Oscar Wilde: Art and Morality Part 8

The story consists of a strong and marvellous central idea, ill.u.s.trated by three characters, all men. There are a few women in the background, but they are only mentioned: they never appear to speak for themselves.

There is, too, a valet who brings in his master's breakfasts, and a chemist who by some scientific miracle, disposes of a human body: but, substantially, the book is taken up with the artist who paints the portrait, with his friend Lord Harry aforesaid, and with Dorian Gray, who might, so far as the story goes, stand alone. He and his portrait are one, and their union points the moral of the tale.

The situation is as follows. Dorian Gray is a youth of extraordinary physical beauty and grace, and pure and innocent of soul. An artist sees him and falls aesthetically in love with him, and finds in him a new inspiration in his art, both direct and general. In the lines of his form and features, and in his colouring and movement, are revealed fresh and profound laws: he paints him in all guises and combinations, and it is seen and admitted on all sides that he has never before painted so well. At length he concentrates all his knowledge and power in a final portrait, which has the vividness and grace of life itself, and, considering how much both of the sitter and of the painter is embodied in it, might almost be said to live. The portrait is declared by Lord Harry to be the greatest work of modern art; and he himself thinks so well of it that he resolves never to exhibit it, even as he would shrink from exposing to public gaze the privacies of his own nature.

On the day of the last sitting a singular incident occurs. Lord Harry, meeting with Dorian Gray for the first time, is no less impressed than was Hallward, the artist, with the youth's radiant beauty and freshness.

But whereas Hallward would keep Dorian unspotted from the world, and would have him resist evil temptations and all the allurements of corruption, Lord Harry, on the contrary, with a truly Satanic ingenuity, discourses to the young man on the matchless delights and privileges of youth. Youth is the golden period of life: youth comes never again: in youth only are the senses endowed with divine potency; only then are joys exquisite and pleasures unalloyed. Let it therefore be indulged without stint. Let no harsh and cowardly restraints be placed upon its glorious impulses. Men are virtuous through fear and selfishness. They are too dull or too timid to take advantage of the G.o.dlike gifts that are showered upon them in the morning of existence; and before they can realise the folly of their self-denial, the morning has pa.s.sed, and weary day is upon them, and the shadows of night are near. But let Dorian, who is matchless in the vigour and resources of his beauty, rise above the base shrinking from life that calls itself goodness. Let him accept and welcome every natural impulse of his nature. The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young: let him so live that when old age comes he shall at least have the satisfaction of knowing that no opportunity of pleasure and indulgence has escaped untasted.

This seductive sermon profoundly affects the innocent Dorian, and he looks at life and himself with new eyes. He realizes the value as well as the transitoriness of that youth and beauty which hitherto he had accepted as a matter of course and as a permanent possession. Gazing on his portrait, he laments that it possesses the immortality of loveliness and comeliness that is denied to him; and, in a sort of imaginative despair, he utters a wild prayer that to the portrait, and not to himself, may come the feebleness and hideousness of old age; that whatever sins he may commit, to whatever indulgences he may surrender himself, not upon him but upon the portrait may the penalties and disfigurements fall. Such is Dorian's prayer; and, though at first he suspects it not, his prayer is granted. From that hour, the evil of his life is registered upon the face and form of his pictured presentment, while he himself goes unscathed. Day by day, each fresh sin that he commits stamps its mark of degradation upon the painted image. Cruelty sensuality, treachery, all nameless crimes, corrupt and render hideous the effigy on the canvas; he sees in it the gradual pollution and ruin of his soul, while his own fleshly features preserve unstained all the freshness and virginity of his sinless youth. The contrast at first alarms and horrifies him; but at length he becomes accustomed to it, and finds a sinister delight in watching the progress of the awful change.

He locks up the portrait in a secret chamber, and constantly retires thither to ponder over the ghastly miracle. No one but he knows or suspects the incredible truth; and he guards like a murder-secret this visible revelation of the difference between what he is and what he seems. This is a powerful situation; and the reader may be left to discover for himself how Mr. Wilde works it out.

[31] _Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, September, 1890._

_ ... Pater, who is, on the whole, the most perfect master of English prose now creating amongst us._

WALTER PATER ON "DORIAN GRAY."

There is always something of an excellent talker about the writing of Mr. Oscar Wilde, (wrote Pater, in reviewing "Dorian Gray" for _The Bookman_[32]) and in his hands, as happens so rarely with those who practise it, the form of dialogue is justified by its being really alive. His genial, laughter-loving sense of life and its enjoyable intercourse, goes far to obviate any crudity there may be in the paradox, with which, as with the bright and shining truth which often underlies it, Mr. Wilde, startling his "countrymen," carries on, more perhaps than any other writer, the brilliant critical work of Mathew Arnold. _The Decay of Lying_, for instance, is all but unique in its half-humorous, yet wholly convinced, presentment of certain valuable truths of criticism. Conversational ease, the fluidity of life, felicitous expression, are qualities which have a natural alliance to the successful writing of fiction; and side by side with Mr. Wilde's _Intentions_ (so he ent.i.tles his critical efforts) comes a novel, certainly original, and affording the reader a fair opportunity of comparing his practice as a creative artist with many a precept he has enounced as critic concerning it.

