Edo period, as did Tsarist Russia, the Nazis, the Spanish, and the Chinese. Book burnings and literature bans have existed for centuries, in which governments would try to promote or expel certain ideologies to conform their subjects. Censorship still remains prevalent with books often reviewed as ‘beautiful’ by goodreads, being censored/banned for being immoral or indecent by the government. Many books that are banned still to this day are childhood favourites, from The Harry Potter series in the UAE and Hunger Games series in Vietnam to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in the USA.
What Makes a Book Immoral?
This begs the second question of what makes a book ‘immoral’ so much so that it arouses the need to be censored? Is it the content or the implication, the characters or the plot? Oscar Wild claimed in The Picture of Dorian Gray that “there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.” Whilst this suggests that the nature of literature is in the hands of the reader rather than the author and that therefore literature on its own has no emotional provocation, this quote is laced so heavily with irony that it makes it impossible to take it at face value. In the preface of the first edition of the book, Wilde states that “to reveal the art and conceal the artist is art’s aim”, yet his views on late 19th century decadence and aestheticism are channelled through the voice of Lord Henry Wotton. The portrait in itself is also a gateway into the soul of the artist. Yet Wilde simultaneously claims that “art has no influence upon action”, seemingly making a case of bringing meaning into art but then retreating from such claims.
Although this does leave a rather barren notion of immoral literature, Wilde does have a point in not presenting his audience with a conclusion. Whatever he may have believed, Wilde sets forth the notion that literature may or may not carry the emotive intentions of the author, thus a seed is planted in the reader’s mind. By claiming one thing but then contradicting himself, it forces the reader to think. Whether they then come to a concrete opinion or not does not innately matter for the idea has been spread.
Dictators and Literary Censorship
In the more pragmatic lens of dictators, this seemingly innocent and intangible process of thought is what keeps them up at night. The immorality in this case is oftentimes thought that does not align with the promoted ideology. Thoughts which could lead to opposition, discourse, and action. Though this does not account for every case in history, it does in the cases of the Tokugawa Bakufu whose closed border policies did not take kindly to the circulation of ‘barbaric’ foreign literature and ideas. Neither did the Spanish, who in burning Aztec and Mayan codices, brandished the scriptures as immoral and satanic. The Burning of the Vanities led by Savanorola likewise took to destroying items considered sinful and immoral.
“The Books that the World Calls Immoral are Books that Show the World its Own Shame”
Leaning back into the wisdom of Wilde, he stated that “the books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame”. This quote certainly leaves an element of ambiguity in terms of what the shame is. Whether that be the allegedly ‘immoral’ thing in question or the one claiming ‘immorality’. However, perhaps the fluidity of literature allows for both to be true. Historically for the rulers, ie those claiming immorality thus upholding censorship, they aim to remove ideas that go against their ideology which in their eyes is ‘shameful’; however, on the flipside is the way in which control is taken too far with such rulers and how their inhuman modes of control is in itself shameful. Censorship harms society as it deprives humans of humanity, rendering moody Dracula listless, resolute Circe half-hearted, and drains the romance from the landscapes of rural England. Not only is literary autonomy disregarded, but words are banned from living and giving life. For that is the ‘beauty’ of literature. In this example of dictatorships, censorship not only encompasses literature but all other artistic forms which likewise have the dangerous nature of being both soothing and provocative based on the beholder.
The Irony of Censoring Animal Farm
Yet even when considering the single viewpoint of what goes against an ideology as being ‘shameful’, it hardly ever leads to the same conclusion. An example of this is George Orwell’s Animal Farm, which was banned in the USA for advocating socialism yet laughably was also banned in the Soviet Union for promoting anti-socialism. The same book by the same author, yet taken as two completely contrasting interpretations, both concluding on its ‘immorality’ nonetheless. The irony in this is what perhaps Wilde was ascertaining to, for whatever Orwell’s motives, it was the reader that gave it a purpose. The different interpretation of the novel gives it various life forms and the fact that the novel breathes, censored or not, evokes the spark and a beautiful one at that.
Such books that are considered ‘immoral’, however, I believe pose the greatest power over humanity. Perhaps the only benefit in censoring literature is that authorities inadvertently suggest that these books have an innate destructive element and weight that speaks to humans. I find this to be especially true with The Handmaid’s Tale, in which not only is the whole novel a silent protest against inequality and inhumanity, but the quote “I tell therefore you are” connotes a connection between strangers that can be incredibly strong. This interconnectedness amongst humanity that can be achieved through literature is what indeed makes it terrifying and simultaneously so beautiful and therefore, ‘censorship in literature has done more harm than good’ as to silence that which is ‘dangerous’ is to remove the beauty.
