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Oscar Wilde Art and Morality - Stuart Mason · The Autobiography of a Thief

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Speaker 1: Section one of Oscar Wilde Art and Morality. This is
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Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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Speaker 1: Recording by Martin Geeson. Oscar Wilde Art and Morality. A
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Speaker 1: Defense of the Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by Stuart Mason.
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Speaker 1: Section one on the whole. An artist in England gains
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Speaker 1: something by being attacked. His individuality is intensified, he becomes
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Speaker 1: more completely himself. Of course, the attacks are very gross,
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Speaker 1: very impertinent, and very contemptible. But then no artist expects
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Speaker 1: grace from the vulgar mind or style from the suburban intellect.
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Speaker 1: Art and morality, Why do you always write poetry? Why
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Speaker 1: do not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult?
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Speaker 1: These were the words of Walter Peter to Oscar Wilde
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Speaker 1: on the occasion of their first meeting during the latter's
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Speaker 1: undergraduate days at Oxford. Footnote. Oscar Wilde matriculated at Maudlin College, Oxford,
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Speaker 1: October seventeenth, eighteen seventy four, and took his BA degree
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Speaker 1: on November twenty eighth, eighteen seventy eight. Peter was at
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Speaker 1: the time a fellow and tutor of Brasenose. Those were these,
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Speaker 1: of lyrical ardors and of studious solid writing, wrote wild
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Speaker 1: in reviewing one of Peter's books some years later. Days
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Speaker 1: when one loved the exquisite intricacy and musical repetitions of
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Speaker 1: the Ballad and the Villanelle, with its linked, long drawn echoes,
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Speaker 1: and its curious completeness. Days when one solemnly sought to
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Speaker 1: discover the proper temper in which a triolect should be written,
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Speaker 1: delightful days in which I am glad to say there
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Speaker 1: was far more rhyme than reason. Oscar Wilde was never
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Speaker 1: a voluminous writer. Writing bores me, so he once said
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Speaker 1: to Andre Gide, And at the time of which he speaks,
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Speaker 1: he had published little except some of occasional verses in
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Speaker 1: his university magazines. Then in eighteen eighty one came his
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Speaker 1: volume of collected poems, followed at intervals during the next
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Speaker 1: nine or ten years by a collection of fairy stories
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Speaker 1: and some essays in the leading reviews. I did not
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Speaker 1: quite understand what mister Pater meant, he continues, and it
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Speaker 1: was not till I had carefully studied his beautiful and
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Speaker 1: suggestive essays on the Renaissance, that I fully realized what
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Speaker 1: a wonderful, self conscious art, the art of English prose
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Speaker 1: writing really is, or may be made to be. It
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Speaker 1: has been suggested that it was his late apprenticeship to
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Speaker 1: an art that requires lifelong study which rendered Wilde's prose
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Speaker 1: so insincere, resembling more or the conscious artifice of the
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Speaker 1: modern French school than the restraint yet dueled style of Peter,
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Speaker 1: whom he claimed as his master in prose. It was
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Speaker 1: not till eighteen ninety that he published his first and
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Speaker 1: only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, with its strangeness
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Speaker 1: of color and its passionate suggestion flickering like lightning through
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Speaker 1: the gloom of the subject. The Puritans and the Philistines,
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Speaker 1: who scented veiled improprieties in its paradoxes, were shocked, but
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Speaker 1: it delighted the connoisseur and the artist, wearied as they
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Speaker 1: were with the humdrum accounts of afternoon tea parties and
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Speaker 1: the love affairs of the curate, that such a master
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Speaker 1: of prose and scholarship Pater should have written in terms
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Speaker 1: of commendation of Dorian Gray is sufficient to prove how
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Speaker 1: free from offense the story really is. In the original
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Speaker 1: version of the story, one passage struck Peter as being
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Speaker 1: indefinite and likely to suggest evil to evil minds. This
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Speaker 1: paragraph wild elaborated, but he refused to suppress a single
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Speaker 1: sentence of what he had written. No artist is consciously wrong,
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Speaker 1: he declared. A similar incident is recorded as early as
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Speaker 1: eighteen seventy eight. Shep the professor of poetry at Oxford,
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Speaker 1: suggested some improvements in Wilde's Nudigate Prize poem Ravenna. Wilde
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Speaker 1: listened to all the suggestions with courtesy, and even took
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Speaker 1: notes of them, but he went away and had the
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Speaker 1: poem printed without making a single alteration in it. The
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Speaker 1: Picture of Dorian Gray first appeared on June the twentieth,
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Speaker 1: eighteen ninety, in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine for July. It was
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Speaker 1: published in America by the J. B. Lippincott Company of Philadelphia,
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Speaker 1: simultaneously with the English edition of the magazine issued by
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Speaker 1: Messrs Ward Locke and Company. A few weeks before the
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Speaker 1: publication of his romance, Wilde wrote a letter to a
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Speaker 1: publisher stating that his story would appear in Lippincott's on
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Speaker 1: the following twentieth of June, and that after three months
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Speaker 1: the copyright reverted to him. The publication of Dorian Gray
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Speaker 1: would create a sensation, he wrote, he was going to
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Speaker 1: add two two additional chapters and would the publishing house
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Speaker 1: with whom he was corresponding care to consider it. Unfortunately,
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Speaker 1: the letter bears no indication of the house to which
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Speaker 1: it was sent. However, on the first of July. In
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Speaker 1: the following year, the Picture of Dorian Gray was published
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Speaker 1: in book form by Messrs Ward Locke and Company. In
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Speaker 1: this form, it contained seven new chapters. The binding was
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Speaker 1: of a rough gray paper the colour of cigarette ash,
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Speaker 1: with back of parchment vellum. The guilt lettering and design
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Speaker 1: was by Charles Ricketts. A sumptuous aditient de Lukes, limited
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Speaker 1: to two hundred fifty copies signed by the author, was
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Speaker 1: also issued, the covers being similar to the ordinary edition,
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Speaker 1: but the guilt tooling more elaborate. In March eighteen ninety one,
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Speaker 1: Wild had written a preface to Dorian Gray in the
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Speaker 1: Fortnightly Review, in which he enunciated his creed as an artist.
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Speaker 1: This preface is included in all impressions of Dorian Gray,
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Speaker 1: which contain twenty chapters. Wild was indeed a true prophet
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Speaker 1: when he foretold that his story would create a sensation.
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Speaker 1: Though it occupied but one hundred pages in a monthly periodical,
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Speaker 1: it was reviewed as fully as any shed'af of a
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Speaker 1: leading novelist. In one of his letters, Wilde says that
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Speaker 1: out of over two hundred press cuttings which he received
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Speaker 1: in reference to Dorian Gray, he took public notice of
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Speaker 1: only three. But it is impossible to doubt but that
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Speaker 1: he was thinking of him critics when he gave vent
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Speaker 1: to his views on journalists and the attitude of the
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Speaker 1: British public towards art. In his essay on the Soul
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Speaker 1: of Man a few months later. A work of art
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Speaker 1: is the unique result of a unique temperament, he writes.
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Speaker 1: Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is
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Speaker 1: what he is. The moment that an artist takes notice
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Speaker 1: of what other people want and tries to supply the demand,
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Speaker 1: he ceases to be an artist. He considers it to
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Speaker 1: be an impertinence for the public represented by the journalist
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Speaker 1: who knows nothing about art, to criticize the artist and
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Speaker 1: his work. In this country, he declares that the arts
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Speaker 1: that have escaped best from the aggressive offense and brutalizing
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Speaker 1: attempts on the part of the public to interfere with
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Speaker 1: the individual as an artist are the arts in which
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Speaker 1: the public takes no interest. He gives poetry as an instance,
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Speaker 1: and declares that we have been able to have fine
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Speaker 1: poetry because the public does not read it and consequently
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Speaker 1: does not influence it. But in the case of the
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Speaker 1: novel and the drama, arts in which the public does
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Speaker 1: take an interest, the result of the exercise of popular
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Speaker 1: authority has been absolutely ridiculous. No country produces such badly
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Speaker 1: written fiction, such tedious common work in the novel form.
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Speaker 1: It must necessarily be so. The popular stand is of
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Speaker 1: such a character that no artist can get to it.
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Speaker 1: It is at once too easy and too difficult to
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Speaker 1: be a popular novelist. It is too easy because the
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Speaker 1: requirements of the public, as far as plot style, psychology,
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Speaker 1: treatment of life, and the treatment of literature are concerned,
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Speaker 1: are within the reach of the very meanest capacity and
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Speaker 1: the most uncultivated mind. It is too difficult because to
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Speaker 1: meet such requirements the artist would have to do violence
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Speaker 1: to his temperament, would have to write not for the
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Speaker 1: artistic joy of writing, but for the amusement of half
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Speaker 1: educated people, and so would have to suppress his individualism,
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Speaker 1: forget his culture, annihilate his style, and render everything that
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Speaker 1: is valuable in him. The one thing that the public
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Speaker 1: dislikes is novelty. Any attempt to extend the subject matter
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Speaker 1: of art is extremely distasteful to the public, and yet
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Speaker 1: the vitality and progress of art depend in a large
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Speaker 1: measure on the continual extension of subject matter. The public
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Speaker 1: dislikes novelty because it is afraid of it. A fresh
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Speaker 1: mode of beauty is absolutely distasteful to the public, and
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Speaker 1: whenever it appears, it gets so angry and bewildered that
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Speaker 1: it always uses two stupid expressions. One is that the
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Speaker 1: work of art is grossly unintelligible, the other that the
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Speaker 1: work of art is grossly immoral. When when the public
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Speaker 1: says a work of art is grossly unintelligible, it means
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Speaker 1: that the artist has said a beautiful thing that is new.
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Speaker 1: When the public describes a work as grossly immoral, it
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Speaker 1: means that the artist has said or made a beautiful
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Speaker 1: thing that is true. The former expression has reference to style,
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Speaker 1: the latter to subject matter. But it probably uses the
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Speaker 1: words very vaguely, as an ordinary mob will use ready
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Speaker 1: made paving stones. There is not a single real poet
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Speaker 1: or prose writer of this the nineteenth century on whom
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Speaker 1: the British public has not solemnly conferred diplomas of immorality.
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Speaker 1: Of course, the public is very reckless in the use
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Speaker 1: of the word an ah artist is of course not
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Speaker 1: disturbed by it. The true artist is a man who
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Speaker 1: believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself. But
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Speaker 1: I can fancy that if an artist produced a work
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Speaker 1: of art in England that, immediately on its appearance, was
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Speaker 1: recognized by the public through its medium, which is the
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Speaker 1: public press, as a work that was quite intelligible and
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Speaker 1: highly immoral, he would begin seriously to question whether in
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Speaker 1: its creation he had really been himself at all, and
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Speaker 1: consequently whether the work was not quite unworthy of him,
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Speaker 1: and either of a thoroughly second rate order or of
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Speaker 1: no artistic value whatsoever. Wild then go on to discuss
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Speaker 1: the use of other words by journalists seeking to describe
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Speaker 1: the work of an artist. These are the words exotic, unhealthy,
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Speaker 1: and morbid. Footnote The Times, February the twenty third, eighteen
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Speaker 1: ninety three. In reviewing Salome said it is an arrangement
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Speaker 1: in blood and ferocity, morbid, bizarre, repulsive, and very offensive.
