The Author's View of the Christian Faith
It is necessary to deal with this part of "De Profundis" which treats of the unhappy author's "discoveries" in Christianity, because his views were put so perfectly, with such a wealth of phrase, with such apparent certainty of conviction, that they may well have an influence upon young and impressionable minds which will be, and possibly has been, dangerous and unsettling.
There is no doubt but that the teaching of "De Profundis," or rather the point of view enunciated in it, which deals with Christianity, shows that Oscar Wilde had failed to gain any real insight into the Faith. It is quite true that various of the sects within the English Church, especially those which dissent from the Establishment, might find themselves in accordance with much that Wilde said. A Catholic, however, cannot for a moment admit that the poet's teachings are anything but paradoxical, dangerous, and untrue.
A minister of the Protestant Church, Canon Beeching, preaching at Westminster Abbey on "The Sinlessness of Christ," referred to the portions of "De Profundis," with which I am dealing now, in no uncertain way.
There are here and there things that a Catholic would not entirely endorse in Canon Beeching's sermon, yet, on the whole, it is a very sane and fair presentation of what a Christian must think in reading "De Profundis." It is as well to say frankly, that I write as a Catholic, and, in this section of my criticism, for those who are also of the Faith.
I print some extracts from Canon Beeching's sermon:
"One wonders sometimes," said he, "if Englishmen have given up reading their gospels. A book has lately appeared which presents a caricature of the portrait of Christ, and especially a travesty of His doctrine about sin, that is quite astonishing; and with one or two honourable exceptions the daily and weekly Press have praised the book enthusiastically, and especially the study it gives of the character of Christ; whereas, if that picture were true, the Pharisees were right when they said to Him that He cast out devils through Beelzebub, and the priests were right in sending Him to death as a perverter of the people. The writer of the book, who is dead, was a man of exceptional literary talent, who fell into disgrace; and whether it is pity for his sad fate or admiration of his style in writing that has cast a spell upon the reviewers and blinded them to his meaning, I cannot say; but I do say they have not done their duty to English society by lauding the book as they have done, without giving parents and guardians some hint that it preaches a doctrine of sin, which, if taken into romantic and impressionable hearts, will send them quickly down the road of shame. The chief point on which the writer fixes is Christ's behaviour to the sinners; and his theory is that Christ consorted with them because He found them more interesting than the good people, who were stupid. 'The world,' he says, 'had always loved the saint as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of God; Christ, through some divine instinct in Him, seems to have always loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of man. To turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not His aim.... But in a manner not yet understood of the world He regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful and holy things, and modes of perfection.' It seems to have struck the writer at this point that our Lord had Himself explained that He consorted with sinners, as a physician with the sick, to call them to repentance. For he goes on:—'Of course the sinner must repent; but why?—simply because otherwise he would be unable to realise what he had done.' In other words, a man is the better for any sort of emotional experience, when it is past, because he is fertilised by it as by a crop of wild oats; a form of philosophy which Tennyson in 'In Memoriam' well characterised as 'Procuress to the Lords of Hell.' But even this writer, absolutely shameless and unabashed as he is, does not hint that Christ Himself gained His moral beauty by sinning. The lowest depth of woe is theirs who call evil good and good evil, for that is a poisoning of the well of life. What is the use of calling Jesus "good" if we destroy the very meaning of goodness? May God have pardoned the sin of the man who put this stumbling-block in the way of the simple, and may He shield our boys and young men from that doctrine of devils that the way of perfection lies through sin."
These words, although they are obviously said without any sympathy whatever for Oscar Wilde, have the germ of truth within them. Strong as they are, and no one who had really studied the whole work and life of Oscar Wilde would perhaps care to make so fierce a statement, they are, nevertheless, words of weight and value. I have no record among my documents of any Catholic priest who dealt with the Christian aspect of "De Profundis" upon its publication. Nevertheless, I have conversed with Christians of all denominations on the subject of Wilde's "discovery" of Christ, and I am certain that I am only representing the Christian point of view when I state that a wholesale condemnation of the doctrines Wilde enunciated is the only thing possible for us. Of the way in which his doctrines were enunciated no one with a literary sense and who takes a joy in fine, artistic achievement, can fail to give a tribute of whole-hearted praise and admiration.
