Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

(Oscar Fingall O’Flahertie Wilde)

Aestheticism and Decadence

- the first masters of aestheticism in Britain were John Ruskin and Walter Pater
- through Swinburne the French doctrine of art for art’s sake became popular in
England
- the doctrine placed the artist’s activity outside of and above morals
- beauty no longer is the blissful perfection of creatures, every social and moral
consideration vanishes
- not the consequences of experience, but experience itself is important
- decadence began to be talked about in the 1890s and is associated mainly with the
French poets Baudelaire and Gautier
- the literal meaning of the word is ‘falling away’ , decline
- the movement has to do with intense refinement, valuing of artificiality over nature
- also associated with a feeling of ‘ennui’ (boredom)
- decadent literature: the literature of a modern society grown over-luxurious and
sophisticated
- in many respects the terms aestheticism and decadence overlap
- aesthetes and decadents rely on intense refinement, artificiality, interest in paradox
and perversity
- they promote an over luxurious and sophisticated style, and explore the beauty of
strange, subjective, unique moments
- Hedonism – shakes off the chains of Victorian society and preaches the normal
search for pleasure
- anxious impatience for life and widening of the fields of sensuality

Life:
- born in Dublin, 16th October 1854
- father – leading oculist and ear surgeon
- mother – talented writer of nationalist poetry
- studied at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College Oxford
- academically and socially outstanding
- came under the influence of Ruskin and Pater’s doctrines
- 1879 left Oxford for London
- travelled in Italy and Greece
- became leader of the aesthetes
- made a name for himself through the intense and refined audacity of his clothes, his
tastes, his language
- 1882 lecture tour in the U.S.
- friendship with James Mc. Neill Whistler

- 1884 married Constance Lloyd – had two sons (Cyril and Vyvyan)
- 1895 sentenced to 2 years’ hard labour, because of breach of morality
- 1900, November died in Paris

Work:

- Poems (1881)
- Intentions (1893)
- The Duchess of Padua (1891)
- Lady Windermere’s Fan (1893)
- Salome
- A Woman of No Importance (1894)
- An Ideal Husband
- The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
- The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)
- Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime (1887)
- The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
- The House of Pomegranates (1891)
- The Ballad of Reading Goal
- De Profundis

Wilde’s Irishness:

- traumatic childhood in Ireland : neglectful, dominant, nationalist mother, involved in

politics and feminism; disappointment in first love, Florence Balcombe, 1876
- Wilde wanted to forget the Irish nightmare by making a career in England, he cut the
cord which bound him to the land of his parents
- his mother had sought to repossess Irish folklore and the native language, he wished to
achieve a total mastery of English
- I am Irish by race, but the English have condemned me to speak the language of
Shakespeare, he told his friend Edmond de Goncourt
- decades later J. Joyce stated: The Irish, condemned to express themselves in a
language not their own, have stamped on it the mark of their own genius and compete
for glory with the civilized nations. The result is then called English literature.
- an Irishman only discovers himself when he goes abroad
 Poems and Plays:

- wrote in all the main literary forms: fiction, poetry, drama, essays
- collected his poems in one volume: Poems
- in poetry and prose he proved to be a very talented writer
- The Ballad of Reading Goal and De Profundis were created after his tragic overthrow
- the Ballad of Reading Goal is considered his best poetic work:

He did not wear his scarlet coat,

For blood and wine are red,

And blood and wine were on his hands

When they found him with the dead,

The poor dead woman whom he loved,

And murdered in her bed….

Some kill their love when they are young,

And some when they are old;

Some strangle with the hands of Lust,

Some with the hands of Gold:

The kindest use a knife, because

The dead so soon grow cold.