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Speaker 1: Wild replied Times March the second, the opinions of English
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Speaker 1: critics on a French work of mine have, of course
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Speaker 1: little if any interest for me. In the soul of man.
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Speaker 1: He wrote. To call an artist morbid because he deals
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Speaker 1: with morbidity as his subject matter is as silly as
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Speaker 1: if one called Shakespeare mad because he wrote King lear.
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Speaker 1: He disposes of each in turn. Briefly. He says that
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Speaker 1: the public is morbid, the artist is never morbid. The
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Speaker 1: word exotic merely expresses the rage of the momentary mushroom
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Speaker 1: against the immortal, enchancing and exquisitely lovely orchid. And he
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Speaker 1: concludes what the public calls an unhealthy novel is always
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Speaker 1: a beautiful and healthy work of art. End of section one.
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Speaker 1: Section eight of Oscar Wilde Art and Morality. A Defense
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Speaker 1: of the Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by Stuart Mason.
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Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
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Speaker 1: Martin Geeson. Section eight. Art should never try to be popular.
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Speaker 1: The public should try and make itself artistic. The Daily
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Speaker 1: Chronicle on Dorian Gray footnote June thirtieth, eighteen ninety. Dullness
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Speaker 1: and dirt are the chief features of Lippincott's This Month.
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Speaker 1: The element in it that is unclean, though undeniably amusing,
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Speaker 1: is furnished by mister Oscar Wilde's story of the Picture
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Speaker 1: of Dorian Gray. It is a tale spawned from the
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Speaker 1: leprous literature of the French Decadons, A poisonous book, the
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Speaker 1: atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic odors of
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Speaker 1: moral and spiritual putrifaction, A gloating study of the mental
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Speaker 1: and physical corruption of a fresh, fair and golden youth,
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Speaker 1: which might be horrible and fascinating but for its effeminate frivolity,
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Speaker 1: its studied insincerity, its theatrical cynicism, its tawdry mysticism, its
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Speaker 1: flippant philosophizings, and the contaminating trail of garish vulgarity, which
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Speaker 1: is over all mister Wilde's elaborate wardour, street estheticism, and
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Speaker 1: obtrusively cheap scholarship. Mister Wilde says his book has a moral.
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Speaker 1: The moral, so far as we can collect it, is
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Speaker 1: that man's chief end is to develop his nature to
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Speaker 1: the fullest by always searching for new sensations. That when
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Speaker 1: the soul gets sick, the way to cure it is
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Speaker 1: to deny the senses. Nothing for nothing, says one of
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Speaker 1: mister Wilde's characters, Lord Henry Wotton, can cure the soul,
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Speaker 1: but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses
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Speaker 1: but the soul. Man is half angel and half ape.
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Speaker 1: And mister Wilde's book has no real use if it
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Speaker 1: be not to inculcate the moral that when you feel
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Speaker 1: yourself becoming too angelic, you cannot do better than rush
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Speaker 1: out and make a beast of yourself. There is not
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Speaker 1: a single good and holy impulse of human nature, scarcely
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Speaker 1: a fine feeling or instinct that civilization, art, and religion
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Speaker 1: have developed throughout the ages as part of the barriers
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Speaker 1: between humanity and animalism, that is not held up to
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Speaker 1: ridicule and contempt in Dorian Gray, If indeed, such strong
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Speaker 1: words can be fitly applied to the actual effect of
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Speaker 1: mister Wilde's airy levity and fluent impudence, his desperate attempt
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Speaker 1: to vamp up a moral for the book at the
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Speaker 1: end is artistically speaking, coarse and crude, because The whole
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Speaker 1: incident of Dorian Gray's death is, as they say on
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Speaker 1: the stage out of the picture, Dorian's only regret is
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Speaker 1: that unbridled indulgence in every form of secret and unspeakable vice,
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Speaker 1: every resource of luxury and art, and sometimes still more
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Speaker 1: be can't to the jaded young men of fashion, whose
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Speaker 1: lives Doole and Gray pretends to sketch by every above
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Speaker 1: nation of vulgality and squalor. Is what why that it
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Speaker 1: will leave traces of premature age and loathsomeness on his
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Speaker 1: pretty face, rosy with the loveliness that endeared youth of
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Speaker 1: his odious type to the paralytic patricians of the lower empire.
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Speaker 1: Dulian Gray praised that a portrait of himself, which an
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Speaker 1: artist who raves about him as young men do about
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Speaker 1: the women they love, not wisely but too well, has painted,
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Speaker 1: may grow old instead of the original. This is what
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Speaker 1: happens by some supernatural agency, the introduction of which seems
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Speaker 1: purely farcical, so that Dorian goes on enjoying unfading youth
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Speaker 1: year after year, and might go on forever using his
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Speaker 1: senses with impunity to cure his soul, defiling English society
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Speaker 1: with the moral pestilence which is incarnate in him. But
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Speaker 1: for one thing, that is his sudden impulse, not merely
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Speaker 1: to murder the painter, which might be artistically defended on
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Speaker 1: the plea that it is only a fresh development of
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Speaker 1: his scheme for realizing every phase of life experience, but
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Speaker 1: to rap up the canvas in a rage, merely because
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Speaker 1: though he had permitted himself to do one good action,
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Speaker 1: it had not made his portrait less hideous. But all
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Speaker 1: this is inconsisive, distant with Dorian Gray's cool, calculating, conscienceless character,
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Speaker 1: evolved logically enough by mister Wilde's new hedonism. Then mister
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Speaker 1: Wilde finishes his story by saying that, on hearing a
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Speaker 1: heavy fall, Dorrian Gray's servants rushed in found the portrait
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Speaker 1: on the wall as youthful looking as ever, its senile
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Speaker 1: ugliness being transferred to the foul profligate himself, who is
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Speaker 1: lying on the floor, stabbed to the heart. This is
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Speaker 1: a sham moral, as indeed, everything in the book is
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Speaker 1: a sham, except the one element in the book which
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Speaker 1: will taint every young mind that comes in contact with it.
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Speaker 1: That element is shockingly real, and it is the plausely
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Speaker 1: insinuated defense of the creed that appeals to the senses
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Speaker 1: to cure the soul whenever the spiritual nature of man
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Speaker 1: suffers from too much purity and self denial. Oh, the
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Speaker 1: rest of this number of Lippincott consists of articles of
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Speaker 1: harmless padding. When critics disagree the artist is in accord
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Speaker 1: with himself. Oscar Wilde's reply Dorian Gray to the editor
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Speaker 1: of the Daily Chronicle footnote July second, eighteen ninety Sir,
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Speaker 1: will you allow me to correct some errors into which
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Speaker 1: your critic has fallen in his review of my story
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Speaker 1: The Picture of Dorrian go Gray, publish'd in to day's
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Speaker 1: issue of your paper. Your critic states to begin with
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Speaker 1: that I make desperate attempts to vamp up a moral
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Speaker 1: in my story. Now I must candidly confess that I
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Speaker 1: do not know what vamping is. I see from time
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Speaker 1: to time mysterious advertisements in the newspapers about how to vamp,
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Speaker 1: but what vamping really means remains a mystery to me,
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Speaker 1: a mystery that, like all other mysteries, I hope some
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Speaker 1: day to explore. However, I do not propose to discuss
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Speaker 1: the absurd terms used by modern journalism. What I want
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Speaker 1: to say is that, so far from wishing to emphasize
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Speaker 1: any moral in my story, the real trouble I experienced
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Speaker 1: in writing the story was that of keeping the extremely
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Speaker 1: obvious moral subordinate to the artistic and dramatic effect. When
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Speaker 1: I first conceived the idea of a young man selling
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Speaker 1: his soul in exchange for eternal youth, an idea that
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Speaker 1: is old in the history of literature, but to which
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Speaker 1: I have given new form, I felt that from an
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Speaker 1: esthetic point of view, it would be difficult to keep
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Speaker 1: the moral in its proper secondary place, and even now
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Speaker 1: I do not feel quite sure that I have been
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Speaker 1: able to do so. I think the moral too apparent.
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Speaker 1: When the book is published in a volume, I hope
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Speaker 1: to correct this defect. As for what the moral is,
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Speaker 1: your critic states that it is this that when a
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Speaker 1: man feels himself becoming too angelic, he should rush and
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Speaker 1: make a beast of himself. I cannot say that I
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Speaker 1: consider this a moral. The real moral of the story
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Speaker 1: is that all excess, as well as all renunciation, brings
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Speaker 1: its punishment, and this moral is so far artistically and
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Speaker 1: deliberately suppressed that it does not enunciate its law as
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Speaker 1: a general principle, but realizes itself purely in the lives
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Speaker 1: of individuals, and so becomes simply a dramatic element in
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Speaker 1: a work of art, and not the object of the
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Speaker 1: work of art itself. Your critic also falls into error
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Speaker 1: when he says that Dorian Gray, having a cool, calculating,
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Speaker 1: conscienceless character, was inconsistent when he destroyed the picture of
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Speaker 1: his own soul, on the ground that the picture did
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Speaker 1: not become less hideous after he had done what, in
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Speaker 1: his vanity he had considered his first good action. Dorrian
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Speaker 1: Gray has not got a cool, calculating, conscienceless character at all.
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Speaker 1: On the contrary, he is extremely impulsive, absurdly romantic, and
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Speaker 1: is haunted all through his life by an exaggerated sense
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Speaker 1: of conscience, which mars his pleasures for him and warns
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Speaker 1: him that youth and enjoyment are not everything in the world.
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Speaker 1: It is finally, to get rid of the conscience that
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Speaker 1: had dogged his steps from year to year that he
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Speaker 1: destroys the picture, and thus, in his attempt to kill conscience,
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Speaker 1: Dorrian Gray kills himself. Your critic then talks about obtrusively
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Speaker 1: cheap scholarship. Now, whatever a scholar writes is sure to
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Speaker 1: display scholarship in the distinction of style and the fine
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Speaker 1: use of language. But my story contains no learned or
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Speaker 1: pseudo learned discussions, and the only literary books that it
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Speaker 1: alludes to are books that any fairly educated reader may
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Speaker 1: be supposed to be acquainted with, such as the satiricon
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Speaker 1: of Petronius Arbiter or Gutier's Immuicami. Such books as Lecnso's
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Speaker 1: Clericalis Dsciplina belong not to culture but to curiosity. Anybody
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Speaker 1: may be excused for not knowing them. Finally, let me
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Speaker 1: say this, the esthetic movement produced certain curious color, subtle
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Speaker 1: in their loveliness and fascinating in their almost mystical tone.
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Speaker 1: They were and are, our reaction against the crude primaries
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Speaker 1: of a doubtless more respectable, but certainly less cultivated age.
