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Oscar Wilde: Art and Morality

<h2>"THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY."</h2> <h3>A Spiritualistic Review.</h3> <h3>By "NIZIDA."</h3> The following review of "Dorian Gray" referred to by Oscar Wilde in his second letter to the Scots Observer (see here) was published in the issue of Light dated July 12th, 1890. This is "a Journal of Psychical, Occult, and Mystical Research." "M.A., Oxon," writing in the same paper a few weeks later mentions that "Oscar Wilde says of Light that it is 'The organ of the English mystics,' and adds 'I do not like that word 'organ.'" At the same time "M.A., Oxon," refers to the Scots Observer as being "bright, wise, witty, and not at all aggressive." The review is here given in its entirety: Mr. Oscar Wilde has created a new character in fiction, one likely to absorb public attention with a similar weird fascination to that produced by the renowned Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; and with a more lasting and beneficial moral effect than had Mr. Stevenson's surprising creation. A deeply conceived psychological study, upon entirely new lines, enriched by the stored wealth of a mind which has spared no pains in the pursuit of sensuous beauty, and which has, to all appearance, revelled in deepest draughts from that sparkling and alluring fountain. But what a spiritual lesson has he drawn therefrom—a lesson graphically and powerfully set forth in the fascinating pages which present to us the life of Dorian Gray. A modern Narcissus, enamoured of his own beauty, which proves a lure to draw him down into the deepest hells of sensual indulgence, from whence he sinks into a still deeper abyss of crime. Introduced as an innocent, rather effeminate youth of extraordinary and fascinating beauty, Dorian Gray has his eyes opened to the fact that he possesses beauty, and his slumbering vanity and egotism, awakened by the insidious flatteries of a hardened cynic, spring at once into activity, and from that moment begins the downward course. Skilfully the author depicts the budding and gradual unfolding of this baleful life-blossom of the animal soul, seeking only the selfish gratification of the senses, refined indeed by education and artistic culture, but, notwithstanding, purely animal—nay, at times, bestial. By degrees, the still, small voice—the voice of the higher self which spiritually overshadows the unsophisticated youth—is deadened in the soul. All the humane, merciful, spiritually beautiful sentiments and emotions of the better nature, are strangled in their infancy, for Dorian Gray drinks so deeply of the intoxicating cup of sensuous gratification, that his nature becomes transformed to that of a demon—beautiful outwardly, but within hideous. All this is depicted with a master hand; the underlying lesson, for those who can find it, being the danger to the soul which lies in an egotistic love and idolatrous cherishing of one's own personal beauty—for male or female equally perilous. But the author by an ingenious device presents to us an objective image of the subjective transformation gradually going on in Dorian Gray's soul, which, for startling vividness and horror, surpasses the effects usually produced by the novelist's art. Dorian Gray, whilst retaining the youthfulness, vigorous health, and unimpaired beauty of his external form, at the same time witnesses the objective presentment of his soul's growing, loathsome hideousness; and its falling into diseased decrepitude, into an ugliness beyond conception. At first horrified by this, he becomes at length accustomed to it, and at certain stages of his downward course, after the commission of new excesses, he repairs to this silent recorder of his deeds, and unveiling it, seeks for fresh indication of the gradual decay and corruption which are unfailingly represented on this physical side of his being. As time went on— <blockquote>"He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine with minute care, and often with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead, or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sins or the signs of age. He would place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture, and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs."[22] </blockquote> Never does he feel a moment of repentance. The disgusting image, however, haunts him with a terror of discovery, drawing him back from distant places to assure himself of its hidden security, and to contemplate it with a hideous fascination. The loathsome horror never departs from his consciousness. From its veiled seclusion it exerts over him a spell of diabolical enchantment, and he knows that it is he himself; but his mirror presents to his gaze the personal beauty he cherishes, and the world continues to be fascinated by his charm. Many become fascinated to their serious moral and spiritual injury. His victims are numerous; innocent women and upright young men, who, but for him, would have led virtuous, useful lives. With his beautiful body—cared for as one would care for some rare exotic blossom—going about the world with a charming appearance of harmlessness and even innocence, he murdered souls in secret, as completely as if with his slender, white, taper fingers he might have clutched their throats and strangled the life