Let us consider.
Morality, philosophy, religion, Wilde has already confessed have no controlling force or power for him. Yet, he takes up the position of those dim and early seekers after the Presence of Divinity. He would see "Jesus." Accordingly, Wilde writes of our Lord very beautifully indeed. He tells us that the basis of "His nature was an intense and flame-like imagination.... There is almost something incredible in the idea of the young Galilean Peasant imagining that he could bear on his own shoulders the burden of the entire world—all that has been done and suffered, and all that was to be done and suffered—and not merely imagining it, but achieving it."
As another Anglican minister, Canon Gorton, appointed out at the time, Wilde states that Christ ranks next to the poets. There is nothing in the highest drama which can approach the last act of Christ's Passion. Our Lord becomes, in Wilde's eyes, the source of all art. He is a requisite for the beautiful. He is in "Romeo and Juliet," in "The Winter's Tale" in Provencal poetry, and in "The Ancient Mariner." "Hence Christ becomes the palpitating centre of romance, He has all the colour elements of life, mystery, strangeness, pathos, suggestion, ecstasy, love."
And then Wilde finally says "that is why he is so fascinating to artists." This summing up of the personality and mission of the Saviour of the world as a mere element in the life of mental or spiritual pleasure enjoyed by those who are cultivated to such a life at all, strikes the Christian man or woman with dismay. It is horrible, this patronising analysis of the Redeemer as another and great Dante, merely a supreme artist to whom artists should bow because of that, and no more.
Wilde, in fact, definitely states that the artistic life means for him the tasting in turn of good and evil, the entertainment of saints and devils, for the sake of extending the circle of his friends. He approaches the Personality of Christ sub specie artis, and only in this way, and his words are the more terrible to the devout Christian because they are so beautiful. Do we not remember, indeed, that once when a young man knelt to our Lord and called Him "good," the Saviour put him aside? Does it not strike one that there is something very nearly blasphemous in the man who had lived the consciously antinomian life that Oscar Wilde lived daring to call the Saviour idyllic, poetic, dramatic, charming, fascinating? Does not the poet use the personality of our Lord as a mere peg on which to hang his own gorgeous and jewelled imagery, a reed through which he should make his own artistic music? Our Lord did not come into the world to win admiration but to win the soul from sin. His appeal was not to our imagination, but to our dormant souls to rouse and strengthen them.
Oscar Wilde writes of Jesus, but there is no Cross. There is a Saviour, but no repentance, no renewal, of life, no effort after Holiness.
It is terrible, indeed, to think of the poor unhappy author striving to appreciate Jesus, though surely even his blind semi-appreciation of the Personality of our Lord was better than none at all, and then to know that even the little germ of truth which seemed to have come into his life was forgotten and pushed away when once more the "appreciator" of Jesus of Nazareth returned to the world.
As an English minister pointed out, the moral of Wilde's attitude towards the Christian Faith is as old as Scripture itself, and as modern as Browning also, who, in the painter's question—"gave art, and what more wish you?" replied—
"To become now self-acquainters,
And paint man, man, whatever the issue,
Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray,
New fears aggrandise the rags and tatters,
To bring the invisible full into play,
Let the visible go to the dogs—what matters?"
Finally we have to ask ourselves what is the precise value of this last legacy Oscar Wilde has left to us? I think it is just this. We have upon our shelves a piece of incomparable prose. I know of nothing written in recent years that comes anywhere near it as an almost flawless work of art. Nobody who cares for English literature or who understands in the least degree, what fine writing is and means, will ever neglect this minor classic. From another point of view also, it has its value. We who appreciate the immense genius of Oscar Wilde and mourn for a wrecked life and the extinction of a bright intellect, will care for and treasure this volume for its personal pathos, its high and serene beauty of expression, and also because, as a psychological document, it throws a greater light upon the extraordinary brain and personality of its author than anything he had written in the past.
