Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-03-28
OSCAR WILDE.

OSCAR WILDE.
The Iealers OF the RECORD. UNION en-
joyed, yesterday morning, very graphic
description of Oscar Wilde, together with
some passing insight into his views. II
must be said that even to those who have
heard or read his lectures, it is by no means
easy to obtain definite conception of his
purposes. Somehow when Art is the sub
ject, all clearness of thought and express
sion vanishes, and an esthetic transcend
entalism takes its place, and seems to seek
to compensate for the want of sense by
the profuse exhibition of adjectives. Oscar
Wilde is an educated man, and not want
| ing in cleverness. He has written a yoiume
of poetry which, apart from It's :" feshli-
"ness," possesses considerable merit. and
shows him to be possessed of creative
imagination and talent for versification.
Whose endeavors, in all simplicity, to dis
cover through Lis poems what it is that
his cult is supposed to add to civilization,
however, is apt to reach the rather bewil-
dering conclusion that it covers the free
employment of that kind of treatment of
sexual relations which Philistines would
call lascivious. Mr.. Wilde defends him.
self against adverse criticism on this point
by asserting that in Art there is no ques-
tion of right or wrong, of good or evil, OF
moral or immoral, but that the only ques.
ton is whether the thing is well or badly
performed. This is certainly speeious
defense, but it does not really touch the
point at issue. For if Art is above and
beyond all moral considerations, it yet re-
mains to be explained why the school
represented by Mr.. Wilde has. while os-
tensibly pursuing Art alone, been so pow
erfully drawn to those manifestations of it
which appeal far less to the intellect than
to the senses.
Mr.. Wilde would probably say that true
and complete Art can only satisfy the In
tellect by satisfying the Senses also. No
doubt it is always dangerous to play with
words which do not really stand for clearly
separable and defnable things, and all
talk about the Intellect and the Senses is
apt to end in barren disputations after the
manner OF the schoolmen. But to get
away from such verbal stumbling blocks
it may be as well to change the terms of
the proposition, and say that Mr.. Wilde's
poetry seems to appeal to the lower
rather than the higher attributes of the
reader, and that this dees not suggest the
best outcome of the highest Art. And
this we take to be the most serious defect
in the whole system of the new school. Its
| plea for the untrammeled freedom of Art
might be allowed if only its Art did not
insist upon taking instant advantage of
this freedom to walk naked through the
public streets. II we were to trace this
movement back to its origin we should proba-
bly, find that it is really a revolt against
that conventional morality which, owing its
doctrines to Christian asceticism, has for SO
many centuries repressed and fettered Art,
and sought, as in Thompson's powerful
and suggestive poem, ''The Naked God
dess, to cub and smother the free pro-
portions of Nature under its barbarous
and superstitious garments. But it is the
fault of the new school that even in max
ing this claim for the enfranchisement of
Art they display their own thraldom to the
conventional morality they affect to de-
spise, for their endeavors to demonstrate
their independence of it issues in an immor-
atty which is far from being the nobly
passionless purity Of Nature which is in
truth but the obvefse OF the picture the
esthetes seek to repudiate.
Mr.. Wildes poem Charmides, fully
illustrates our meaning. There are many
beautiful verses in that poem, but its mo-
tive and its whole tendency are earthly
and sensual-not in pure esthetic sense,
but in the sense of being positively sala-
cious. We take Mr.. Wilde's poems rather
than his lectures, because in the latter he
is only seeking to interest the world in
Art in an abstract way, whereas in the
former we must certainly have his INNER
most ideas of how this Art ought to infu-
epce Poetry and Life. And judging his
school by its poetry, we express the opin-
ion that it is not calculated to effect any
| considerable improvement in human civil
ization, or to add in any appreciable way
to the sweetness and light " of its gen.
Grafton. We are not inclined to Prudish-
ness. We do not believe in Asceticism
We entertain little respect for the Conven-
tional Morality of the times. We appreci.
ciate the Importance of an entranchised
Art. But it nevertheless seems to US that
the reforms which are most desirable are not
in the direction of an increase in the spe-
cially Sensual aspects of Art that reac.
ton against Asceticism need not take
the form of plunge into Obscenity that
it is possible for Nature to be relieved of
her letters without parading her in an os-
| bNhShstOuSiJ hudO oOa1O buat 10 NV
together good Art, from any tenable stand
point, to confuse Lust and Liberty that
little benefit in an intellectual or any other
way can come of surrender to the falla.
cious notion entertained by our new school
concerning the Ancient Greeks-to wit
that those people were absorbed in esthetic
culture OF the modern kind, combined with
an erotic abandonment quite their own.
So much for Mr.. Wilde's poetry. As
regards his gospel of Art, that which is
mos. true in it is certainly not new, and
that which is new is by no means certainly
true. 1t is no doubt good thing to cult.
vate love of the beautiful, but when it is
asserted that the term beautiful applies
prominently to sunhowers and lilies and
storks and Anglo-Saxon attitudes" it is
in order to demur to the position. As to
the theory that Labor can be estheticized,
we fear that Mr.. Wilde has here got
beyond his depth. The labor by which
the majority OF men earn their bread is Of