THE OSCHOLARS

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Issue no 44: May 2008

AND I ? MAY I SAY NOTHING ?

Responses to reviews; Abstracts of papers; Essays

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Annabel Rutherford: Wilde, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes
Madeleine Humphreys and Michael Patrick Gillespie Cross Swords
Floortje Zwigtman: Tricks of the Trade, a précis
Four abstracts of conference papers on Oscar Wilde i. Juan Ignacio Oliva Cruz: ‘Wilde’s Shadow in Jamie O’Neill’s Epic Narratives’ ii. Florina Tufescu: ‘Beyond the Myth of Solitary Authorship: The Collaborative Genius of Wilde, Joyce, O’Brien et al’ iii. Antonio José Couso Liañez: ‘Wilde’s Proposal for Literature: the Importance of Beauty and Reception’ iv. Norbert Lennartz: ‘Two Responses to the Horrors of Modern Trash Culture: Oscar Wilde and George Gissing’ plus a link to abstracts from papers on ‘The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe’
Leila Johnston: De Profundis – Some First Impressions
Kawinthra Luck: Influence gone Wilde

Seducing the Audience, Confounding the Censor:

Oscar Wilde’s Influence on the Creation of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes

Annabel Rutherford

Paper presented at ‘The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe’, Trinity College, Oxford, 8th-9th March 2008

The tremendous impact that Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (1909-1929) made on twentieth-century western arts has been well documented by scholars. Rarely has a theatre art made such an impact on society. And this influence spread beyond theatre directors, composers, designers, and artists to literature. Diaghilev caught the attention of such writers as Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Jean Cocteau, the Sitwells, the Bloomsbury group in general, and, of course, D. H. Lawrence. While this has all been noted in biographies and memoirs, limited scholarship exists as to possible influences on Diaghilev and his creation of the Ballets Russes. Why would a man who had aligned himself with sumptuous and highly successful art exhibitions and demonstrated such a strong passion for opera turn to ballet?

Any attempt to answer such a question requires an exploration of the events in Diaghilev’s life from his St. Petersburg years to the Paris years and the early seasons of the Ballets Russes (1909-1913). In such a study, one name recurs: Oscar Wilde – in person, in writing, and in spirit. A review of Diaghilev’s career between 1895 and 1913 together with a textual study of some early ballets suggests that Wilde may have been a stronger influence on Diaghilev and the creation of the Ballets Russes than has previously been noticed.

In 1890, the eighteen-year-old Diaghilev arrived in St. Petersburg where his cousin Dima Filosofov introduced him to an elite circle of young artists led by Alexander Benois. They were later to become known as the World of Art group. As the group expanded, its members shared a passion for the visual, performing, and literary arts. Their interests lay in the new artistic trends occurring in Western Europe and the rejuvenation of their own national art. Within a few years, Diaghilev took command, declaring ‘the moment ripe to unite and, as one, take up our place in the life of European art.’[1] Two years later, 1898, high on the success of a major art exhibition in St Petersburg, the group published the first issue of their influential journal Mir Iskusstva (World of Art). But in those preceding years, Diaghilev’s passion for art and opera took him on several trips across Europe to enhance his cultural education and procure paintings for his personal collection.

In the summer of 1897, Diaghilev made a trip to Dieppe where he met with Aubrey Beardsley. Benois records this meeting in his memoirs, explaining that the purpose of Diaghilev’s visit was to meet Wilde.[2] Certainly, the timing coincides with Wilde’s release from Reading gaol. By the time Diaghilev reached Dieppe, however, Wilde had moved along the coast to Berneval, living under his pseudonym Sebastian Melmoth, and Diaghilev’s hopes for a meeting with the author that summer were dashed. Since it is unlikely that the young Russian would have been aware of any awkwardness between author and illustrator of Salomé, he may well have expected to meet the two men together – indeed both had recently been staying at the Hôtel Sandwich. While a meeting occurred between Diaghilev and Beardsley, it was to be several more months before Diaghilev was to meet Wilde.

Within weeks of Wilde’s resurfacing in society (February 1898), Diaghilev made a trip to Paris where he met the author. Wilde refers to this event in a letter to Smithers dated ‘circa 4 May, 1898: ‘There is a young Russian here….His name is Serge de Diaghilew [sic].’[3] He describes Diaghilev to Smithers and requests that one of Beardsley’s illustrations be sent to the Russian at his hotel. Clearly, the meeting was a significant occasion for the young Russian. Some twenty-three years or more after the event, he told his private secretary Boris Kochno that when Wilde walked with him down the Grands Boulevards, ‘prostitutes stood on their chairs outside the cafes to see him arm-in-arm with a handsome young man who wore a white streak in his hair, and they shouted abuse.’[4] Apocryphal? - perhaps, but that this tale would survive when Diaghilev met so many writers, artists, and composers during his life only emphasizes the importance of Wilde to Diaghilev. What may have transpired in the conversation between these two men is impossible to know but, clearly, Diaghilev’s fascination with Wilde was great enough to seek him out in Paris.

At what point Diaghilev became acquainted with Wilde’s writing is unknown, but, as Janet Kennedy notes in her work Mir Iskusstva and Russian Art, knowledge of his critical work is apparent in Diaghilev’s essays for the early issues of the journal.[5] Moreover, given the notoriety of Wilde’s trials, which involved lengthy discussions of his writings, it is highly probable that Diaghilev became acquainted with other works by the author at that time. There is little doubt that literature was of great importance to Diaghilev. As family letters reveal, he was a voracious reader from childhood, and, at the time of his death, 1929, he had in his possession over two-thousand rare books and manuscripts.[6] But most particularly, Diaghilev’s characteristic meticulous attention for the tiniest detail, makes it unthinkable that he would have met Wilde without having first studied at least some of his works.

The journal, Mir Iskusstva, was published quarterly from 1898 to 1904 with Filosofov as literary editor and Diaghilev as editor-in-chief.[7] Articles included discussions on art, theatre, music, and literature. For Diaghilev, the journal presented him with the opportunity to express his philosophy of art and, as he explains, ‘to say frankly what I think.’[8] He wrote four essays for Mir Iskusstva under the heading ‘Complicated Questions.’ His engagement in the aesthetic debates that swirled around France and England during the nineteenth century reveals his broad knowledge of symbolism and decadence. But while almost every notable critical writer of the era is mentioned, there is one omission: Wilde. Indeed, he becomes noticeable by his absence.

That Diaghilev would omit the name of the man he had taken trouble to locate and meet months earlier is curious. Prior to the launch of the journal, however, Russian social realist critic Vladimir Stasov delivered a vitriolic attack on the World of Art, labeling the group decadent.[9] Although, as both Kennedy and Joan Acocella observe, this was an inaccurate assessment of the group, Diaghilev went to great lengths to refute the accusation.[10] Even at this early stage in his career, he knew how to attract patrons. He also recognized that a group identified as decadent was unlikely to draw the necessary support of the wealthy elite of St. Petersburg. Thus, Wilde’s recent notoriety and his association with decadence would make it virtually impossible for Diaghilev to include him by name.

