<p><i>On the whole, an artist in England gains something by being attacked.
His individuality is intensified. He becomes more completely himself. Of
course, the attacks are very gross, very impertinent, and very
contemptible. But then no artist expects grace from the vulgar mind, or
style from the suburban intellect.</i></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2><SPAN name="ART_AND_MORALITY" id="ART_AND_MORALITY"></SPAN>ART AND MORALITY</h2>
<p>"Why do you always write poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so
much more difficult."</p>
<p>These were the words of Walter Pater to Oscar Wilde on the occasion of
their first meeting during the latter's undergraduate days at Oxford.<SPAN name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</SPAN>
Those were "days of lyrical ardours and of studious sonnet-writing,"
wrote Wilde, in reviewing one of Pater's books some years later,<SPAN name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</SPAN>
"days when one loved the exquisite intricacy and musical repetitions of
the ballade, and the vilanelle with its linked long-drawn echoes and its
curious completeness; days when one solemnly sought to discover the
proper temper in which a triolet should be written; delightful days, in
which, I am glad to say, there was far more rhyme than reason."</p>
<p>Oscar Wilde was never a voluminous writer—"writing bores me so," he
once said to Andr� Gide—and at the time of which he speaks he had
published little except some occasional verses in his University
magazines. Then, in 1881, came his volume of collected poems, followed
at intervals during the next nine or ten years by a collection of fairy
stories and some essays in the leading reviews.</p>
<p>"I did not quite understand what Mr. Pater meant," he continues, "and it
was not till I had carefully studied his beautiful and suggestive essays
on the Renaissance that I fully realised what a wonderful self-conscious
art the art of English prose-writing really is, or may be made to be."</p>
<p>It has been suggested that it was his late apprenticeship to an art that
requires life-long study which rendered Wilde's prose so insincere,
resembling more the conscious artifice of the modern French school than
the restrained, yet jewelled style of Pater, whom he claimed as his
master in prose.</p>
<p>It was not till 1890 that he published his first and only novel, <i>The
Picture of Dorian Gray</i>, with its strangeness of colour and its
passionate suggestion flickering like lightning through the gloom of the
subject. The Puritans and the Philistines, who scented veiled
improprieties in its paradoxes, were shocked; but it delighted the
connoisseur and the artist, wearied as they were with the hum-drum
accounts of afternoon tea parties and the love affairs of the curate.</p>
<p>That such a master of prose and scholarship as Pater should have written
in terms of commendation of <i>Dorian Gray</i> is sufficient to prove how
free from offence the story really is. In the original version of the
story one passage struck Pater as being indefinite and likely to suggest
evil to evil minds. This paragraph Wilde elaborated, but he refused to
suppress a single sentence of what he had written. "No artist is
consciously wrong," he declared.</p>
<p>A similar incident is recorded as early as 1878. Shairp, the Professor
of Poetry at Oxford, suggested some improvements in Wilde's Newdigate
Prize Poem <i>Ravenna</i>. Wilde listened to all the suggestions with
courtesy, and even took notes of them, but he went away and had the poem
printed without making a single alteration in it.</p>
<p><i>The Picture of Dorian Gray</i> first appeared on June 20th, 1890, in
<i>Lippincott's Monthly Magazine</i> for July. It was published in America by
the J.B. Lippincott Company of Philadelphia simultaneously with the
English edition of the same magazine issued by Messrs. Ward, Lock and
Co.</p>
<p>A few weeks before the publication of his romance Wilde wrote a letter
to a publisher stating that his story would appear in Lippincott's on
the following 20th of June, and that after three months the copyright
reverted to him. The publication of <i>Dorian Gray</i> would "create a
sensation," he wrote; he was "going to add two additional chapters," and
would the publishing house with whom he was corresponding care to
consider it?</p>
<p>Unfortunately the letter bears no indication of the house to which it
was sent. However, on the 1st of July in the following year <i>The Picture
of Dorian Gray</i> was published in book form by Messrs. Ward, Lock and Co.
In this form it contained seven new chapters. The binding was of a rough
grey paper, the colour of cigarette ash, with back of parchment vellum.
The gilt lettering and design was by Charles Ricketts. A sumptuous
<i>�dition de luxe</i>, limited to two hundred and fifty copies, signed by
the author, was also issued, the covers being similar to the ordinary
edition but the gilt tooling more elaborate.</p>
<p>In March, 1891, Wilde had written "A Preface to 'Dorian Gray'" in the
<i>Fortnightly Review</i>, in which he enunciated his creed as an artist.