A wholesome dislike of the common-place, rightly or wrongly identified by him with the _bourgeois_, with our middle-cla.s.s--its habits and tastes--leads him to protest emphatically against so-called "realism" in art; life, as he argues, with much plausibility, as a matter of fact, when it is really awake, following art--the fashion of an effective artist sets; while art, on the other hand, influential and effective art, has taken its cue from actual life. In "Dorian Gray" he is true, certainly, on the whole, to the aesthetic philosophy of his _Intentions_; yet not infallibly, even on this point: there is a certain amount of the intrusion of real life and its sordid aspects--the low theatre, the pleasures and griefs, the faces of some very unrefined people, managed, of course, cleverly enough. The interlude of Jim Vane, his half-sullen but wholly faithful care for his sister's honour, is as good as perhaps anything of the kind, marked by a homely but real pathos, sufficiently proving a versatility in the writer's talent, which should make his books popular. Clever always, this book, however, seems intended to set forth anything but a homely philosophy of life for the middle-cla.s.s--a kind of dainty Epicurean theory, rather--yet fails, to some degree in this; and one can see why. A true Epicureanism aims at a complete though harmonious development of man's entire organism. To lose the moral sense therefore, for instance, the sense of sin and righteousness, as Mr.

Wilde's hero--his heroes are bent on doing as speedily, as completely as they can, is to lose, or lower, organisation, to become less complex, to pa.s.s from a higher to a lower degree of development. As a story, however, a partly supernatural story, it is first-rate in artistic management; those Epicurean niceties only adding to the decorative colour of its central figure, like so many exotic flowers, like the charming scenery and the perpetual, epigrammatic, surprising, yet so natural, conversations, like an atmosphere all about it. All that pleasant accessory detail, taken straight from the culture, the intellectual and social interests, the conventionalities, of the moment, have, in fact, after all, the effect of the better sort of realism, throwing into relief the adroitly-devised supernatural element after the manner of Poe, but with a grace he never reached, which supersedes that earlier didactic purpose, and makes the quite sufficing interest of an excellent story.

We like the hero and, spite of his somewhat unsociable, devotion to his art, Hallward, better than Lord Henry Wotton. He has too much of a not very really refined world in him and about him, and his somewhat cynic opinions, which seem sometimes to be those of the writer, who may, however, have intended Lord Henry as a satiric sketch. Mr. Wilde can hardly have intended him, with his cynic amity of mind and temper, any more than the miserable end of Dorian himself, to figure the motive and tendency of a true Cyrenaic or Epicurean doctrine of life. In contrast with Hallward the artist, whose sensibilities idealise the world around him, the personality of Dorian Gray, above all, into something magnificent and strange, we might say that Lord Henry, and even more the, from the first, suicidal hero, loses too much in life to be a true Epicurean--loses so much in the way of impressions, of pleasant memories, and subsequent hopes, which Hallward, by a really Epicurean economy, manages to secure. It should be said, however, in fairness, that the writer is impersonal; seems not to have identified himself entirely with any one of his characters; and Wotton's cynicism, or whatever it be, at least makes a very clever story possible. He becomes the spoiler of the fair young man, whose bodily form remains un-aged; while his picture, the _chef d'oeuvre_ of the artist Hallward, changes miraculously with the gradual corruption of his soul. How true, what a light on the artistic nature, is the following on actual personalities and their revealing influence in art. We quote it as an example of Mr.

Wilde's more serious style.

"I sometimes think that there are only two eras of any importance in the world's history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, sketch from him. Of course I have done all that. But he is much more to me than a model or a sitter. I won't tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that Art cannot express it. There is nothing that Art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life. But in some curious way ... his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before."[33]

Dorian himself, though certainly a quite unsuccessful experiment in Epicureanism, in life as a fine art, is (till his inward spoiling takes visible effect suddenly, and in a moment, at the end of his story) a beautiful creation. But his story is also a vivid, though carefully considered, exposure of the corruption of a soul, with a very plain moral, pushed home, to the effect that vice and crime make people coa.r.s.e and ugly. General readers, nevertheless, will probably care less for this moral, less for the fine, varied, largely appreciative culture of the writer, in evidence from page to page, than for the story itself, with its adroitly managed supernatural incidents, its almost equally wonderful applications of natural science; impossible, surely, in fact, but plausible enough in fiction. Its interest turns on that very old theme; old because based on some inherent experience or fancy of the human brain, of a double life: of Doppelganger--not of two _persons_, in this case, but of the man and his portrait; the latter of which, as we hinted above, changes, decays, is spoiled, while the former, through a long course of corruption, remains, to the outward eye, unchanged, still in all the beauty of a seemingly immaculate youth--"the devil's bargain." But it would be a pity to spoil the reader's enjoyment by further detail. We need only emphasise once more, the skill, the real subtlety of art, the ease and fluidity withal of one telling a story by word of mouth, with which the consciousness of the supernatural is introduced into, and maintained amid, the elaborately conventional, sophisticated, disabused world Mr. Wilde depicts so cleverly, so mercilessly. The special fascination of the piece is, of course, just there--at that point of contrast. Mr. Wilde's work may fairly claim to go with that of Edgar Poe, and with some good French work of the same kind, done, probably, in more or less conscious imitation of it.

