Part 2

_And it was precisely in his attitudes that he was most sincere. They represented his intentions; they stood for the better, unrealised part of himself. Thus his attitude, towards life and towards art, was untouched by his conduct; his perfectly just and essentially dignified assertion of the artist's place in the world of thought and the place of beauty in the material world being in nowise invalidated by his own failure to create pure beauty or to become a quite honest artist. A talent so vividly at work as to be almost genius was incessantly urging him into action, mental action._

_Realising as he did, that it is possible to be very watchfully cognisant of that "quality of our moments as they pass," and so shape them after one's own ideal much more continuously and consciously than most people have ever thought of trying to do, he made for himself many souls, souls of intricate pattern and elaborate colour, webbed into infinite tiny cells, each the home of a strange perfume, perhaps a poison. "Every soul had its own secret, and was secluded from the soul which had gone before it or was to come after it. And this showman of souls was not always aware that he was juggling with real things, for to him they were no more than the coloured glass balls which the juggler keeps in the air, catching them one after another. For the most part the souls were content to be playthings; now and again they took a malicious revenge, and became so real that even the juggler was aware of it. But when they became too real he had to go on throwing them into the air and catching them, even though the skill of the game had lost its interest for him. But as he never lost his self-possession, his audience, the world, did not see the difference._"[7]

Thus not wishing to live for himself, Wilde was surprised into living mainly for others, and his ever-present desire to astonish was one of the prime causes that led to his overthrow. Yet, in spite of this, what riches of the mind, one easily divines him to possess, if for a moment we peer beyond the mobile curtain of his paradoxes. Those who listened to him, this modern St. Chrysostom, on whose lips there was ever an ambiguous smile, could not fail to see that he spoke to himself, was occupied in translating that which was passing in his mind, trying in a sense, to ravish his auditors and plunge them even into greater, though only ephemeral, ravishment, whilst ushering them into an absolutely unreal and immaterial kingdom of capricious fantasy, and they will remember that he was sometimes astonishingly profound and grave, and always charming, paradoxical, and eloquent. His mind constantly dwelt upon the questions of Art and Aesthetics. In _Intentions_ he laid down serious problems, which in themselves bore every appearance of contradiction, and which any attempt to resolve would, at the outset, appear puerile and ambitious.

For instance:--Is lying a fundamental principle of Art, that is to say, of every art?

Is it possible for there to be perfect concordance between a finely ordered and pure life, and the worship of Beauty; or, are we to consider such a consummation as utterly impossible and chimerical?

Must there be a permanent and necessary divorce between Ethics and Aesthetics?

Ought we, beneath the flowery mask of a borrowed smile, allow ourselves to be carried away by all the waves of instinct?

The art of Criticism, is it superior to Art? The Interpreter can he be superior to the creator? Must we modify the profound axiom, "to understand is to equal," not by reducing it to that other axiom, more profound perhaps, "to understand is to achieve," but by modifying it with that, which, at the first glance looks at least passingly strange "to understand is to surpass?"

Such are the questions which Wilde postulated in _Intentions_ and worked out with great audacity, but with no higher object than to win admiration, and all this with the indifferent suppleness of a conjuror of words.

_Intentions_ is a study of artificial genius, culture, and instinct, and, for this reason, it forms a most curious production. In itself it can hardly be termed a magistral work, inasmuch as all the theories enunciated in it are, at least, twenty years old, and appear to us to-day quite worn out and decrepit. As much may be said, also, for the theories put forward by our young, contemporaneous artists who undertake to discuss all things in Heaven and Earth, and whose vapourings on Life, Nature, Social Art and other things--especially other things--are no more guaranteed against mortality than the doctrines above specified. Let them remember, in reading Wilde's work, that their Aesthetical doctrines will soon become as antiquated, and that it is no bid for lasting fame to write flashy novels, pretty verses, high-flown or realistic dramas, pessimistic or optimistic plays, imbued with Schopenhaurian and Nitzschien principles, since the crying need of the time is for sincere work. All the doctrines ever invented are mere tittle-tattle, only fit to amuse brainless ladies wanting in beauty, or minds stricken with positive sterility.

It is not inexact that in _Intentions_ one meets with a profound truth now and again, but the dressing of it is so paradoxical that we run a risk of misinterpreting all that may animate it of genuine fitness and sincerity.

Wilde may truly be denominated the last representative of that English art of the XIXth. century, which beginning with Shelley, continuing with the Pre-Raphaelites and culminating with the American painter, Whistler, endeavours purposely to set forth an ideal and elegant expression of the world.