INDEX
Æsthetic Movement, [7-9], [12], [19], [22], [29]
Æsthetics—
Art and morality, [337-344]
Art criticism distinguished from, [333]
Meaning and scope of, [332]
Ruskin's teaching regarding, [338-340]
Wilde's belief in his vocation as to, [331];
his writings, [333];
his lectures, [334-336]
America, Wilde's tour in, [18], [29];
quotation from his lectures, [334-336]
Anderson, Miss Mary, [199-200]
Apologia, [269]
Aristotle cited, [342]
Art—
Art's sake, for, [345]
Morality and, [337-344]
Wilde's writings on, [333]
Ave Imperatrix, [248-250]
Ballad of Reading Gaol—
Criticisms of, [285-286]
Dedication of, [287]
Estimate of, [262], [283-284], [298]
Quotations from, [287-297]
Revision of, [286]
Otherwise mentioned, [86], [273]
Ballad parody, [266]
Ballade de Marguérite, [264-265]
Baudelaire, Charles, influence of, on Wilde, [245-246], [258], [273], [274], [282];
quoted, [245], [252;]
Danse Macabre quoted, [274-276]
Baugham, E. A., quoted—on Salomé, [195-197]
Beardsley, Aubrey, [40-41]
Beeching, Canon, quoted—on De Profundis, [387-389]
Berneval, Wilde's life at, [84]
Bernhardt, Mme. Sarah, [161], [187-188];
Wilde's sonnet to, [267]
Birthday of the Infanta, The, [239]
Boswell quoted, [373-374]
Chanson, [265]
Charmides, [263-264]
Currie, Lady, quoted, [285-286]
Daily Chronicle—
"Salomé" Critique in, quoted, [190-192]
Wilde's letters to, cited, [81-84]
Daily Mirror cited, [74]
Daily Telegraph, extract from, [65-68]
D'Aubrevilly, Barbey, quoted, [283]
De Profundis—
Authenticity of, as prison-written, [71-76], [364-365]
Biblical influence, [376-377]
Christ as depicted in, [386-392]
Estimate of, [362], [393]
Extracts from, [359-360], [376], [378], [383-386], [390-391]
Preface to, [366-367]
Press criticisms on, [380]
Publication and reception of, [362-363]
Ross, R., on publication of, [363-366]
Self-revelation in, [360], [379-386]
Sincerity of, [382], [384-385]
Style of, [371-373], [375-378];
Subject matter of, [367-371]
Des Sponettes, [269]
Devoted Friend, The, [229], [233-234]
Dole of the King's Daughter, The, [265]
Dress, rationale of, [14-15]
Duchess of Padua, The—
Anderson, Miss Mary, refusal by, [199-200]
Estimate of, [199], [205-206]
Influences in, [49]
Plot of, [200-204]
Production of, in Berlin, [205]
E Tenebris, [256], [257]
Endymion, [263]
Fairy Stories, the—
Format of 1891 Edition of, [239-240]
Pathos of, [228]
Sacred matters, allusions to, [230-231]
Style of, [229]
Fisherman and his Soul, The, [240-241]
Florentine Tragedy, The—
Plot of, [217-218]
Production of, [215], [216], [219]
Theft of, [215]
Flowers—
Decorative effect of, [45-46]
Wilde's love of, [250-251], [260], [271]
Fortnightly Review—
Ballad of Reading Gaol criticised in, [285-286]
Poems in Prose in, [348]
Soul of Man, The, in, [352]
Fourth Movement, The, [268]
Fyfe, Hamilton, cited, [75]
Garden of Eros, The, [250-253]
Gide, André, [77]
Gorton, Canon, cited, [390]
Grolleau, Charles, estimate of Wilde by, [47-48]
Happy Prince and Other Tales, The, [227-231].
(See also titles of the stories.)
