Oscar Wilde the Critic as Artist

8/10/2019 Oscar Wilde the Critic as Artist

1/8

Oscar Wilde: The Critic as ArtistAuthor(s): Fumihiko KatoSource: The Harp, Vol. 1, Second International Conference (1985), pp. 26-32Published by: IASIL-JAPANStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20533293.

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2/8

Oscar

Wilde:

The Critic

as Artist1

Fumihiko

Kato

Kyoto

Women's

University

Critical

assessment is

inevitably

a

form of

reduction. While

it

may

enable

an

emancipation

of

its

object

of

enquiry,

nevertheless

it

con

fines that

object

within

some new

boundary.

In

this

way

a

succession

of

eminent

critics

have

continued

to

reappraise

the nature

and

signifi

cance

of the

critical

writings

of

Oscar

Wilde,

yet

at

each

stage

have failed

to

perceive

or

follow

through

the

full

implications

of their

analyses.

It

was

thus

by

his

sympathy

with

the

organic

imagination

of the

romantic tradition that

Frank Kermode

was

able

to

abstract from

Wilde's critical

dialogues

such

concepts

as

the

autonomy

of

art

and the

coterminousness

of

form and

matter,

to

see a

vital

connection

between

Wilde

and

his

romantic

precursors

on

the

one

hand,

and

to elevate

him

to the

status

of

a

forerunner of modernism

on

the

other.

Today

when

we

have

reached

a

vantage

point

from

which

the

affinities between

writers

once

seen

as

apparently

distinct,

such

as

Walter

Pater

and Wallace

Stevens,

can more

readily

be

perceived

and

acknowledged,

it is

much

easier

to

see

the

connections

made

by

Kermode

than

it

was

twenty

years

ago,

when his

Romantic

Image

was

first

published. Important

ly,

however,

Kermode dismissed

the

overall

characteristic

of the

Wildean

dialogue

as

affectedly

exultant and

confusingly

am

biguous, 2

and

although

this

attitude

may

have

been inevitable

in

the

pioneering

venture

of

rescueing

the

better

part

of the

author's

work

from almost

complete neglect,

it also

seems

to

be

true

that

the

ambivalence

on

the

part

of the

critic arises

from the demand made

on

him of

maintaining

some

standard

of

rationality

as

the

hallmark of

sound criticism.

If,

then,

such

dialogues

as

The Critics

as

Artist

or

The

Decay

of

Lying,

are

to

be

understood

more

in

the

sense

of

something

artistic rather

than

critical and

expository,

we

ought

to

be

able

to

begin

to

do

justice

to

that

particular

quality

of th?

dialogical

discourse,

which

was

been

and

is

generally

disparaged.

For the

standard

of

rationality

or

of

sound

logic

does

not neces

sarily apply

to

the realm of art, and yet it is

precisely

for its

artistic

nature

that the

Wildean

dialogue

seems

to

have

the

greatest

relevance

for

us

today.

In

his

comparative

study

of

the manifesta

tions

of the

artistic

will

as

the

source

of

absolute

freedom

in

the later

nineteenth

century

philosophical-literary

milieu,

Stephen

Donadio

pointed

out

the

difficulty

involved

in

coming

to terms

with

Oscar Wilde

as

a

serious

author and how

Wilde

had often

been

taken for

the

very

opposite

of that

on

the

basis

of

the

largely

mistaken

conventional identifi

cation of

seriousness

and

solemnity.3

Long

before this observation

was

printed,

and

in

fact

even

before Lionel

Trilling,

several

years

earlier,

in

his

Sincerity

and

Authenticity,

had

pointed

out

that neither his

dandyism

nor

his

martyrdom

could

any

longer

obscure Wilde's

^intellectual

significance,4

there

seems

to

have

been

a

marked

change,

if

affecting only

the

minority,

in

the

critical

trends

on

one

side

of

the

Atlantic

at

least

towards

rejecting

what had

once

been

upheld, namely

the

rigorous

dis

tinction

between

the

objective

and the

sub

jective

within the

critical

process.

One notable

instance

of such

a

move,

as we

may

recall,

was

made

by

Susan

Sontag's

essay

Against

Inter

pretation

in

1964.5

With

its

anti-mimetic

spirit,

it

largely

shared

its

basic

assumptions

with the kind of formalism

professed

in

the

two

dialogues

of

Oscar

Wilde

which

sought

to

dislodge

the

conventional

opposition

bet

ween

form and

content.