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Speaker 1: My story is an essay on decorative art. It reacts
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Speaker 1: against the crude brutality of plain realism. It is poisonous
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Speaker 1: if you like, but you cannot deny that it is
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Speaker 1: also perfect, and perfection is what we artists aim at.
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Speaker 1: I remain, sir, your obedient servant. Oscar Wild sixteen tight Street,
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Speaker 1: June thirtieth, end of section eight. Section nine of Oscar
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Speaker 1: Wilde Art and Morality. A Defense of the Picture of
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Speaker 1: Dorian Gray, edited by Stuart Mason. This LibriVox recording is
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Speaker 1: in the public domain recording by Martin Geeson. Section nine.
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Speaker 1: We allow absolute freedom to the journalist and entirely limit
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Speaker 1: the artist. English public opinion, that is to say, tries
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Speaker 1: to constrain and impede and warp the man who makes
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Speaker 1: things that are beautiful in effect, and compels the journalist
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Speaker 1: to retail things that are ugly or disgusting or revolting
31:51
Speaker 1: in fact, so that we have the most serious journalists
31:56
Speaker 1: in the world and the most indecent news papers. The
32:02
Speaker 1: Scot's Observers review. The following diatribe is from a journal,
32:09
Speaker 1: The Scot's Observer, which had an ephemeral existence in the
32:13
Speaker 1: early nineties, and the heading of reviews and magazines it
32:19
Speaker 1: launched forth in these words, why go grubbing in muck heaps?
32:27
Speaker 1: The world is fair, and the proportion of healthy minded
32:31
Speaker 1: men and honest women to those that are foul, fallen
32:35
Speaker 1: or unnatural is great. Mister Oscar Wilde has again been
32:42
Speaker 1: writing stuff that were better unwritten. And while the picture
32:47
Speaker 1: of Dorian Gray, which he contributes to Lippincott's is ingenious, interesting,
32:53
Speaker 1: full of cleverness, and plainly the work of a man
32:57
Speaker 1: of letters, it is false art, for its interest is
33:01
Speaker 1: medico legal. It is false to human nature, for its
33:07
Speaker 1: hero is a devil. It is false to morality, for
33:12
Speaker 1: it is not made sufficiently clear that the writer does
33:16
Speaker 1: not prefer a course of unnatural iniquity to a life
33:20
Speaker 1: of cleanliness, health and sanity. The story which deals with
33:27
Speaker 1: matters only fitted for the criminal investigation department or a
33:32
Speaker 1: hearing in camera, is discreditable alike to author and editor.
33:39
Speaker 1: Mister Wilde has brains and art and style. But if
33:44
Speaker 1: he can write for none but outlawd noble men and
33:49
Speaker 1: perverted telegraph boys, the sooner he takes to tailoring or
33:54
Speaker 1: some other decent trade, the better for his own reputation
34:00
Speaker 1: and the public morals. The Scots Observer was edited by W. E. Henley.
34:08
Speaker 1: It was violently Tory in character, and afterwards became the
34:13
Speaker 1: National Observer. But not even a re christening could save
34:18
Speaker 1: it from an early death. We are dominated by journalism.
34:25
Speaker 1: Journalism governs forever and ever. Oscar Wilde's replies to this
34:34
Speaker 1: vulgar abuse. Wild condescended to reply in the following terms.
34:41
Speaker 1: Sixteen tight Street, Chelsea, ninth July eighteen ninety Sir, you
34:49
Speaker 1: have publish'd a review of my story, The Picture of
34:53
Speaker 1: Dorian Gray. As this review is grossly unjust to me
34:58
Speaker 1: as an artist, I ask you to allow me to
35:01
Speaker 1: exercise in your columns my right of reply. Your reviewer, Sir,
35:08
Speaker 1: while admitting that the story in question is plainly the
35:12
Speaker 1: work of a man of letters, the work of one
35:15
Speaker 1: who has brains and art and style, yet suggests, and
35:21
Speaker 1: apparently in all seriousness, that I have written it in
35:25
Speaker 1: order that it should be read by the most depraved
35:28
Speaker 1: members of the criminal and illiterate classes. Now, Sir, I
35:35
Speaker 1: do not suppose that the criminal and illiterate classes ever
35:40
Speaker 1: read anything except newspapers. They are certainly not likely to
35:47
Speaker 1: be able to understand anything of mine. So let them pass.
35:53
Speaker 1: And on the broad question of why a man of
35:57
Speaker 1: letters writes at all, let me say this. The pleasure
36:02
Speaker 1: that one has in creating a work of art is
36:05
Speaker 1: a purely personal pleasure, and it is for the sake
36:09
Speaker 1: of this pleasure that one creates. The artist works with
36:14
Speaker 1: his eye on the object. Nothing else interests him. What
36:20
Speaker 1: people are likely to say does not even occur to him.
36:24
Speaker 1: He is fascinated by what he has in hand. He
36:28
Speaker 1: is indifferent to others. I write because it gives me
36:33
Speaker 1: the greatest possible artistic pleasure to write. If my work
36:38
Speaker 1: pleases the few, I am gratified. If it does not,
36:43
Speaker 1: it causes me no pain. As for the mob, I
36:48
Speaker 1: have no desire to be a popular novelist. It is
36:52
Speaker 1: far too easy. Your critic, then, sir, commits the absolutely
36:58
Speaker 1: unpardonable crime of trying to confuse the artist with his
37:03
Speaker 1: subject matter. For this, Sir, there is no excuse at
37:09
Speaker 1: all of one who is the greatest figure in the
37:12
Speaker 1: world's literature since Greek days. Keats remarked that he had
37:17
Speaker 1: as much pleasure in conceiving the evil as he had
37:21
Speaker 1: in conceiving the good. Let your reviewer, Sir, consider the
37:26
Speaker 1: bearings of Keats's criticism, For it is under these conditions
37:31
Speaker 1: that every artist works. One stands remote from one subject matter,
37:38
Speaker 1: one creates it, and one contemplates it. The further away
37:43
Speaker 1: the subject matter is, the more freely can the artist work.
37:49
Speaker 1: Your reviewer suggests that I do not make it sufficiently
37:52
Speaker 1: clear whether I prefer virtue to wickedness or wickedness to virtue.
37:59
Speaker 1: An artist, Sir, has no ethical sympathies at all. Virtue
38:05
Speaker 1: and wickedness are to him simply what the colors on
38:09
Speaker 1: his palette are to the painter. They are no more,
38:13
Speaker 1: and they are no less. He sees that by their
38:17
Speaker 1: means a certain artistic effect can be produced, and he
38:22
Speaker 1: produces it. The argo may be morally horrible and imogen
38:28
Speaker 1: stainlessly pure. Shakespeare, as Keith said, had as much delight
38:34
Speaker 1: in creating the one as he had in creating the other.
38:38
Speaker 1: It was necessary, Sir, for the dramatic development of this
38:43
Speaker 1: story to surround Dorian Gray with an atmosphere of moral corruption.
38:49
Speaker 1: Otherwise the story would have had no meaning and the
38:52
Speaker 1: plot no issue. To keep this atmosphere vague and indeterminate
38:59
Speaker 1: and wonderful was the aim of the artist who wrote
39:02
Speaker 1: the story. I claim, Sir, that he has succeeded. Each
39:09
Speaker 1: man sees his own sin in Dorian Gray. What Dorian
39:14
Speaker 1: Gray's sins are, no one knows. He who finds them
39:19
Speaker 1: has brought them. In conclusion, Sir, let me say how
39:25
Speaker 1: really deeply I regret that you should have permitted such
39:29
Speaker 1: a notice as the one I feel constrain'd to write
39:33
Speaker 1: on to have appeared in your paper. But the editor
39:37
Speaker 1: of the Saint James's Gazette should have employ'd Caliban as
39:42
Speaker 1: his art critic was possibly natural. The editor of the
39:47
Speaker 1: Scots Observer should not have allowed thirsities to make mows
39:53
Speaker 1: in his reviews. It is unworthy of so distinguished a
39:58
Speaker 1: man of letters. I am, et cetera, Oscar Wilde to
40:06
Speaker 1: this letter. The following editorial note was added. It was
40:11
Speaker 1: not to be expected that mister Wilde would agree with
40:16
Speaker 1: his reviewer as to the artistic merit of his booklet.
40:21
Speaker 1: Let it be conceded to him that he has succeeded
40:25
Speaker 1: in surrounding his hero with such an atmosphere as he describes.
40:31
Speaker 1: This is his reward. It is none the less legitimate
40:37
Speaker 1: for a critic to hold and to express the opinion
40:41
Speaker 1: that no treatment, however skillful, can make the atmosphere tolerable
40:48
Speaker 1: to his readers. That is his punishment, no doubt. It
40:55
Speaker 1: is the artist's privilege to be nasty, but he must
41:00
Speaker 1: exercise that privilege at his peril. During the next two
41:06
Speaker 1: weeks various correspondents aired their views on the subject, and
41:11
Speaker 1: in the third week footnote August second, Oscar Wilde replied
41:18
Speaker 1: to them, thus, Sir, in a letter dealing with the
41:23
Speaker 1: relations of art to morals published in your columns, a
41:28
Speaker 1: letter which I may say, seems to me in many
41:31
Speaker 1: respects admirable, especially in its insistence on the right of
41:36
Speaker 1: the artist to select his own subject matter. Mister Charles
41:42
Speaker 1: Whibley suggests that it must be peculiarly painful to me
41:47
Speaker 1: to find that the ethical import of Dorrian Gray has
41:52
Speaker 1: been so strongly recognized by the foremost Christian papers of
41:57
Speaker 1: England and America that I have been greeted by more
42:00
Speaker 1: than one of them as a moral reformer. Allow me, Sir,
42:05
Speaker 1: to reassure on this point, not merely mister Charles Whibley himself,
42:11
Speaker 1: but also your no doubt anxious readers. I have no
42:16
Speaker 1: hesitation in saying that I regard such criticisms as a
42:20
Speaker 1: very gratifying tribute to my story. For if a work
42:25
Speaker 1: of art is rich and vital and complete, those who
42:29
Speaker 1: have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to
42:34
Speaker 1: whom ethics appeal more strongly than esthetics will see its
42:38
Speaker 1: moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and
42:44
Speaker 1: the unclean will see in it their own shame. It
42:48
Speaker 1: will be to each man what he is himself. It
42:53
Speaker 1: is the spectator and not life, that art really mirrors.
42:59
Speaker 1: And so in the case of Dorrian Gray, the purely
43:03
Speaker 1: literary critic, as in The Speaker and elsewhere, regards it
43:08
Speaker 1: as a serious and fascinating work of art. The critic
43:13
Speaker 1: who deals with art in its relation to conduct, as
43:17
Speaker 1: the Christian leader and the Christian world, regards it as
43:22
Speaker 1: an ethical parable light, which I am told is the
43:27
Speaker 1: organ of the English mystics, regards it as a work
43:31
Speaker 1: of high spiritual import. Saint James's Gazette, which is seeking
43:38
Speaker 1: apparently to be the organ of the prorient, sees or
43:42
Speaker 1: pretends to see in it all kinds of dreadful things,
43:48
Speaker 1: and hints at treasury prosecutions. And your mister Charles Whibley
43:54
Speaker 1: genially says that he discovers in it lots of morality.
