Babel Tower

by A. S. Byatt

  He is asked by Sir Augustine if he has read Babbletower.

  A. I have.

  Q. Can you give us your opinion of it.

  A. It is written by a writer of talent. It is a clever and tormented book. In the last resort, it is pornography, not literature.

  Q. Can you justify that opinion? So that the jury may understand how you arrived at it?

  A. Pornography is confined to certain aspects of human nature; it is to do with one person’s power over another person’s body. It reduces human beings to bodily functions—certain repetitive, emphasised, selected functions which are made public without any remnants of privacy, or secrecy (the places of imagination, gentleness, the unspoken, kindness and delight). Pornography tears away veils from shames which then fester and destroy. It diminishes humanity.

  Q. You have written about these matters, I believe.

  A. I have. I should like, if I may, to quote a passage from Maurice Girodias’s Olympia Reader, which I criticised in my book.

  “Moral censorship was an inheritance from the past, deriving from centuries of domination by the Christian clergy. Now that it is practically over, we may expect literature to be transformed by the advent of freedom. Not freedom in its negative aspects, but as the means of exploring all the positive aspects of the human mind, which are all more or less related to, or generated by, sex.”

  This is obviously a foolish statement, an exaggeration. But it is an exaggeration of a position which is taken by respectable people, including those who have eloquently defended Babbletower. Nothing should be hidden, nothing should be silent, nothing should be unspoken. And what should be spoken is sex, is the body as body. A society with no religious beliefs may reach this position logically. Nietzsche, to whom Mr. Mason is so attached, wrote, “Once Spirit was God, then it became man, now it is becoming mob.” Mob is public man as pure animal, as pure body. I have seen the power of totalitarian states; I have seen the power of those who had total freedom—total permission—to do as they pleased with the bodies of others. There are limits to this power. There are not so many things you can do to bodies. But those who “enjoy” this freedom—in all senses of the word “enjoy”—resemble each other.

  It is not only—perhaps not mostly—what Efraim Ziz says that has its effect on the crowded courtroom, perhaps on the jury. It is his physical presence, his frailty, his age, his survival, his gentleness, his sweet seriousness. Samuel Oliphant rises to ask him, as he has asked Magog, whether he cannot accept that Babbletower is on his side, is making his own points, is “opposed to total or totalitarian freedom.”

  Ziz replies:

  “Mr. Mason has used the myth of the Tower of Babel, which is a myth about language and God, to make a modern point about the human body and its freedom and its sufferings. There is a long tradition of rabbinical commentary on the fact that the inhabitants of the Tower were not all destroyed, as the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were, or the whole generation before the Flood. And this was, according to Rabbi Juda ha Nassa, because they loved each other. They worked together. After their presumption they were not destroyed, but were taught eighty languages by the eighty angels around the throne of God. Speech and writing were made more difficult for them, but they were saved. Whereas Mr. Mason’s people are not saved, because there is nothing but total freedom and the body in his book. They are not dignified. There is no hope.”

  Q. You sound as though you are describing a pessimistic book, but a work of literary merit?

  A. I do not say there is no literary merit. I say there is not enough. Not enough to save the book from doing more harm than good to those who read it.

  Q. Your view is that of a religious teacher?

  A. Yes. And it is that of an expert in pain, who wishes to see less of it in the world.

  The barristers make their final speeches. Sir Augustine is clear and on the whole unemotional. He reiterates the point that Babbletower is repetitive and constricted in its subject matter; he quotes one or two of the most distressing passages; he quotes also a passage from Sade.

  Is murder a crime in the eyes of Nature? Doubtless we will humiliate man’s pride in reducing him to the ranks of other productions of Nature, but nevertheless he is merely an animal like any other, and in the eyes of Nature his death is no more important than that of a fly or an ox.… Destruction is Nature’s method of progress, and she prompts the murderer to destruction, so that his action shall be the same as plague or famine.… In a word, murder is a horror, but a horror often necessary, never criminal, and essential to tolerate in a republic.