The other

event

that

marked the

decisive

turn

towards the

open-ended

interpretation

akin

to

the Wildean

doctrines

was

the

symposium

on

The

Lan

guages

of

Criticism and the

Sciences

of

Man 6

held under the

auspices

of Johns

Hopkins

Humanities

Center

in

the fall of

1966,

when

almost all the works of Roland

Barthes,

Jacques

Derrida,

and

Tzvetan

Todorov,

not to

mention

those of

Jean-Francois

Lyotard,

had

yet

to

be

introduced

to

the

English

speaking

audience.

26

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3/8

How

many

of those who

happend

to

witness

Jacque

Derrida

wheeling

his

deconstructive

sword

on

L?vi-Strauss7

have foreseen the

com

ing

of

a

time

when

deconstruction

finds

its

way,

as

it

does,

deep

into the

consciousness

of

scholars

and

critics

regardless

of their

assump

tions? Whether all this has benefited or damag

ed

literary

studies

has

yet

to

be

judged

by

the

generations

to

come,

but

it

is

at least

clear

that

Oscar Wilde

studies have

nothing

to

lose.

Indeed,

very

possibly,

they

may

have

a

lot

to

benefit from

the deconstructive

turn

of mind.

The

prediction

of

Northrop

Frye,

made

in

his Secular

Scripture,

to

the

effect

that

a

new

age

in

literature

heralded

by

Wilde would

take

another

century

to

penetrate

the

aware

ness

of critics,8 has

to

allow for

some

excep

tions

at

least.

Geoffrey

Hartman

and Harold

Bloom

among

others have

shown

the

extent

the

creativity

of criticism

can

take

us

in

their

respective

ways.

Bloom's notion of mis

prision 9

recreates in

a

somewhat

more

esoteric

manner

the

main tenets

of the

two

dialogues,

while Hartman's

answerable

style

as

well

as

his

comparison

of

Wilde

with

Georg

Luk?cs10

is

perhaps

one

of

the

most

serious

critical

responces

that

Wildean

criticism

has

given

rise

to.

And

yet,

neither

Bloom

nor

Hartman

can

be

said

to

have

done

full

justice

to

the

artistic

nature of

Wilde's

critical

writings.

Edward Said

has taken

up

the

same

com

parison

between Wilde and the realist

critic,

but

his

emphasis

on

the

functional

aspect

of

criticism

seems

to

distract further

away

from

the

ontological

condition

of

Wildean

criticism.

Said

upholds

the

critic's task of

discovering,

and then

setting

as

a

standard,

a new

set

of

values

and

ideals,

which,

according

to

him,

must

necessarily

be

epitomized

in

the form

of

the

essay

the

critic

writes

himself. This idea of

the critic

as

the

creator

of

a new

standard

may

be

perfectly

in

line with

the

function

of

the

critic

as

it

was

envisaged

by

Matthew

Arnold

or

T.S.

Eliot,

but

it

is

not

the

central

issue

of the

critic

as

artist

in

the Wildean

sense.

Interestingly enough,

however,

Said

sees a con

nection

between

his

own

notion

of the

re

velatory

and

exemplifying

function

of the

critic and what

R.

P.

Blackmur,

after

G.M.

Hopkins,

called

the

bringing

of

literature

to

performance.

According

to

the

author

of

The

World,

the

Text,

and the

Critic,

the

critic

is

responsible

for

finding,

and

exposing

or

giving

articulation

to

that

which

is

hidden

in

the

texts

but silenced

under

a

system

of

forces

institutionalized

by

the dominant

culture.11

In

the ultimate status accorded to the hidden but

veritable

presence

of voices

or

the

immanent

meaning,

he

is

simply betraying

his

own so

called

logocentric

bias.

Although

Wilde did

espouse

the

expressive

or

revelatory

nature

of

art

in

De

Profundis,

we

should

not

under

estimate

how

he could

equally

go

to

the

other

extreme

as

he does

in

The Critic

as

Artist

in

which

Gilbert

gives

flamboyant

expression

to

the

view

that

performance,

whether

musical

or

dramatic,

is

a

realization of the

performer's personality

rather

than

that

of the

original

composer.

As

we

may

recall,

this

is

a

position

in

accord

with

his

impressive

theory

of

art

according

to

which

the function

of the

critic

as

interpreter,

to

show

a new

relevancy

of

a

work

to

his

own

age,

is

designated

to

be

the

secondary.

