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30. Casanovas Heinfahrt
e d
box 4/11
POINT IV
In judging Casanova’s Homecoming'
by the long-established rules, it must be
read as a whole: and on that basis it
must be upheld.
A work of art, and particularly a book, is to be
indged by its entirety, not by isolated fragments.
Both in England and in this state the judicial test
is to be applied to the ichole book, and not to ex¬
cerpts which may be singled out by the instigator
of the obscenity charge.
In St. Hubert Guild v. Quinn (supre) the Court
The judgment of the court below is based
upon a few passages in each of these works
* * *
These few passages furnish no cri¬
terion* That some of these passages,
jadged by the standard of our day, mar rather
than enhance the value of these books can be
admitted**
The same criticism has
been directed against many of the classics of
antiquity and against the works of some of our
greatest writers from Chaucer to Walt Whit¬
*#
man
In Halsey v. N. F. Society (supra), the Court
said at page 4:
“No work may be judged from a selection of
slich paragraphs alone. Printed by themselves
they might, as a matter of law come within
the prohibition of the statute. So might a sim¬
ilar selection from Aristophanes or Chaucer or
Boccaccio or even from the Bible. The book,
however, must be considered broadly as a
whole“.
It is evident, therefore, that “Casanova’s Home¬
coming'’ should not, and cannot be judged on the