  Who, he asks, copied out and studied this passage? Who referred to the innocent victims of his sadistic crimes as animals? Ian Brady, the murderer, who shared his reading matter and the nihilism, the desperate vision derived from it, with his dazzled victim and fellow criminal, Myra Hindley. “Do not believe, members of the jury,” says Sir Augustine, “that cruel acts and cruel visions cannot be passed on, from one human being to another. The well-intentioned ‘experts’ who have amused and bemused us with their academic dissertations on the harmless pleasures of sado-masochism and their determined cheerful liberal willingness to say that ‘everything goes,’ refused, almost to a man and woman, to admit that they were sexually or viscerally stirred by the excesses of Babbletower. They refused to admit that their flesh tingled or crawled when they read of the torture of little Felicitas or the ingenious death of the Lady Roseace. They are expert witnesses, they are specialist witnesses. Professor Marie-France Smith is a beautiful woman, a cool Frenchwoman, who, for reasons best known to herself, chooses to spend her time studying the sexual dottiness of M. Fourier and the nasty doctrines of the evil Marquis. Canon Holly, a Christian clergyman, is willing to equate the most grotesque fancies of Jude Mason with the sufferings of his Lord. Dr. Gander is harder to follow, but it is clear that his normal responses to depictions of pain, of sexual excitement, of the desire to hurt, are hopelessly entangled in abstract words to which he can give any meaning he chooses—words like ‘liberation,’ words like ‘freedom,’ words like ‘oppression’—words which can only have the odd meanings they have for him because in fact he lives in a decent society where he is free to say what he pleases because his rights are protected by the vigilance of courts like this, and juries composed of sensible people such as yourselves.

  “You have read the book, members of the jury. I do not know how you responded to it. You may have been disgusted, you may have been sickened, you may have been stirred in ways that disturbed you. Your flesh may have crawled, as mine did. I have appeared in many obscenity cases, ladies and gentlemen, and I can tell you that most pornography is sickening in quite a different way from Babbletower. It is sickening because it is boring, it is grotesque, not threatening, it is against life because it appeals from dead imaginations to dull imaginations. I will grant that Babbletower is better written than the trash which normally, in horrible bulk, appears before the courts. It is more disturbing for that reason. It is more potent. The expert witnesses have told you at some length that this is because of its literary merit. They have also told you that it is hard to assess the literary merit of contemporary works. They have told you their reasons for wanting this book published, and they have told you—most of them—that it has not stirred them up. I think you know better than that, members of the jury. I think your responses are simpler and more honest, not tied up in abstract languages and doctrinaire beliefs. I think you are better judges of what Ian Brady and Myra Hindley might make of Babbletower—and not only them, but smaller sadists, ready to do smaller hurts that are nevertheless hurts.

  “I believe that Mr. Parrott is a good man, an honest man, a well-intentioned man, and a slightly foolish man, who has been misled by modish rhetoric and mistaken libertarian idealism to take risks that he would have been better to have turned away from. I believe Mr. Mason is a man whose mind and body were depraved and corrupted in his youth—even in his childhood—and I feel a great deal of sympathy for him. My
learned friend Mr. Hefferson-Brough obviously feels personal sympathy for the sufferings of this Erstwhile Hog, and I extend mine to him. I believe that Mr. Mason’s early experiences did lead directly to his later way of life, his acquaintance with the seamier aspects of our society, and to the form and content of Babbletower itself. I believe you may have read, as I have, that it is an accepted understanding, nowadays, that child-beaters have been beaten children, and that those who exploit innocent children sexually have themselves, often, been so exploited as children themselves. It is known as a circle of deprivation—or perhaps a circle of depravity—and it is our duty, as responsible human beings, to break it. Mr. Mason has been hurt, and he is trying—perhaps even unconsciously—to hurt others.

  “You have been told—and I tell you again—that discussion of motive, of intention, is irrelevant in deciding whether a work has a tendency to deprave and corrupt. Mr. Parrott may be a good man, and Mr. Mason may believe he is a serious artist, but the first question for you is whether Babbletower has a tendency to deprave and corrupt—to deprave and corrupt not literary experts, but ordinary men and women, trying to live their lives, men and women who can be tempted or crushed by despair. If you decide that the book has such a tendency, you must then consider whether it has sufficient literary or other merit—sufficient gravity, grace, seriousness, beauty—to outweigh the detrimental effects of this tendency on ordinary readers. Whose testimony will you trust in this? Those long-winded experts, who see the whole thing through a cloud of their own complex terms and good intentions, or the wise Professor Ziz, who believes the book is a dangerous book, is ‘pornography not literature’ and is himself ‘an expert in pain who wishes to see less of it in the world.’ ”

