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050 - Mr Pater's Imaginary Portraits · Reviews

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  Speaker 1: Section number forty nine of reviews by Oscar Wilde. This
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  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. Reading by Robin Cotter, July two thousand seven,
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  Speaker 1: Reviews by Oscar Wilde, edited by Robert Ross, Section forty
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  Speaker 1: nine mister Pater's Imaginary Portraits. To convey ideas through the
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  Speaker 1: medium of images has always been the aim of those
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  Speaker 1: who are artists as well as thinkers in literature, and
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  Speaker 1: it is to a desire to give a sensuous environment
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  Speaker 1: to intellectual concepts that we owe mister Pater's last volume
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  Speaker 1: for these imaginary or as we should prefer to call them,
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  Speaker 1: imaginative portraits of his form a series of philosophic studies
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  Speaker 1: in which the philosophy is tempered by personality and the
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  Speaker 1: thoughts shown under varying conditions of mood and manner, the
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  Speaker 1: very permanence of each principle gaining something through the change
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  Speaker 1: and color of the life through which it finds expression.
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  Speaker 1: The most fascinating of all these pictures is undoubtedly that
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  Speaker 1: of Sebastian van Stork, the account of Watteau is perhaps
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  Speaker 1: a little too fanciful, and the description of him as
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  Speaker 1: one who was quote always a seeker after something in
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  Speaker 1: the world, that is, there is no satisfying measure, or
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  Speaker 1: not at all unquote, seems to us more applicable to
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  Speaker 1: him who saw Mona Lisa sitting among the rocks than
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  Speaker 1: to the gay and debonair bientre de fete gallants. But Sebastian,
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  Speaker 1: the grave young Dutch philosopher is charmingly drawn from them.
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  Speaker 1: The first glimpse we get of him skating over the
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  Speaker 1: water meadows with his plume of squirrel's tail, and is
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  Speaker 1: fir muff in all the modest pleasantness of boyhood, down
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  Speaker 1: to his strange death in the desolate house amid the
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  Speaker 1: sands of the helder. We seem to see him, to
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  Speaker 1: know him, almost to hear the low music of his voice.
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  Speaker 1: He is a dreamer, as the common phrase goes, and
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  Speaker 1: yet he is poetical in this sense that his theorems
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  Speaker 1: shape life for him directly. Early in youth, he is
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  Speaker 1: stirred by a fine saying of Spinoza and sets himself
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  Speaker 1: to realize the ideal of an intellectual disinterestedness, separating himself
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  Speaker 1: more and more from the transient world of sensation, accident,
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  Speaker 1: and even affection, till what is finite and relative becomes
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  Speaker 1: of no interest to him, and he feels that his
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  Speaker 1: nature is but a thought of his so he himself
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  Speaker 1: is but a passing thought of God. This conception of
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  Speaker 1: the power of a mere metay physical abstraction over the
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  Speaker 1: mind of one so fortunately endowed for the reception of
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  Speaker 1: the sensible world is exceedingly delightful, and mister Peter has
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  Speaker 1: never written a more subtle psychological study. The fact that
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  Speaker 1: Sebastian dies in an attempt to save the life of
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  Speaker 1: a little child, giving to the whole story a touch
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  Speaker 1: of poignant pathos and sad irony. Dennis l'aureau is suggested
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  Speaker 1: by a figure found or said to be found on
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  Speaker 1: some old tapestries in Ouer, the figure of a flaxen
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  Speaker 1: and flowery creature, sometimes well nigh naked among the vine leaves,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes muffled in skins against the cold, sometimes in the
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  Speaker 1: dress of a monk, but always with a strong impress
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  Speaker 1: of real character and incident from the veritable streets of
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  Speaker 1: the town itself. From this strange design, mister Peter has
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  Speaker 1: fashioned a curious medieval myth of the return of Dionysus
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  Speaker 1: among men, a myth steeped in color and passion and
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  Speaker 1: old romance, full of wonder and full of worship. Denis himself,
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  Speaker 1: being half animal and half God, making the world mad
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  Speaker 1: with a new ecstasy of living, stirring the artists simply
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  Speaker 1: by his visible presence, drawing the marvel of music from
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  Speaker 1: reed and pipe, and slain at last in the stage
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  Speaker 1: play by those who had loved him. In its rich
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  Speaker 1: affluence of imagery, this story is like a picture by Montaigna,
