In yesterday’s post, we saw Luther rejecting the poetry (or some of it) of Catullus (among others) on account of its obscenity. Consquently, his position on the matter of obscenity might seem straightforward and clear.

“Not so fast,” as one might say in a long line at the drive-through. Here is a passage, again from the Table Talk, where Luther apparently has a different view. His topic is Roman comedy.

Translation (WA TR 3,3346)

Boys should perform comedies: first, so that they can get practice in the Latin language; second, fictional characters contribute to men’s formation, and each person is reminded of his duty.

It is for the following purpose that the tricks of dishonorable women^[1] are related: both so that parents can arrange marriages for their sons and so that sons obey their parents in this matter.

And if a Christian should not act in comedies on account of certain obscenities, the Bible should not be read either. He who is offended by such things, moreover, suffers offense when no one is giving it.^[2]

Some Remarks

1. As I said, this may seem to contradict yesterday’s passage. It comes from the summer of 1533, about five years earlier than that passage. Perhaps he changed his mind.
2. Perhaps, however, it is the case that the “obscenities” in question are not of the same kind. The violent and explicit brutality in Catullus’s worst poems does not have a parallel in the Roman comedies Luther refers to. It does have a parallel in other types of mimetic drama that does not survive, and one can reasonably assume Luther would have objected to it there as well. In the comedies Luther has in mind, there may be situations involved that are not above-board, as well as some crude, low, base, or coarse language, but not the direct depiction or graphic description of the action involved in said situations.
3. What about the telos or goal of comedy? For Luther (as for Melanchthon) it is the establishment of proper social order and morality. Greek New Comedy, from which Roman comedy is largely derived, ends with marriage. And according to Luther, comedies can teach young people to obey the wisdom of their parents instead of being led along by their own foolish and impulsive passions.
4. And what of those who find the display of vice in comedy objectionable? Luther says that if that’s the case, they should avoid the Bible, too. He is presumably thinking of things like the story of David and Bathsheba, and other instances in sacred history of people behaving badly. With this statement, we can see clearly one way in which Luther is a Renaissance figure. For he is using a Renaissance argument for the permissibility of reading pagan literature. To demonstrate this, I quote at length from Leonardo Bruni’s The Study of Literature: “Yes; amours are sometimes described [in the pagan poets], such as the tale of Phoebus and Daphne, and of Vulcan and Venus, but who is so doltish as not to understand that such things are fictional and allegorical? The things to be condemned, moreover, are very few, while many are the things that are good and well worth the knowing, as I showed above with Homer and Vergil. It is the height of injustice to forget about the things that truly deserve praise, and to remember only those things that suit one’s own argument. “I would be pure,” says my austere critic; “I would rather abandon the good in fear of the evil than run the risk of evil in hope of something good; hence I may neither read the poets myself nor allow others to do so.” But Plato and Aristotle studied them, and I will refuse to allow that they yield to you either in moral seriousness or in practical understanding. Or do you think you see father than they? ‘I am a Christian,’ my critic says; ‘their mores are not mine.’ As though honor and moral seriousness were something different then from what they are now! As though the same and even worse cannot be found in the Holy Scriptures! Do we not find there depicted Samson’s wild lusts, when he put his mighty head in a wench’s lap and was shorn of his strength-giving hair? Is this not poetical? And is this not shameful? I pass over in silence the shocking crime of Lot’s daughters, the detestable filthiness of the Sodomites, two circumstances that I, praiser of poets though I be, can hardly bear to relate. Why even mention David’s passion for Bathsheba, his crime against Uriah, Solomon’s fratricide and his flock of concubines? All of these stories are wicked, obscene, and disgusting, yet do we say that the Bible is not therefore to be read? Surely not. Then neither are the poets to be rejected because of the occasional reference to human pleasures” (trans. Craig W. Kallendorf).