In

spite

of the similarities in

terminology,

Wilde's

notion

of the

performative

nature

of

art

seems

to

be radically different

from

Said's,

or

either from

Hopkins's

or

Blackmur's12

for

that

matter.

Wilde's

impressionistic theory

of

art is in

fact much

in

keeping

with twentieth

century

awareness

of

literature

as

event rather

than

as

substantive

entity

to

be

deciphered:

an

awareness

to

be found

among

the

critics

of

such

diverse

persuasions

as

Jean-Paul

Sartre,

Georges

Poulet,

Hans

Robert

Jauss,

Wolfgang

Iser,

Louise

Rosenblatt,

Michael

Riff

aterre,

Norman

Holland,

and

Stanley Fish.13

As for

the affinities and

repulsions

that

are to

be

found between Wilde's critical ideas and

those

of the reader-oriented

theoreticians, any

dis

cussion

must

inevitably

end

up

in

a

hair

splitting quibble

which

is

out

of

our

present

concern.

It

may

suffice

here

to

point

out

the

crucial difference between Wilde

and those

critics.

The former

is

peculiarly

marked

by

his

lack

of

tenacity

and

earnestness

in

sustaining

any point

of

view

as

absolutely

true

and

final,

while

the latter

are

full of

enthusiams

which is

quite

alien

to the

mercurial

spirit

of

the

Wildean

dialogue.

27



4/8

Ren?

Wellek's remains

the

most

rigorous

and

comprehensive

attempt

at

abstracting

Wilde's

critical

contentions,

and

is

typically

ambivalent

in its attitude toward the

nature

of

his

writings.

The

line of

appraisal

this

representative

critic

of the older

generation

follows

in

his

celebrat

ed A

History of

Modern

Criticism: 1975

195014

can

be

fairly

neatly

summarized

as

follows.

In the first

place,

he

points

to

what

he

takes

to

be the

most

notable demerits

in

Wilde's

writings,

characterising

them

as an

inconsistency

in

argumentation

and

an

ir

ritatingly

unbalanced

style. Secondly,

Wellek

rather

condescendingly

acknowledges

that the

irrationality

involved

both

in

the

style

and

content

of Wildean criticism does

in

fact

reveal

issues

otherwise hidden

by

reasoned

argumentation

and the

conscientious

weighing

of

pros

and cons. It

was

his

style

of

juggling

and

flippancy, according

to

Wellek,

that

gave

Wilde

range

and

scope

and made

him the

representative

figure

of the

English

aesthetic

movement.

Thirdly

and

in

order

to

facilitate

some

kind

of

historical

comparison

and dimen

sion,

Wellek

sees

Wilde's

contentions

as

falling

within three

basic

categories:

a) panaestheti

cism;

b)

the

autonomy

of

art;

and

c)

decorative

formalism. The first

category

includes

the

whole

variety

of assertions

scattered

among

Wilde's works

in

such

essays

as

The

Decay

of

Lying

with

its

anti-mimetic,

mythopoeic

principles,

The

Soul

of

Man Under Socialism

with

its

imposition

of artistic criteria

even on

government,

The Critic

as

Artist

with

its

exaltation

of

the

life of

contemplation

over

the

life of

conduct,

and

finally,

De Profundis

with its

analogy

drawn

between Christ

and

a

work

of

art.

For this

representative

critic of

the older

generation,

the

second

category

is

indisputable

so

far

as

it

remains

in

concord

with what

he

deems

to

be

the

central

tenet

of the

great

idealist

tradition,

the

union

of

form and

content,

that

is.

Much

to

Wellek's

deep

regret,

however,

this idea

of the

autonomy

of

art

tends

to

degrade

itself

into

an

allegedly

false formalism

in

Oscar

Wilde's

case,

which

places

too

high

a

stake

on

decorative

arabesques

on the one

hand,

and leads to an unfounded

identification

with

autobiography,

on

the

other.

The

third

category

called decorative for

malism

is

simply

there

for

Wellek

to

deplore.

The

adjectives

deployed

by

him

in

relation

to

decorative

art

are,

however,

not

so

much

descriptive

of

the

art

they syntactically

qualify

as

of

the

personal

nature

of

judgment

on

the

part

of the

great

theorist

himself:

false,

mere,

sheer,

and

empty.

It

is

important

to note

the

unconscious

contradiction

Wellek

has fallen

into in

his

assumption

of the

super

iority

of

idealist aesthetics

over

the

decorative.

