All meetings are chaired by Dr Peter Rex Valentine unless otherwise stated

"NOT SO OSCAR WILDE"

Brian Crossley on 8 Feb 2003

The speaker chose an original approach to Wilde. Instead of discussing his well-known comedies and "well made" plays. He focuses on his serious "failed" plays to explore the underlying psychology of Wilde himself.

To use Wilde’s own words: "Experience is the name men give to their mistakes." But for Wilde these experiences were the ‘sine qua non’ of his life and art. Even in his early works this longhaired dandy’s poems, like his appearance, challenged society.

Wilde’s pre-occupation with sin is revealed in his Gothic autobiography ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey’.

The Modern movement in England and America at that time of ‘art for arts sake’, had its origins in France, but here manifest itself by a social, philosophic and aesthetic reaction against the growing power and materialism of the so-called ‘solid Victorian Middle Class’. This took the form of a revolt against Ruskin’s naturalistic approach to Art; truth becoming more important than the beauty of nature.

Wilde follows Baudelaire to decadence and exultation in the artist as lonely, tormented and misunderstood. The emphasis is on the ‘Grand Theme’ of man’s struggle with his own nature. Although this theme was thinly veiled in satirical comedy, Wilde still lived in constant fear ‘of being understood’.

"Here we touch the pulse of Wilde’s art – sin," says former Jesuit apostate James Joyce, also an exile and sufferer of an overdose of piety.

Wilde showed the public the reality of the divided self between the dogma of the transcendental realm and the realities of the temptations of the flesh. The consequence being, in his view, that without temptation and sin there can be no salvation.

The speaker compared ‘La Sainte Courtesan’ with ‘Salome’. Although set in Elizabethan and biblical worlds, these plays still mirrored too closely the preoccupations of the day, that is to say, the unmentionable and repressed feelings, which, if condoned, would be equivalent to an admission of guilt. Consequently ‘Salome’ was banned. Here Wilde uses tragedy not comedy to examine the truth.

The more fully life is lived and truly experienced the better is one able to understand the relativity of good and evil – provided one survives, of course. When seen in this light Wilde becomes paradoxically conservative.

Woman’s role as ‘la belle dame sans merci’ in the drama and theology dominates and determines the outcome of events. Eve remains the font of necessary sin to bring true knowledge and salvation to mankind.

Even in exile at the end of his life, the name he chose was symbolic – Sebastian Melmonth, saint and errant wanderer.

Bearing in mind Oscar Wilde’s deathbed conversion to Catholicism, and

provided one does not confuse the life with the works, this is not so surprising.

Rex Valentine.

Discussion

A member first asked about the different settings and interpretations of Wilde’s plays. The speaker emphasised that all the plays even of the same series would be slightly different, and that you had to see the actual performance in order to discuss them. It. that it was much more difficult to talk about plays than novels.

Another questioner raised Wilde’s obsession with sin. The speaker said Wilde was certainly bedevilled with sin, but basically religious. He presented ordinary working people as having souls, as he put it: ’Souls under Socialism’. He was neither Communist nor Atheist. The speaker went on to point out Wilde’s contribution to penal reform and his shock at the barbaric treatment of prisoners.

A member pointed out that ‘De Profundis’, a letter by Wilde written to Alfred Douglas from prison, was full of remorse and guilt. Although Wilde castigates Alfred Douglas for his profligacy, he still seems enslaved by love. Through this letter, the underlying serious nature of Wilde becomes evident.

Nancy Catchpole commented on the satirical aspects of his plays, as in Galsworthy or Swinburne criticising the mores of the time, and that to do this Wilde often put himself in one of the characters.

The speaker said Wilde brought his downfall upon himself, thinking he would only be fined, as was usual with homosexuals. When he counter-charged the Marquess of Queensbury he underestimated Queensbury’s determination to bring down this ‘arch toff’ and ‘homosexual peacock’, who had corrupted his son. In addition Wilde openly frequented ‘rent boy’ areas of London, making himself an easy target.

The convenor thought that if Wilde had lived in France or been born thirty years later he would have survived. But even now ‘trial by media’ for celebrities still commonly occurred in Britain, and could cost them their livelihood and reputation.

Peter Rex Valentine