44:00
Speaker 1: It is quite true that he goes on to say
44:03
Speaker 1: that he detects no art in it. But I do
44:06
Speaker 1: not think that it is fair to expect a critic
44:09
Speaker 1: to be able to see a work of art from
44:12
Speaker 1: every point of view. Even Gautier had his limitations just
44:18
Speaker 1: as much as Didero had, and in modern England Girty's
44:23
Speaker 1: are rare. I can only assure mister Charles Whibley that
44:29
Speaker 1: no moral apotheosis to which he has added the most
44:33
Speaker 1: modest contribution could possibly be a source of unhappiness to
44:39
Speaker 1: an artist. I remain, sir, your obedient servant, Oscar wild
44:49
Speaker 1: end of section nine, Section twelve of Oscar A Wild
45:01
Speaker 1: Art and Morality. A Defense of the Picture of Dorian Gray,
45:07
Speaker 1: edited by Stuart Mason. This LibriVox recording is in the
45:12
Speaker 1: public domain recording by Martin Geeson. Section twelve The Picture
45:21
Speaker 1: of Dorian Gray, A spiritualistic review by Nisidah. The following
45:29
Speaker 1: review of Dorian Gray, referred to by Oscar Wilde in
45:33
Speaker 1: his second letter to the Scot's Observer, was published in
45:38
Speaker 1: the issue of Light, dated July the twelfth, eighteen ninety.
45:44
Speaker 1: This is a journal of psychical, occult and mystical research. M. A. Oxen,
45:52
Speaker 1: writing in the same paper a few weeks later, mentions
45:56
Speaker 1: that Oscar Wilde says of Light that it is the
46:00
Speaker 1: organ of the English mystics, and adds I do not
46:05
Speaker 1: like that word organ At the same time, m. A.
46:10
Speaker 1: Oxen refers to the Scot's observer as being bright, wise, witty,
46:18
Speaker 1: and not at all aggressive. The review is here given
46:23
Speaker 1: in its entirety. Mister Oscar Wilde has created a new
46:29
Speaker 1: character in fiction, one likely to absorb public attention with
46:35
Speaker 1: a similar weird fascination to that produced by the renowned
46:40
Speaker 1: Dr Jekyll and mister Hyde, and with a more lasting
46:45
Speaker 1: and beneficial moral effect than had mister Stevenson's surprising creation.
46:53
Speaker 1: A deeply conceived psychological study upon entirely new lines, enriched
47:00
Speaker 1: by the stored wealth of a mind which has spared
47:03
Speaker 1: no pains in the pursuit of sensuous beauty, and which
47:08
Speaker 1: has to all appearance revel'd in deepest drafts from that
47:13
Speaker 1: sparkling and alluring fountain. But what a spiritual lesson has
47:19
Speaker 1: he drawn? Therefrom a lesson graphically and powerfully set forth
47:25
Speaker 1: in the fascinating pages which present to us the life
47:29
Speaker 1: of Dorian Gray, a modern narcissus enamored of his own beauty,
47:36
Speaker 1: which proves allure to draw him down into the deepest
47:41
Speaker 1: hells of sensual indulgence. From whence he sinks into a
47:46
Speaker 1: still deeper abyss of crime. Introduced as an innocent, rather
47:54
Speaker 1: effeminate youth of extraordinary and fascinating beauty, Dorian Gray has
48:00
Speaker 1: his eyes opened to the fact that he possesses beauty,
48:06
Speaker 1: and his slumbering vanity and egotism awakened by the insidious
48:12
Speaker 1: flatteries of a hardened cynic spring at once into activity,
48:18
Speaker 1: and from that moment begins the downward course. Skillfully, the
48:24
Speaker 1: author depicts the budding and gradual unfolding of this baleful
48:30
Speaker 1: life blossom of the animal soul, seeking only the selfish
48:36
Speaker 1: gratification of the senses, refined indeed by education and artistic culture,
48:43
Speaker 1: but notwithstanding purely animal nay at times bestial by degrees.
48:51
Speaker 1: The still small voice, the voice of the higher self,
48:56
Speaker 1: which spiritually overshadows the un sophisticated youth, is deadened. In
49:03
Speaker 1: the soul. All the humane, merciful, spiritually beautiful sentiments and
49:10
Speaker 1: emotions of the better nature are strangled in their infancy.
49:16
Speaker 1: For Dorrian Gray drinks so deeply of the intoxicating cup
49:21
Speaker 1: of sensuous gratification that his nature becomes transformed to that
49:27
Speaker 1: of a demon. Beautiful outwardly but within hideous all. This
49:35
Speaker 1: is depicted with a master hand, the underlying lesson for
49:40
Speaker 1: those who can find it being the danger to the
49:43
Speaker 1: soul which lies in an egotistic love and idolatrous cherishing
49:49
Speaker 1: of one's own personal beauty for male or female equally perilous.
49:56
Speaker 1: But the author, by an ingenious device, presents to us
50:01
Speaker 1: an objective image of the subjective transformation gradually going on
50:06
Speaker 1: in Dorian Gray's soul, which, for startling vividness and horror,
50:13
Speaker 1: surpasses the effects usually produced by the novelist's art. Dorian Gray,
50:20
Speaker 1: whilst retaining the youthfulness, vigorous health, and unimpaired beauty of
50:26
Speaker 1: his external form, at the same time, witnesses the objective
50:32
Speaker 1: presentment of his soul's growing loathsome hideousness, and its falling
50:39
Speaker 1: into disease, to decrepitude, into an ugliness beyond conception. At
50:46
Speaker 1: first horrified by this, he becomes at length accustomed to it,
50:52
Speaker 1: and at certain stages of his downward course, after the
50:56
Speaker 1: commission of new excesses, he repairs to this silent recorder
51:01
Speaker 1: of his deeds, and, unveiling it, seeks for fresh indication
51:07
Speaker 1: of the gradual decay and corruption which are unfailingly represented
51:14
Speaker 1: on this physical side of his being. As time went on,
51:20
Speaker 1: he grew more and more enamored of his own beauty,
51:24
Speaker 1: more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.
51:29
Speaker 1: He would examine with minute care, and often with a
51:33
Speaker 1: monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the
51:38
Speaker 1: wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy, sensual mouth, Wondering
51:45
Speaker 1: sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sins
51:50
Speaker 1: or the signs of age. He would place his white
51:54
Speaker 1: hands beside the coarse, bloated hands of the picture and smile.
52:02
Speaker 1: He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs. Never
52:09
Speaker 1: does he feel a moment of repentance. The disgusting image, however,
52:15
Speaker 1: haunts him with the terror of discovery, drawing him back
52:19
Speaker 1: from distant places to assure himself of its hidden security
52:24
Speaker 1: and to contemplate it with a hideous fascination. The loathsome
52:31
Speaker 1: horror never departs from his consciousness, from its veiled seclusion.
52:38
Speaker 1: It exerts over him a spell of diabolical enchantment, and
52:43
Speaker 1: he knows that it is he himself, but his mirror
52:47
Speaker 1: presents to his gaze the personal beauty he cherishes, and
52:53
Speaker 1: the world continues to be fascinated by his charm. Many
52:59
Speaker 1: become fascinated to their serious moral and spiritual injury. His
53:06
Speaker 1: victims are numerous innocent women and upright young men, who,
53:11
Speaker 1: but for him, would have led virtuous, useful lives, with
53:16
Speaker 1: his beautiful body cared for as one would care for
53:20
Speaker 1: some rare exotic blossom, going about the world with a
53:25
Speaker 1: charming appearance of harmlessness and even innocence. He murdered souls
53:32
Speaker 1: in secret, as completely as if with his slender, white
53:38
Speaker 1: taper fingers he might have clutched their throats and strangled
53:43
Speaker 1: the life out of their bodies. And all this rottenness,
53:49
Speaker 1: all this corruption, had been proximately caused by a seed
53:54
Speaker 1: dropped into a soil prepared for it, the soul left,
53:59
Speaker 1: doubtless from the calmer of some previous life, a seed
54:04
Speaker 1: dropped from the flattering tongue of Lord Henry Wotton, tended
54:09
Speaker 1: and skillfully fostered into a surprising precociousness by his insidious,
54:16
Speaker 1: worthless cynicisms and oracula sophistries. A man out of whose
54:22
Speaker 1: life had departed every wholesome savor, who poisoned the lives
54:28
Speaker 1: of others and led them to sin, whilst apparently he
54:33
Speaker 1: sinned not himself. As a friend once said to him,
54:38
Speaker 1: you never say a moral thing, and you never do
54:42
Speaker 1: a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose. His
54:48
Speaker 1: whole life was, however, a sin concealed behind a mask
54:53
Speaker 1: of bon or me a fashionable cheerfulness and pleasantness of manner,
54:59
Speaker 1: a hollo cadavre, full of the dust and ashes of
55:03
Speaker 1: a burnt out life. One of Lord Henry Wotton's specious
55:09
Speaker 1: sophistries was this, the only way to get rid of
55:14
Speaker 1: a temptation is to yield to it, as well, wrap
55:19
Speaker 1: one's self confidingly in the folds of a boa constrictor,
55:23
Speaker 1: hoping to save one's life thereby. Lord Henry's apt pupil,
55:29
Speaker 1: Dorian Gray, followed this advice scrupulously, only to increase the
55:35
Speaker 1: power of temptation, which never after found him unwilling, until
55:41
Speaker 1: at last all of his higher nature was suffocated. The
55:47
Speaker 1: author skillfully depicts the insidious, baleful influence of Lord Henry Wotton,
55:54
Speaker 1: but attributes the corruption of Dorian Gray's soul to a
55:59
Speaker 1: book which lawd Henry loaned him. He says the Renaissance,
56:04
Speaker 1: knew of strange manners of poisoning, poisoning by a helmet
56:09
Speaker 1: and a lighted torch, by an embroidered glove, and a
56:13
Speaker 1: jeweled fan, by a gilded pomander, and by an amber chain.
56:19
Speaker 1: Dorian Gray was poisoned by a book. There were moments
56:24
Speaker 1: when he looked on evil simply as a mode through
56:29
Speaker 1: which he could realize his conception of the beautiful. Dorian
56:35
Speaker 1: Gray had conceived the idea that his life was the
56:38
Speaker 1: product of many preceding lives. The author causes him to
56:44
Speaker 1: make the following reflections. He used to wonder at the
56:49
Speaker 1: shallow psychology of those who conceive the ego in man
56:54
Speaker 1: as a thing simple, permanent, reliable, and of one essence.
