Fie on Goodness! Fie! Fie!

I seem to have been slacking off a bit here lately.  So let me turn the mike over to one of our ever-popular guest bloggers:

Among all the writers that have ever lived, there has not been  a single one brave enough to declare that he did not care a damn about morality or immorality, that all he wanted to do was produce something great and beautiful and human, and that if immorality made the slightest artistic contribution to his work, then he would serve immorality up to the public, openly and honestly, without stating hypocritically that he was being immoral with a moral purpose, however much indignation this might arouse among conservative or republican journalists, those virtuous souls who keep several mistresses and live on the profits of a gambling club

.--Edmund and Jules de Goncout, Pages  from the Goncourt Journals 335-6

(February 4, 1888) (NYRB Edition 2007)

Apparently they never read the Iliad?

[But wait--to keep several mistresses and live on the profits of a gambling club--how, exactly, does one arrange that?]

Fn:  Blogger's spell-checker does not recognize the word "bloggers."]