What

Wellek found

most

repellant

among

Wildean

doctrines

was

the

autobiographical

nature the

criticism is

claimed

to

have.

But

he

seems

to

have

been

quite

unaware as

to

how

completely

his

own

personal

history

con

ditioned and

was

reflected

in

his

aesthetic

preferences.

Needless

to

say

there

is

no

more

warrant

for the

superiority

of the

idealist

theory

of

art,

than

there

is

one

for

presuming

the

preeminence

of

decorative

art-of

the

Celtic

or

Japanese

tradition,

say.

That

is

just

a

matter

of

personal

taste

which

is

as

autobiographical

as

one's

prejudices

or

sympathies.

But

there

is

no

way

to

call

it

willful

or

fantastic

as

Wellek

does the

Wildean

theory

of

the

subjective

nature

of

criticism.

For,

after

all,

are

not

critical

judgments

so

many

choices and

deci

sions

which

are

by

definition

arbitrary,

ac

cidental,

or

existential

if

you

will,

and

as

personal

and

subjective

as

one's beliefs?

We should

finally

but

very

quickly,

em

phasise

here the

significance

of

the

part

played

by

Wilde's

paradoxical

contradictions

in

style

and

content.

These

are

not

something

that

went

unnoticed

by

Wellek. But

it is not

as

he

suggests

in

spite of

but

because

of

the

irrationally

paradoxical

nature

of them

that

the

critical

writings

of

Oscar

Wilde

can

be

more

relevant

to

us

today

than

they

could

been

to

any genera

tion

before

us.

Our

own

age

is

one

which has

witnessed

virtually

every

paradigmatic

opposi

tions

reinterpreted

and

dismantled,

and tradi

tional values

and

categories

exchange

their

relative

ascendancies.

It

would

not

be

an

overstatement to

say

that

most of

the

inver

sions and

dismountings

of

oppositions

which

have taken

place during

the last

seventy

years

or so

have

their

counterparts

in

Oscar Wilde's

writings.

The

development

of

the

linguistic

and

28



5/8

semiological

turn

of

mind,

in

particular,

can

be said

to

have been

prefigured

in

the

kind

of

antinomian

formalism manifest

in

Wilde.

Lying

and

truth-telling,

for

instance,

could

never

have

been

expected

to

be

set

over

against

each

other

with the

lying

taking

the

ascendancy

in

the

Platonic-Christian

context.

Once

the

signifi

cance

of

lying

is

reinterpreted,

as

it

has

been,

and the

fabricating ability

of human

language

is

set

against

the mimetic

function

of

it,

which

the

truth-telling

is

now

identifiable

with,

the

opposing

terms

do take

on

a

different

hierarchy

with

lying

asserting

its

superiority

over

the

other

term. For the

fiction-making,

the

creat

ing-otherness

is

arguably

the last

resort

the

living

organism

is

left

with

in its

struggle

against gravity

and

repose

as

George

Steiner

tersely

summed

up

in

After

Babel15

One

conspicuous exception

we

would have

to

acknowledge

is

the

opposition

between

speaking

and

writing

which

Wilde did

not

overturn,

but affirmed

in

favor

of

speaking.

But

here

again,

in

his

categorical

negation

of

spontaneous

poetry

as

such and

in

his

detecting

the

alleged

penetration

of the

conscious,

critical

operations deep

into the most

primitive

of

poetry,

it

will

not

be

difficult

to

see an

almost

disconcerting

isomorphism

with

Jacques

Derrida's

notion

of

archi-writing

or

dif

f?rance.16

But

to

verify

this

means

another

paper

itself.

We

may

now

turn to a

consideration of the

criticism-creation

relationship

which lies

at

the

heart

of the

colloquy

The Critic

as

Artist.

In

pointing

out

those three

views

as

the

con

stants

in

the

critical

theory

of

Wilde,

Rene

Wellek

did

not

fail

to

blame what

he

deemed

to

be

inconsequential

shifts

among

them

which

made for

the

difficulty

on

the

part

of the

reader

to

follow the

argument.

In

fact

the shift

is

only

one

of the

many

aspects

of the

way

wardness

of the

dialogical

process

which

many

others have

found

annoying

and

complained

about. Just

as

in

many

other

crucial

turning

points,

the shift

takes

place

during

the

dis

cussion

of

the

central

issue

of the

dialogue,

that

is the

alleged

creative

nature

of

the

criticism.