This preface is included in all impressions of <i>Dorian Gray</i> which
contain twenty chapters.</p>
<p>Wilde was indeed a true prophet when he foretold that his story would
create a sensation. Though it occupied but a hundred pages in a monthly
periodical, it was reviewed as fully as any <i>chef d'oeuvre</i> of a leading
novelist. In one of his letters Wilde says that out of over two hundred
press cuttings which he received in reference to <i>Dorian Gray</i> he took
public notice of only three. But it is impossible to doubt but that he
was thinking of his critics when he gave vent to his views on
journalists, and the attitude of the British public towards art, in his
essay on <i>The Soul of Man</i> a few months later. "A work of art is the
unique result of a unique temperament," he writes. "Its beauty comes
from the fact that the author is what he is.... The moment that an
artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the
demand, he ceases to be an artist."</p>
<p>He considers it to be an impertinence for the public (represented by the
journalist) who knows nothing about art to criticise the artist and his
work. In this country, he declares that the arts that have escaped best
from the "aggressive, offensive and brutalising" attempts on the part of
the public to interfere with the individual as an artist, are the arts
in which the public takes no interest. He gives poetry as an instance,
and declares that we have been able to have fine poetry because the
public does not read it, and consequently does not influence it. But,</p>
<blockquote><p>"In the case of the novel and the drama, arts in which the public
does take an interest, the result of the exercise of popular
authority has been absolutely ridiculous. No country produces such
badly written fiction, such tedious, common work in the
novel-form.... It must necessarily be so. The popular standard is
of such a character that no artist can get to it. It is at once too
easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist. It is too easy,
because the requirements of the public as far as plot, style,
psychology, treatment of life, and treatment of literature are
concerned are within the reach of the very meanest capacity and the
most uncultivated mind. It is too difficult, because to meet such
requirements the artist would have to do violence to his
temperament, would have to write not for the artistic joy of
writing, but for the amusement of half-educated people, and so
would have to suppress his individualism, forget his culture,
annihilate his style, and surrender everything that is valuable in
him....</p>
<p>"The one thing that the public dislikes is novelty. Any attempt to
extend the subject-matter of art is extremely distasteful to the
public; and yet the vitality and progress of art depend in a large
measure on the continual extension of subject-matter. The public
dislikes novelty because it is afraid of it.... A fresh mode of
Beauty is absolutely distasteful to the public, and whenever it
appears it gets so angry and bewildered that it always uses two
stupid expressions—one is that the work of art is grossly
unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral.
When the public says a work is grossly unintelligible, it means
that the artist has said a beautiful thing that is new; when the
public describes a work as grossly immoral, it means that the
artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true. The former
expression has reference to style; the latter to subject-matter.
But it probably uses the words very vaguely, as an ordinary mob
will use ready-made paving-stones. <i>There is not a single real poet
or prose-writer of this</i> (the nineteenth) <i>century on whom the
British public has not solemnly conferred diplomas of
immorality</i>.... Of course, the public is very reckless in the use
of the word.... An artist is, of course, not disturbed by it. The
true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he
is absolutely himself. But I can fancy that if an artist produced a
work of art in England, that immediately on its appearance was
recognised by the public, through its medium, which is the public
press, as a work that was quite intelligible and highly moral, he
would begin seriously to question whether in its creation he had
really been himself at all, and consequently whether the work was
not quite unworthy of him, and either of a thoroughly second-rate
order or of no artistic value whatsoever."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Wilde then goes on to discuss the use of other words by journalists
seeking to describe the work of an artist. These are the words "exotic,"
"unhealthy," and "morbid."<SPAN name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</SPAN> He disposes of each in turn. Briefly he
says, that the public is morbid, the artist is never morbid. The word
"exotic" merely expresses the rage of the momentary mushroom against the
immortal, entrancing and exquisitely lovely orchid. "<i>And,</i>" he
concludes, "<i>what the public calls an unhealthy novel is always a
beautiful and healthy work of art.</i>"</p>
<div class="footnote"><p><SPAN name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></SPAN> Oscar Wilde matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford,
October 17, 1874, and took his B.A. degree on November 28, 1878. Pater
was at the time a Fellow and Tutor of Brasenose.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote"><p><SPAN name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></SPAN> <i>The Speaker</i>, Vol I., No. 12, page 319. March 22, 1890.</p>
</div>
<div class="footnote"><p><SPAN name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></SPAN> <i>The Times</i>, February 23rd, 1893, in reviewing "Salome",
said: "It is an arrangement in blood and ferocity, morbid, bizarre,
repulsive and very offensive." Wilde replied (<i>Times</i>, March 2nd), "The
opinions of English critics on a French work of mine have, of course,
little, if any interest for me."</p>
<p>In <i>The Soul of Man</i> he wrote: "To call an artist morbid because he
deals with morbidity as his subject matter, is as silly as if one called
Shakespeare mad because he wrote 'King Lear.'"</p>
</div>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<p><i>One of the results of the extraordinary tyranny of authority is that
words are absolutely distorted from their proper and simple meaning, and
are used to express the obverse of their right signification.</i></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
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