Nonetheless, Wilde’s work is featured, in absentia, in Diaghilev’s writings. Echoing Wilde’s belief in ‘The Decay of Lying’ that ‘the object of Art is not simple truth but complex beauty,’[11] Diaghilev argues that ‘complex beauty is the highest expression of the personality’.[12] He claims:

For the Beholder, the value and significance of a great work of art consist in the clarity with which it expresses the artist’s personality and in the accord between the artist’s personality and the beholder’s.[13]

Further emphasizing his point, he states: ‘the full appreciation and understanding of a work of art…is a discovery of myself in the personality of the artist, in accord and solidarity with the creator.’[14] While this argument is in keeping with aestheticism in general, there is an extraordinary resemblance between Diaghilev’s comments and those of Basil Hallward in The Picture of Dorian Gray. For the artist Hallward:

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter: it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.[15]

Wilde’s emphasis on feeling in ‘Critic as Artist’ - that the artist be inspired through sight and feeling rather than abstract inspiration – is, as Kennedy observes, also echoed by Diaghilev, who stresses ‘the importance of personal feeling as the source of art rather than an abstract ideal.’[16] Thus, just as Wilde echoes Pater, Whistler, and, at times, even Ruskin, so Diaghilev appears to echo Wilde.

The success of Mir Iskusstva together with the staging of spectacular art exhibitions earned Diaghilev swift recognition in the Russian arts. His editorship of the 1899 Annual Yearbook of the Imperial Theatres gained him personal acknowledgment from the tsar, and an appointment as special assistant to the Director of the Imperial Theatres. But Diaghilev’s rapid success coupled with a certain arrogance became a source of jealousy and irritation among co-workers at the theatre. Spiteful rumours circulated about his homosexuality. Warned to tone down his mode of dress and affected mannerisms, he refused. Following a series of petty, nasty incidents directed against Diaghilev, he received a public dismissal under a clause preventing him from any further employment at the Imperial Theatres.[17]

Public humiliation was swiftly followed by emotional trauma for Diaghilev. The demise of Mir Iskusstva, which occurred shortly thereafter, had much to do with an extraordinary sexual entanglement. A love triangle developed between Filosofov, Diaghilev’s cousin and lover since the early 1890s, and the husband and wife symbolist poets, Dmitri Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius. After an exceedingly bizarre, bitter, and frequently public battle, documented in Gippius’ Diaries, Diaghilev eventually lost Filosofov to the Merezhkovskys.[18] The editorship of Mir Iskusstva was in crisis. Neither cousin was able to work alongside the other. The group began to drift apart and, in 1904, the journal ceased publication. Things had reached an all time low for Diaghilev. Canny enough to leave St. Petersburg on a high note, however, he staged a magnificent exhibition of Russian Portraits, for which he received honours; he toasted the dawning of a new Russian era and, in 1906, departed for Paris where, once more, he was to encounter Wilde – in spirit.[19]

At a time when Diaghilev was busy organizing his annual Russian Seasons in Paris – mounting lavish art exhibitions, staging spectacular concerts, arranging a season of opera, and assessing the taste of the Parisian public – a significant cultural event occurred. May 1907 saw the French premiere of Richard Strauss’ opera Salomé with the composer conducting. A few months earlier, the first substantial collection of Beardsley’s art was exhibited at the Galerie Shirleys in Paris, which included his illustrations for Salomé.[20] As a result, the newspapers and journals carried long articles on Wilde, Beardsley, and, of course, Salomé, creating and reflecting an excitement among the French elite that was to build into fever pitch Salomania. Whether Diaghilev visited the exhibition is unknown, but given his admiration for the artist, whose work had been included in Mir Iskusstva, it would be extraordinary to think that he did not. In the event that he did not, then, surely, he must have seen the newspaper articles - the last one appearing the same day as his first concert (16 May 1907). That he may not have attended the opera is unthinkable. Indeed, that Strauss sat beside Diaghilev at the opening of his first Russian concert in Paris two weeks following Salomé’s premiere, makes it as certain as can be.[21]

Although Strauss adhered closely to Wilde’s sensual text, he saw fit to reverse the gender of the homosexual young Page. Even with this inversion, the opera earned a dubious reputation. Prior to Paris, it had closed after only one performance in New York following complaints about ‘the stench with which Oscar Wilde’s play had filled the nostrils of humanity.’[22] But with Le Président de la République in attendance, the eagerly awaited Parisian premiere ‘had all the earmarks of a State occasion.’[23] It was a gala attracting a gathering of the most wealthy and elite French citizens. For those Parisians, it was their first experience of a staged heady, exoticism. They were enthralled, so were the critics. And all the while, Diaghilev was in the milieu, assessing and observing Parisian reaction.

Diaghilev’s respect for Strauss (whom he later commissioned for the Ballets Russes) suggests that he was impressed with the production of the opera, which, according to critical accounts, retained the sensuality and sexual perversity of Wilde’s play. A theme of Salomé is, of course, sexual deviancy and, as Beardsley’s illustrations depict, there is much blurring of gender. If, on one level, Salomé’s literal crushing to death may be perceived as punishment for desiring and acquiring forbidden love – the love that dare not speak its name – then, as Regenia Gagnier believes, the play may be understood as ‘Wilde’s personal fantasy of the triumph of sexual love over the repressive forces of society.’[24] After all, in De Profundis, Wilde does confess: ‘I took the drama, the most objective form known to art, and made it as personal a mode of expression as the lyric or sonnet.’[25] Given Diaghilev’s recent experiences concerning his own sexuality, it is not difficult to imagine his interest in covertly staged homoeroticism.

Diaghilev was a keen observer and quick study. He was well aware of the problem a homoerotic subtext could cause should it become apparent. Wilde’s plays had contributed to his incarceration, Beardsley’s illustrations had been subject to the censor, and Strauss had understood the necessity for gender reversal in his opera. Could it not have occurred to Diaghilev as he watched what Wilde described as ‘the invisible dance’ take shape that ballet would be the perfect vehicle through which to stage homoeroticism?[26] After all, the ephemerality of the art form renders it virtually impossible to censor.

Within two years of the premiere of Salomé, Diaghilev abandoned his art exhibitions and concerts and presented the Parisians with their first taste of Russian ballet (1909).[27] A keen observer of his audience, he was swift to identify exoticism as a key element in their successful reception. The first ballet specifically choreographed for Diaghilev’s new company was Scheherezade in 1910. Curiously, strains of Salomé are detectable in this familiar tale whose Golden Slave oozes an uncontainable eroticism. Like Salomé, he, too, is punished by death for desiring and acquiring forbidden love. As ballet historian Lynn Garafola observes, the Golden Slave ‘exalted the fully liberated self and its inevitable clash with society.’[28] For Diaghilev, it was the first conscious step towards staging Wilde’s ‘invisible dance.’

In Russia, the term applied to this exotic otherness was nega, which, literally translated, means ‘sweet bliss.’ But as music historian Richard Taruskin explains, the term represented all that Russia imagined as sensual and Eastern.[29] By the 1890s, with its connotation of eroticism, nega came to be understood as a ‘degenerate counterpart’ to Russian virility – an ‘exotica-cum-erotica,’ which, Taruskin believes, became ‘the sex lure that underpinned Diaghilev’s incredible success.’[30] But after the official formation and naming of the Ballets Russes in 1911, Diaghilev pushed this concept of nega into a seductive exotica-cum-homoerotica.

Before Diaghilev could continue to stage this nega, he had to replace the ballerina from her traditional position centre stage with the male dancer. This he achieved overtly in Le Spectre de la rose, the opening work of the formally established Ballets Russes. With one infamous leap through a window, Nijinsky soared high into the unknown domain of ballet modernism, leaving behind the ballerina quite literally sitting in an armchair. The audience’s gaze remained fixed on the window through which Nijinsky had just leapt and the ballerina was forgotten.