It

is

essential

to

take

into

account how the

dialogue

moves

from

one

point

of

view

to

another

without

substantially

terminating

the

arguments

on

any,

not

to

mention

reaching

an

agreement,

in

order

to

grasp

the

dialogic

strategy

involved

here,

which

is

significantly

different

from

the

one we

are

accustomed

to

in the

Platonic

dialogues.

Gilbert has

expounded

on

the

critical

faculty

of

selection,

which

is

rather

reminiscent

of

Matthew

Arnold's

sense

of the

critical

power.

Without

having

come

to

any

agreement

on

the

relative

value of

it

vis-?-vis

what

Ernest,

his

interlocutor,

believes

to

be

the

superior

faculty,

that

of

creation,

his

discourse drifts

into

another

realm of

opposition;

the

opposi

tion

between literature and

life,

linguistic

representation

and

action,

and his

argument

further deflects

into

another

opposition,

that

is

the

one

between moral and

immoral actions

which he

proceeds

to

invert in

favor of

the

immoral,

only

to come

back

to

the

earlier

opposition

between

description

and

action.

The

initial

shift

takes

place

under the

nose

of

the

interlocutor,

or

of the

reader for that

matter,

through

the medium of

the double

meaning

of

two

phrases.

Ernest,

when

provoked

by

Gilbert's assertion of the

critical

over

against

the

creative

faculty,

says:

After

all,

even

you

must

admit

that

it

is

much

more

difficult

to do

a

thing

than

to

talk

about it.

It

should

be

obvious

that

by

the

phrase

to do

a

thing

Ernest

meant

the

actual

creative

activity,

and

by

to

talk

about

it,

the

critical.

But

when

Gilbert

takes

up

the

phrases

he

employs

another

set

of

meanings

to

shift

the

opposition

into

another

ground:

to

do

a

thing

in

actual

life

means

action,

and

to

talk

about

it,

linguistic

representation

of

the

action. It is

very

much

more

difficult,

retorts

Gilbert,

to talk

about

a

thing

than

to

do it.

In

the

sphere

of

actual

life

that

is of

course

obvious.

Anybody

can

make

history.

Only

a

great

man

can

write

it.

The last

statement

is

arrived

at

by

means

of

metaleptic

conversion,

or

by

the

deployment

of

a

m?tonymie

restatement

of

the

phrases

which

were

metaphorical

restatements

themselves.

The

slippage

of

meaning

first

through

the

metaphorical

or

paradigmatic

axis,

then the

projection

of

the

newly

highlighted

sense

onto

a

new

syntagma

tic

one.

To

put

it

anotherway,

there is

here

a

deliberate

confusion of the

rhetorical

and

the

logical

which

is

being

29



6/8

creatively

exploited by

Gilbert's

discourse.

Metalepsis

is

one

of

the

ploys

human

language

is

naturally

endowed

with for

the

multiple

articulations

of the world

out

of

the

basically

limited

number of

fragmentary

units.

What

is

called

bricolage

in

structuralist

anthropology17

is a good enough illustration of the creative

potential

of

the

metaleptic

process.

Another

form

of

aberration

from

logical

ratiocination arises

when Gilbert

abruptly

brings

up

the identification of criticism with

creation,

by

saying

criticism

is itself

an

art.

And

just

as

artistic

creation

implies

the

working

of

the critical

faculty,

and

indeed without

it

it

cannot

be said

to

exist

at

all,

so

criticism

is

really

creative

in the

highest

sense

of the

word.

Criticism

is,

in

fact,

both

creative

and inde

pendent,

In

these words and

much

more

that follow the

two

are

said

to

be

identical

on

two

grounds.

One

is:

because neither

is

constrained

by

the standard

of

faithfulness

to

their

object,

in other

words

by

outside

reference.

(This,

needless

to

say,

is

what

the

main

thesis of The

Decay

of

Lying

and the

Wildean

impressionism

of The

Critic

as

Artist

are

boiled

down

to.)

And

the second: because

both

creation and criticism

use

as

their

mate

rials

elementary

creations

by

the hands

of

other

creators.

The

equation

is

obviously

carried

out

by

neglecting

all

the irrelevant

factors

which

otherwise

make

for

the

distinctive

features of

the

two

respectively.

The

arbitrary neglect

is

a

form of reduction

which

may

even

be

com

pared

to what

is

understood

by

phenomenologi

cal

bracketting.