  Hefferson-Brough’s speech is longer, noisier, and more repetitive than Sir Augustine’s. He says frequently that “in this day and age” much is acceptable that would once have been thought obscene libel, and does not give the impression that he is sure that this is for the best. He says that it is right to publish serious studies of sadism and masochism, and it is right also to make serious literary representations of them. He speaks passionately, and at too great length, in the general perception, of the harm done by secrecy and silence at places like Swineburn, by people like Dr. Grisman Gould. He uses tired words—“brilliant,” “outstanding,” “promising,” “talented”—of Jude Mason, and speaks warmly of the responsibility of Rupert Parrott, of the unlikelihood of Bowers and Eden being found in the position of publishing anything that tends to deprave and corrupt. He praises the good sense of Alexander Wedderburn and Phyllis Pratt; he demolishes Roger Magog with his only literary reference.

  “Mr. Facing-both-ways was a character in Pilgrim’s Progress. Mr. Magog likes to pronounce upon issues of the day. No doubt you will find him pronouncing in favour of Babbletower at some point in the future, as he pronounced in favour of it last week.” Of Efraim Ziz’s evidence he says, perhaps unfortunately, that concentration camp guards can no more be thought of as typical probable readers than can Ian Brady or Myra Hindley. “Ordinary, responsible English people are not like that, ladies and gentlemen. They are like you and me. They can take these things in their stride. If we are to ban all books that might encourage monsters to be monstrous we should start with the Brothers Grimm and the giant who cries fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. Because some people in some places have ground up bones and made bread we mustn’t forbid fairytales. And the eminently sensible Mrs. Pratt has told us that that is what Babbletower is—a fairytale.”

  Samuel Oliphant reads out various passages of Babbletower, none of them sexual or sadistic: the descriptions of the woods, the remarks of Samson Origen, the descriptions of the tower and its daily life. He reads well. He says, “Is this depraving or corrupting? Or is it good writing, by a young man whose career stands in danger of being mined by the enthusiasm of moral zealots, out of touch with the times. A young man whose life has been hard, but who has, in circumstances of pain and difficulty, written a brilliant, daring and moving book, for which he should be being rewarded, rather than castigated and punished? A young man, who, far from being a seducer and a tempter, is a stern moralist and a tragic poet.”

  The jury look at their hands, at the ceiling, at the prisoner in the dock.

  Mr. Justice Gordale Balafray sums up. His summing up is dry, and he thanks the jury for their patience, giving the impression that his own has sometimes been tested. He tells them that they are to decide the question of obscenity—of whether the book, as a whole, has a tendency to deprave and corrupt. If, and only if, they come to the conclusion that it has, they must decide on whether the work has sufficient literary merit—or other quality of value to society—to outweigh the tendency to deprave and corrupt. “The Defence has raised a defence under Section 4, which entails, as we have seen, the calling of expert witnesses. As we are all aware, the world these days is a world of specialised knowledge and is full of experts on everything under the sun. But English criminal law is based upon the view that a jury takes of the facts and not upon the view that experts may have. You, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, are the sole judges of the facts in this case. It is my place to put the law to you, but the facts—both as to the tendency to deprave and corrupt, and as to the literary or other arguments which may outweigh that tendency—are yours and yours alone to decide. You have heard the dictionary definitions of the words ‘deprave’ and ‘corrupt.’ I do not know if I can improve on those definitions, or elaborate on the meaning of the word ‘tendency.’ ”

  The judge goes on to recapitulate the evidence. On the whole, he is fair and appears to lean to neither side, though he becomes testy when faced with the evidence of Canon Holly and Elvet Gander, and says, “You may think that the Prosecution has a point when it refers to the obfuscating language of some of the so-called experts, their use of words in ways contrary to commonsense interpretations of those words, and so on. You are here to uphold the commonsense virtues, to represent ordinary men and women.” He remarks, also, that in Canada only five witnesses may appear for each side, and states that “there is some attraction in this restriction, you may think, in this concentration of witness.”

