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___________ |
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Vol. III |
No. 12 |
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issue no 31: November / December 2006 |
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Revised for transfer from www.irishdiaspora.net
to www.oscholars.com February
2009 |
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To the Table of Contents |
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The Critic as Critic |
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A Monthly Page of Reviews |
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All authors whose books are reviewed are invited to
respond. |
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To see a complete list of all
works reviewed, click |
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1. Myth and Demystification
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Josephine Guy and Ian Small: Studying Oscar Wilde: History, Criticism, Myth. University of
North Carolina at Greensboro: ELT Press 2006 (1880-1920 British Authors
series, number 22). |
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Review by John McRae |
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It
has been clear for a long time that Oscar Wilde Studies need to emerge from
the larval stage of the suffocating closeness of biographical/
autobiographical and semi-autobiographical readings of the life and
works. As so often, Oscar himself
promulgated the initial joint reading with his ‘admission’ that he had put
his genius into his life rather than his writing. |
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Josephine Guy and Ian Small’s new book continues from two
earlier bibliographical studies by Small (Oscar
Wilde Revalued, 1993, and Oscar
Wilde: Recent Research, 2000) and Guy and Small’s Oscar Wilde’s Profession, also from 2000, which looked at the
detail of his publishing and his career as a professional writer, especially
before the myth of ‘Oscar Wilde’ grew up around him. Reading the present volume I sometimes
wished we could distinguish the two Oscars as easily as we can by slipping
inverted commas around the mythical one – but that is of course the whole
point: always the twain shall meet. |
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Quietly and with only a little self-dramatisation these two
academics are changing the face of Oscar Wilde studies. But there is never going to be a definitive
Oscar, and controversy will always be just around the corner, no matter how
seriously any critic, textual analyst or biographer tries to convince us
otherwise. |
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Guy and Small take issue with Neil McKenna’s recent
biography (which I reviewed for THE OSCHOLARS
no 30) – in fact his name is one of the most frequently mentioned in the
(excellent) index: 13 references, as opposed, for example, to 8 for Richard
Ellmann. All credit to McKenna for
giving the authors here so much material to argue with, question, dismiss and
discuss – material which certainly kick-starts a new era of Wilde studies. |
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Studying Oscar Wilde makes it clear from the
outset what kind of book it is, and immediately opens up the eternal question
of ‘academic’ and ‘general’ readership.
Wilde studies are beset by the problem of what people already know or
think they know about Oscar (the ‘myth’) getting in the way of the more
critical, objective reading academia normally aims for. Croce
e delizia al cuor. |
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What the authors explicitly want to do is bring to bear on
the reading experience what various kinds
(italics theirs) of academic research can add, both in terms of knowledge and
of critical approaches. In this, they
succeed convincingly. |
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Where McKenna was engaged with the ‘secret life’ of Oscar
Wilde, Guy and Small are looking at ‘the secrets of Wilde’s texts’. Many readers will want both. It is salutary to have, at last, the
unvarnished warts-and-all approach intelligently applied to the texts and
manuscripts, notably to the multiplicity of textual variants. The texts are read crucially ‘above and
beyond their biographical importance’.
The authors sometimes make this seem to be a challenge McKenna’s
‘over-simplistic’ approach. I see it
as more complementary to his approach, expanding considerably our readings of
Oscar, sometimes making us re-read much read scenes or passages totally
afresh, and sometimes, although they won’t necessarily thank me for saying
it, confirming the omni-presence of the myths in Wilde studies. |
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‘What is unique to literary knowledge’ (page 2), rather
than ‘the life and works’, is the focus then.
The authors berate Neil McKenna for ‘sensationalizing’, and attack his
‘methodology’, which is a deliberate fanning of the flames, but does very
usefully point up the fundamental issues between a biographical approach and
a textual approach. |
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Is the result palatable academicism, caviar to the general,
or two critics stranded on their little islet? Guy and Small do succeed in
their main aim: to persuade the ‘general’ reader that scholarship has a
contribution to make to the reading experience of Wilde. But it will not do to slag off biographers’
methodologies: Wilde is the author least susceptible to ‘depersonalization’
of the works, and all of us have to live with that. Guy and Small hasten to acknowledge this
(page 7), but seem to feel the need to apologise for their own dilemma in
facing up to it. |
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‘Even the most scrupulous biographer cannot come
objectively to Wilde’s life’, they admit on page 16. They question Ellmann’s assumptions and
methods too, but tend to be rather more respectful in doing so. However, they are especially perceptive on
Ellmann’s (and others’) blatantly biased stories about syphilis as the cause
of Wilde’s death, and this is a very valuable corrective to a constant
tendency in the biographical approach. |
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This leads to their necessary and judicious questioning of
‘the purpose for which the narrative of the life is being used’ (page 20) – a
tendency in self-fashioning narrative which started with Oscar himself and
which has been played as theme and variations ever since. |
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They challenge the case that many biographers have recently
wanted to make that the works are ‘about’ his sexuality. Which works? What sexuality? On page 43 we
read, ‘for Wilde writing was often and necessarily a commercial activity’,
which they adduce must give the lie to the prevalent idea ‘that he wished to
use his literary works to subvert bourgeois sexual morality.’ They are not
suggesting the two are incompatible, but they do come down on the side of post hoc, propter hoc. We cannot have it so just because we
wish it so. Whether he wished to or
not, explicitly or implicitly, he can now be read by some and in some
readings of some of his texts as having done just that – but the intentional
fallacy is necessarily a fallacy. |
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*** |
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Guy and Small’s attention to textual detail and variants
and their accounts of his repetitions and verbal recyclings, give us a most
significant, and long overdue contribution to serious Wilde studies. They do not need to protest so much about
other researchers’ approaches (from Robert Ross through Ellmann to McKenna
they make it seem everybody has got it wrong.