With the male established centre stage, exoticism blended with eroticism. The 1912 premiere of L’Après-midi d’un faune caused a scandal unparalleled in the history of ballet. In Nijinsky’s own words the scenario depicts:

Faun playing flute and eating grapes. Nymphs on their way to bathe. The nymphs take notice of faun and scatter. The faun intercepts a half-clothed nymph. The other nymphs return to assist her. The faun is left behind with nymph’s discarded tunic….Faun carries tunic back to his resting place on hillock with great care. Once there, he languors with it and lays it down beside him.[31]

What Nijinsky omits, however, are the details that created the scandal. While languoring, the faun lies on the tunic and masturbates to a full orgasmic climax. Now the male dancer lay alone, centre stage, indulging in a sexual act. The audience focused on his actions and, depending on the beholder, the autoerotic gesture was perceived as either hetero- or homoerotic.

The one element that remained to be staged in Diaghilev’s ‘invisible dance’ was male partnering. Realizing, perhaps, that the public was not ready for a ballet depicting homosexual love, Diaghilev staged Jeux, an overtly lesbian ballet, thereby succumbing to the safety of gender inversion. This eight-minute ballet opens with a ball bouncing across the stage. A young man leaps onstage and two women follow. The man flirts with one woman while caressing the other, and then the two women flirt with each other. The man intercepts and flirts with both women. Another tennis ball bounces across the stage and the three run merrily off together.[32]

Diaghilev’s intentions for this ballet are revealed through diary extracts and letters. According to Nijinsky’s Diary, the ballet was ‘about three young men making love to each other.’ He continues: ‘the two girls represent the two boys and the young man is Diaghilev…I changed the characters, as love between three young men could not be represented on the stage.’[33] In a letter to Debussy, Diaghilev explains: ‘Great secret – because up till present never has a man danced on toe. [Nijinsky] would be the first, and I think it would be very elegant.’[34] The ‘secret’ never materialized but had it occurred, then a male dancing en pointe would have had the affect of a blurring of gender between all three characters. That Diaghilev could not present three males on stage engaged in sexual foreplay is of no consequence. There was no need. As Garafola notes, the male’s ‘diffidence dresses feminity in the garb of femaleness,’ while the women’s ‘vigor dresses femininity in the garb of malehood.’[35] Besides, there were a lot of balls bouncing across the stage, symbolic or otherwise. Two weeks following the premiere of Jeux, Diaghilev staged the infamous Rite of Spring - a defining moment in cultural modernism. With the Ballets Russes now strongly established, the company moved into a new phase – a dialogue between ballet and contemporary art movements.

Of course, it would be reductive to consider these early ballets merely as occasions for staged homoeroticism. In his desire to achieve Wagner’s concept of gesamtkunstwerk, Diaghilev fused the avant-garde work of innovative artists, musicians, choreographers and dancers into scintillating ballets. It is impossible to know with any certainty why Diaghilev created the Ballets Russes or, indeed, what his aim was. Such questions certainly puzzled those who worked for him. Ann Kodicek notes in the catalogue to the 1996 Diaghilev exhibition held at the Barbican Art Gallery that both Benois and principal Ballets Russes dancer Serge Lifar hint strongly ‘that Diaghilev never transcended his antipathy to ballet and never really understood it.’[36] How true this observation might be is impossible to gauge. Ballets Russes composer Nicholas Nabokov believes that much can be explained when we understand that Diaghilev was ‘perhaps the first grand homosexual who asserted himself and was accepted as such by society…[he had] a very deep and very profound understanding of what he was doing.’[37]

The discussion between Wilde and Diaghilev will remain forever a mystery. It was after the premiere of the Wilde/Strauss production of Salomé in 1907, when Diaghilev re-encountered Wilde, however, that his focus turned to ballet - a medium through which he could safely confound the censor and, at the same time, seduce the audience. The ballets dazzled and the love that dare not speak its name that had been silenced for Wilde, danced across the European stages for Diaghilev. If, as Wilde asserts in ‘Pen, Pencil and Poison’ the ‘arts borrow, not from life, but from each other,’ then the Ballets Russes may be considered a triumph not only for Diaghilev, but for Wilde, too.[38]

Works Cited

Benois, Alexandre. Memoirs. Trans. Moura Budberg. London: Chatto and Windus, 1964.

---. Reminiscences of the Russian Ballet. Trans. Mary Britnieva. London: Putnam, 1941.

Buckle, Richard. Diaghilev. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1979.

Desmarais, Jane Haville. The Beardsley Industry: The Critical Reception in England and France 1893-1914. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998

Diaghilev, Serge. “Complicated Questions.” Mir Iskusstva, 3:1899.

Drummond, John. Speaking of Diaghilev, London: Faber, 1997.

Gagnier, Regenia, A. Idylls of the Marketplace : Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986.

Garafola, Lynn and Nancy Van Norman Baer, eds. The Ballets Russes and Its World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

Garafola, Lynn. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

G[H]ippius, Zinaida. Between Paris and St. Petersburg: Selected Diaries of Zinaida Hippius, ed and trans. Temira Pachmuss, Chicago: U of Illinois, 1975.

Hart-Davies, Rupert, ed. Selected Letters of Oscar Wilde. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Haskell, Arnold, with Walter Nouvel. Diaghilev: his Artistic and Private Life, London: Gollancz, 1935.

Kennedy, Janet. “The Mir Iskusstva Group and Russian Art.” Diss. Columbia University. New York: Garland Press, 1976.

Kirstein, Lincoln. Nijinsky Dancing, London: Thames and Hudson, 1975.

Kodicek, Ann, ed. Diaghilev: Creator of the Ballets Russes. London: Barbican Art Gallery, 1996.

Lifar, Serge. His Life, His Work, His Legend. London: Putnam, 1940.

Nectoux, Jean-Michel. Nijinsky Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un Faune. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990.

Nijinska, Bronislava. Early Memoirs. London: Faber, 1982.

Nijinsky, Vaslav. Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky. London: Jonathan Cape, 1963.

Petrov, Vsevolod, and Alexander Kamensky, eds. Trans. Arthuf Shkarovsky-Raffe. World of Art Movement in Early 20^th-Century Russia. Leningrad: Aurora, 1991.

Shead, Richard. Ballets Russes. Seacus: Wellfleet Press, 1989.

Sturgis, Matthew. Aubrey Beardsley, Woodstock: Overlook Press, 1999.

Tanitch, Robert. Oscar Wilde on Stage and Screen. London: Methuen, 1999.

Taruskin, Richard. Defining Russia Musically, New Jersey: Princeton, 1997.

Volkonsky, Sergei. My Reminiscences. 2 vols. Trans. A. E. Chamot. London: Hutchinson, n.d.

Wilde, Oscar. De Profundis. New York: Modern Library, 2000.

---. The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Penguin, 2000.

---. The Soul of Man Under Socialism & Selected Critical Writings. London: Penguin, 2001.

Zobin, Vladimir. A Difficult Soul: Zinaida Gippius. Trans. and introd. Simon Karlinsky. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

· Following a career in the performing arts as an actress and dancer, Annabel Rutherford is currently studying for her PhD in English and Drama at York University, Toronto, Canada. Her most recent publication was on nineteenth-century artist Augustus Leopold Egg for Tate Britain (Tate Papers ’07). Her ‘Glossary of Theatre Terms’, written with Christopher Innes, will appear on the website www.moderndrama.com shortly.