_The Athenaeum_ in reviewing "The Picture of Dorian Gray," in its issue of June 27th, 1891, under the heading of "Novels of the Week," said:--

Mr. Oscar Wilde's paradoxes are less wearisome when introduced into the chatter of society than when he rolls them off in the course of his narrative. Some of the conversation in his novel is very smart, and while reading it one has the pleasant feeling, not often to be enjoyed in the company of modern novelists, of being entertained by a person of decided ability. The idea of the book may have been suggested by Balzac's "Peau de Chagrin," and it is none the worse for that. So much may be said for "The Picture of Dorian Gray," but no more, except, perhaps, that the author does not appear to be in earnest. For the rest, the book is unmanly, sickening, vicious (though not exactly what is called "improper"), and tedious.

Mr. R.H. Sherard, in his recently published "Life of Oscar Wilde"

(Werner Laurie, 1906), gives some interesting particulars as to the reasons which induced Wilde to write the book, while the views of a French _litterateur_ on "Dorian Gray" may be read in M. Andre Gide's "Study," a translation of which, by the present editor, was issued from the Holywell Press, Oxford, in 1905.

[32] November 1891.

[33] Pp. 14, 15 (1891 edition).

_A critic cannot be fair in the ordinary sense of the word._

THE MORALITY OF "DORIAN GRAY."

The question of the morality of "Dorian Gray" was dealt with very fully during the trial of the Marquis of Queensberry for libel, and also in the subsequent trials of Wilde himself, when, the libel action having collapsed, Wilde was transferred from the witness-box to the dock.

At the trial of Lord Queensberry at the Old Bailey on April 3rd, 1895, Sir Edward Clarke, in his opening speech for the prosecution, referred to what he called "an extremely curious count at the end of the plea,"

namely, that in July, 1890, Mr. Wilde published, or caused to be published, with his name upon the t.i.tle page, a certain immoral and indecent work, with the t.i.tle of "The Picture of Dorian Gray," which was intended to be understood by the readers to describe the relations, intimacies and pa.s.sions of certain persons guilty of unnatural practices. That, said Sir Edward, was a very gross allegation. The volume could be bought at any bookstall in London. It had Mr. Wilde's name on the t.i.tle page, and had been published five years. The story of the book was that of a young man of good birth, great wealth and great personal beauty, whose friend paints a picture of him. Dorian Gray expresses the wish that he would remain as in the picture, while the picture aged with the years. His wish was granted, and he soon knew that upon the picture and not upon his own face the scars of trouble and bad conduct were falling. In the end he stabbed the picture and fell dead.

The picture was restored to its pristine beauty, while his friends find on the floor the body of a hideous old man. "I shall be surprised," said Counsel in conclusion, "if my learned friend (Mr. Carson) can pitch upon any pa.s.sage in that book which does more than describe as novelists and dramatists may, nay, must, describe the pa.s.sions and the fashions of life."

Lord Queensberry's Counsel was Mr. (now Sir Edward) Carson, M.P. He proceeded, after Sir Edward's Clarke's speech, to cross-examine Mr.

Wilde on the subject of his writings.

Counsel: You are of opinion, I believe, that there is no such thing as an immoral book?

Witness: Yes.

Am I right in saying that you do not consider the effect in creating morality or immorality?--Certainly, I do not.

So far as your works are concerned you pose as not being concerned about morality or immorality?--I do not know whether you use the word "pose"

in any particular sense.

It is a favourite word of your own?--Is it? I have no pose in this matter. In writing a play or a book I am concerned entirely with literature, that is, with art. I aim not at doing good or evil, but in trying to make a thing that will have some quality of beauty.

After the criticisms that were pa.s.sed on "Dorian Gray" was it modified a good deal?--No. Additions were made. In one case it was pointed out to me--not in a newspaper or anything of that sort, but by the only critic of the century whose opinion I set high, Mr. Walter Pater--that a certain pa.s.sage was liable to misconstruction, and I made one addition.

This is in your introduction to "Dorian Gray": "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

That is all."--That expresses my view of art.

Then, I take it that no matter how immoral a book may be, if it is well written it is, in your opinion, a good book?--Yes; if it were well written so as to produce a sense of beauty which is the highest sense of which a human being can be capable. If it were badly written it would produce a sense of disgust.

Then a well-written book putting forward perverted moral views may be a good book?--No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.

A novel of "a certain kind" might be a good book?--I do not know what you mean by "a novel of a certain kind."

Then I will suggest "Dorian Gray" as open to the interpretation of being a novel of that kind.--That could only be to brutes and illiterates.

An illiterate person reading "Dorian Gray" might consider it such a novel?--The views of illiterates on art are unaccountable. I am concerned only with my view of art. I do not care twopence what other people think of it.

The majority of persons would come under your definition of Philistines and illiterates?--I have found wonderful exceptions.