57:00
Speaker 1: To him, man was a being with myriad lives and
57:04
Speaker 1: myriad sensations, a complex, multiform creature that bore within itself
57:12
Speaker 1: strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh
57:17
Speaker 1: was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead. He
57:22
Speaker 1: loved to stroll through the gaunt, cold picture gallery of
57:27
Speaker 1: his country house and look at the various portraits of
57:31
Speaker 1: those whose blood flowed in his veins. Here was Philip
57:36
Speaker 1: Harbott described by Francis Osborne in his Memoirs on the
57:41
Speaker 1: Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James, as one who
57:45
Speaker 1: was caress'd by the court for his handsome face, which
57:50
Speaker 1: kept him not long company. Was it young Harbert's life
57:55
Speaker 1: that he sometimes led had some strange, poisonous germ crept
58:01
Speaker 1: from body to body till it had reach'd his own.
58:06
Speaker 1: Was it some dim sense of that ruined grace that
58:10
Speaker 1: had made him so suddenly and almost without cause, give
58:14
Speaker 1: utterance in Basil Hallward's studio to that mad prayer which
58:20
Speaker 1: had so changed his life. Here, in gold embroidered red,
58:26
Speaker 1: doublet jeweled surcoat and gilt edged rough and wristbands stood
58:32
Speaker 1: Sir Anthony Sherard, with his silver and black armor piled
58:36
Speaker 1: at his feet. What had this man's legacy been? Had
58:41
Speaker 1: the lover of Jovanna of Naples bequeathed him some inheritance
58:46
Speaker 1: of sins and shame where his own actions merely the
58:51
Speaker 1: dreams that the dead man had not dared to realize.
58:57
Speaker 1: Here from the fading canvas smiled Lady Elizabeth Devereur, in
59:03
Speaker 1: her gauze hood, pearled stomacher and pink slashed sleeves. A
59:09
Speaker 1: flower was in her right hand, and her left clasped
59:12
Speaker 1: an enameled collar of white and dammask roses. On a
59:18
Speaker 1: table by her side lay a mandolin and an apple.
59:22
Speaker 1: There were large green rosettes upon her little pointed shoes.
59:28
Speaker 1: He knew her life and the strange stories that were
59:31
Speaker 1: told about her lovers. Had he something of her temperament
59:37
Speaker 1: in him? Those oval, heavy, liddid eyes seemed to look
59:42
Speaker 1: curiously at him. What of George Willoughby, with his powdered
59:47
Speaker 1: hair and fantastic patches, How evil he looked? The face
59:54
Speaker 1: was saturnine and swarthy, and the sensual lips seemed to
59:59
Speaker 1: be twisted with disdain. Delicate lace ruffles fell over the lean,
1:00:04
Speaker 1: yellow hands that were so overladen with rings. He had
1:00:10
Speaker 1: been a Macaroni of the eighteenth century, and the friend
1:00:14
Speaker 1: in his youth of Lord Ferrars. What of the second
1:00:20
Speaker 1: Lord Sherard, the companion of the Prince Regent in his
1:00:24
Speaker 1: wildest days, and one of the witnesses of the secret
1:00:28
Speaker 1: marriage with Missus fitz Herbert. How proud and handsome he was,
1:00:34
Speaker 1: with his chestnut curls and insolent pose. What passions had
1:00:40
Speaker 1: he bequeathed. The world had looked upon him as infamous.
1:00:45
Speaker 1: He had led the orgies at Carlton House. The star
1:00:50
Speaker 1: of the Garter glittered upon his breast. Beside him hung
1:00:55
Speaker 1: the portrait of his wife, a pallid, thin lipped woman
1:00:59
Speaker 1: in black. Her blood also stirred within him. How curious
1:01:05
Speaker 1: it all seemed, what a pity Dorian did not see
1:01:11
Speaker 1: that the sole reason for a plurality of lives was
1:01:15
Speaker 1: that very thirst of the animal soul, for the sensual
1:01:19
Speaker 1: pleasures of the material life in which he so wildly indulged.
1:01:25
Speaker 1: And yet with a diabolical, smooth and easy method in
1:01:31
Speaker 1: his madness seeking ever the externally beautiful beauty fled indeed
1:01:39
Speaker 1: before the gaunt ugliness of crime. But when this happened
1:01:44
Speaker 1: to Dorian, he coolly turned his back and went in
1:01:49
Speaker 1: search of new sensations. And in his search for sensations
1:01:55
Speaker 1: that would be at once new and delightful and possessed
1:01:59
Speaker 1: that element of strangeness that is so essential to romance,
1:02:04
Speaker 1: he would often adopt certain modes of thought that he
1:02:08
Speaker 1: knew to be really alien to his nature, abandon himself
1:02:13
Speaker 1: to their subtle influences, and then having as it were
1:02:18
Speaker 1: caught their color and satisfied his intellectual curiosity, leave them
1:02:25
Speaker 1: with that curious indifference that is not incompatible with a
1:02:30
Speaker 1: real ardor of temperament, and that indeed, according to certain
1:02:35
Speaker 1: modern psychologists, is often a condition of it. Veiled as
1:02:43
Speaker 1: he would, his extreme moral corruption became known, crept out
1:02:49
Speaker 1: from beneath skillful concealments, and was borne by the breath
1:02:53
Speaker 1: of gossip and scandal, whispering of its enormities. He was
1:02:59
Speaker 1: black balled in a West End club, and when brought
1:03:04
Speaker 1: by a friend into a smoking room of the Carlton,
1:03:07
Speaker 1: the Duke of Berwick and another gentleman, got up in
1:03:11
Speaker 1: a marked manner and went out. Curious stories became current
1:03:17
Speaker 1: about him. After he had passed his twenty fifth year.
1:03:22
Speaker 1: Men would whisper to each other in corners, or pass
1:03:26
Speaker 1: him with a sneer, or look at him with cold,
1:03:29
Speaker 1: searching eyes. Of such insolences and attempted slights, He, of
1:03:36
Speaker 1: course took no notice, and in the opinion of most people,
1:03:41
Speaker 1: his frank manner, his charming, boyish smile, and the infinite
1:03:46
Speaker 1: grace of that wonderful youth that seemed never to leave
1:03:51
Speaker 1: him were in themselves a sufficient answer to the calumnies,
1:03:57
Speaker 1: for so they called them that to a circulated about him.
1:04:03
Speaker 1: The life at length culminates in the commission of a
1:04:06
Speaker 1: crime of the most cruel, treacherous, and dastardly character. It
1:04:13
Speaker 1: is successfully concealed. The extraordinary coolness, even peace of mind,
1:04:20
Speaker 1: which Dorian experiences after this deed of horror is powerfully depicted,
1:04:27
Speaker 1: but he does feel a few momentary weak qualms of conscience.
1:04:33
Speaker 1: He spares one of his victims, and he thinks of
1:04:37
Speaker 1: beginning a new life, then imagining himself becoming purified. He
1:04:44
Speaker 1: longs to see how his silent recorder looks. He expects
1:04:50
Speaker 1: to find some wonderful improvement in the aspect of the
1:04:54
Speaker 1: loathsome hidden self he has created. So he repairs to
1:05:00
Speaker 1: his hiding place. It is more loathsome than ever, and
1:05:05
Speaker 1: presents new aspects of ugliness. In a moment of supreme
1:05:11
Speaker 1: disgust and aversion, he seizes a knife to destroy it.
1:05:17
Speaker 1: By so doing he ends his physical life. The only
1:05:23
Speaker 1: occult explanation of the catastrophe which befalls him is that
1:05:29
Speaker 1: he commits astral suicide by the murderous attack he ignorantly
1:05:34
Speaker 1: makes upon that which represented to him his own soul.
1:05:40
Speaker 1: The blow reverts to his physical body, and he falls dead.
1:05:48
Speaker 1: There is in this book a wonderful spiritual insight into
1:05:52
Speaker 1: the inner life of the human being, arising in all
1:05:56
Speaker 1: probability from that intuition. We all more or less possess
1:06:02
Speaker 1: a sort of flash of truth upon the mind, which
1:06:06
Speaker 1: is not known at the moment to be really true,
1:06:10
Speaker 1: but is supposed to be the mere weaving of a graceful,
1:06:14
Speaker 1: prolific fancy. A similar power lay at the back of
1:06:19
Speaker 1: mister R. Stevenson's creation of Doctor Jekyl, casting upon the
1:06:25
Speaker 1: tale so powerful a spiritual light that all readers were
1:06:30
Speaker 1: held by the spell of its enchantment. The same feeling
1:06:35
Speaker 1: of being under a spell fills the reader of the
1:06:39
Speaker 1: picture of Dorian Gray. The same subtle spiritual effect of
1:06:45
Speaker 1: the aura of evil flows out from the book, especially
1:06:51
Speaker 1: at those moments when Dorion is contemplating the image of
1:06:55
Speaker 1: his soul's corruption. Not in this instance that the evil
1:07:02
Speaker 1: so powerfully felt poisons the mind, as poor Dorian was
1:07:08
Speaker 1: poisoned for life by his French novel, but one gets
1:07:12
Speaker 1: a feeling of painful horror and sickening disgust. It is
1:07:19
Speaker 1: not easy to shake off. One seems to have glanced
1:07:23
Speaker 1: momentarily into the deepest abysses of hell, and to have
1:07:29
Speaker 1: drawn back totally sickened by a subtle effluvium. This singular
1:07:36
Speaker 1: power possessed by both these writers reveals a certain gruth
1:07:42
Speaker 1: or development in them of the spiritual nature, which need
1:07:47
Speaker 1: not necessarily, as yet convert either of these gentlemen into
1:07:52
Speaker 1: saints or angels, although doubtless they are both very good men.
1:08:00
Speaker 1: Lesson taught by mister Oscar Wilde's powerful story is of
1:08:04
Speaker 1: the highest spiritual import and, if it can be not
1:08:09
Speaker 1: believed merely but accepted as a literal fact, a mysterious
1:08:15
Speaker 1: verity in the life of a human being, that the
1:08:19
Speaker 1: invisible soul within the body, that alone, which lives after death,
1:08:25
Speaker 1: is deformed, bestialized, and even murdered by a life of
1:08:31
Speaker 1: persistent evil, it ought to have the most beneficial effect
1:08:37
Speaker 1: upon society. Let him depict the soul as he may.
1:08:43
Speaker 1: Except in the case of Basil Hallward, mister Wilde never
1:08:48
Speaker 1: rises above the animal soul in man. It is the
1:08:52
Speaker 1: animal soul alone, dominated by a refined but perverted intellect
1:08:59
Speaker 1: seeking an animal gratification. In sensuous beauty which he puts
1:09:05
Speaker 1: before us. Dorian Gray suffocated in its infancy, the only
1:09:12
Speaker 1: germ of spiritual soul he possessed. End of section twelve.
1:09:27
Speaker 1: Section fourteen of Oscar Wilde Art and Morality, A Defense
1:09:34
Speaker 1: of the Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by Stuart Mason.
1:09:39
Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
1:09:44
Speaker 1: Martin Geeson. Section fourteen. The note of doom that like
1:09:52
Speaker 1: a purple thread runs through the texture of Dorian Gray.