Harlot's House, The, [272-274]
Helas, [248]
Holloway Prison, journalistic account of Wilde in, [59-64]
House decoration, [44-46]
House of Pomegranates, The, [235-239]
Humanitad, [270]
Ideal Husband, The—
Characters of, [129-131]
Estimate of, [129], [148]
Plot of, [131-148]
Importance Of Being Earnest, The—
Estimate of, [149]
Plot of, [150-154]
Quotations from, [154-156]
Reception of, [150], [156]
Otherwise mentioned, [40]
Impression de Voyage, [267]
Impression du Matin, [263]
Impressions de Théâtre, [267]
Incomparable and Ingenious History of Mr W.H., The—
Story of, [320-322]
Theft of, [215], [220], [302]
Theory of, [323-327]
Value of, [322]
Intentions, [49], [336], [337,], [345-348], [375]
Irving, Sir Henry, Wilde's Sonnet to, [267]
Japanese artistic sense, [46]
Johnson, Dr, quoted, [374]
Keats, influence of, on Wilde, [246], [263], [264];
Wilde's epitaph on, [266-267]
La Bella Donna della mia Mante, [263]
Labouchere, H., estimate of Wilde by, [17-19]
Lady Windermere's Fan—
Extracts from, [111-118]
Plot of, [107-109]
Reception of, by the public, [95], [106];
by critics, [104-106]
Le Gallienne, Richard, cited, [336-337]
Le Reveillon, [268]
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, [320]
Madonna Mia, [257]
Magdalen Walks, [262-263]
Meyerfeld, Dr Max, [192-193]
Moonlight, Wilde's sentiment for, [168]
Moore, Sturge, [216]
Morris, Wm., Wilde's estimate of, [251]
Nature, Wilde's love of, [260], [271-272]
Nicholson, Dr, cited, [75]
Nightingale and the Rose, The, [231-232]
Nordau, Dr Max, [9-12];
criticism of Wilde by, [12-16]
Oxford Union debate on the Æsthetic Movement, [39-41]
Panthea, [267-268]
Pater, Walter, quoted, [371-372];
cited, [374]
Pen, Pencil and Poison, cited, [379-380]
Pennington, Harper, portrait of Wilde by, [44]
Picture of Dorian Gray, The—
Epigrams from, in Wilde's plays, [315]
Estimate of, [319]
Extracts from, [312-313], [316-318]
Huysmans' influence in, [49]
Preface to, [303]
Story of, [304-312]
Poe, E. A., influence of, on Wilde, [246], [273]
Poems in Prose, [348-352], [373]
Poems, pastoral, [259-262].
(See also titles of Poems.)
Poetry, Wilde's views as to simplicity in, [246-247]
Precious stones, Wilde's knowledge of, [312]
Proverbs, Wilde's transmutations of, [319]
Punch, [21-22], [38];
bibliography of references to Wilde in, [23-28];
quotations, [29-34], [271]
Queensberry case, [56]
Quia Multi Amori, [269]
Ravenna, [247-248]
Reading Gaol—
Ballad of Reading Gaol, see that title
Cruelties perpetrated in, [81-83]
Wilde's removal to, [370];
his life in, [76-78], [85]
Rebell, Hugues, estimate of Wilde by, [48-50]
Remarkable Rocket, The, [234-235]
Requiescat, [253-254]
Ricketts, C. S., [192], [193], [239-240], [283]
Roman Catholic Church, influence of, on Wilde, [240], [254-255], [258], [272], [315]
Rome Unvisited, [240], [256]
Ross, Robert, quoted—on theft of Wilde's MSS., [215];
on publication of De Profundis, [363-366];
cited, [217];
mentioned, [75]
Rossetti, D. G., influence of, on Wilde, [246], [252], [254], [256-258], [265]
Ruskin, John, quoted, [338-340]
Sage Green, [266]
St James's Gazelle, extract from, [72-74]
Salomé—
Beardsley's illustrations to, [184-185]
Bernhardt, written for, [161];
her dealings regarding, [187-188]
Censor's prohibition of, [187]
Criticisms on, quoted, [190-198]
German popularity of, [365]
Language of, [186]