out of their bodies. And all this rottenness, all this corruption, had been proximately caused by a seed dropped into a soil prepared for it—the soul left doubtless from the Karma of some previous life. A seed dropped from the flattering tongue of Lord Henry Wotton, tended and skilfully fostered into a surprising precociousness by his insidious, worthless cynicisms, and oracular sophistries. A man out of whose life had departed every wholesome savour, who poisoned the lives of others, and led them to sin, whilst, apparently, he sinned not himself. As a friend once said to him, "You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose." His whole life was, however, a sin, concealed behind a mask of bonhommie, a fashionable cheerfulness and pleasantness of manner; a hollow cadavre full of the dust and ashes of a burnt-out life. One of Lord Henry Wotton's specious sophistries was this: "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." As well wrap oneself confidingly in the folds of a boa-constrictor, hoping to save one's life thereby. Lord Henry's apt pupil, Dorian Gray, followed this advice scrupulously, only to increase the power of temptation, which never after found him unwilling, until at last all of his higher nature was suffocated. The author skilfully depicts the insidious, baleful influence of Lord Henry Wotton, but attributes the corruption of Dorian Gray's soul to a book which Lord Henry loaned him. He says:— <blockquote>"The Renaissance knew of strange manners of poisoning—poisoning by a helmet, and a lighted torch, by an embroidered glove, and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander, and by an amber chain. Dorian Gray was poisoned by a book. There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realise his conception of the beautiful."[23] </blockquote> Dorian Gray had conceived the idea that his life was the product of many preceding lives. The author causes him to make the following reflections:— <blockquote>"He used to wonder at the shallow psychology of those who conceive the Ego in man as a thing simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence. To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead. He loved to stroll through the gaunt cold picture-gallery of his country house and look at the various portraits of those whose blood flowed in his veins. Here was Philip Herbert, described by Francis Osborne in his Memoirs on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James as one who was "caressed by the Court for his handsome face, which kept him not long company." Was it young Herbert's life that he sometimes led? Had some strange poisonous germ crept from body to body till it had reached his own? Was it some dim sense of that ruined grace that had made him so suddenly, and almost without cause, give utterance, in Basil Hallward's studio, to that mad prayer which had so changed his life? Here in gold embroidered red doublet, jewelled sur-coat, and gilt edged ruff and wrist-bands, stood Sir Anthony Sherard, with his silver and black armour piled at his feet. What had this man's legacy been? Had the lover of Giovanni of Naples bequeathed him some inheritance of sins and shame? Were his own actions merely the dreams that the dead man had not dared to realise? Here, from the fading canvas smiled Lady Elizabeth Devereux, in her gauze hood, pearled stomacher, and pink slashed sleeves. A flower was in her right hand, and her left clasped an enamelled collar of white and damask roses. On a table by her side lay a mandolin and an apple. There were large green rosettes upon her little pointed shoes. He knew her life, and the strange stories that were told about her lovers. Had he something of her temperament in him? Those oval heavy-lidded eyes seemed to look curiously at him. What of George Willoughby, with his powdered hair and fantastic patches? How evil he looked! The face was saturnine and swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to be twisted with disdain. Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean yellow hands that were so overladen with rings. He had been a macaroni of the eighteenth century, and the friend, in his youth, of Lord Ferrars. What of the second Lord Sherard, the companion of the Prince Regent in his wildest days, and one of the witnesses of the secret marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert? How proud and handsome he was, with his chestnut curls and insolent pose! What passions had he bequeathed? The world had looked upon him as infamous. He had led the orgies at Carlton House. The Star of the Garter glittered upon his breast. Beside him hung the portrait of his wife, a pallid, thin-lipped woman in black. Her blood also stirred within him. How curious it all seemed!"[24] </blockquote> What a pity Dorian did not see that the sole reason for a plurality of lives was that very thirst of the animal soul for the sensual pleasures of the material life in which he so wildly indulged, and yet with a diabolical, smooth, and easy method in his madness, seeking ever the externally beautiful. Beauty fled indeed before the gaunt ugliness of crime; but when this happened to Dorian, he coolly turned his back and went in search of new sensations. <blockquote>"And in his search for sensations that would be at once new and delightful and possess that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance, he would often adopt certain modes of thought that he knew to be really alien to his nature, abandon himself to their subtle influences, and then, having, as it were, caught their colour and satisfied his intellectual curiosity, leave them with that curious indifference that is not incompatible with a real ardour of temperament, and that, indeed, according to certain modern psychologists, is often a condition of it."