Stories and Essays of Mina Loy

“But the church says ‘it’s’ wrong!”

CENSOR MORALS SEX

Censorship may be suitable to the haziness of the social morality and Censors might hold on to their authority for ever if censorship had not defeated its own aims. As long as any social misbehaviour is not official— When it becomes accepted behaviour — the Censor represents no electors.

There is no secret to be kept when “all” are in the secret.

The Censor is sufficient unto himself. Dare him to produce a single individual of the moral negativism — that he pretends he strives to protect — and he will be unable to do so. No one aspires to put any restriction on his own “amoral” sophistication.

The public to whom the censor defers exists only in its supposing that public to exist “somewhere” else.

The worst kind of sex maniac is the Censor (re: Sumner and Smoot). With their canine affinities — they can only sustain their sexual potentiality by sticking their noses into their neighbour’s ——

Hitherto it has been said that a period of sexual liberty precedes a period of degeneration— The present tendency toward sex liberation should — understandingly and purely directed — inaugurate a period of regeneration.

If as Freud infers — Religion and Sex are interchangeable — why not reintegrate both giving the people an impetus toward the equilibrium they require?

Sexual myths become the masters of civilization.

CONVERSION

The obsessions prescribed by the Holy Church of Rome, are re-edited by the Psychoanalyst.

The Fathers and Freud successively established confessionals for neurotics, and it will not be long before they are fitted with domestic appliances.

Our Virgin Mary has resuscitated in the incest complex —— it is refreshing to consider that “Our Mary” Pickford has also her devotees.

In psycho-analytic literature, at least, we are offered no escape from the post-natal womb of the Eternal Mother

And the Eternal Mother devours her literary kittens —— invariably.

Once the Catholic convert has gone to —— his Mother, his literature follows him in the filial chute

And now that the Psycho-Analytic convert has gone to his ——— mother complex ———

The aim of the artist is to miss the Absolute —— the only possible creative gesture —— whereas the mystic impulse is to embrace a “ready-made” in the way of absolutes

And the Absolute of this new mechanised mysticism of the Psycho Analyst is the Unconscious.

So here we have “Psychoanalysis And The Unconscious” by D.H. Lawrence, where the almost lyrical prose of the Women in Love is also converted —— to candy.

Thus: “But sweet heaven what merchandise. What dreams dear heart! What was there in the cave?

Alas that we ever looked!

Nothing but a huge slimy serpent of sex ——”

Which transposed to the economic style of “modernism” would run something like this —

“Sweet heart Alas ‘Cave serpent —— ’em’ ”!

Inevitably Lawrence like other converts whose reputation makes it imperative that they preserve their independence, compiles some ingenious terminology of his own and indulges in the well known truc of the distinguished disciple, in seeking a quarrel with his master.

With his tour de force —— locating “I Am That I Am” in the Solar Plexus he has dangerously damned his own creative flux with a theory, and is already regarding the polarised navel of the infant Jesus through the eye of his pen.

He tells us that “Psycho-Analysis is out under the therapeutic disguise to do away with the moral faculty in man”. My observation of every strata of society leads me to conclude that man has never exhibited the least inclination towards a moral faculty ++++++++++ —— However what I really wished to say is that Mr. Lawrence has arrived at this rather obvious conclusion in the superficial dimension +++++++++ Too late.

If Freud is not in the pay of the Jesuits, the omission should be immediately remedied. For he, contrary to Mr. Lawrence’s assertion is in a fair way to accomplish — what the Fathers of the church so signally failed to accomplish — the purification of the race.

Already the élite in protest at the epidemic of psycho-exhibitionism among the merely cultured, are dropping “sex” entirely from their programme.

Psycho-Analysis has raised sex to the venerable status of a duty; and WHO ——— wants to do his duty?

GATE CRASHERS OF OLYMPUS—

The somersault of society dates from the day that a small Spaniard, P.O. Casse (cf. French breakage) so inevitably exhibited the portrait of a wine glass, “looking both ways at once”.

Every new object to which he applied his disruptive aesthetic has had an extra crack knocked into it by his rabid opposers, i.e. disciples.

For although modern warfare is not responsible for our revaluation of values, modern art which is the actual cause is martialised to the extent that he who steals a stunt from its originator, does so, for the redemption of the aforesaid art.

I have heard that the original wine glass was broken by Braque, i.e. cf. break. Or at least that he broke another on the same day—

However I predict that the breakage of P.O. Casse will be canonised by the dealers — for he has successively broken a greater variety of objects, and with more rapidity than his most ardent opponents (i.e. disciples) could keep up with.

Example.

P.O. Casse broke a guitar — which prophetic pattern induced an aesthetic intimation comparable to what in other areas, the French call frisson.

This disjuncted guitar has in every “avant guard” every year, in every land re-re-re-represented the imminent intellectual revolt for one quarter of a century.

The same guitar — often seen believe me — broken at the same place — yet bearing a variety of signatures.

No head or tail of reason for this save that emancipation being contagious, if caught by the noncreative finds only the sexual un-confines in which or wherein to flower—

Magazine slogan—

Art is always “new” to the uninitiate—

GERTRUDE STEIN

Twenty years ago, people used to say to me, “the days when a genius could appear suddenly, and be unappreciated, are well and truly gone.”

They said we were so very civilized, so blasé in the face of any conceivable surprise, that no-one could ever again leave the critics baffled.

Bizarrely, however, our culture is destined to find that any truly new thought will burst upon it like a fury. And it is to this destiny that the critics have once more succumbed in the case of Gertrude Stein.

For nearly twenty years, Gertrude Stein built up her œuvre, in relation to which our culture allowed nothing to see the light save the odd bit of bullying from the wittier journals.

She went on building her œuvre, in a manner which — despite established usage in such cases — I shall not call courageous (for only the most vulgar error could lead us to believe that the enlightened have need of courage in the face of the unenlightened), but rather serene. And the slight, contented smile with which she met the bullying to which she was subjected pleased me immensely.