Production of—in Paris, [188];
in London, [189-193];
in various Continental countries, [193-194];
in Berlin, [195];
in New York, [195]
Stage directions of, [167], [185-186]
Stagecraft of, [181-182]
Story of, [162-180]
Tone of, [183]
San Miniato, [255]
Scott, Clement, criticism by, of Lady Windermere's Fan, quoted, [104], [105]
Selfish Giant, The, [232-233]
Serenade, A, [263]
Shakespeare's influence on Wilde, [264]
Shannon, Mr, [239]
Shaw, G. B., Don Juan in Hell, cited, [121-123], [157]
Sherard, R. H., cited, [6,] [11], [84]
Sibbern, cited, [342]
Simon, J. A., quoted, [39-41,]
Socialism, Wilde's views on, [353]
Soul of Man, The, [235], [352-355]
Sphinx, The, [272], [276-283]
Star-Child, The, [241-242]
Story of an Unhappy Friendship, The, cited, [6]
Style, [246], [371-378]
Swinburne, A. C., Wilde's estimate of, [251]
Symons, Arthur, cited, [333]
Tapestry, Wilde's knowledge of, [313]
Terry, Miss Ellen, Wilde's sonnets to, [267]
Times, The—
Ballad of Reading Gaol praised by, [285]
De Profundis criticised by, [380-381]
Tribune, extract from, [215-217]
Truth, extract from, [69-70]
Vera, or The Nihilists—
Dramatis personæ of, [207-208]
Estimate of, [212-213]
Plot of, [208-212]
Production of, in America, [207]
Wainwright the poisoner, [379]
Wilde, Constance Mary, [235], [248];
quoted, [44-46]
Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills—
Ancestry of, [11]
Appreciation of, growth of, [3-5]
Career of—
first period, [7], [16-42];
second, [42-53],
third, [53-79];
fourth, [79-90];
tour in America, [18], [29];
bankruptcy, [215], [220], [368];
refusal to forfeit his bail, [54-57];
the Queensberry case, [56];
trial and sentence, [65];
Clapham Junction episode, [370];
life in Reading Gaol, [76-78], [85];
release, [76];
last years, [84-88];
death, [88]
Characteristics of—
Charm of manner, [46]
Complexity, [50-51], [79]
Conversational brilliancy, [34], [46], [86], [349]
Eccentricity, [38]
Egoism, [51-52], [349], [382]
Flowers, love of, [250-251], [260]
Generosity, [46], [51]
Humour, [17]
Imaginative faculty, [301]
Kindliness and gentleness, [46], [51], [77]
Language, felicity of, [252], [378]
Loyalty to friends, [53], [55]
Moonlight, sentiment for, [168]
Narrowness of view, [383]
Nature, love of, [260], [271-272]
Perversity and whimsicality, [34]
Profusion and splendour, taste for, [46]
Self-plagiarism, [315]
Versatility, [90], [301]
Wit, [46], [98], [103]
Dramatic powers of—
Brilliancy of dialogue, [95-99], [110]
Plot interest, [97-98]
Reality of characters and scenes, [96], [100], [102]
Estimates of, by—
Grolleau, M. Charles, [47-48]
Labouchere, H., [17-19]
Nordau, Dr Max, [12-16]
Rebell, Hugues, [48-50]
Fiction of, characteristics of, [302-303]
Home of, at Chelsea, [43-44]
Insanity of, [11-12], [91], [382], [384]
Interview with, quoted, [35-38]
Life of, by Sherard, cited, [6]
Literary style of, [371-378]
Portrait of, by Penninton, [44]
Work of, absolutely distinct from private life, [4], [68]
Wilde, William, cited, [55]
Woman Covered With Jewels, The—
Bernhardt, written for, [221]
Loss of MS. of, [220-221]
Plot of, [222-223]
Woman Of No Importance, A—
Characters of, [126-128]
Dialogue of, [120-123]
Plot of, [123-125]
Popularity of, [121-123], [128]
Reception of, [119],
Woman's World, The, Wilde's editorship of, [42]
Words, Wilde's felicitous choice of, [252]