The mistake of these men lies in the belief that Art was made for Life; whereas it is, as a matter of fact, quite the contrary. Life has no other value, except as subject-matter, for poet and painter. These are excentric theories, certainly, but then, what on earth, does it matter about theories? Do not they serve the great artist to make his genius more puissant, and enable him to concentrate all his forces in the same direction by uniting instead of scattering them? With, or in spite of his theories, Shelley wrote his poems and Whistler painted his pictures; if their æsthetic basis was bad, one, at least, cannot pretend that it was dangerous, since it enabled them to accomplish their masterpieces. Wilde, unfortunately, was an æsthete before he was a poet, and produced his works somewhat in the spirit of bravado. He had been told that he could not create aught of good: the reply, triumphant and crushing was, the _Picture of Dorian Grey_. He is a literary problem; and in considering him, we are struck with the unwarranted corruption, by his acquaintances, of a fine artistic sensibility.

The fashionable drawing-rooms of the West-End brought about his downfall, or rather, and it amounts to the same thing: his frank and undisguised desire to please and to dazzle them proved his undoing. Possibly the same misfortune would have overtaken Merimée, had it not been for his lofty and vigorous intelligence; as it was, he lost more than once, most precious time in composing "_Chambres bleues_," when he was undoubtedly capable of producing another "_Colomba_," and other variations of "_Vases étrusques_."

With all this, let us be thoroughly just; _Intentions_ is far from containing anything but mere paradoxes. Those that we find there are at any rate of very diverse kinds. Some are pure verbal amusements, and may be thrust aside after the moment's attention that they snatched from our surprise. Others belong to a nobler family of ideas and awaken in us the lasting and fecund astonishment of the paradox which is born sound and healthy, because it concerns a new truth. Into the mental landscape, these paradoxes introduce that sudden change of perspective, which forces the mind to rise or to descend, and thus causes us to discover other horizons. What a grievous error would it be on our part not to feel something of that immense and exhaustive love of beauty which haunted the soul of Wilde until the bitter end? However artificial his work may appear at the first glance, there is still sufficient left of the man which was incomparable. We instinctively feel that he belonged to the chosen race of those upon whom the "spirit of the hour" had laid his magic wand, and who give forth at the cunning touch of the Magician some of the finest notes of which our stunted human nature is capable. Men thus endowed, enjoy the rare privilege of being unable to proffer a single word, without our perceiving however confusedly, the splendid harmony of an almost universal accompaniment of ideas. The choir, their eyes fixed upon the eyes of the master-musician, follows his inspired gestures with jealous care, and seeks to interpret his every nod and movement.

None but an artist could have written the admirable pages on Shakespeare, Greek Art, and other elevated themes that are to be found in the works of Oscar Wilde.

More than an artist was he, who noted down the suggestive thought: that the humility of the matter of a work of art is an element of culture. If therefore, we hear him exclaim that "thought is a sickness," we must bear in mind that this is simply an analysis of the phrase: "_We live in a period whose reading is too vast to allow it to become wise, and which thinks too much to be beautiful._"

Our eyes can no longer penetrate the esoteric meaning of the statues of the olden times, beautiful with glorified animality, and which have alas, become for us little more than the tongue-tied offspring of the inspiring god Pan, dead beyond all hope of rebirth. Our brains have become stupified through the heaviness of the flesh, and this, perhaps, because we have treated the flesh as a slave.

"_The worship of the senses, wrote Wilde, has often, and with much justice, been decried; men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and sensations that seem stronger than themselves, and that they are conscious of sharing with the less highly-organised forms of existence. But it is probable the true nature of the senses has never been understood, and that they have remained savage and animal merely because the world has sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty will be the dominant characteristic._"[8]

In these lines, we may perhaps find the key of a certain metamorphosis in the poet's life, before Circe, that terrible sorceress, had passed his way.

"_Who knows not Circe, The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup Whoever tasted lost his upright shape, And downward fell into a grovelling swine?_" (_Milton: Comus, 50-53._)

The infant King of Rome, we are told, looking out from a window of the Louvre one day, at the muddy street where young children were playing,--sad in the midst of a perfumed and divinely flattering court,--cried out: "I too, would like to roll myself in that beautiful mud." We are inclined to think from a sentimental outlook, that Wilde also had the same morbid desire; but, he was worth better things; and there were times in his life when serene aspirations moved his heart before he sat down to the festive board of Sin.

He had a pronounced tendency towards the _discipulat_; used to question youths about their studies and their mind, showing as much interest in them as a spiritual confessor, inebriating himself with their enthusiasm, and surrounding himself more and more with a medley of different friends. A vigorous pagan, ardent, intoxicated with souvenirs of Antiquity, heart-sick of his worldly successes, he dreamed perhaps of living over again:

_Ces héröiques jours où les jeunes pensées Allaient chercher leur miel aux lèvres d'un Platon._

But this _artificiel de l'art_ was, although he wotted it not, a man who rioted in the good things of life. He sought to inculcate in himself a quiet spirit which believes itself invulnerable.

