Oscar Wilde: A Dissident Vision of History | ||
In turn-of-the-century England, and especially in the years 1888 to 1895, Oscar Wilde | Párr. 1 | |
literally occupied centre stage as a writer whose fame was reaching a peak. But he | ||
continually discomfitted Victorian society with his open challenge to the norms of morality | ||
and religion; he was drawn to socialism and homosexuality and refused to define life, art | ||
5 | and reality in conventional terms. | |
In 1895, at the moment of his greatest literary triumph—when his The Importance | Párr. 2 | |
of Being Earnest was being performed to packed houses in London—he was convicted of | ||
sodomy and given a term of two years' hard labour. The penal sentence Oscar Wilde | ||
received was the climax of the reaction to what one may euphemistically call his | ||
10 | unconventionality. Wilde recognised it as one of two major turning points in his life: the | |
first, when his father sent him to Oxford, the second, when society sent him to jail. Wilde's | ||
social protests continued after his release. He violently denounced the English judicial and | ||
penal systems and resumed his colourful and controversial lifestyle. He died in 1900, | ||
bankrupt financially and, in the eyes of many of his contemporaries, morally as well. | ||
15 | Oscar Wilde as rebel is the most enduring image, both in the popular mind and in | Párr. 3 |
literary and historical commentaries. Wilde was undeniably in revolt against much that | ||
made up the social and intellectual milieus of his time. He was rebellious and startling in | ||
nearly all that he wrote, said and did. Yet, to see him only, or even mainly, in this light is | ||
misleading. That is, he was a rebel and a dissident, but such figures must not be seen as | ||
20 | isolated from their societies. Rather they are themselves products of the social forces of | |
their age. | ||
Oscar Wilde was a poseur who never regarded his various stances as ends in | Párr. 4 | |
themselves. He did not turn his back on approaching or understanding either his age or ages | ||
past. This is what this essay will call Wilde's sense of history. It will be approached first, | ||
25 | through Wilde's definition of the relationship between life and art (especially literature) and | |
second, through his involvement with what Andre Malraux was later to describe as | ||
the human condition. | ||
It is not easy to place Oscar Wilde neatly in any one of the niches of the intellectual | Párr. 5 | |
culture of the nineteenth century. He was part of the decadent movement, yet his own | ||
30 | particular proclivities lend this literary classification newer, more shadowy nuances. He | |
was an aesthete, he was close to Stephane Mallarme and the Symbolists, and he was also | ||
part of the cultural despair, the "generation in revolt" that H. Stuart Hughes and many | ||
others speak of in describing fin-de-siecle Europe. Wilde worked with many types of | ||
literature: he was a novelist, dramatist, critic, poet, wit and spinner of tales. He was very | ||
35 | certain of the worth of his literary products. Wilde called himself a "miser of sound and | |
syllable no less than Midas of his coinage" and a "king" and “supreme arbiter of style" in | ||
his craft. | ||
Wilde considered that he achieved a historical co-relation to his age because of the | Párr. 6 | |
revelations that proceeded from his constant grappling with the problem of life and art. | ||
40 | There had been much championing of the cause of "art for art's sake" in the nineteenth | |
century. But he went beyond that with a historical urgency, which described art as "the | ||
supreme reality" and "the great primal note". | ||
Wilde set himself to awakening the imagination of his century, since he believed it | Párr. 7 | |
to be the absolute creative force. Imagination—and its best manifestation, art—were the | ||
45 | means to find and know oneself, not immersion in life. Thus the invaluable dimension that | |
Oscar Wilde discovered and wanted so passionately to impart to his age was the suggestive | ||
power of the imagination and of art. These gave man indefinite possibilities for | ||
transcendence, self-realisation and true achievement. | ||
Wilde emphasised the historical importance of the critical spirit, and of the critic in | Párr. 8 | |
50 | society. He was one of the first to realise that criticism and art were in a vital relationship. | |
In one sense it was symbiotic, but criticism was also "creative and independent." Wilde | ||
built on the contributions of his Oxford mentor, Walter Pater, to urge that the critic evaluate | ||
art not simply for what it was, but also for what it was not. This type of criticism was more | ||
self-conscious and more creative. Through it neither the artist nor the critic were bound by | ||
55 | constraints of time and place. The critic thus was an artist in his own right, employing | |
suggestion, historical comparison, and revelations of possibilities for perfection. | ||
The critic was representative of the truly creative historical perspective that Wilde | Párr. 9 | |
saw as necessary for man to realise himself most fully. Oscar Wilde's sense of history is | ||
evident in his meditations on man's Fate. It was a concern with the components of the | ||
60 | human condition, on man's role in shaping his destiny, and on situations and social systems | |
that could aid or hinder him in the process. | ||
Wilde believed that "whatever is realised is right," and that "the real fool is he who | Párr. 10 | |
does not know himself." This self realisation would proceed from experience; experience | ||
was reality. Art, in pointing out the possibilities for experience was a vital contributor to | ||
65 | realisation. Oscar Wilde declared that history should be "an accurate description of what | |
has never occurred," and that "the only duty we owe to history is to rewrite it". The man | ||
with a true sense of history is he who aims at realising himself through experience, and | ||
does not go out into the world to "do", armed with Reason, Morality or Religion. | ||
It can be said that Oscar Wilde's sense of history was coloured to a great extent by | Párr. 11 | |
70 | the circumstances of his life. Two of his works, however, free him from much of this | |
charge. They are The Ballad of Reading Gaol and The Soul of Man under Socialism. The | ||
former, if one is permitted a generalization, cannot leave one unmoved. It is more than a | ||
mere reverie on an incident, or a call for prison reform. The Ballad explores the themes of | ||
suffering, retribution and fate. Wilde admitted it “aimed at eternity." He questioned a social | ||
75 | system that could not only condemn a man and take his life, but maim forever the processes | |
of growth and self realisation of all his comrades who were left alive but under its control. | ||
"It is only what is good in Man that wastes and withers there." This is the crisis of the | ||
human condition, when the social system and its institutions inflict inescapable and | ||
horrifyingly invisible punishment on man's faculties, his sensations, his hopes for newer | ||
80 | and better experiences. For Wilde, the condemned man in the Ballad—and his fellow | |
prisoners—are the symbols of man's universal fate. | ||
In The Soul of Man Under Socialism, Oscar Wilde speaks of socialism as the means | Párr. 12 | |
for man to achieve genuine individualism. Admittedly, Wilde did not go into the theoretical | ||
analysis of socialism; he was more concerned that socialism meant the fostering of a culture | ||
85 | “that would realise the essence of a soul." | |
Oscar Wilde was by no means the only nineteenth century figure to muse on what | Párr. 13 | |
history was—or should be. But his sense of history is made more fascinating because it was | ||
neither always explicit nor overstated; it was a philosophy of life rather than a rigid theory. | ||
Wilde continually focused on the meaning of life—and art. It did not take him long to | ||
95 | decide that art was infinitely superior to life. The irony of his own life was that while | |
extolling the supremacy of art he was made to bend under the pressures of life's blows. | ||
Wilde's sense of history was not an esoteric pursuit. It was his attempt to confront the | ||
historic and intellectual problems of his time. He did not "win", but he considered that | ||
through his experiences and the process of realisation that he was less "shallow" than much | ||
95 | that comprised the age in which he lived. | |
Referencia | ||
100 | Rajani, A. (1984). Oscar Wilde: A Sense of History. India International Centre Quarterly, 11, 75-80. |