1:10:00
Speaker 1: A Revulsion from Realism by Anne H. Warten footnote Lippincott's
1:10:09
Speaker 1: Monthly Magazine, September eighteen ninety. In all ages and climes,
1:10:17
Speaker 1: mankind has found delight in romances based upon the mystic,
1:10:22
Speaker 1: the improbable, and the impossible, From the days when the
1:10:26
Speaker 1: Norse poets sang their sagas through long northern nights, and
1:10:32
Speaker 1: the fair Shaherizad under southern moon charm'd her bloodthirsty lord
1:10:38
Speaker 1: by her tales of wonder, to our own day, when
1:10:42
Speaker 1: Stevenson and Crawford and Haggard hold fancies spellbound by their
1:10:48
Speaker 1: entirely improbable stories. Scott and Buller played with master hands
1:10:55
Speaker 1: upon the love of the mysterious and supernatural inherent in
1:10:59
Speaker 1: my kind. Dickens and others have essayed to gratify its demands,
1:11:06
Speaker 1: but with less daring, and having an eye always on
1:11:10
Speaker 1: the moorings of the actual, their success has been less marked.
1:11:16
Speaker 1: With the elder Hawthorne, such romance writing seemed the natural
1:11:21
Speaker 1: growth of an exquisitely sensitive and spiritual nature, while among
1:11:27
Speaker 1: later French writers, theo File Gautier and Edmond Abu have
1:11:32
Speaker 1: entered into the domain of the impossible, as into the
1:11:36
Speaker 1: natural heritage of their genius, sporting in its impalpable ether,
1:11:43
Speaker 1: with the tuneful abandon of a fish in the sea
1:11:47
Speaker 1: or a bird in the air, hampered by no bond
1:11:51
Speaker 1: of the actual, weighted by no incumbrance of the material.
1:11:57
Speaker 1: It is not strange that the great influx of realistic
1:12:02
Speaker 1: novels that has flowed in upon the last decade should
1:12:06
Speaker 1: be followed by a revulsion to the impossible in fiction.
1:12:12
Speaker 1: Men and women wearied with meeting the same characters and
1:12:16
Speaker 1: events in so called romance that they encounter in everyday life,
1:12:23
Speaker 1: or saddened by the depressing, if dramatic pictures of Tulstoy
1:12:30
Speaker 1: and the cool vivisection of humanity presented by Ibsen, turn
1:12:36
Speaker 1: with a sense of rest and refreshment to the guidance
1:12:40
Speaker 1: of those who, like Robert Lewis Stevenson and Ryder Haggard,
1:12:45
Speaker 1: lead them suddenly into the mystic land of wonder, or,
1:12:50
Speaker 1: like Marion Crawford and Missus Oliphant, delight to draw them,
1:12:55
Speaker 1: by gentle and easy stages, from the midst of all
1:13:00
Speaker 1: the pointed setting of every day life into the shadowy
1:13:04
Speaker 1: border land that lies between the real and the unreal.
1:13:11
Speaker 1: Much of the success of such romance writing rests upon
1:13:15
Speaker 1: the rebound natural to humanity, from intense realism to extreme ideality,
1:13:24
Speaker 1: more perhaps upon the fact that this age, which is
1:13:28
Speaker 1: grossly material, is also deeply spiritual. With these two facts
1:13:34
Speaker 1: well in view, mister Oscar Wilde has fallen into line
1:13:39
Speaker 1: and entered the lists with some of the most successful
1:13:42
Speaker 1: masters of fiction. In his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray,
1:13:48
Speaker 1: written for the July Lippincott's, Mister wild like Balzac and
1:13:54
Speaker 1: the authors of Faust and John ingallsand presents to us
1:13:58
Speaker 1: the drama of a huge human soul, while like Gautier
1:14:03
Speaker 1: and Abu, he surrounds his utterly impossible story with a
1:14:08
Speaker 1: richness and depth of coloring, and a grace and airiness
1:14:13
Speaker 1: of expression that make the perusal of its pages an
1:14:17
Speaker 1: artistic delight. If mister Wilde's romance resembles the productions of
1:14:24
Speaker 1: some of the writers of the French school in its
1:14:27
Speaker 1: reality and tone, it still more strongly resembles mister Stephenson's
1:14:33
Speaker 1: most powerfully wrought fairy tale, Doctor Jekyl and Mister Hyde,
1:14:39
Speaker 1: although the moral of the story is brought out even
1:14:42
Speaker 1: more plainly, as plainly, indeed, as in the Drama of Faust.
1:14:47
Speaker 1: In both mister Stephenson's and mister Wilde's stories, there is
1:14:52
Speaker 1: a transformation or substitution. In one, the soul of Doctor
1:14:58
Speaker 1: Jekyl appears under different exteriors. In the other, some fine
1:15:04
Speaker 1: influence passes from the soul of Dorian Gray into his portrait,
1:15:10
Speaker 1: and their works a gradual and subtle change upon the
1:15:14
Speaker 1: pictured lineaments. Although mister Wilde's extravaganza is far less dramatic
1:15:21
Speaker 1: than that of mister Stephenson, it has the advantage of
1:15:25
Speaker 1: richer coloring and a more human setting. If we may
1:15:30
Speaker 1: so express it, the characters in the picture of Dorian
1:15:34
Speaker 1: Gray enjoy life more than mister Stephenson's creations, who seem
1:15:41
Speaker 1: to have had so dull a time of it at
1:15:44
Speaker 1: the best that they might have been expected to welcome
1:15:48
Speaker 1: a tragedy as a relief to the tedium of their
1:15:52
Speaker 1: daily lives. Mister Utterson, we are told, was good, but
1:15:58
Speaker 1: he was evidently not particularly happy, which was the case
1:16:02
Speaker 1: with the other personages of the drama, with the exception
1:16:06
Speaker 1: of those who were signally wretched. On the other hand,
1:16:12
Speaker 1: mister Wilde's characters are happy during their little day. Their
1:16:18
Speaker 1: world is a luxurious, perfumed land of delight until sin
1:16:24
Speaker 1: transforms it. And even after Lord Henry has corrupted the
1:16:29
Speaker 1: nature of Dorian Gray with evil books and worldly philosophy,
1:16:35
Speaker 1: he occasionally drinks of the waters of lethe and enjoys
1:16:40
Speaker 1: some fragments of what may be called happiness, while Lord
1:16:45
Speaker 1: Henry himself seems to derive a certain satisfaction from the
1:16:51
Speaker 1: practice of his mephist of Fli and art, and in
1:16:54
Speaker 1: his entire freedom from the restraints of conscience. In a
1:17:00
Speaker 1: tale of the impossible, it is not required that the
1:17:04
Speaker 1: writer should be true to life, animate or inanimate. Yet,
1:17:10
Speaker 1: in the fact that there are glimpses of light through
1:17:13
Speaker 1: the clouds that surround his dramatis personae, that they inhabit
1:17:19
Speaker 1: a world in which the laburnum hangs out yellow clusters
1:17:23
Speaker 1: in June, and the Clematis robes itself with purple stars,
1:17:29
Speaker 1: and the sun sheds gold and the moon's silver, despite
1:17:34
Speaker 1: the tragedy that touches the lives of its inhabitants, is
1:17:39
Speaker 1: not mister Wild quite as true to nature as to art.
1:17:45
Speaker 1: The reader may reasonably question the author's good taste in
1:17:50
Speaker 1: displaying at such length his knowledge of antique decoration and
1:17:56
Speaker 1: old world crime, as in chapter nine, Foot's note Chapter
1:18:02
Speaker 1: eleven in the eighteen ninety one edition, which, besides being
1:18:08
Speaker 1: somewhat tiresome, clogs the dramatic movement of the story. Yet
1:18:15
Speaker 1: on the other hand, it must be admitted that none
1:18:18
Speaker 1: but an artist and an apostle of the beautiful could
1:18:22
Speaker 1: have so sympathetically portrayed the glowing hues and perfumes of
1:18:27
Speaker 1: the garden in which Dorian Gray had first presented to
1:18:33
Speaker 1: his lips the Cup of Life, and none other could
1:18:37
Speaker 1: have so pictured the luxurious surroundings of his home, for
1:18:43
Speaker 1: whose embellishment the known world had been searched for hangings, ornaments,
1:18:49
Speaker 1: and pica brac amid. Such an entourage of modern London life,
1:18:55
Speaker 1: with its sybaritic indulgence, its keenness of wit, and its
1:19:00
Speaker 1: subtle intelligence, mister Wilde places his characters and works out
1:19:06
Speaker 1: his miracle. Viewing his own portrait, just completed by an
1:19:13
Speaker 1: artist friend, Dorian Gray turns from it, filled with envy
1:19:18
Speaker 1: and dissatisfaction, because it has been whispered in his ear
1:19:23
Speaker 1: that youth is the supreme possession in life, and that
1:19:27
Speaker 1: when youth and beauty have fled from his face and form,
1:19:32
Speaker 1: this pictured presentment will live forever a perpetual mockery of himself,
1:19:39
Speaker 1: whom withering age has overtaken, and the influence of his
1:19:44
Speaker 1: evil genius, Lord Henry Wotton. Dorian Gray utters a prayer
1:19:50
Speaker 1: that he may always remain young, and the portrait alone
1:19:55
Speaker 1: reveal the ravages of time, sin and sorrow. The realization
1:20:01
Speaker 1: of this idea is the theory of mister Wilde's romance
1:20:06
Speaker 1: and the air of probability with which he has endowed
1:20:10
Speaker 1: the absolutely impossible evidences the artistic and dramatic power of
1:20:16
Speaker 1: the writer. The portrait of Dorian Gray, painted in days
1:20:21
Speaker 1: of innocence and loveliness, when his mere presence, symbolized to
1:20:26
Speaker 1: the artist, the entire harmony between beauty of body and
1:20:32
Speaker 1: beauty of soul changes day by day with the degradation
1:20:38
Speaker 1: of his nature, while the living Dorian Gray, after years
1:20:43
Speaker 1: of sin, remorseless cruelty, and corruption of thought and action,
1:20:49
Speaker 1: preserves all the grace and fairness of his antinoous like youth.
1:20:56
Speaker 1: Love in this romance is an incident, not its crowning event,
1:21:01
Speaker 1: although an important incident as a revelation of the character
1:21:06
Speaker 1: of Dorian Gray, the reader never meets Sybil Vain. He
1:21:11
Speaker 1: merely sees her on the stage and hears of her
1:21:15
Speaker 1: from the lips of her lover. Yet even thus she
1:21:19
Speaker 1: appeals to us as an exquisite personation of maidenhood, with
1:21:24
Speaker 1: all its purity and all its tenderness, as shadowy an outline,
1:21:30
Speaker 1: as the fair child whom Buller allows to captivate the
1:21:35
Speaker 1: imagination of KENNELM. Chillingly, who caught butterflies, talked philosophy, and
1:21:41
Speaker 1: died young, yet who, in her brief transit across his path,
1:21:47
Speaker 1: realized to his poetic soul all the best possibilities of life,
1:21:52
Speaker 1: spiritual and material. Sybil Vain comes to us girt about
1:21:58
Speaker 1: with ideal arm to fulfill her widely different mission, which
1:22:05
Speaker 1: was to reveal to Dorian Gray the sad fact that
1:22:09
Speaker 1: his soul had passed beyond her sweet and ennobling influence.