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  Speaker 1: and indeed Montaigne might have suggested the description of the pageant,
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  Speaker 1: in which Denis rides upon a gaily painted chariot in
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  Speaker 1: soft silken raiment, and for head dress a strange elephant's
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  Speaker 1: scalp with gilded tasks. If Denis l'oudrout symbolizes the passion
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  Speaker 1: of the senses and Sebastian van Stork the philosophic passion,
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  Speaker 1: as they certainly seem to do, though no mere formula
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  Speaker 1: or definition can adequately express the freedom and variety of
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  Speaker 1: the life that they portray, the passion for the imaginative
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  Speaker 1: world of art is the basis of the story of
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  Speaker 1: Duke Karl of Rosenmold. Duke Karl is not unlike the
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  Speaker 1: late King of Bavaria in his love of France, his
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  Speaker 1: admiration for the Grand Monarch, and his fantastic desire to
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  Speaker 1: amaze and to bewilder. But the resemblance is possibly only
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  Speaker 1: a chance one. In fact, mister Pater's young hero is
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  Speaker 1: the precursor of the off Clerung of the last century,
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  Speaker 1: the German precursor of Herder and Lessing and Goethe himself,
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  Speaker 1: and finds the forms of art ready to his hand,
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  Speaker 1: without any national spirit to fill them or make them
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  Speaker 1: vital and responsive. He too dies trampled to death by
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  Speaker 1: the soldiers of the country he so much admired on
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  Speaker 1: the night of his marriage with a peasant girl, the
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  Speaker 1: very failure of his life lending him a certain melancholy
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  Speaker 1: grace and dramatic interest. On the whole. Then this is
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  Speaker 1: a singularly attractive book. Mister Peter is an intellectual impressionist.
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  Speaker 1: He does not weary us with any definite doctrine or
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  Speaker 1: seek to suit life to any formal creed. He is
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  Speaker 1: always looking for exquisite moments, and when he has found them,
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  Speaker 1: He analyzes them with delicate and delightful art, and then
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  Speaker 1: passes on often to the opposite pole of thought or feeling,
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  Speaker 1: knowing that every mood has its own quality and charm,
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  Speaker 1: and is justified by its mere existence. He has taken
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  Speaker 1: the sensationalism of Greek philosophy and made it a new
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  Speaker 1: method of art criticism. As for his style, it is
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  Speaker 1: curiously ascetic. Now and then we come across phrases with
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  Speaker 1: the strange sensuousness of expression, as when he tells us
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  Speaker 1: how Denis l'ireau, on his return from a long journey
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  Speaker 1: quote ate flesh for the first time, tearing the hot
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  Speaker 1: red morsels with his delicate fingers in a kind of
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  Speaker 1: wild greed unquote. But such passages are rare. Asceticism is
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  Speaker 1: the keynote of mister Pater's prose. At times, it is
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  Speaker 1: almost too severe in its self control, and makes us
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  Speaker 1: long for a little more freedom. For indeed, the danger
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  Speaker 1: of such prose as his, is that it is apt
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  Speaker 1: to become somewhat laborious. Here and there one is tempted
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  Speaker 1: to say of mister Peter that he is quote a
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  Speaker 1: seeker after something in language that is therein no satisfying
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  Speaker 1: measure or not at all unquote. The continual preoccupation with
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  Speaker 1: phrase and epithet has its drawbacks as well as its virtues.
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  Speaker 1: And yet, when all is said, what wonderful prose it is,
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  Speaker 1: with its subtle preferences, its fastidious purity, its rejection of
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  Speaker 1: what is common or ordinary. Mister Peter has the true
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  Speaker 1: spirit of selection, the true tact of omission. If he
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  Speaker 1: be not among the greatest prose writers of our literature,
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  Speaker 1: he is at least our greatest artist in prose. And
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  Speaker 1: though it may be admitted that the best style is
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  Speaker 1: that which seems an unconscious result rather than a conscious aim,
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  Speaker 1: still in these latter days, when violent rhetoric does duty
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  Speaker 1: for eloquence and vulgarity usurps the name of nature, we
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  Speaker 1: should be grateful for a style that deliberately aims at
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  Speaker 1: perfection of form, that seeks to produce its effect by
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  Speaker 1: artistic means, and sets before itself an ideal of grave
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  Speaker 1: and chastened beauty. End of Section forty nine. Mister Peter's
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  Speaker 1: Imaginary Portraits