The Culture of the Europeans (Text Only Edition) by Donald Sassoon

Author:Donald Sassoon [Sassoon, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007400409
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-06-27T21:00:00+00:00

A Freer Society

The panic about mass culture followed almost naturally from the less repressive attitude to censorship which some European governments adopted towards the end of the nineteenth century. Once, one could rely on religion and the fear of eternal damnation to stop people reading ‘bad’ books. If that failed, there was a strict censorship machine. When the fear of hell or prison subsided, there was a real cause for panic. In those parts of eastern Europe under the rule of the Tsar, censorship continued unabated. Indeed political censorship increased to meet the challenge of a new breed of revolutionaries and subversives: the Russian censorship laws of 1882 were a step back from 1855, when it was possible for the press to criticise the government, though not the Tsar.30

But if the Tsarist Empire still wallowed in darkness, elsewhere matters improved. In Austria-Hungary, after the ‘Compromise’ of 1867 (which created Austria-Hungary) a relatively free press was ushered in, though such freedom tended to be limited to the Hungarians and the Austrians, and not to the Romanian ethnic minority of Transylvania. Freedom of the press in Hungary in 1900 was more extensive than after 1918, when Admiral Horthy staged his counter-revolutionary coup, or under the post-Second World War communist government. The liberalisation of the press proceeded even in Spain, especially after the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1868 and Isabella II’s forced abdication, when the new government lifted press restrictions and declared that the role of the press was to educate the people, and that newspapers were the books of the labouring classes.31 Further restrictions were lifted in 1883, paving the way for a revival of Spanish literature.

In France the Third Republic had emerged out of the ruin of a fairly restrictive regime, that of Napoleon III, which it must be said had entered a liberal phase in its second and final decade of existence. The new republican regime could hardly fail to improve matters further. Its first decree, on 4 September 1870, extended an amnesty to all press crimes. Yet a few years later, in 1875, tribunals were as busy as ever enforcing press crimes such as injuries against the authorities and morality. Then in 1881 a new law abolished censorship and established freedom of the press. The limits to this freedom were more clearly stated than previously: it was forbidden to insult judges or the President of the Republic, or even foreign heads of state; it was forbidden to incite people to avoid military service; and it was illegal to publish material contrary to public morality and religion (outrage à la morale publique et religieuse et aux bonnes moeurs).32 The most important difference with previous practice was that pre-publication censorship was abolished. This somewhat increased the risk to authors and publishers, since one could not be sure if what one wrote or published would be deemed offensive. Louis Desprez found to his cost that his 1884 novel Autour d’un clocher (Round a Bell Tower) was condemned because of its account of peasant sexuality.

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