Part 28 (1/2)

The more Catholic the conception of religion and of art becomes, the more surely the socialistic idea obtains. Certainly our Lord taught that individual character can only be developed through community. The great socialistic organ of England attempted the value and weight of Oscar Wilde's defence of Socialism in the following words:--

”Christ taught that individual character could only be developed through community. Some say he opposed Socialism because, when two young capitalists came to him wrangling about their private property, he ignored them, saying, 'Who made me a divider among you?' I suppose these objectors still think that Socialism means dividing up. When his enemies were closing in upon him, and his life hung in the balance, a woman came and anointed his feet, and wiped them with her hair, and the good people were shocked, and complained of the waste. Might not the ointment have been sold, and the money doled out to the poor? Christ defended her generous impulse, and remarked: 'The poor you have always with you. You have plenty of opportunities of helping them. Me you have not always.'

This is erected into a great p.r.o.nouncement that we must not attempt to abolish poverty! To such amusing s.h.i.+fts are Christian Individualists driven!

”But our contention is that although Christ was not a State Socialist, his spirit, embodied in the Christian Church, inevitably urges men to Socialism; that the political development of the Catholic Faith is along the lines of Socialism; and that, as the State captured the Church in the past, so now it is the business of the Church to recapture the State, and through it to establish G.o.d's Kingdom on earth.”

I quote them here in order to show what sympathy the essay awakened, even though that sympathy is utterly alien to the belief of the chronicler. And now let us finally bid farewell to Oscar Wilde as aesthete, or, rather, as prophet and expounder of the aesthetic.

I have placed on record not only my own small opinion of his teachings, but a very solid and weighty consensus of condemnation of his att.i.tude.

And I hope, from the purely literary point of view, I have made obeisance and given every credit to one of the greatest literary artists of our time.

PART VIII

”DE PROFUNDIS”

”DE PROFUNDIS”

”I Have entered on a performance which is without example, whose accomplishments will have no imitator. I mean to present my fellow-mortals with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this man shall be myself.

”I know my heart, and have studied mankind; I am not made like anyone I have been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if not better, I at least claim originality, and whether Nature did wisely in breaking the mould with which she formed me, can only be determined after having read this work.

”Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself before the sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, Thus have I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I.

With equal freedom and veracity have I related what was laudable or wicked, I have concealed no crimes, added no virtues; and if I have sometimes introduced superfluous ornament, it was merely to occupy a void occasioned by defect of memory. I may have supposed that certain, which I only knew to be probable, but have never a.s.serted as truth a conscious falsehood. Such as I was, I have declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous, generous, and sublime. Even as thou hast read my inmost soul, Power eternal! a.s.semble round thy throne an innumerable throng of my fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn expose with equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and, if he dare, aver, _I was better than that man_.”

These are the first words in that book which it was supposed would always stand as a type of real self-revelation and confession and which now is thought of by all the world as merely a brilliant piece of literature and an amazing tissue of misrepresentations.

Jean Jacques Rousseau never gave his real self to the world despite the loud Gallic boast of the paragraphs above.

Did De Quincey? Did St Augustine? Did anyone ever tell the truth about himself from the very beginnings of literature? Newman's ”Apologia”; Bunyan's ”Grace Abounding”; the Journals of Wesley; the Memoirs of Madame de Stael de Launay; the diary of Madame D'Arblay; the ”Ausmeinem Leben” of Goethe, the ”Lavengro” of Borrow--how much in all these and in the hundred other works of like nature which crowd to the mind, how much is self-deception, how much picturesque fiction?

Who can say?

There is only one way of determining the value of an autobiographical statement--by a comparison of internal evidence with external historic fact. In the case of people whose generation has pa.s.sed away this task is beset with difficulties, though not impossible. In the case of one who has but recently died, whose friends and contemporaries are living still, about whom doc.u.mentary and oral evidence abounds, the task is more easy, though still a hard and, possibly, a thankless one.

In a consideration and criticism, however, of Oscar Wilde's greatest work, ”De Profundis,” such an attempt must undoubtedly be made.

Yet, this question of sincerity or reality is not the only one to be determined, and it will be well, therefore, to treat of ”De Profundis”

with the a.s.sistance of a definite plan of criticism.

Let us then divide this part of the book into several sections.

There are, undoubtedly, a great many people who have heard the name of the book and read the extraordinarily copious reviews of it in the public press, but have no further acquaintance with it than just that.

It will be necessary, therefore, in the first instance, to give an account of the actual subject-matter in order to make the following criticism intelligible and, it is to be hoped, to induce them to purchase and read this marvellous monograph, which is one of the world's minor masterpieces, for themselves.

Secondly, a purely literary criticism will not be out of place, a criticism which treats of the book as a consummate work of art and a piece of prose almost unparalleled for its splendour and beauty in modern literature.