1:22:16
Speaker 1: His artistic and intellectual senses were touched by her beauty
1:22:21
Speaker 1: and dramatic power, but to the beauty that made her
1:22:25
Speaker 1: worthy to be loved, his eyes were blind, his heart
1:22:30
Speaker 1: was insensible. The tragedy of the story, the climax of
1:22:35
Speaker 1: the situation, is not the death of Sibyl Van nor
1:22:40
Speaker 1: even the pitiless murder of the friend who dared to
1:22:44
Speaker 1: give Dorian Gray good counsel, but the disclosure that Dorian's soul,
1:22:51
Speaker 1: once open to all good influences, had, by yielding to
1:22:56
Speaker 1: the maligned domination of his evil genius, last beyond the
1:23:01
Speaker 1: reach of love, pity, or remorse. It is needless to
1:23:06
Speaker 1: say that Dorian Gray is not a very substantial character.
1:23:12
Speaker 1: The most entertaining, though not the most exemplary personage of
1:23:17
Speaker 1: the story is Lord Henry Wotton, who, by his preaching
1:23:21
Speaker 1: and practice of the doctrine of hedonism, leads Dorian Gray
1:23:26
Speaker 1: into all known and unknown evil, until finally his darkling
1:23:33
Speaker 1: shadow outreaches in depravity, the imagination of his tempter. When
1:23:40
Speaker 1: his victim has sunk so low in sin that the
1:23:44
Speaker 1: world shuns him, Lord Henry still enjoys his gay, conscienceless
1:23:51
Speaker 1: existence and continues to utter the persiflage that constitutes much
1:23:56
Speaker 1: of the attraction of the book, as well as of
1:23:59
Speaker 1: his anxiety. Gabonnaire Witty learned, giving expression to aphorisms as
1:24:07
Speaker 1: keen as the sayings of Thackeray's characters, with the moral
1:24:11
Speaker 1: element eliminated, and as cynical as those of Norris, with
1:24:17
Speaker 1: exquisite taste and the fascination of a finished man of
1:24:21
Speaker 1: the world, Lord Henry belongs as truly on the material
1:24:26
Speaker 1: side of his nature to the life of to day
1:24:29
Speaker 1: as he appertains on its spiritual side, to the region
1:24:34
Speaker 1: of Pluto. A gay child of the great London social world,
1:24:40
Speaker 1: he hovers airily around and about the emotions of life,
1:24:45
Speaker 1: declaring that death is the only thing that ever terrifies him,
1:24:50
Speaker 1: and that death and vulgarity are the only facts in
1:24:54
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. The climax
1:25:01
Speaker 1: of Lord Henry's sardonic worldliness is reached when he becomes
1:25:07
Speaker 1: the spectator of his own domesticity, if he may be
1:25:11
Speaker 1: said to have any, and speaks to Dorian of his
1:25:15
Speaker 1: divorce from his wife as one of the latest sensations
1:25:19
Speaker 1: of London, remarking apropos of his music. The man with
1:25:25
Speaker 1: whom my wife ran away played chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria.
1:25:31
Speaker 1: I was very fond of her. The house is rather
1:25:35
Speaker 1: lonely without her. Lord Henry is so entirely true to
1:25:40
Speaker 1: himself and the worst that is in him, that towards
1:25:45
Speaker 1: the close of the book, when Dorian announces that he
1:25:48
Speaker 1: is going to be good and begs his friend not
1:25:53
Speaker 1: to poison another young life with the book with which
1:25:57
Speaker 1: he had corrupted his, we find out ourselves trembling for
1:26:01
Speaker 1: Dorian's one remaining ally, especially when he exclaims, my dear boy,
1:26:08
Speaker 1: you are really beginning to moralize. You will soon be
1:26:12
Speaker 1: going about warning people against all the sins of which
1:26:16
Speaker 1: you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to
1:26:21
Speaker 1: do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I
1:26:27
Speaker 1: are what we are, and we will be what we
1:26:32
Speaker 1: will be. Had not the hero stabbed himself or his picture,
1:26:39
Speaker 1: which was it, it is only a question of time.
1:26:43
Speaker 1: How soon Dorian Gray, with the slightest obtrusion of conscience,
1:26:48
Speaker 1: would have ceased to charm him, who had welcomed him
1:26:52
Speaker 1: as a debutante on the stage of pleasure. Where to
1:26:57
Speaker 1: use his favorite saying, the only way to get rid
1:27:01
Speaker 1: of a temptation is to yield to it. Laurian Gray,
1:27:07
Speaker 1: struggling against the temptations of the world, would have proved
1:27:11
Speaker 1: an inartistic and disturbing element in the life of Lord Henry.
1:27:19
Speaker 1: All that is needed to complete the tale is Lord
1:27:23
Speaker 1: Henry's own comment on the highly dramatic taking off of
1:27:27
Speaker 1: his friend. This chapter, mister Wilde, true to his artistic instinct,
1:27:34
Speaker 1: has not finished, preferring to leave appetite unappeased, rather than
1:27:40
Speaker 1: to create satiety by making his mephistopheles say precisely what
1:27:46
Speaker 1: one would expect him to say under the circumstances. End
1:27:53
Speaker 1: of section fourteen. Section fifteen of Oscar Wilde Art and Morality,
1:28:07
Speaker 1: A Defense of the Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by
1:28:12
Speaker 1: Stuart Mason. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain
1:28:18
Speaker 1: recording by Martin Geeson. Section fifteen The Romance of the
1:28:26
Speaker 1: Impossible by Julian Heartharn footnote Libincott's Monthly Magazine, September eighteen ninety.
1:28:39
Speaker 1: Fiction which flies at all game has latterly taken to
1:28:43
Speaker 1: the impossible as its quarry. The pursuit is interesting and
1:28:49
Speaker 1: edifying if one goes properly equipped and with adequate skill,
1:28:54
Speaker 1: but if due care is not exercised, the impossible turns
1:28:59
Speaker 1: upon the hunter and grinds him to powder. It is
1:29:03
Speaker 1: a very dangerous and treacherous kind of wild fowl. The
1:29:08
Speaker 1: conditions of its existence, if existence can be predicated of
1:29:14
Speaker 1: that which does not exist, are so peculiar and abstruse
1:29:19
Speaker 1: that only genius is really capable of taming it and
1:29:23
Speaker 1: leading it captive. But the capture, when it is made
1:29:28
Speaker 1: is so delightful and fascinating that every tyro would like
1:29:34
Speaker 1: to try. One is reminded of the Princess of the
1:29:38
Speaker 1: fairy tale, who was to be won on certain preposterous terms,
1:29:44
Speaker 1: And if the terms were not met, the discomforted suitor
1:29:48
Speaker 1: lost his head. Many misguided or overweening youths perished. At
1:29:56
Speaker 1: last the one succeeded. Failure in a romance of the
1:30:02
Speaker 1: impossible is apt to be a disastrous failure. On the
1:30:07
Speaker 1: other hand, success carries great rewards. Of course, the idea
1:30:13
Speaker 1: is not a new one. The writings of the alchemists
1:30:17
Speaker 1: are stories of the impossible. The fashion has never been
1:30:21
Speaker 1: entirely extinct. Balzac wrote the po de cha Grand, and
1:30:27
Speaker 1: probably this tale is as good a one as was
1:30:30
Speaker 1: ever written of that kind. The possessor of the skin
1:30:34
Speaker 1: may have everything he wishes for, but each wish causes
1:30:39
Speaker 1: the skin to shrink, and when it is all gone,
1:30:43
Speaker 1: the wisher is annihilated with it. By the art of
1:30:48
Speaker 1: the writer, this impossible thing is made to appear quite feasible.
1:30:54
Speaker 1: By touching the cords of coincidence and fatality, The reader's
1:31:00
Speaker 1: sense is soothed to sleep. We feel that all this
1:31:05
Speaker 1: might be, and yet no natural law be violated. And
1:31:11
Speaker 1: yet we know that such a thing never was and
1:31:14
Speaker 1: never will be. But the vitality of the story, as
1:31:19
Speaker 1: of all good stories of the sort, is due to
1:31:22
Speaker 1: the fact that it is the symbol of a spiritual verity,
1:31:27
Speaker 1: the life of indulgence, the selfish life destroys the soul.
1:31:34
Speaker 1: This psychic truth is so deeply felt that its sensible
1:31:39
Speaker 1: embodiment is rendered plausible. In the case of another famous romance, Frankenstein,
1:31:48
Speaker 1: the technical art is entirely wanting. A worse story from
1:31:54
Speaker 1: the literary point of view has seldom been written. But
1:31:59
Speaker 1: the soul of it, so to speak, is so potent
1:32:02
Speaker 1: and obvious that although no one actually reads the book,
1:32:07
Speaker 1: nowadays everybody knows the gist of the idea. Frankenstein has
1:32:14
Speaker 1: entered into the language for it at as a perpetual
1:32:18
Speaker 1: truth of human nature. At the present moment, the most
1:32:24
Speaker 1: conspicuous success in the line we are considering is Stephenson's
1:32:29
Speaker 1: Doctor Jekyl and Mister Hyde. The author's literary skill in
1:32:35
Speaker 1: that awful little parable is at its best and makes
1:32:40
Speaker 1: the most of every point. To my thinking, it is
1:32:44
Speaker 1: an artistic mistake to describe Hyde's transformation as actually taking
1:32:51
Speaker 1: place in plain sight of the audience. The sense of
1:32:55
Speaker 1: spiritual mystery is thereby lost, and a mere brute miracle
1:33:02
Speaker 1: takes its place. But the tale is strong enough to
1:33:07
Speaker 1: carry this imperfection, and the moral significance of it is
1:33:12
Speaker 1: so catholic it so comes home to every soul that
1:33:16
Speaker 1: considers it that it has already made an ineffacible impression
1:33:21
Speaker 1: on the public mind. Every man is his own g
1:33:26
Speaker 1: kill and hide, only without the magic powder on the
1:33:32
Speaker 1: bookshelf of the impossible, Mister Stephenson's book may take its
1:33:37
Speaker 1: place beside Balsa's. Mister Oscar Wilde The Apostle of Beauty
1:33:45
Speaker 1: has in the July number of Lippincott's magazine, a novel
1:33:50
Speaker 1: or romance. It partakes of the qualities of both, which
1:33:55
Speaker 1: everybody will want to read. It is a story strange
1:34:00
Speaker 1: in conception, strong in interest, and fitted with a tragic
1:34:05
Speaker 1: and ghastly climax. Like many stories of its class, it
1:34:11
Speaker 1: is open to more than one interpretation, and there are
1:34:15
Speaker 1: doubtless critics who will deny that it has any meaning
1:34:19
Speaker 1: at all. It is, at all events, a salutary departure
1:34:25
Speaker 1: from the ordinary English novel, with the hero and heroine
1:34:30
Speaker 1: of different social stations, the predatory black sheep, the curate
1:34:36
Speaker 1: the settlements and society. Mister Wilde, as we all know,
1:34:44
Speaker 1: is a gentleman of an original and audacious turn of mind,
1:34:48
Speaker 1: and the commonplace is scarcely possible to him. Besides, his
1:34:55
Speaker 1: advocacy of novel ideas in life, art, dress and demeanor
1:35:01
Speaker 1: had led us to expect surprising things from him, and
1:35:06
Speaker 1: in this literary age, it is agreed that a man
1:35:09
Speaker 1: may best show the best there is in him by
1:35:14
Speaker 1: writing a book. Those who read mister Wilde's story in
1:35:20
Speaker 1: the hope of finding in it some compact and final
1:35:23
Speaker 1: statement of his theories of life and manners will be
1:35:28
Speaker 1: satisfied in some respects and dissatisfied in others. But not
1:35:34
Speaker 1: many will deny that the book is a remarkable one,
1:35:38
Speaker 1: and will attract attention even had it appeared without the
1:35:42
Speaker 1: author's name on the title page. The picture of Dorian
1:35:48
Speaker 1: Gray begins to show its quality in the opening pages.