(The Ballad of Reading Goal)

- in his plays, Wilde demonstrates his satirical wit and surface brilliance
- wrote his plays for the theatre, only for success
- took elements from the Victorian farce and melodrama, but polished and stylized them
- stylization: a ‘raison d’etre’ of Wilde’s plays
- dialogues are witty, sparkling
- his best play: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
- he created a world where action exists in order to make possible the appropriate
conversation
- the dialogues have a dynamic flow
- the perfection of artificial comedy
The Picture of Dorian Gray

- a novel of introspection written in the decadent manner

- the book in which his aestheticism is to be found in all its aspects:
- the search for intense or rare sensations
- the ban put on every belief, every feeling which might set a limit to the faculty of
enjoyment or imprison the soul
- the superiority of the true artist
- the artist is he whose life is a work of art
- an apology of Hedonism:

And, certainly, to him Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other
arts seemed to be but a preparation….

He sought to elaborate some new scheme of life that would have its reasoned philosophy and
its ordered principles, and find in the spiritualizing of the senses its highest realization….

But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had never been understood,
and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the world had 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 was to be the dominant characteristic….

Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism that was to re-create,
and to save it from that harsh, uncomely puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious
revival. (The Picture of Dorian Gray, p. 109)

- the novel is built upon a striking symbol: the divided personality in a detached
existence which watches itself
- in this novel again, Wilde is at his best as a conversationalist
- most reviews were unfavorable, but the book was widely read
- W. Pater, though, wrote a most thoughtful review: …There is always something of an
excellent talker about the writing of Mr. Oscar Wilde.
- the novel reveals both aspects of Wilde in a vivid narrative form: aestheticism and
decadence
- Wilde stated the main aesthetic principles in the Preface of the novel:
The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim….

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is
a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is
hope.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book….

No artist desires to prove anything….

No artist has ethical sympathies….

The artist can express everything. …

All art is at once surface and symbol. …

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril….

All art is quite useless.

- in a letter to the St. James’ Gazette, in June 1890 Wilde admitted the inconsistency
between the aesthetic claims of the Preface and the central theme of the novel:

…it is a story with a moral. And that moral is this: All excess, as well as all renunciation,
brings its own punishment…

- the novelist uses the theme of the Double

- he operates a mysterious inversion of the natural order through which the actual face
keeps its inviolate youth, while the portrait is stained by the course of impure years
 - the Double seems to arise from a morbid self-love which prevents the development of
a balanced personality
- when the Double is denied it becomes man’s fate, it comes back to haunt its creator
- murdering the Double is an attempt to do away with guilt, which is not easily
repressed:

…in order to escape the fear of death, the person resorts to suicide which, however, he
carries out on his double because he loves and esteems his ego so much. (Erich Stern)

- the killing or annihilating of the double is no final solution, for his life and welfare are
closely connected to that of his author
- alternatively, the stabbing of the portrait can be interpreted as the triumph of art over
time
- Wilde was also inspired by the myth of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image
and paid with his life just as Dorian Gray falls in love with his portrait and has to die
in the end
- the story has some common elements with the Faust legend; like him Dorian Gray
sells his soul to a dark force (Mephistopheles for Faust, Lord Henry for Dorian Gray)
- the symbolical magic instrument is the Yellow Book – Huysmans’s A Rebours
(Against Nature)- an illustration of French Decadence
- obvious references to Shakespeare’s plays (Caliban, Miranda, Laertes)
- Wilde: “Basil Hallward is what I think I am; Lord Henry is what the world thinks of
me; Dorian is what I would like to be – in other ages, perhaps.”
 - The novel raised a moralistic scandal because of its homoeroticism, the offence
against the social, literary and aesthetic sensibilities of Victorian book critics

Conclusion:

- Oscar Wilde belonged to the fin de siècle aesthetic movement which believed in art
less as an escape from than as a substitute for life
- became famous for his biting wit and flamboyant appearance
- also belonged to the fin de siècle decadence and gave experience and enjoyment
complete supremacy
- he even acted out aestheticism and decadence in his own career
- his life fell into a tragic pattern
- he demonstrated a way of life and a way of art: art is about the elevation of taste and
the pure pursuit of beauty