And

this

process

can

be traced

behind

any

kind of formalism whether

literary,

philosophical,

or

linguistic,

and

the

reversal

of

the

relative

value of form and

content

within

the

Symbolist

context,

for

instance,

could

not

have

been

possible

without this.

And

then,

surprisingly enough,

Wilde's

colloquist

jumps

onto

his

next

assertion: the

superiority

of

one

of

the

parties

he

has

just

contended

to

have

one

and the

same

status

as

the

other. The

criticism

is

said

to

be

superior

to

creation

because

one

is

impressive

in

princi

ple

and

the other

mimetic.

That

this

is

a com

pletely self-contradicting

comparison

is

too

obvious:

he

is

distorting

his

comparison

into

an

unfair

weighing

of the

relative value with

the

ideally

superior

member of

a

class

on one

end of the scale and

with

the

inferior

member

of

another

on

the other. What

happened,

one

may

justly

wonder,

to

the

paragons

of

non

mimetic creation he has

earlier commended:

Homer,

Shakespeare,

Keats?

No wonder

so

many readers have complained about the

inconsistency

involved

in

his

discourse. And

his

later

admission of

the

insincerity

of

the

critic,

and

his

appreciation

of

incompleteness

per

se

as

the

factor that makes the

critic

develope

permanently

and

makes

beauty complete,

give

only

a

false

impression

of the

coherence

of his

argument.

Relying

on a

logical

point

of

view

as

the

basis

for

their critical

analyses,

not

only

Wellek

but

most

of

the

critics

I have

mentioned

so

far,

have

been

destined

to

find the

dialogues

of

Wilde

more

or

less

an

assemblage

of alien

parts,

each

of

which

remains

an

independent

exposition

of

a

thesis

rather

than

a

step

towards

a

larger

unit of

argument.

Edward

Roditi

was

the first critic

who

pointed

this

out in

the

comparison

he

made

between

the

Platonic

dialogues

and

Wilde's

in

his

monograph

on

this

then-largely-forgotten

artist in

1947.18

He

was

not

wide

of

the mark

in

pointing

out

the

fragmentary

nature

Wilde's

dialogues

must

inevitably

present

against

the

Platonic

norm.

And

the

discourse

of

Wilde's

protagonist

is

characterized

by

its

apparently

whimsical recoils from

dialectical

debate

on

the

one

hand,

and

by

sudden

bursts

of

colorful

tirades which

are

more

vulnerable

to

counter

arguments

than

overwhelmingly

persuasive

on

the

other.

In

short

his is

not

the

well-manuever

ed

strategy

of

Socrates

whose

deliberate

ques

tioning

is

designed

to

lead his

opponents

to

the

admission of

the truths

they

have hitherto been

unaware

of.

But

we

must

here

insist

that this

first substantial critic

on

Wilde's

literary

achievement

was

not

doing justice

to

the

raison

d'?tre

of his

dialogues

when

he

makes

an

un

warranted inference that Wilde seemed

to

have

been

obscurely

aware

of

the weaknesses of his

own

dialectics,

or

again,

when

he

refers

to the

alleged

failure

on

the

part

of the

author

to

achieve

his

high

aim

in

the

dialogues

as

in

other

writings

where he

emmulated classical

models.

Obviously,

Wilde's

aim

was not

dialectical

elucidation

as

such. It

was

only

within

the

30



7/8

logocentric

tradition

that the

perfection

of

metaphysical

logic

was

erroneously

identifed,

as was

done

by

Roditi,

as

Wilde's

goal.

Wildean

coloquys

with

their

inconsistencies

and self

contradictions,

together

with

all

the

other

so

called

critical

writings

of him

propounding,

as

often

as

not,

for

contradictory

theses

among

themselves,

never

contribute

to

the

verification

of

any

single

truth,

but

prevent

any

of the

inversions

of values

from

rigidifying

into

new

orthodoxies

in

their

turn.

All

of those

means

of

inconsistency,

logical

aberration,

and

contradiction,

constitute

the

process

of creation which

is

nothing

more

than

an

endless

process

of

self-differentiation

or

becoming

in

a

cozier

term.

With

Wilde's

notion

of

the

essential

incompleteness

of

art

this self

differentiation

seems

to

emancipate

literature

from

the

burden

of

the

principle

of

outside

reference

and almost achieves

the innocence

of

pure

play

similar

to

the

kind

of

play

classified

as

ilinx

or

the

vertiginous

by Roger

Caillois

in

Man,

Play,

and

Games.19

Almost

but

not

quite,

a

deconstructionist

may

say.