Madeleine Humphreys and Michael Patrick Gillespie Cross Swords

Response to review by Professor Michael Patrick Gillespie of The Life and Times of Edward Martyn: An Aristocratic Bohemian. Irish Academic Press, 2007.

Madeleine Humphreys

First things first, some reassurance for Professor Gillespie: Don’t worry! Researching and writing a biography of Edward Martyn was neither ‘laborious’ nor ‘painful’. It was fun. The question is, how did a failed academic, albeit potential independent scholar, come to do this?

Well, about ten years ago I was a slightly middle-aged woman, not wanted in academia, stumbling around south Galway (west of Ireland) looking for something to do. I didn’t, necessarily, want to be a writer, even though I was confident I could write moderately pleasing prose. A mistaken confidence, I now see. I am gullible. When people say of my book that it is ‘engaging and entertaining’, I believe them.

Anyway, to get back to the story: The first place I discovered Edward Martyn was in Saint Brendan’s Cathedral in Loughrea, Co. Galway, a gem of Irish art, for which he was mainly responsible. And then, I discovered him in the pro-Cathedral in Dublin, where, to this day, his Palestrina Choir delights mass-goers on a weekly basis. And then, I discovered him in the theatre and then, lo and behold, wasn’t he right there with Arthur Griffith founding Sinn Fein, and changing the course of Irish history. Who was he? Very few people knew. So, in my arrogance, I set out to change that.

It took me six years to research and write this biography; the chief reason being the amount of time I spent hunting down primary source material. I thought I was very successful. It seems now, however, that the boxes of Martyn papers I found in the Irish Land Commission; the extraordinary land deals of the Smyth family recorded in the Land Registry; the boxes of papers in the Galway Diocesan Archive; the references to the Martyns in famine records in Galway County Library and the Martyn letters in the NYPL, NLI etc. etc., have all been used before! I certainly missed that. I must have, for, according to Professor Gillespie, who freely admits he has a very limited knowledge of Edward Martyn, my book has merely ‘summarised material contained in a handful of previous published studies’. Now, this is naughty, even offensive.

I believe Professor Gillespie knows that, unlike any previous study, my book is an exploration of Edward Martyn’s life, both public and private; the private being the better story, since it shows how a difficult life can be transformed by a love of great art. Is there a reason he doesn’t want this said? He also knows, perhaps, that in such an exploration, speculation, based on certain behavioural patterns, is perfectly legitimate. Thankfully, I trust my readers to understand what I am attempting to do and, for example, when I use a fictional description of a certain situation it is because it contains a truer truth than mere fact.

Regarding all my other flaws: a great writer recently wrote: ‘I always think my style, such as it is, is a compound of all my deficiencies, but maybe that’s what style is anyway’.1 I can’t better that.

1. Alan Bennett ‘What I didn’t do in 2007’, (LRB, 3 January 2008)

Michael Patrick Gillespie ripostes:

Although we have never met, I must commend Ms. Humphreys for her insight into my character. All too often in my life I have been ‘naughty, even offensive.’ However, I am afraid in this case that her assessment is inaccurate

Ms. Humphreys applies that phrase in seeking to refute my point that her biography contents itself with a small number of sources that serve as the basis for her representation of Martyn and those around him. She cites as evidence of her thoroughness the voluminous research she undertook as part of her project. God bless her for her industry. She does not, however, address the specific example that I presented, her extended use of quotations from Lady Gregory’s journal, on pp. 257-258 of her work. Nor does she go on to offer specific evidence of the application of her detailed research. Indeed she does not seem to understand my assertion that, whatever background research she undertook, in the body of her work she relies on a relatively small number sources whom she quotes with little evaluation.

I’m afraid that she has also misunderstood my admission of little previous knowledge of Edward Martyn’s life. I had come to her work hoping to improve my knowledge. Instead, I came away from it unsure of what to make of the material that I had read.

Her dismissal of my other points as simply differences in stylistic tastes again misses the central objections in my review. My claim, in all of the examples I cite, is not that Ms. Humphreys does not write in a style of which I approve but rather that she writes in a style which I have difficulty understanding.

Tricks of the Trade

Floortje Zwigtman

Floortje Zwigtman’s first two Adrian Mayfield books have to date only been published in Dutch, with British and especially American publishers being – let us say, cautious, about teenage homosexuality. Mevr. Zwigtman has kindly sent us this outline of the first volume in the trilogy, which won the Golden Owl Award for books for young adults.

Adrian Mayfield works as a shop assistant in men’s clothing shop Victor Procopius. Every morning he wakes up feeling like life has let him down – his job is dull, his social life is dull, his whole world is dull. He is unhappy with everything and feels like the days go by without anything happening to him. He can’t believe he is stuck in such a rut and feels like he has been given someone else’s life by mistake.

However, his boring little life gets rudely interrupted by a flamboyant man who comes into the drapers. Whilst trying on a suit, this man rudely pushes Adrian’s hand into his crotch. Adrian pushes his hand away and the man leaves, giving Adrian a sovereign and his business card on his way out. His name is Augustus Trops and he is an artist. Adrian is surprised to find that this event has been unexpected, but not wholly unpleasant.

One morning, Adrian finally explodes at his authoritarian boss and gets himself fired. He walks out onto the streets of London feeling stupid, but at the same time strangely liberated. He decides to celebrate his freedom and spends the money that Augustus Trops has given him. As it gets dark he decides to visit his father, who lives with two other struggling actors in a grotty flat in South London. Adrian’s mother and father divorced some time before, following his father’s descent into alcoholism and the loss of his business. Adrian soon realises his father cannot help him and the money from Augustus is rapidly running out.

That night, in his dream, Adrian is strolling through Soho and gets hit by a bike and feels more depressed than ever. As he struggles to his feet he sees the most gorgeous Italian man that he’s seen before in the street, a man who has the broadest white smile Adrian has ever seen. He wakes up feeling excited. This is when he realises that he can no longer ignore his true feelings.

As Adrian is running out of money, he decides to visit Trops, who is exceptionally pleased to see him. Adrian decides to take Trops up on his offer to use him as a model for his paintings, so he can earn some money. Adrian soon realizes he has feelings for Trops, and he is very disturbed by it, as Trops is a rather fat and unattractive man. The following night Trops offers Adrian five shillings to sleep with him. Adrian decides to do it, as he is curious and really needs the money. He discovers that it is actually a pleasurable experience and confirms to him that he really is attracted to men.

Trops takes Adrian along to Camelot House to meet the Farley family, whose company ‘Farley’s Insurance’ is very well-known and run by Stuart Farley. Stuart’s brother, Vincent Farley, is a good friend of Trops and a fellow painter. Trops convinces Vincent to take Adrian on as a model, as he knows he has been searching for someone. As time goes on Adrian visits the Farley residence two mornings a week and, through Vincent, starts to socialise with London’s cultural and intellectual elite.

Then, one day, Trops gives Adrian a kiss in the presence of Vincent – Vincent acts disgusted by this, and Adrian feels terribly embarrassed. He has grown used to being in Trops’ company, visiting bars and parties where this behaviour is accepted, and where he mingles with people like Oscar Wilde’s circle. Adrian feels like he has found himself and lives for these special moments, not caring about the future.

Adrian meets many more interesting people, including Alfred (Bosie) Douglas, and Bosie’s father; the Marquess of Queensberry. Bosie shows interest in Adrian, and Adrian in return finds him very attractive, but Trops tells him that Bosie is always more interested in other people’s lovers. Adrian has the impression Trops is just jealous.

