Affirmations

by H. Havelock Ellis

Excerpt from Affirmations

There are at least two ways of looking at books and at the personalities books express. In its chief but rarer aspect literature is the medium of art, and as such can raise no ethical problems. Whatever morality or immorality art may hold is quiescent, or lifted into an atmosphere of radiant immortality where questioning is irrelevant. Of the literature that is all art we need not even speak, unless by chance we too approach it as artists, trying to grasp it by imaginative insight. In literature, as elsewhere, art should only be approached as we would approach Paradise, for the sake of its joy. It would be well, indeed, if we could destroy or forget all that has ever been written about the world's great books, even if it were once worth while to write those books about books.

Genres: Philosophy

252 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1898

About the author

Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis, was a British physician, writer, and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He was co-author of the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and inclinations, including transgender psychology. He is credited with introducing the notions of narcissism and autoeroticism, later adopted by psychoanalysis. He served as president of the Galton Institute and, like many intellectuals of his era, supported eugenics.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ellis’s most lasting contribution to literary Decadence was the volume Affirmations (1898)
which included those three essays from The Savoy (Zola, Casanova and Nietzsche), along with
long essays on Joris-Karl Huysmans and St Francis of Assisi.

I am post-processing this book for DistributedProofreaders and Project Gutenberg will publish it pretty soon.

[Lynda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exhaustive study on the subject. A few good things for the workshop.