[25] </blockquote> Veil it as he would, his extreme moral corruption became known, crept out from behind skilful concealments, and was borne by the breath of gossip and scandal—whispering of its enormities. He was black-balled in a West End Club, <blockquote>"and when brought by a friend into a smoking-room of the Carlton, the Duke of Berwick and another gentleman got up in a marked manner and went out. Curious stories became current about him after he had passed his twenty-fifth year. ... Men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass him with a sneer, or look at him with cold, searching eyes. Of such insolences and attempted slights, he, of course, took no notice; and in the opinion of most people his frank manner, his charming, boyish smile, and the infinite grace of that wonderful youth that seemed never to leave him were in themselves a sufficient answer to the calumnies (for so they called them) that were circulated about him."[26] </blockquote> The life at length culminates in the commission of a crime of the most cruel, treacherous, and dastardly character. It is successfully concealed. The extraordinary coolness, even peace of mind, which Dorian experiences after this deed of horror is powerfully depicted. But he does feel a few momentary, weak qualms of conscience. He spares one of his victims, and he thinks of beginning a new life. Then imagining himself becoming purified he longs to see how his silent recorder looks. He expects to find some wonderful improvement in the aspect of the loathsome hidden self he has created, so he repairs to its hiding place. It is more loathsome than ever, and presents new aspects of ugliness. In a moment of supreme disgust and aversion he seizes a knife to destroy it. By so doing he ends his physical life. The only occult explanation of the catastrophe which befalls him is, that he commits astral suicide by the murderous attack he ignorantly makes upon that which represented to him his own soul. The blow reverts to his physical body, and he falls dead. There is in this book a wonderful spiritual insight into the inner life of the human being. Arising, in all probability from that intuition we all more or less possess; a sort of flash of truth upon the mind, which is not known at the moment to be really true, but is supposed to be the mere weaving of a graceful prolific fancy. A similar power lay at the back of Mr. R. Stevenson's creation of Dr. Jekyll, casting upon the tale so powerful a spiritual light, that all readers were held by the spell of its enchantment. The same feeling of being under a spell fills the reader of "The Picture of Dorian Gray." The same subtle, spiritual effect of the aura of evil flows out from the book—especially at those moments when Dorian is contemplating the image of his soul's corruption, not, in this instance, that the evil so powerfully felt poisons the mind as poor Dorian was poisoned for life by his French novel; but one gets a feeling of painful horror, and sickening disgust, it is not easy to shake off. One seems to have glanced momentarily into the deepest abysses of hell, and to have drawn back totally sickened by a subtle effluvium. This singular power possessed by both these writers reveals a certain growth or development in them of the spiritual nature, which need not necessarily, as yet, convert either of these gentlemen into saints, or angels, although doubtless they are both very good Men. The lesson taught by Mr. Oscar Wilde's powerful story is of the highest spiritual import; and if it can be, not believed merely, but accepted as a literal fact, a mysterious verity in the life of a human being, that the invisible soul within the body, that alone which lives after death, is deformed, bestialised, and even murdered by a life of persistent evil, it ought to have the most beneficial effect upon society. Let him depict the soul as he may, except in the case of Basil Hallward, Mr. Wilde never rises above the animal soul in man. It is the animal soul alone, dominated by a refined but perverted intellect, seeking an animal gratification in sensuous beauty, which he puts before us. Dorian Gray suffocated in its infancy the only germ of spiritual soul he possessed. <div class="footnote">[22] Pp. 65, 66. </div> <div class="footnote">[23] p. 77. </div> <div class="footnote">[24] p. 75. </div> <div class="footnote">[25] p. 68. </div> <div class="footnote">[26] p. 74. </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> The fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/wilde02.jpg" width-obs="418" alt="Punch" title="" /></div> Joe, the Fat Boy in Pickwick, startles the Old Lady; Oscar, the Fad Boy in Lippincott's, startles Mrs. Grundy:— Oscar, the Fad Boy: "I want to make your flesh creep!" Reproduced by special permission of the proprietors of "Punch." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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