Unfortunately, 1601 has recently been tagged by Professor Edward
Wagenknecht as “the most famous piece of pornography in American
literature.” Like many another uninformed, Prof. W. is like the little
boy who is shocked to see “naughty” words chalked on the back fence,
and thinks they are pornography. The initiated, after years of wading
through the mire, will recognize instantly the significant difference
between filthy filth and funny “filth.” Dirt for dirt's sake is
something else again. Pornography, an eminent American jurist has
pointed out, is distinguished by the “leer of the sensualist.”
“The words which are criticised as dirty,” observed justice John M.
Woolsey in the United States District Court of New York, lifting the ban
on Ulysses by James Joyce, “are old Saxon words known to almost all men
and, I venture, to many women, and are such words as would be naturally
and habitually used, I believe, by the types of folk whose life,
physical and mental, Joyce is seeking to describe.” Neither was there
“pornographic intent,” according to justice Woolsey, nor was Ulysses
obscene within the legal definition of that word.
“The meaning of the word 'obscene,'” the Justice indicated, “as legally
defined by the courts is: tending to stir the sex impulses or to lead to
sexually impure and lustful thoughts.
“Whether a particular book would tend to excite such impulses and
thoughts must be tested by the court's opinion as to its effect on a
person with average sex instincts--what the French would call 'l'homme
moyen sensuel'--who plays, in this branch of legal inquiry, the same
role of hypothetical reagent as does the 'reasonable man' in the law
of torts and 'the learned man in the art' on questions of invention in
patent law.”
Obviously, it is ridiculous to say that the “leer of the sensualist”
lurks in the pages of Mark Twain's 1601.