1:35:53
Speaker 1: Mister Wilde's writing has what is called color, the quality
1:35:58
Speaker 1: that forms the main stay of many of reader's works,
1:36:03
Speaker 1: and it appears in the sensuous descriptions of nature and
1:36:08
Speaker 1: of the decorations and environments of the artistic life. The
1:36:14
Speaker 1: general aspect of the characters and the tenor of their
1:36:18
Speaker 1: conversation remind one a little of Vivian Gray and a
1:36:23
Speaker 1: little of Pelham, but the resemblance does not go far.
1:36:28
Speaker 1: Mister Wilde's objects and philosophy are different from those of
1:36:33
Speaker 1: either Disraeli or Buller. Meanwhile, his talent for aphorisms and
1:36:39
Speaker 1: epigrams may fairly be compared with theirs. Some of his
1:36:45
Speaker 1: clever sayings are more than clever. They show real insight
1:36:50
Speaker 1: and a comprehensive grasp. Their wit is generally cynical, but
1:36:56
Speaker 1: they are put into the mouth of one of the characters,
1:37:00
Speaker 1: Lord Harry, and mister Wilde himself refrains from definitely committing
1:37:05
Speaker 1: himself to them, though one cannot help suspecting that mister
1:37:11
Speaker 1: Wilde regards Lord Harry as being an uncommonly able fellow.
1:37:18
Speaker 1: Be that as it may. Lord Harry plays the part
1:37:22
Speaker 1: of Old Harry in the story and lives to witness
1:37:26
Speaker 1: the destruction of every other person in it. He may
1:37:31
Speaker 1: be taken as an imaginative type of all that is
1:37:34
Speaker 1: most evil and most refined in modern civilization, a charming, gentle, witty,
1:37:43
Speaker 1: euphemistic Mephistopheles who deprecates the vulgarity of goodness and muses
1:37:51
Speaker 1: aloud about those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue
1:37:58
Speaker 1: and those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.
1:38:05
Speaker 1: Upon the whole. Lord Harry is the most ably portrayed
1:38:09
Speaker 1: character in the book, though not the most original in conception.
1:38:15
Speaker 1: Dorian Gray himself is as nearly a new idea in
1:38:20
Speaker 1: fiction as one has nowadays a right to expect if
1:38:25
Speaker 1: he had been adequately realized and worked out, mister Wilde's
1:38:30
Speaker 1: first novel would have been remembered after more meritorious ones
1:38:35
Speaker 1: were forgotten. But even as nemo repente fuit turpissimus so,
1:38:43
Speaker 1: no one, or hardly anyone, creates a thoroughly original figure
1:38:49
Speaker 1: at a first essay, Dorian never quite solidifies. In fact,
1:38:56
Speaker 1: his portrait is rather the more real thing of the
1:38:59
Speaker 1: two who, but this needs explanation. The story consists of
1:39:05
Speaker 1: a strong and marvelous central idea illustrated by three characters,
1:39:12
Speaker 1: all men. There are a few women in the background,
1:39:17
Speaker 1: but they are only mentioned. They never appear to speak
1:39:21
Speaker 1: for themselves. There is true a valet who brings in
1:39:25
Speaker 1: his master's breakfasts, and a chemist who, by some scientific
1:39:31
Speaker 1: miracle disposes of a human body. But substantially the book
1:39:37
Speaker 1: is taken up with the artist who paints the portrait,
1:39:41
Speaker 1: with his friend Lord Harry aforesaid, and with Dorian Gray,
1:39:46
Speaker 1: who might, so far as the story goes, stand alone.
1:39:51
Speaker 1: He and his portrait are one, and their union points
1:39:56
Speaker 1: the moral of the tale. The situation is as follows.
1:40:02
Speaker 1: Dorian Gray is a youth of extraordinary physical beauty and
1:40:06
Speaker 1: grace and pure and innocent of soul. An artist sees
1:40:13
Speaker 1: him and falls esthetically in love with him, and finds
1:40:18
Speaker 1: in him a new inspiration in his art, both direct
1:40:22
Speaker 1: and general. In the lines of his form and features,
1:40:28
Speaker 1: and in his coloring and movement, are revealed fresh and
1:40:32
Speaker 1: profound laws. He paints him in all guises and combinations,
1:40:39
Speaker 1: and it is seen and admitted on all sides that
1:40:42
Speaker 1: he has never before painted so well. At length, he
1:40:48
Speaker 1: concentrates all his knowledge and power in a final portrait,
1:40:53
Speaker 1: which has the vividness and grace of life itself, and,
1:40:59
Speaker 1: considering how much both of the sitter and of the
1:41:02
Speaker 1: painter is embodied in it, might almost be said to live.
1:41:09
Speaker 1: The portrait is declared by Lord Harry to be the
1:41:12
Speaker 1: greatest work of modern art, and he himself thinks so
1:41:18
Speaker 1: well of it that he resolves never to exhibit it,
1:41:23
Speaker 1: even as he would shrink from exposing to public gaze
1:41:27
Speaker 1: the privacies of his own nature. On the day of
1:41:33
Speaker 1: the last sitting, a singular incident occurs. Lord Harry, meeting
1:41:39
Speaker 1: with Dorian Gray for the first time, is no less
1:41:43
Speaker 1: impressed than was Halward. The artist, with the youth's radiant
1:41:48
Speaker 1: beauty and freshness. But whereas Hallward would keep Dorian unspotted
1:41:55
Speaker 1: from the world, and would have him resist evil temptations
1:42:00
Speaker 1: and all the allurements of corruption, Lord Harry, on the contrary,
1:42:06
Speaker 1: with a truly satanic ingenuity, discourses to the young man
1:42:11
Speaker 1: on the matchless delights and privileges of youth. Youth is
1:42:19
Speaker 1: the golden period of life. Youth comes never again. In youth.
1:42:25
Speaker 1: Only are the senses endowed with divine potency. Only then
1:42:31
Speaker 1: are joys exquisite and pleasures unalloyed. Let it therefore be
1:42:38
Speaker 1: indulged without stint. Let no harsh and cowardly restraints be
1:42:44
Speaker 1: placed upon its glorious impulses. Men are virtuous through fear
1:42:50
Speaker 1: and selfishness. They are too dull or too timid to
1:42:55
Speaker 1: take advantage of the godlike gifts that are showered upon
1:42:59
Speaker 1: them in the morning of existence. And before they can
1:43:03
Speaker 1: realize the folly of their self denial, the morning has passed,
1:43:09
Speaker 1: and weary day is upon them, and the shadows of
1:43:14
Speaker 1: night are near. But let Dorian, who is matchless in
1:43:20
Speaker 1: the vigor and resources of his beauty, rise above the base,
1:43:25
Speaker 1: shrinking from life that calls itself goodness. Let him accept
1:43:31
Speaker 1: and welcome every natural impulse of his nature. The tragedy
1:43:37
Speaker 1: of old age is not that one is old, but
1:43:40
Speaker 1: that one is young. Let him so live, that when
1:43:44
Speaker 1: old age comes, he shall at least have the satisfaction
1:43:49
Speaker 1: of knowing that no opportunity of pleasure and indulgence has
1:43:54
Speaker 1: escaped untasted. This seductive sermon profoundly affects the innocent Dorian,
1:44:03
Speaker 1: and he looks at life and himself with new eyes.
1:44:08
Speaker 1: He realizes the value, as well as the transitoriness, of
1:44:12
Speaker 1: that youth and beauty, which hitherto he had accepted as
1:44:17
Speaker 1: a matter of course and as a permanent possession. Gazing
1:44:23
Speaker 1: on his portrait, he laments that it possesses the immortality
1:44:28
Speaker 1: of loveliness and comeliness that is denied to him, And
1:44:34
Speaker 1: in a sort of imaginative despair, he utters a wild
1:44:38
Speaker 1: prayer that to the portrait, and not to himself, may
1:44:44
Speaker 1: come the feebleness and hideousness of old age. That whatever
1:44:49
Speaker 1: sins he may commit, to, whatever indulgences he may surrender himself.
1:44:56
Speaker 1: Not upon him, but upon the portrait may the penalties
1:45:00
Speaker 1: and disfigurements fall. Such is Dorian's prayer, And though at
1:45:08
Speaker 1: first he suspects it not, his prayer is granted. From
1:45:14
Speaker 1: that hour. The evil of his life is registered upon
1:45:18
Speaker 1: the face and form of his pictured presentment, while he
1:45:23
Speaker 1: himself goes unscathed. Day by day, Each fresh sin that
1:45:30
Speaker 1: he commits stamps its mark of degradation upon the painted image. Cruelty, sensuality, treachery,
1:45:41
Speaker 1: all nameless crimes corrupt and render hideous the effigy on
1:45:47
Speaker 1: the canvas. He sees in it the gradual pollution and
1:45:53
Speaker 1: ruin of his soul, while his own fleshly features preserve unstate,
1:46:00
Speaker 1: and all the freshness and virginity of his sinless youth.
1:46:06
Speaker 1: The contrast at first alarms and horrifies him, but at
1:46:12
Speaker 1: length he becomes accustomed to it, and finds a sinister
1:46:17
Speaker 1: delight in watching the progress of the awful change. He
1:46:22
Speaker 1: locks up the portrait in a secret chamber and constantly
1:46:27
Speaker 1: retires thither to ponder over the ghastly miracle. No one
1:46:34
Speaker 1: but he knows or suspects the incredible truth, and he
1:46:40
Speaker 1: guards like a murder secret, this visible revelation of the
1:46:45
Speaker 1: difference between what he is and what he seems. This
1:46:51
Speaker 1: is a powerful situation, and the reader may be left
1:46:56
Speaker 1: to discover for himself how mister Wyant world works it
1:47:01
Speaker 1: out end of Section fifteen,