It is

difficult

to

overlook the

pr?sense

of

one

trascendental

dimension

which

is

kept

untouched

by

the flux

of

changing

terms in

the

Wildean

universe.

The

name

given

to

that

transcendence

is,

of

course,

Beauty,

and

its

human

counterpart

is

called

the soul. The

privilege

the

pair enjoys

undergoes

little

change

throughout

Wilde's

writings,

and

all

the

binary

oppositions

with each

contradicting

terms

shift

ing

its relative

validity

are

maintainable

as

significant oppositions

only

by being

presided

over,

as

it

were,

by

the

transcendental

terms.

So

long

as

their

absolute

status was

never

put

under

a

sceptical

scrutiny

by

this

otherwise

deconstructive

precursor,

the

comparison

often

made

between

him

and

Nietzsche

must

neces

sarily

be

a

limited

one.

For

Wilde

Beauty

embodied

whatever

good

God

or

the

One

in the

Platonic

tradition

has

represented.

We

can

rest

assured,

if

we

like,

of the

fundamentally

monistic

sensibility

Wilde

never

parted

with,

even

under

the

guise

of

pluralism

manifest

in

his

style

of

writing

as

well

as

in

his

doctrines.

And

yet,

quite fortunately

for

thoe

who

admire his

artistic

style,

pluralism

was

enhanced

and

was

given

even

more

in

tensity

by

virture

of the

strength

of

his

monistic

under-pinning.

Pluralism

reveals

as

well

as

conceals his monism. It remains

Wilde's

ultimate

mask.

The

creative nature

of the

writings

of

the

author of The

Decay

of

Lying

rests

on

the

same

kind

of

logical indeterminacy

as

that

which

is

demonstrated

by

that

now-over

strained

Epimenides paradox:

All

Cretans

are

liars. 20

As

for the abstractable

contents

of

his

writings,

they

should

remain

ambiguous.

In

his

recent

article

in New

Literary

History,

Norman

Holland

arrived

at the

conclusion

that

creation

and

interpretation

are

coterminous

and

inseparable

through

his

analysis

of Robert

Frost's

writings.21

But

to

read

it

and

go

through

his

interdisciplinary

ratiocinations

conscientiously weighing

pros

and

cons

in

one's

mind,

should be

and is

a

distinctly

dif

ferent

experience

from one's

musing

over

Wilde's

dialogical performance

in

that

superbly

rich,

rhythmical

movement which

betokens

the

liar's

discourse

in

the Wildean

sense.

Critics

dealing

with Wilde's

writings

should

constantly

remind themselves

of the

fact

that

they

are

in

exactly

the

same

situation

as

they

would be

in

when

confronted

with

the

Cretan's

paradox.

If

one

is

willing

to

sit

over

the

Wildean dia

logues

once

in

a

while

and

go

through

the

vertiginous

journey

through

their

strange,

loop

ing

route,

one

can

do

without the

deconstruc

tive

hvffiene.

Notes

1

This

is

a

slightly

revised version

of

my

paper

presented

at

the

Second International Con

ference

of

IASAIL-JAPAN under the

title

Some

Implications

of the

Criticism

of

Oscar Wilde.

2 Frank

Kermode,

Romantic

Lmage

(London:

Routledge

&

Kegan

Paul,

1957),

pp.

44-47.

3

Stephen

Donadio, Nietzsche,

Henry

James,

and

the

Artistic

Will

(New

York: Oxford

Univ.

Press),

p.

53.

4

Lionel

Trilling,

Sincerity

and

Authenticity

(Cambridge,

Mass.

& London:

Harvard Univ.

Press),

p.

118.

5

Susan

Sontag,

Against Interpretation

(New

York: Farrar

Straus,

1966).

6 See

Richard

Macksey

&

Eugenio

Donato,

eds.,

The

Languages

of

Criticism

and

the

31



8/8

Sciences

of

Man

(Baltimore

&

London:

The

Johns

Hopkins

Univ.

Press,

1970).

7

Jacques

Derrida,

Structure,

Sign,

and

Play

in

the

Discourse

of

the Human

Sciences,

ibid., pp.

247-65.

8

Northrop Frye,

The Secular

Scripture:

A

Study of

the

Structure

of

Romance

(Cam

bridge,

Mass.,

& London:

Harvard

Univ.

Press,

1976),

p.

46.

9

See Harold

Bloom,

The

Anxiety

of

In

fluence:

A

Theory

of

Poetry

(London:

Oxford

Univ.

Press,

1973),

and A

Map

of

Misreading

(London

&

New York:

Oxford

Univ.

Press,

1975)

10 See

Geoffrey

Hartman,

Criticism

in

the

Wilderness: The

Study

of

Literature

Today

(New

Haven & London: Yale Univ.

Press,

1980).

11

Edward

Said,

The

World,

the

Text,

and the

Critic

(Cambridge,

Mass.:

Harvard

Univ.

Press,

1983),

Ch. 1.

12

Cf.

Said, pp.

4Iff.

13 See

J.P.

Sartre,

Qu'est-ce

que

la

litt?rature?

(Paris:

Gallimard,

1948);

Georges

Poulet,

Phenomenology

of

Reading,

in

New

Literary

History,

1(1969),

53-68;

U.R.

Jauss,

Literaturgeschite

als

Provokation

(Frankfurt:

Suhrkamp,

1970),

Literary

History

as a

Challenge

to

Literary

Theory,

trans.,

Elizabeth

Benzinger,

in

New

Literary

History,

2

(1970),

7-37;

Wolfgang

Iser,

Indeterminacy

and the

Reader's

Response

in

Prose

Fiction,

in

Aspects

of

Narrative,

ed.,

J.H. Miller

(New

York:

Columbia

Univ.

Press,

1971),

pp.

1-45,

The Act

of

Reading:

A

Theory of

Aesthetic

Response

Baltimore:

The Johns

Hopkins

Univ.

Press,

1978);

Louise

Rosenblatt,

The

Reader,

the

Text,

the Poem: The Transactional

Theory of

the

Literary

Work

(Carbondale:

Southern

Illi

nois Univ,

Press,

1978);

Michael

Riffatere,

Semiotics

of

Poetry

(Bloornington:

Indiana

Univ.

Press,

1978);

Norman

Holland,

The

Dynamics

of

Literary

Response

(New

York:

Oxford Univ.

Press,

1968),

5

Readers

Reading

(New

Haven: Yale Univ.

Press,

1975);

Stanley

E.

Fish,

Is There

a

Text in

This

Class?:

The

Authority of

Interpretive

Communities

(Cambridge,

Mass.:

Harvard

Univ.

Press,

1980).

For other reader-ori

ented

theories

see,

the

two

collections

of

essays:

J.P.

Tompkins,

ed.,

Reader-Response

Criticism

(Baltimore

& London:

The Johns

Hopkins

Univ.

Press,

1980);

S.R.

Suleiman

&

Inge

Crosman, eds.,

The

Reader

in

the

Text:

Essays

on

Audience

and

Interpretation

(Princeton:

Princeton Univ.

Press,

1980).

14

Ren?

Wellek,

A

History

of

Modern

Criti

cism:

1975-1950,

IV

(London:

Jonathan

Cape,

1966),

pp.

407-16.

15

George Steiner, After

Babel:

Aspects of

Language

and

Translation

(London,

Oxford,

&

New

York:

Oxford Univ.

Press,

1975),

p.

222.

16 See

Jacques

Derrida,

Of

Grammatology\

trans.,

G.C.

Spivak

(Baltimore

&

London:

The Johns

Hopkins

Univ,

Press,

1974),

Margins of

Philosophy,

trans.

Alan

Bass

(Chicago:

Univ.

of

Chicago

Press,

1982),

pp.

1?27,

and

Speech

and Phenomena and

Other

Essays

on

HusserVs

Theory

of

Signs,

trans.

D.B. Allison

(Evanston:

Northwestern

Univ.

Press,

1973).

17

Cf.

Claude

L?vi-Strauss,

The

Savage

Mind

(Chicago:

Univ.

of

Chicago

Press,

1966),

p.

150.

18

Edouard

Roditi,

Oscar Wilde

(Norfolk:

New

Directions,

1947).

19

Roger

Caillois, Man,

Play,

and

Games,

trans.,

Meyer

Barash

(New

York:

Free

Press of

Glencoe,

1961).

20

See

Douglas

Hofstadter,

G?del,

Escher,

Bach:

An

Eternal

Golden

Braid

(New

York:

Basic

Books,

1979).

21

Norman

Holland,

The Brain

of

Robert

Frost

m

New

Literary History,

15

(1984),

365-85.

32

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Date post:	02-Jun-2018
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Oscar Wilde the Critic as Artist

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