"_And when we reach the true culture that is our aim, we attain to that perfection of which the saints have dreamed, the perfection of those to whom sin is impossible, not because they make the renunciations of the ascetic, but because they can do everything they wish without hurt to the soul, and can wish for nothing that can do the soul harm, the soul being an entity so divine that it is able to transform into elements of a richer experience, or a finer susceptibility, or a newer mode of thoughts, acts or passions that with the common would be commonplace, or with the uneducated ignoble, or with the shameful vile._"[9]

This passage shows us a state of things very far removed from the old dream of antiquity.

He forgot, alas! the puritanism and sublime discourses of Diotime, which have been so finely pictured for us by Plato, to wallow in the orgies of the Island of Capria.

Before that Criminal Court, where he vainly struggled so as "not to appear naked before men," we hear him proclaim what he had himself desired and perhaps attained.

What interpretation, asked the judge, can you give us of the verse:

_I am the Love which dares not tell its name_

"The Love referred to," replied Wilde, "is that which exists between a man of mature years and a young man; the love of David and of Jonathan. It is the same love that Plato made the basis of his philosophy; it is that love which is sung in the Sonnets of Shakespeare and of Michael-Angelo; it is a profound spiritual affection, as pure as it is perfect. It is beautiful, pure and noble; it is intellectual, the love of a man possessing full experience of life, and of a young man full of all the joy and all the hope of the future."

There in that struggle in the midst of thick darkness, this must have been the cry of his tormented soul, a breath of pure air as he passed, a perfumed memory ... then there came a few arrow flights badly winged which only wounded his own heart.

He defended himself in an indifferent way according to some people, although it must be admitted that he gave the answers that were necessary and becoming, and, in some cases, compelled his judges, who were no better than the mouth-pieces of the crowd, to confess the hatred that the worship of beauty had inspired.

"However strange may have been his attitude, that attitude could not have been indifferent to anyone. Those who have been fortunate enough to laugh at the portrait that René Boylesve has drawn of the æsthete in his fine novel "Le Parfum des Iles Borromées," would find it difficult to make a mock of the man who accepted with superb disinterestedness, the torture that he knew beforehand the judges would inevitably inflict upon him.

Although he may not have been a great poet, although the pretext of his equivocal mode of living was taken to condemn him, we cannot lose sight of the art and of the literary craftsman that were condemned at the same time with him."[10]

_We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality. In general, elopements, divorces, and family quarrels, pass with little notice. We read the scandal, talk about it for a day, and forget it. But once in six or seven years our virtue becomes outrageous. We cannot suffer the laws of religion and decency to be violated. We must make a stand against vice. We must teach libertines that the English people appreciate the importance of domestic ties. Accordingly some unfortunate man, in no respect more depraved than hundreds whose offences have been treated with lenity, is singled out as an expiatory sacrifice. If he has children, they are to be taken from him. If he has a profession, he is to be driven from it. He is cut by the higher orders, and hissed by the lower. He is, in truth, a sort of whipping-boy, by whose vicarious agonies all the other transgressors of the same class are, it is supposed, sufficiently chastised._[11]

This bitter denunciation of English mock-modesty by the brilliant Essayist rests upon thoroughly justifiable grounds. Once again in the dolorous history of humanity, the grotesque farce was enacted of chasing forth the scapegoat into the wilderness to bear away the sins of the people. But, in this instance, the unhappy creature was not only laden with the sins of the tribe; a heavier burden still had been added to all the others: the fearful burden of the mad, unreasoned hatred of the sinners. Indeed he, whose share in the general load of sin was the greatest, sought to add more hatred than all the others to the great fardel under which the victim staggered, and believing himself so much the more innocent that the abjection of the unfortunate wretch was complete, would have been glad had it been in his power to help even the public hangman in the execution of his nefarious task. We have observed that through some diabolical strain in human nature, the evil joy which creates scandal and gives rise to a man's downfall, increases in intensity if the victim happens to be a man of superior rank and talent.