Adrian has to move out of Trops’ house and decides to rent out a small flat in Soho. His relationship with Trops cools off, but he still regularly poses with him for Vincent. As he only works two mornings a week, he is sometimes quite bored and spends his spare time wandering around the streets of London.

As the seasons change, everyone leaves London for their summer break - the Farleys go on a cruise and Trops takes a trip to Brussels. Adrian is worried – what will he do for income while they are all away?

At one of the parties he had been to with Trops, a man called Charles Parker had given Adrian a note – all that was written on it was the address ’13 Little College Street’. Adrian realises what this address is and decides to look it up. When a guy called Bob opens the door Adrian introduces himself as Charlie Rosebery. Over the next few weeks Adrian meets lots of men, and sleeps with his first customer; a man called Thomas Coombes. While having sex with Thomas the police raid the brothel and Adrian manages to jump out of the window and escape. Gay sex is strictly prohibited in 1894 and could result in at least two years in jail.

The next day Bob visits Adrian and accuses Adrian of being a spy for the Marquess of Queensberry (Bob has a feeling the Marquess has something up his sleeve, especially as he suspects his son Francis is gay). Adrian decides to leave with Bob as it’s no longer safe to stay in his flat.

In the following weeks Adrian sleeps with anyone willing to pay him. It’s never very fancy; usually in small, dirty hotel rooms or in the homes of men whose wives have gone on holiday with the children. Bob, Charles and Alf (all prostitutes) decide that they want to break into the Farley’s house to find any correspondence with the Queensberry family (The Farleys and Queensberrys being good friends). They want to find information that will keep them out of prison. They realise Adrian knows his way around their house and threaten Adrian that they will report him to the police if he doesn’t co-operate. This leaves Adrian with no choice…

During the break-in they find the letters they were looking for and Adrian picks up Vincent’s diary. The letters they find confirm that the Marquess was in correspondence with Stuart Farley. In the meantime Adrian reads Vincent’s diary and realizes Vincent doesn’t like Adrian anymore - he was put off by his kiss with Trops.

After the summer holidays Adrian receives a letter from Vincent Farley, asking if he wants to resume modelling for him. Adrian is looking forward to it – he has decided to put the diary entry out of his mind - but he does worry that Palmtree- the Farleys’ butler- might have him on the night of the burglary.

One day, at the Farley residence, Adrian meets Bosie again and there is still chemistry between them. Bosie invites him to go horse-riding and Adrian loves it. They then go to his hotel room at the Savoy, where they have sex together and Adrian feels he is in paradise. They fall asleep and when they wake up the next morning Bosie asks Adrian to stay with him. Adrian can’t believe his luck, but then he remembers that he promised to accompany his sister Mary-Ann to the doctor, as she is unwell. Bosie reacts badly, gets very angry and calls him a whore. Adrian runs out angrily and shouts Lord Alfred is a whore! Lord Alfred is gay! all down the hotel corridor.

September turns into October and Adrian is still modelling for Vincent Farley. While modelling the Farleys receive a telegram telling them that Francis Queensberry (the Marquess’ son) has died. Everyone suspects suicide brought on by the rumours surrounding his sexuality.

At a dinner party for Oscar Wilde, Adrian shares a table with Oscar himself. Vincent continually makes horrible comments about Adrian, which Adrian doesn’t understand. He thought Vincent was his friend! That evening Vincent falls ill and no one knows exactly what is wrong with him. His friend Robbie says he’s in love, but Vincent denies this. It turns out that everything was fine until the Marquess of Queensberry stopped by and spoke to Stuart Farley and Palmtree in the library. They had spoken about Vincent and his planned trip to Paris- they called it the ‘gay capital of Europe’. The Marquess of Queensberry warns Stuart about his brother and that his good name could well be damaged when Vincent comes back.

As Vincent Farley is still on his sick-bed, there is no work left for Adrian to do. As he wanders the streets he notices that he is being followed by Palmtree. He tries to hide, but cannot manage to shake him off. Palmtree manages to follow him back to his flat. He interrogates Adrian about Vincent’s diary, but Adrian denies ever having seen it. Palmtree emphasises that he’s looking after Vincent’s well-being and asks for Adrian’s understanding in this. He gives Adrian a twenty pound note and a business card, and shows him another five hundred pounds in his wallet. He tells Adrian he cannot win from the rich and that he should bear that in mind. When Palmtree has left Adrian looks at the business card - it reads the ‘Marquess of Queensberry’.

Trops decides to take Adrian out and together they celebrate Guy Fawkes’ night. As the taxi pulls up to a house, Adrian realises they’re going to Vincent’s leaving party- it’s his last day in London before he leaves for Paris. Adrian is really annoyed and feels uncomfortable with the situation. At the party Palmtree asks whether Adrian has changed his mind about the diary. Adrian tells him he hasn’t and that he is not for sale anymore.

At this point Vincent walks up to Adrian and declares his love for him. Adrian doesn’t know what’s happening to him, but tells him he loves him too and they kiss, somewhere away from the crowd. It appears that all along Vincent has had feelings for Adrian and used him as a model even when it was no longer necessary. Vincent is still going to Paris and they promise to stay in touch and wait for each other. Finally Adrian has found true love and happiness…

Four Oscar Wilde Abstracts

The 6th International EFACIS conference, titled ‘Dreaming the Future: New Horizons/Old Barriers in 21^st Century Ireland’ was held at the University of Seville, 13-15 December 2007. It included an Oscar Wilde panel, chaired by José Maria Tejedor-Cabrera (University of Seville). The following papers were presented and the abtracts are here published by kind permission:

1. Juan Ignacio Oliva Cruz (University of La Laguna, Spain): ‘Wilde’s Shadow in Jamie O’Neill’s Epic Narratives’

Jamie O'Neill (Dun Laoghaire, 1962-) is best known by his third novel, At Swim, Two Boys (2001), winner of the Ferro-Grumley Award for Fiction and the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Men's Fiction. He describes too well, not only in this one but also in the other two novels, Disturbance (1989) and Kilbrack (1990), the tormented relationship existing between male selves and the hostile environments that surround their quest for true identities. The mental struggles of a young half-orphan Irish boy in a house that is tumbling down (in Disturbance), the recovery of memories, both individual and historical, in a rural setting with comic undertones (in Kilbrack), or the heroic choice in the construction of the social self through homosexual positions, in the previous hours of the Dublin Rising of 1916 (in At Swim, Two Boys), create a peculiar atmosphere in which the romantic epic takes place. Imbued by Wilde, Joyce or Beckett and gifted with a unique prose that imitates nineteenth-century realism with contemporary wisdom, O'Neill's attitude is that of a questioning citizen in front of the moral absolutes of his culture, to regain independence from the familiarized eye of mainstream Ireland.

2. Florina Tufescu (Dalarna University College, Sweden): ‘Beyond the Myth of Solitary Authorship: The Collaborative Genius of Wilde, Joyce, O’Brien et. al.’

Oscar Wilde’s Poems and The Picture of Dorian Gray were severely criticised on publication, Joyce’s Ulysses was initially not deemed worthy of copyright protection, while Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds has only gradually gained critical recognition.

Blatant intertextuality is arguably the most disturbing feature of these and other key Anglo-Irish texts: in emphasizing their artificiality, they are provocatively reader-oriented, like Manet’s Olympia gazing at the spectator.