  He speaks of the jury’s solemn duty to balance the decision as to whether the book is obscene against the difficult assessment—“more difficult, as both sides admit, in the case of a new book, by a living author—of its literary or other merit.” He reiterates, “You, the jury, are to be the sole judges of these things. You are to decide, on the basis of what you have read and heard, whether this book is obscene, and, if it is, whether its merits outweigh this obscenity sufficiently for the publication of the book to be in the public interest.”

  The jury retires. The Bowers and Eden people discuss whether or not the judge’s summing up was hostile or friendly: the fact that they cannot decide is felt to be on the whole a good sign. Canon Holly ventures the opinion that they have put up a strong fight, and Rupert Parrott says, “Shut up,” and then apologises. The judge sentences some prisoners who are already convicted. Jude Mason has disappeared somewhere. Frederica cannot imagine his feelings. Avram Snitkin tells her that no jury will convict for obscenity “in this day and age.” Frederica snaps, “I don’t want to hear that phrase again.” “Why?” says Snitkin. “It’s a pompous cliché.” “Its got a precise meaning.” “Its connotations are horrid. Anyway you’re wrong. I’ve been looking at their faces. They hated Canon Holly. They thought Jude was putting them down. They didn’t like him.” “Juries don’t work on ‘like’ and ‘not like,’ you know. They take their duties very seriously. They aren’t coming back.”

  After three hours, the jury return to enquire whether they have to decide the question of obscenity separately from, and before, the question of literary merit. The judge tells them that this is indeed so. The foreman says that this is difficult, given that they have, so to speak, heard everything at once, both sides of the matter. The judge agrees that it is difficult, and says he wishes h
e could help them further.

  After five hours, they return. Jude Mason returns to the dock. The clerk speaks into the silence.

  Members of the jury, are you agreed upon a verdict?

  Foreman. We are.

  Clerk. Do you find that Bowers and Eden are guilty or not guilty of publishing an obscene article?

  Foreman. Guilty.

  Clerk. Do you find that Jude Mason is guilty or not guilty of publishing an obscene article?

  Foreman. Guilty.

  There is a general hesitation in the Court. The judge says, “Let us be quite clear. You find the publishers and the author guilty of publishing an obscene article. A defence has been raised under Section Four of the Obscene Publications Act, arguing that the book has literary and other merits that outweigh the alleged obscenity of the book. Do you find such merits in the book in question?”

  Foreman. No, my lord. We do not.

  Clerk. And that is the verdict of you all?

  Foreman. It is.

  Frederica finds she is weeping. Rupert Parrott listens white-faced to the judge, who says that the book has been published in good faith by an honourable firm, imposes a small fine (£500) and orders all copies of the book to be seized. The judge then turns to Jude.

  “It is possible for me to impose a sentence of imprisonment upon you, but it seems to me that it would be wrong to do so. Evidence has been given, including your own, that you see your work as a serious work of art, although the jury has found otherwise. I shall impose a fine of fifty pounds, having regard to your clear lack of means to pay any greater fine.”

  “I knew you were all against me,” says Jude.

  XXI

  Rupert Parrott declares his intention to appeal. The lawyers advise against it, on grounds of expense, of the unlikelihood of success, of waste of time and effort. It will take a long time, they say, and a great deal of money, to acquire the court records, which are in any case only selective. Parrott says that he has a complete record of his own, recorded by the diligent Avram Snitkin, and sets his secretary to the transcribing of this document. He speaks of engaging a new barrister, since Hefferson-Brough is firmly set against going any further. Mention is made of John Mortimer, a young playwright and divorce lawyer who is also having some success in this field. A correspondence of some acrimony begins in The Times about jurors, and exactly what, or who, the commonsense common man is whom they are supposed to represent. A fund is started for the Defence of the Arts against legal onslaughts from the Establishment. It is not very well subscribed. Samuel Oliphant is more in favour of an appeal than Godfrey Hefferson-Brough, and spends some time perusing the typescript of Snitkin’s tapes as it piles up in Miss Patty Stott’s out-tray. There is a snag. His client has disappeared. He went to the lavatory whilst Parrott was making statements to the Press at the end of the trial, and has not been seen since. Letters to his convenience address remain unanswered. His slots before the art students are filled by an ex-boxer, chocolate-coloured and muscular.