The World’s Tragedy

XXVI PREFACE. mental and strong. The whole soul storms the height of heaven, exults, laughs, enjoys, falls exhausted. The thing is clean. It is the lady novelist that drags her snail-track across the desert of bad literature. Nothing so excites my loathing as to see these ghouls licking their chops over the adven- tures of some dirty slut of a Princess. They scent indecency in passion beyond the marriage-tie : they will not even allow a man to be in love with his own wife. Why shouldn’t he be ? He is now and then. I happen to know it. The long and short of the whole matter is this, that there is no- thing clean but ecstasy. Whether that ecstasy is the divine spirituality of Visva- rupadarshana, or the sexual splendour of Epipsychidion, or the laughter of Catullus, all is pure and perfect. It is the vision of the God that is pure ; it is the veils that stain. Whether the curtain of falsehood be moral, or ethical, or romantic, it is a stain. Weakness is evil and impure ; strength is divine and clean. A mountain is more naked than a marsh. By your leave, gentles, I will continue to live on the mountain. SODOMY Further, lest ‘ broad-minded ’ prigs come to smash me by their aid, I shall fight openly for that which no living En- glishman dare defend, even in secret — sodomy !