Mise-en-abyme, Borges notes, can be a most disturbing device since it implies that ‘if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, the readers, or spectators, can be fictions’ (‘When Fiction Lives in Fiction’). Intertextuality, which in many post-modernist texts is merely playful and ironic, can also be used to powerful i.e. uncanny and liberating effect, when the composite nature of the text is perceived to mirror the reader’s own constructed identity, the sense of the self as a work-in-progress.

The impact of the ‘anti-essentialist aesthetic’ that Jonathan Dollimore has uncovered in the writings of Oscar Wilde is discussed in relation to contemporary multimedia art and critical and pedagogical theory.

3. Alberto Lazaro Lafuente (University of Alcala de Henares, Spain) : ‘Reading Oscar Wilde in Postwar Spain: The Picture of Dorian Gray under the Microscope’

Another paper on Oscar Wilde was presented within the ‘Other Writings of Ireland’ panel, chaired by Maria Losada Friend (University of Huelva)

4. Antonio José Couso Liañez (University of Huelva): ‘Wilde’s Proposal for Literature: the Importance of Beauty and Reception’

The role of criticism and its relation to literature has changed utterly throughout history. We could argue that it had a religious origin, was at times linked to morality and to didactic purposes, and has been questioned in movements such as the so-called ‘Art for Art’s sake’, which advocated the supremacy of art over all disciplines, separating art from the grounds of morality. Oscar Wilde’s position towards this last point is intriguing and reveals thoughts that still today can bring a new understanding of literature. Having asserted that the only goal of art in general, and of literature in particular, is beauty, he also emphasized the role of the reader, as for him reception is a deeply important part in literature. Wilde asserted that, although the objective of literature is just to convey beauty, the reader can always get some profit, depending on his reception of the work. There may seem to be a contradiction in terms, but actually he was of the opinion that art, and to a lesser extent literature, could make the world better. The contradiction lies in the fact that he adopted a pose of a convinced aesthete with nuances of a dandy for the sake of provocation of society.

Nowadays, in a society that is putting literature aside, we should rescue some of his ideas in order to have a sort of revival of literature, in order to get people more interested in it. For that purpose, we should recover his concept of literature and its function, and specially his concept of beauty as something eternal that stirs our soul (in which poet, subject and expression play an essential role), paying attention to its effects on the reception of any literary work.

Wilde wrote within the framework of the 19thcentury, but it can be very useful for literature in our present society to rescue some of his ideas by establishing certain links between his age and this one of ours. He considered his age one of deep materialism in which the artist was more necessary than ever in order to counteract the decadence of the spirituality in the soul of man, and an age in which the rush caused by business prevented people to enjoy art.

We add to these the abstract of a paper by Dr Norbert Lennartz (University of Bonn) written for the Third International George Gissing Conference ‘Writing Otherness: The Pathways of George Gissing's Imagination’, held at the University of Lille, 27th-28th March 2008; and thank Dr Lennartz for sending it to us.

‘Two Responses to the Horrors of Modern Trash Culture: Oscar Wilde and George Gissing’

In 1891, two works dealing with the way modern trash culture threatened to inundate the literary market were published, Oscar Wilde’s essay The Soul of Man under Socialism and George Gissing’s New Grub Street. Although writing from radically different perspectives, from the subculture of the bohemians and from the supraculture of dandyism, Gissing and Wilde seem to agree that, in the course of the 19^th century, a substantial shift of paradigm had not only re-structured the literary market, but also subjected it to the imperative of vulgarity.

While Wilde severely castigates late Victorian culture as plebeian and – at variance with all then current ideas of Socialism – nostalgically conjures up a time when despots, like princes and popes, were indebted to principles of beauty and cultivation, Gissing depicts in the figure of Jasper Milvain the triumph of ruthless egotism and the commodification of art. Clashing with Wilde’s idea of Individualism, which not only goes back to 19^th-century constructions of the Renaissance but also to Wilde’s intensive study of Ralph W. Emerson, Gissing’s embodiment of egotism has a truly Darwinian power which eventually crushes the numerous paragons of traditional literature, Reardon, Yule and Biffen. What Gissing’s novel thus lacks is Wilde’s note of protest and prophecy, especially when the latter predicts that his vision of a new Individualism ‘will be larger, fuller, lovelier than any Individualism has ever been.’ Gissing, by contrast, focuses on the twilight of the old world of literature and shows it for what it is: less a realm of decadent splendour than a Dantean hell recaptured in uncompromising naturalistic terms.

[A number of abstracts of papers given at the Conference ‘The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe’, Trinity College, Oxford, 8th/9th March 2008, can be found elsewhere on our website.]

De Profundis – Some First Impressions

Leila Johnston

Leila Johnston lives in Egypt, where she teaches English. She only recently started to read Wilde and writes that ‘I felt that I identified with Wilde while he was in his prison cell and I was deeply affected by reading ‘De Profundis’. I subsequently found out some details of his fate after release and the reason why he finally despaired. Hopefully, he'll have another chance in another time and place. I realise that the article is not up to academic standards but only want to share my thoughts and feelings with any others who may be interested.’ We believe that this will resonate with many, recalling their own first encounters with Wilde; and we are pleased to publish this reaction, in the belief that academic writing on Wilde must never supplant the feelings of identification that are his attraction for so many. Other readers may care to share their similar experiences, either formally here, or less so in our forum at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/oscholarship/.

Wilde’s revealing description of his dreadful descent and his sojourn in the Inferno reveals something of the vile vanity that can mar the human character and of which his friend Lord Alfred Douglas was the perfect embodiment. At the same time, it shows how a lack of willpower, such as Wilde’s, at least when it came to his relations with his friend, can lead to ruin on every level; and finally, we read of the purification of his soul through the bitterest suffering, unrelenting, which brought him humility and a deeper knowledge of his own nature that he was preparing to utilize in his Art.

Wilde here recalls:

“I remember saying once to André Gide, as we sat together in some Paris café, that while metaphysics had but little real interest for me, and morality absolutely none, there was nothing that either Plato or Christ had said that could not be transferred immediately into the sphere of Art and there find its complete fulfillment.”

Wilde had already understood the ‘forms’ or ‘ideas’ which Plato had intuited. In one of his essays he had identified how in literature: ‘“Hers are the forms more real than living man”, and hers the great archetypes of which things that have existence are but unfinished copies.’ * Added to this awareness, he was also to gain further insight into the nature of Christ.

As Wilde nears the end of his prison sentence, and we feel that the bitter wretchedness and grief of the Inferno has eased, giving way to a new melancholic sadness in Puragatorio along with some measure of acceptance; a new store of inner treasures opens to him. The flashes of illumination he finds on reading The Gospels in the original Greek are glimpses of the Paradiso yet to dawn but not, perhaps, in this life. This Man of Sorrows, who gazed on Beauty from a fresh perspective, was preparing to bring his new revelation to bear on a fresh mode of literary work following his release from prison. Although part of his experience of incarceration was subsequently distilled into ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, it is a great loss to literature that his artistic ambition to explore such themes as ‘Christ as the precursor of the romantic movement in life’ was otherwise left unrealized. And surprisingly, after his vilification of Douglas, Wilde finally expresses another desire after regaining his freedom, which is to meet Bosie, as he was better known.

What was the reason for Oscar’s wish to set eyes once again on that wilful and utterly selfish character whose own shallowness and blindness had brought about his terrible downfall. A last hope? Whatever kindness, understanding or support he was hoping to receive from the petulant Bosie was not forthcoming. Bosie had not changed. The disillusionment Wilde felt after their reunion in Naples brought about a despair, it seems, that finally shattered his raison d’être.** Wilde had lost everything for the sake of an illusion in the form of Lord Alfred Douglas. Hopefully, Wilde was able to reconcile himself during the last rites administered by a priest in Paris. However, the devastating repercussions of Wilde’s personal and public disaster naturally reached his mother, wife and two sons, and according to his younger son Vyvyan, the elder son Cyril deliberately got himself killed in World War I in an attempt to expiate his father’s crime.**

Though Wilde was unable to give artistic expression to his new vision of Christ, the English painter Stanley Spencer later realized something like this in his very human and, at the same time, romantic portrayals of Christ, the Man of Sorrows.*** Were they not conceived in the same mood?

And how was it that like the poet Rimbaud, and no doubt other poets, Oscar’s fate was foreshadowed in his work, namely in ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey’ and ‘The Happy Prince’? Wilde had already discerned that Life often imitates Art:

“Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose.”*

Moreover, the French dramatist and novelist Jean Genet echoes Wilde’s prison experience a few years later, transmuting it into meaningful symbols and sometimes into pure gold, for example, in the great mystical experience found in ‘The Miracle of the Rose’.

In terms of human experience and aesthetic sensibility and ideas, ‘De Profundis’ can still speak to and inspire us today.

*’The Decay of Lying’ – an essay by Oscar Wilde

** ‘Son of Oscar Wilde’ by Vyvyan Holland (1954)

*** Such as ‘The Foxes have holes’ from Spencer’s ‘Christ in the Wilderness’ series

Influence gone Wilde

Kawinthra Luck (Marylhurst University)

[Tiffany Perala has sent us this essay by one of her students as the first example of the pages of undergraduate writing on Wilde that she plans to expand.]

In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, we meet a sophisticated, wealthy and beautiful young man named Dorian Gray who, unknowingly, has become a significant influence on his artist-friend Basil Hallward who is painting his portrait. Homosexuality is subtly introduced which is original and unique in literature for this time period (and dangerous) since the topic was still quite taboo. This gay dimension adds intrigue and interest to the storyline. Dorian is initially portrayed as young and naïve but transforms before our eyes from an innocent lamb to a cold calculating wolf. Self-serving advice from his friend Lord Henry begins Dorian’s journey into darkness as vanity and the pursuit of indulgent pleasure become his focus. The theme of influence dominates throughout as these three characters manipulate to fulfill their needs. Dorian’s needs and fears push him to make a sinister deal from which there is no return. As sins accumulate, his portrait changes to mockingly remind him of his past deeds. Ultimately, the portrait influences him to his own death.

Lord Henry Wotton seems to know many things about art and how to toy with the minds of his friends. Wilde beautifully puts us in doubt whether Lord Henry is a man with great general knowledge and who likes (or needs) to educate other people with his theories or if he is just a man who loves (or needs) to play with other people’s mind. Which ever one, Lord Henry has a big part in the influence of Dorian’s way of thinking, talking and behaving.

Basil Hallward is a talented painter whose hidden desire surfaces in his work. In the beginning of the story, Basil didn’t want Lord Henry to meet Dorian because he was afraid that Lord Henry would ruin the Dorian that he knows. He said to Lord Henry ‘Don’t spoil him. Don’t try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many marvelous people in it. Don’t take away from me the one person who gives to my art whatever charm it possesses: my life as an artist depends on him’ (Wilde 10). Basil further warns Dorian that ‘He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the single exception of myself’ (12). Little did Basil know then that all he was afraid of would come true.

Dorian Gray, a beautiful young man who is easily influenced because of his vanity is presented during conversation as Lord Henry said ‘He is some brainless, beautiful creature’ (2-3). We get to know him more through Lady Brandon ‘words, introducing him to Basil ‘Charming boy—poor dear mother and I absolutely inseparable. Quite forget what he does—afraid he—doesn’t do anything—oh, yes, plays the piano—or is it the violin, dear Mr. Gray?’(6). ‘Dorian’s beauty informs every aspect of his persona, from his external appearance to his capacity for inspiring confidence in every person he encounters’ (Womack). The initial Dorian, however, would quickly disappear.

From the first time Lord Henry met Dorian, Lord Henry influenced Dorian about beauty. ‘You are too charming to go in for philanthropy’ (12). And ‘Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing…. A new Hedonism—that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol. With your personality there is nothing you could not do. The world belongs to you for a season’ (17). Because of Henry’s words, Dorian became a person who thought of his looks and vowed to have a picture taking a burden of growing old for him. ‘If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!’ (19)

Lord Henry continued to reinforce Dorian. ‘There is nothing that you, with your extraordinary good looks, will not be about to do’ (76). As a result, Dorian’s thoughts go to ‘Eternal youth, infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins—he was to have all these things. The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that was all’ (77).

Skinner explained that ‘People living together in groups come to control one another with a technique which is not inappropriately called ‘ethical.’ When an individual behaves in a fashion acceptable to the group, he receives admiration, approval, affection, and many other reinforcements which increase the likelihood that he will continue to behave in that fashion’ (qtd. in Ulrich, Stachnik and Mabry 124).

We know that Dorian’s first love occurred because of Lord Henry. Dorian confessed to Lord Henry that ‘It never world have happened if I had not met you. You filled me with a wild desire to know everything about life’(35). Would Dorian have originally gone out and wandered around London? I think not. He listened to Lord Henry about ‘The search for beauty being the real secret of life’ (35), and he roamed around until he met Sibyl Vane in the sordid theater. Dorian, fascinated by her astonished ability in acting, fell in love with her.

In Psychology The Science of Mind and Behavior by Michael W. Passer, he said that ‘Our ability to regulate our own behavior and to exercise moral control is often just as important to our survival as are our biological tendencies’ (67). Wilde keeps us thinking about Dorian’s mind and behavioral influence that may have inherited from his mother who chose a penniless guy instead of all the rich guys she might have had. Had Dorian chose to love a poor young actress because of genetic influence, or because of the influence of Lord Henry?

Dorian broke his news about Sibyl Vane to Lord Henry before anybody. It showed that he saw Lord Henry as very important to him as he said ‘I don’t think I am likely to marry, Harry. I am too much in love. That is one of your aphorisms. I am putting it into practice, as I do everything that you say’ (34). Later Lord Henry said ‘‘You could not have helped telling me, Dorian. All through your life you will tell me everything you do’ (38). It is as if Lord Henry hypnotized him and Dorian replied ‘Yes, Harry, I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you things. You have a curious influence over me’ (38).

After Sibyl Vane died, Lord Henry consoled Dorian by telling him to forget her, and look at other woman. Lord Henry said ‘Dorian, you mustn’t let this thing get on your nerves. You must come and dine with me, and afterwards we will look in at the Opera. It is a Patti night, and everybody will be there. You can come to my sister’s box. She has got some smart women with her’ (73). The death of one’s love should normally have a difficult affect but, because of Lord Henry, Sibyl’s death was just another tragic act for Dorian ‘I must admit that this thing that has happened does not affect me as it should’ (73). To Lord Henry it was just a foolish thing that Dorian has done.

The most influencing action that Lord Henry did was to send him a yellow book. ‘For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought to free himself from it’ (92). ‘The whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it’ (93). ‘He grew more and more enamored of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul’ (93). His mind was poisoned by this book more and more everyday. Years later, Basil told him that:

Dorian, this is horrible! Something has changed you completely. You look exactly the same wonderful boy who, day after day, used to come down to my studio to sit for his picture. But you were simple, natural, and affectionate then. You were the most unspoiled creature in the whole world. Now, I don’t know what has come over you. You talk as if you had no heart, no pity in you. It is all Harry’s influence. I see that. (79)

Basil doesn’t have significant influence over Dorian. This can easily be observed in the conversations between Dorian and Lord Henry where Dorian often refers to Basil in a less-than-kind manner. The influence lies with the Picture of Dorian he created that will change Dorian’s life forever. Basil doesn’t want to exhibit this picture. The reason he gave to Lord Henry was ‘I have put too much of myself into it’ (2). Eliot explained that ‘The effect of a work of art upon the person who enjoys it is an experience different in kind from any experience not of art. It maybe formed out of one emotion, or maybe a combination of several; and various feelings, inhering for the writer in particular words or phrases or images, may be added to compose the final result’(41). The portrait of him grew old and ugly. ‘The face on the canvas bears the burden of his passions and his sins’ (66). Dorian seemed to be disturbed and confused at first. ‘Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them’ (66).

He become fascinated and corrupted by his ability to do the evil acts without showing any of it on him. He left the girl that he once said ‘She was the loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life’ (37) ‘I do love her. She is everything to me in life’ (37). As asked by Basil:

Staveley said that you might have the most artistic tastes, but that you were a man whom no pure minded girl should be allowed to know, and whom no chaste woman should sit in the same room with. I reminded him that I was a friend of yours, and asked him what he meant. He told me. He told me right out before everybody. It was horrible! Why is your friendship so fatal to young men? There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide. You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry Ashton, who had to leave England, with a tarnished name. You and he were inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton, and his dreadful end? What about Lord Kent’s only son, and his career? I met his father yesterday in St. James’s Street. He seemed broken with shame and sorrow. What about the young Duke of Perth? What sort of life has he got now? What gentleman would associate with him? (109-110)

Dorian refused all those accusations but later in chapter 16, we see that he went to visit one of his old friends in a sordid den whom he ruined their lives with his charm, beauty and position in society.

‘Basil Hallward is the creator of the portrait and functions as a moral voice in the book; it is Dorian himself who gradually paints the loathsome portrait. It might further be pointed out that although Lord Henry offers Dorian the dangerous knowledge of the New Hedonism, it is Dorian who fails to employ this knowledge properly and becomes corrupt’ (Ericksen 101-102). ‘People cannot be converted to believe something which is totally alien to them and the belief certainly cannot be sustained when the individual is back in an environment where that belief is not commonly held’ (Winn 97).

Dorian has great influence over Basil from the start of the story. Basil tried to explain his feeling about Dorian to Lord Henry. He said that ‘His personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before’ (8).

And again when he came to see Dorian, after he knew that Sibyl Vane died. He confessed to Dorian that:

Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. I worshipped you. I grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you. When you were away from me you were still present in my art…. (83)

Basil knew all along that Dorian has influence over everybody. Being a good friend to Dorian he said ‘You have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good, not for evil’ (111). Poor Basil didn’t know that with his sermon and doubtfulness ‘I wonder do I know you? Before I could answer that, I should have to see your soul.’ (111), that he would be both a catalyst and eventual target for another of Dorian’s sins.

Plato states that ‘To establish settled laws as the criterion of right and wrong is therefore to impose restrictions on nature, for it is human nature to thrust oneself forward at the expense of others. There is loss as well as gain: the pre-eminence of natural superiority vanishes. A ‘real man’, one who could always prevail, would never agree to restrict his power’ (xxv).

Dorian blamed Basil for everything that happened to him. He told his old friend, Alan Campbell that ‘You don’t know what he had made me suffer. Whatever my life is, he had more to do with the making or the marring of it than poor Harry has had. He may not have intended it, the result was the same’ (124).Dorian showed Basil his dreadful, ugly portrait which he believed ‘was the origin of all his shame was to be burdened for the rest of his life with the hideous memory of what he had done’ (112). He never revealed the picture to anyone. After he let slip his darkest secret to Basil, he suddenly felt rage and hatred for Basil. With his corrupted mind, and the sins’ poison swelling inside his body, he could not control this feeling. He killed Basil. What has the gain? Just one more sin for the portrait to feed upon.

Basil once said to Lord Henry about Sibyl Vane that ‘I don’t want to see Dorian tied to some vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his intellect’ (53). Was this protecting Dorian or a sign of jealousy? He didn’t know at that time that it would be Dorian who would ruin and indirectly end her life. Sibyl Vane was a young, beautiful, talented actress who lived her life in the theater. She has a power to capture the audience’s mind as Dorian explained:

When she acts you will forget everything. These common, rough people, with their coarse faces and brutal gestures, become quite different when she is on the stage. They sit silently and watch her. They weep and laugh as she wills them to do. She makes them as responsive as a violin. She spiritualizes them, and one feels that they are of them same flesh and blood as one’s self. (59)

After she fell in love with Dorian, she realized the hollowness of her life and acting. She confessed to Dorian ‘You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection. You had made me understand what love really is. My love! My love! Prince Charming! Prince of life! I have grown sick of shadows. You are more to me than all art can ever be’ (63).

After seeing her fall apart at the theatre Dorian cried ‘You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even stir my curiosity’ (63). He left Sibyl. After he came back home, he noticed the changes on the portrait and realized how bad and brutal he has done to her and he wanted to go back to her. He doesn’t want to be ugly like the picture. ‘I want to be good. I can’t bear the idea of my soul being hideous’ (71). Unfortunately, Sibyl Vane killed herself that night and Dorian would never again get the opportunity to be good again.

Though he apparently tried many times, Lord Henry could not effectively influence Basil. Basil said that ‘I don’t agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is more, Harry, I feel sure you don’t either’ (7). And continuing to Basil’s death, we don’t see any words from Lord Henry’s that can influence Basil at all.

Like a planet and its moon that both influence each other in bigger and smaller ways, so do the characters in Wilde’s story influence each other. As I’ve attempted to point out, some relationships involve more manipulation and influence, while others less. This interaction mimics real life and, perhaps for Wilde, this story mimicked the turmoil in his own life and was a way to talk openly about his frustrations. Maybe he felt trapped inside because of society’s views at the time. A few years after the book was printed he would be jailed due to suspicions and complications arising over his sexual status. Could Dorian’s evil transformation have been a peek into the torment the author was enduring at the time?

Imagine the concepts of homosexuality in literature over 100 years ago. It took courage and the highest originality to write about it. And imagine if Wilde had lived eighty or one hundred years later. Though not perfect, today’s more open-minded society would have allowed him the freedom to be himself. Perhaps Oscar Wilde would have thrived and become even more influential in his writings than he already is.

Work cited

Eliot, T. S. Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot. Ed. Frank Kermode. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., 1975

Ericksen, Donald H. Oscar Wilde. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1977.

Plato. The Republic. Ed. G. R. F. Ferrari. Trans. Tom Griffith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Ulrich, Roger, Thomas Stachnik, and John Mabry. Control of human behavior. Atlanta: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1966.

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Dover Publications, 1993.

Winn, Denise. The Manipulated mind: Brainwashing, Conditioning and Indoctrination. London: The Octagon Press, 1983.

Womack, Kenneth. ‘Withered, Wrinkled, and Loathsome of Visage’: Reading the ethics of the Soul and the Late-Victorian Gothic in Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. THE OSCHOLARS LIBRARY. 21 November 2007. http://www.oscholars.com/TO/ Appendix/library.htm.

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