The enigma that was Wilde

IF there is one writer in English Literature whose name evokes the two extremes of unstinted admiration and vehement condemnation, it is that of Oscar Wilde. It is because, as it often happens, the man's personal character gets mixed up with his literary eminence. By and large, critics have a morbid tendency to be more preoccupied with the seamy side of a writer's character, than his creative genius. It was exactly 100 years ago (i.e. 1900) that Wilde passed away, and it is fitting that we remember him as one who gave rise to so much controversy about himself, as no other literary figure has done.

Very few writers escape this predicament, with Shelley, Byron, Russell and Tolstoy being some outstanding examples of this category. These writers were rather fortunate, since their moral lapses did not come into public view through a court of law, whereas in the case of Wilde, the entire nation was agog when his trial was taking place. And those who once hero-worshipped him, did not lose a single opportunity to condemn him both in public and in private. When he stood convicted, he fell from his dizzy Olympian height to the dunnest depth of Hades. But no one will dispute the necessity of remembering him for the right reasons.

As a student at Dublin and later at Oxford, he created a sensation with his brilliant wit in conversation, and his flair for unconventional dress and demeanour. Regarding his conversational brilliance, we have the testimony of Bernard Shaw himself. He was asked which single person he would like to have at his dinner table to regale his guests with conversation. Without hesitation, Shaw replied that if he were to have the choice to invite someone even from among the dead, Wilde would be his first choice.

By the time he finished his studies, he had already become an heir to Mathew Arnold's crusade against Philistinism, Ruskin's revolt against all vulgarity and Walter Pater's advocacy of Hedonism. However, his distinct individuality and elusive personality defies all attempts to put him in a slot among the English writers. He showed a magnificent contempt for the goody- goody Victorian prudery and priggishness of his day, and in every one of his plays and other writings, we find his rapier-like thrusts against them. But the extraordinary fact is that those whom these sallies were aimed at, were the loudest to laugh. It is no mean art to debunk a person or a group, and make them laugh at it.

Particularly the "aestheticism" of Walter Pater influenced him profoundly and this cult is fully expounded in his Picture of Dorian Gray. It mainly consisted of making an art of everything in life - dress, way of talking and manners. For him, life did not mean mere existing, but "living" in the fullest sense of the word.

Wilde's daring intellect always tried to explore the untrodden recesses of our mental life. This tendency in him can be fully appreciated if we recall George Santayana's observation: "Man is a gregarious creature, more so mentally than physically. A man may sometimes like to be solitary, physically, but never likes to be alone in his opinions."

Along with Shaw, he believed that if you cannot shock people out of their complacency by what you say, it is not worthwhile saying it. For instance, we may examine the following passage from The Picture of Dorian Gray, which gives us a typical Wildean shock. "The body sins once, and has done with its sin, since action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then, except the recollection of a pleasure or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with the longing for the thing it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what the monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world first take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and brain only, the great sins of the World also first take place."

One of the characteristics of genius is lateral thinking. When one reads Wilde, one bumps into this at every turn. Brilliant epigrams, paradoxes and intriguingly fascinating halftruths jump at us from every page of his stories and plays. He is witty, not merely for the sake of wit, but also very often right, in spite of his apparent cynicism. In this process, he turns a commonly held belief upside down and surprises us with his unusual insight. As a matchless spinner of paradoxes and epigrams, he whiplashes the reader out of his complacency and makes him sit up and take note.

The charm and appeal of an epigram or a paradox lies in the incongruity between what is normally expected and what is actually said. For instance, he says, "A cigarette after a dinner is a perfect pleasure, because it leaves you thoroughly unsatisfied."

Wilde excluded the question of conventional morality from all forms of art. For him "the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium." The medium (whether it is paint, brush and canvas, or stone, chisel, hammer, and marble, or words) is imperfect in comparison with the oceanic amplititude of thought and feeling in the artist. But the artist who makes perfect use of this imperfect medium has a genuine claim to greatness.

From this, it is only the next step to the other epigram: "There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are either well written or badly written."

Rousseau had greater faith in the "natural" man than in the "educated" man. We find an echo of this in Wilde when Lady Bracknell ("Importance of being Earnest") says, "I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate, exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone."

In another context he says "Society produces rogues and education makes one rogue more dangerous than the other." He believed that conscious conformity to the so-called good behaviour expected of people imposed a strain on them, which is hardly conducive to good health. This is brought out in the dialogue between Lady Bracknell and Algernon ("Importance of being Earnest"):

Lady Bracknell: I hope you are

behaving well.

Algernon: I am feeling well.

Lady Bracknell: That is not quite

the same thing. In fact, the two

things rarely go together.

His ego and penchant for repartee did not leave him till the end. When he was being led out of the jam-packed court by the Police officials after his conviction, one of his innumerable admirers touched him on the shoulder with tears in his eyes and said, "I hope you will make your peace with God." Wilde turned to the Police Officer next to him and said, "Many people have gone to heaven for much less than that", implying that sympathy and admiration for him was a sure passport to heaven.

After his term in jail he went to stay in France and returned to England after a few months. The Customs officials asked him at the harbour if he had anything to "declare". "Nothing, except my genius", was his reply, implying that genius was prohibited in England.

In judging him, we may take his own words as a guidance to temper our harsh feelings: "All of us are in the gutters, but some of us are looking at the stars". There can be no doubt that he was looking at the stars.

K. S. S. SARMA

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