_On voit briller au fond des prunelles haineuses, L'orgueil mystérieux de souiller la Beauté._

How great must have been the delighted intoxication of numberless weak minds when they were impelled, in the midst of a silence that braver and clearer spirits dared not break, to screech out vociferations against Art and Thought, denouncing these as the accomplices of the momentary aberrations of him who erstwhile worshipped at their shrine. Here in France at least, men knew better how to restrain themselves, and there were even a few courageous wielders of talented pens who did not hesitate to use their abilities in favour of their Anglo-Saxon colleague. Hugues Rebell published in the _Mercure de France_ that _Défense d'Oscar Wilde_, the calm and tempered logic of which is still fresh to many minds. A number of writers and artists even held a meeting of protestation; but, of course, all this had not the slightest effect on the judicial position of Wilde. It was generally felt that the ferocious outcry raised against the unhappy man "who had been found out" was because that man was a poet, and not so much because he had gone counter to the manners of his time. Amongst all the mingled shouting and laughter, the arguments for and the arguments against, the voice of one man was heard stentorian and clear above all the rest, that voice belonged to Octave Mirbeau, a puissant master of the French tongue, and a brilliant writer and dramatist. The following lines of suppressed anger and large-minded charity emanated from his pen:

"_A great deal has been heard about the paradoxes of Oscar Wilde upon Art, Beauty, Conscience and Life! Paradoxes they were, it is true, and we know that some laid themselves open to the charge of exaggeration, and vaulted over the threshold of the Forbidden. But after all, what is a paradox if not, for the most part of the time, the exaltation of an idea in a striking and superior form? As soon as an idea overleaps the low-level of ordinary popular understanding, having ceased to drag behind it the ignoble stumps gathered in the swamps of middle-class morality, and seeks with strong, steadfast wing, to attain the lofty heights of Philosophy, Literature or Art, we at once stigmatize it as a paradox, because, unable ourselves to follow it into those regions which are inaccessible to us, through the weakness of our organs, and we make haste to scotch it and put it under ban by flinging after it curse-laden cries of blame and contempt._

_And yet, strange as it may seem, progress cannot be made save by way of paradox, whilst much vaunted common sense--the prized virtue of the imbecile--perpetuates the humdrum routine of daily life. The truth is, we refuse to allow anyone to come and outrage our intellectual sluggishness, or our morality, ready-made like second-hand clothes in a dealer's shop, or the stupid security of our sheepish preconceptions._

_Looked at squarely, that was the veritable crime in the minds of those who sat in judgment on Oscar Wilde._

_They could not forgive him for being a thinker, and a man of superior intellect--and for that self-same reason eminently dangerous to other men. Wilde is young and has a future before him, and he has proved by the strong and charming works which he has already given us that he can still do much more in the cause of Beauty and Art. Must we not then admit that it is an abominable thing to risk the killing of something far above all laws, and all morality: the spirit of beauty, for the sake of repressing acts which are not really punishable_ per se.

_For laws change and morality becomes transformed with the transformations of time, with the changeing of latitude and longitude, but beauty remains immaculate, and sheds her light far over the centuries that she alone can rescue from obscurity._"

With these magnificent words of one of the great masters of French prose, we would gladly terminate the present study; but it remains for us to cite the following from the pen of our lately deceased friend, Hugues Rebell, who possessed not only acumen and erudition, but employed a brilliant style and ready wit in the expression of his thoughts:

"Will a day ever come, wrote he, when the deeds of men will be no more judged in the name of religion and morality, but from the point of view of their social importance? When the misdemeanours of a man of wit and of genius, or a clever, elegant man of fashion, shall no longer be judged by the same law as that which condemns a stolid navvy or a dockyard hand? Far from believing in our much belauded progress, I am inclined alas, to think that we are really far behind our forefathers in tolerance, and above all in the ideas that govern our idea of social equality. The downfall of the sentiment of hierarchy seriously compromises the existence of some of the best men amongst us. It is not crime merely which is tracked and hounded down, but all that strays aside for a moment from every-day habits and customs. So-and-so, because he is not like other people inspires aversion, even horror on the part of those who take off their hats most respectfully to the successful swindler; and whilst the Police complacently allow the perpetration in our great cities of robberies and murders, they make a raid on the unfortunate bookseller who happens to have stowed away carefully in his back-shop, a few illustrations where the high deeds and gestures of Venus are too faithfully reproduced. These paltry persecutions would only serve to bring a smile to our lips were it not that everyone is more or less exposed to their arbitrary measures. Men are far less free to-day than they formerly were, because they are too much dominated by a large number of ignorant and groundless prejudices. Ferocious gaolers fetter and imprison their minds for their greater overthrow; no longer do they believe in God, whilst giving implicit faith to vain Science which, making small account of the great diversity of character and temperament amongst human beings, holds up for unique example, a healthy and virtuous individual who never had any real existence except in the imagination of fools; and whilst no longer following any of the old religions, they submit themselves with equanimity to the condemnation of so-called Human Justice, which more often than not is radically venal, and impresses them far more than did in olden times, the ex-communicating _bulls_ of Popes who had usurped the authority of God."

As for the sentence of hard labour passed upon Wilde, a description would fail to convey to the inexperienced reader a full idea of its barbarous severity. Sir Edward Clarke, the counsel for the defense, gave substantially the following reply to the representative of a Paris newspaper: