Part 30 (1/2)

In short, so the review, when summed up and crystallised, implied, Wilde was incapable of telling the truth about himself, or about anything at all. Sometimes in his writings he fell upon the truth by accident, and then his works contained a modic.u.m of truth. Consciously, he was never able to discover it, consciously, he was never able to enunciate it.

Now, that is a point of view which is natural enough, but which, after careful study, I cannot substantiate in any way. Over and over again the same thing was said. Everybody was prepared, at last, to admit that Wilde was a great artist--in direct contradiction to that condemnation of even his literary power which was poured upon his works at the time of his downfall--but the general opinion of the leading critics seemed to point to the fact of ”De Profundis” being a pose and insincere.

Now, if the book was merely an excursion in att.i.tude, a considered work of art without any very profound relation to the truth of its personal psychology, then I think the book would be a less saddening thing than it undoubtedly is. Surely, the author had a perfect right, if he so wished, to produce a psychological romance. This I know is not a generally held opinion, but I do not see how anybody who knows anything about the brain of the artist and the ethics of creation can really deny it. If the work is absolutely sincere, as I believe it to be, then, from the moral point of view, it is indeed a terrible doc.u.ment. It shows us how little the extraordinary, complex temperament of Oscar Wilde was really chastened and purified. It provides us with a moral picture of monstrous egotism set in a frame of jewels.

As has been said so often before in this book, the worse and insane side of Oscar Wilde must always obscure and conquer the better and beautiful side of him.

Oscar Wilde describes himself as a ”lord of language.” This is perfectly true. He goes on to say that he ”stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of his time.” This is only half true. He continues that ”I felt it myself and made others feel it.” The first half of this sentence is too true, the second half is untrue, inasmuch as it implies that he made everyone feel it, whereas he mistook the flattery and adulation of a tiny coterie for the applause and sanction of a nation. Oscar Wilde always lived within four very narrow walls. At one time they were the swaying misty walls conjured up by a few and not very important voices, at another they were the walls of concrete and corrugated iron, the whitewashed walls of his prison cell. He says that his relations to his time were more n.o.ble, more permanent, of more vital issue, of larger scope than Byron's relation to his time. Then, almost in the same breath, he begins to tell us that there is only one thing for him now, ”absolute humility.” That something hidden away in his nature like a treasure in a field is ”humility.”

Comment is almost cruel here.

In another part of ”De Profundis” the author airily and lightly touches upon those horrors which had ruined him and made him what he was, and which kept him where he was.

”People thought it dreadful of me to have entertained at dinner the evil things of life, and to have found pleasure in their company. But then, from the point of view through which I, as an artist in life, approached them, they were delightfully suggestive and stimulating. The danger was half the excitement....”

Is this Humility and is this Repentance? To me it seems as terrible a conviction of madness and inability to understand the depth to which he had sunk as one could find in the whole realm of literature.

”People thought it dreadful of me to have entertained,” etc. etc. Does not the very phrase suggest that Wilde still thinks in his new-found ”humility” that it was not dreadful of him at all and that he had a perfect right to do so?

There is no doubt of his absolute sincerity. He is absolutely incapable of understanding. He still thinks, lying in torture, that he has done nothing wrong. He has made an error of judgment, he has misapprehended his att.i.tude towards society. He has not sinned. Once only does he admit, in a single sentence, that any real culpability attached to him.

”I grew careless of the lives of others.” This shows that a momentary glimpse of the truth had entered that unhappy brain, but it is carelessly uttered, and carelessly dismissed. All he cared for, if we believe this book to be sincere, as I think n.o.body who really understands the man and his mental condition at the time that it was written, can fail to believe, is, that every fresh sensation at any cost to himself and others, was his only duty towards himself and his art.

Doubtless when he wrote ”De Profundis” Oscar Wilde believed absolutely in his own att.i.tude. He was no Lucifer in his own account, no fallen angel. He was only a spirit of light which had made a mistake and found itself in fetters. That is the tragedy of the book, that its author could never see himself as others saw him or realise that he had sinned.

When Satan fell from Heaven, in Milton's mighty work, he made no attempt to persuade himself that he had found something hidden away within him like a treasure in a field--”Humility.” There was in the imaginary portrait of the Author of Evil still an awful and impious defiance of the Forces that controlled all nature and him as a part of nature.

Oscar Wilde could look back upon all he did to himself and all the incalculable evil he wrought upon others and say quite calmly that he did not regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. He tells us that he threw the ”pearl of his soul into a cup of wine,” that he ”went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes.” And then, after living on honeycomb he realises that to have continued living on honeycomb would have been wrong, because it would have arrested the continuance of his development.

”I had to pa.s.s on.”

Let us pa.s.s on also to a consideration of Wilde's teaching on Christianity in ”De Profundis.”

THE AUTHOR'S VIEW OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

It is necessary to deal with this part of ”De Profundis” which treats of the unhappy author's ”discoveries” in Christianity, because his views were put so perfectly, with such a wealth of phrase, with such apparent certainty of conviction, that they may well have an influence upon young and impressionable minds which will be, and possibly has been, dangerous and unsettling.

There is no doubt but that the teaching of ”De Profundis,” or rather the point of view enunciated in it, which deals with Christianity, shows that Oscar Wilde had failed to gain any real insight into the Faith. It is quite true that various of the sects within the English Church, especially those which dissent from the Establishment, might find themselves in accordance with much that Wilde said. A Catholic, however, cannot for a moment admit that the poet's teachings are anything but paradoxical, dangerous, and untrue.

A minister of the Protestant Church, Canon Beeching, preaching at Westminster Abbey on ”The Sinlessness of Christ,” referred to the portions of ”De Profundis,” with which I am dealing now, in no uncertain way.