And they don’t even mention Philippe Jullien). |
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It has to be said, however vital and shape-changing their
work proves to be, that in their close reading of textual variants and the
numerous editing processes Wilde’s text have gone through, especially De Profundis, they resort just as
frequently as biographers have done to the surmise option: ‘probably’ is just
as useful to the textual analyst about the cutting and pasting Wilde clearly
did, as it is to the biographer surmising about what Oscar and Bosie and Gide
got up to in Algeria. |
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What is important, however, is that no scholar has done
this work of proper textual investigation until now. And it is a necessary corrective to some of
the myth, the editing with intent, and the agenda-led criticism and biography
which have tended to dominate Wilde studies and to appropriate him to a
variety of causes. |
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It does not change a lot of how we read or see Wilde,
especially the comedies, which rise above all trivial fond records, crafty
attributions of meaning to Bunburying, and clumsy unstylish
interpretations. But it adds immensely
to our awareness of the processes of his writing, above and beyond the roles he
made for himself or had made for him by others. Would Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr
Hyde not be just as susceptible to a gay reading as The Picture of Dorian Gray? Guy and Small argue that Dorian Gray has often been read as a
gay text largely because we ‘know’ that Wilde was gay, and we ‘know’ that RLS
was not. That could set a hundred
dinner table conversations going. ‘The
only thing worse than being talked about……’ |
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Wilde’s contemporaries, Henry James and Joseph Conrad to
name only two, have been the subjects of extreme academic intervention; every
word, every variant, every published thought has been scrutinized. Much of Wilde’s writing has been very
little studied. This is an imbalance
which the ‘general’ reader will not care very much about, but scholars have a
lot to do, and if Guy and Small have shown one way of going about it without
getting too bogged down in the traditional Wilde-crit processes, their
contribution will come to be seen more and more as a major one. |
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I assume it was lack of space that has meant that Salome and ‘The Soul of Man under
Socialism’ have been scantily treated.
It is useful to have the detailed view of De Profundis, but the conclusion might simply be that there will
never be a full variorum edition: Small’s OUP edition, volume two of the Complete Works, 2005, is
exemplary. |
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The inclusion here as an appendix of the texts of The Cardinal of Avignon in outline
form (which I had never seen before) with the more readily available La Sainte Courtisane and A Florentine Tragedy gives the authors
the chance to read them as more self-evidently homosexually allusive texts
than the major plays. This is in
itself valuable. |
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The least revealing, but possibly the most detailed textual
investigation, is into Wilde’s use of other reading and writing in his
essays, in the chapter on Intentions. The authors are very perceptive on
Wilde’s displays of learning, the in-jokes, and on how often a great deal of
it was ripped off shamelessly from a wide range of sources. The fact that some of them were by
homosexual writers is really neither here nor there. Attitude is everything, as they themselves
admit. |
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And this is where that gap between the scholarly and the
biographical again becomes rather worrisome.
Wilde’s whole professional career was devoted, yes, to writing – and,
like any writer in any sphere, that meant recycling, cobbling together, what
is now known as cutting and pasting.
And the textual research into these processes will always be valuable
and will always throw up unexpected treasures. |
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But another part of what Oscar was doing, very consciously
all along, was establishing, fashioning, and then living the image of ‘Oscar
Wilde’ – from the prize Trinity student, to the Oxford aesthete, to the ‘in
your face’ living Bunthorne happily playing the solo role to the hilt across
the United States as well as walking down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily
in his medieval hand. |
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There is no point in trying to portray or find evidence in
the writings for another kind of mythical Oscar, ‘Oscar before he was gay’ –
that would set Wilde studies back half a century. The life is just as much a conscious
creation as the writings. Yes, some of
the stories, essays and other texts are more demonstrably rich in allusions,
hints and references that may now be read as gay, or as code. Others have fewer such possible
readings. No big deal. |
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Full public awareness of the sexual proclivities of the
writer may have taken until 1895; until then Oscar’s triumph was that he
managed to be all things to all his markets – selling his reviews and
journalism and essays, his lectures, his stories, his poetry, his plays of
various kinds, in a career trajectory with a wholly modern pattern to it:
highs and lows, failures and restarts, juggling private family life and a
public performance image, a hedonistic life-style and true love. |
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That it all came tumbling down makes his story the
constantly fascinating biography it is; that his classic writings will remain
classics is clear; that his lesser writings contain a multitude of very
significant things is also very clear – and scholars must engage with these
texts, now that fuller and better editions are becoming available. |
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Small and Guy do themselves some disservice in attacking
the biographers so often - it becomes a rather tedious whinge by the end of
the book, and detracts somewhat from their own major contribution. McKenna has taken what we know of Oscar
Wilde and indeed of ‘Oscar Wilde’, far beyond Ellmann. Ellmann’s own perception, confided in
person to Ian Small, that it was love that shaped Wilde’s life and career is
no surprise to us by now. We can live
with that: we can enjoy the life, we can love, admire and study the works, and
we can enjoy and benefit from the scholarship. |
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But two such eminent and diligent scholars of Wilde’s
texts, publishing history and marketplace, must also be the first to realise
that an academic book, from a not very major American University Press, is
going to reach quite a different market and readership from Neil McKenna’s
biography. They have to live with
that. But they can take considerable
glory from the work they have done.
They have changed the shape of Wilde studies: all criticism is not
useless. |
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v
John McRae is Special Professor of
Language in Literature Studies at the University of Nottingham. |
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2. Just Visiting
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Christopher S. Nassaar: The Importance of
Being Earnest … Revisited. Bognor
Regis, Sussex: Woodfield 2005. ISBN
1-903-053-96-0. £9.95. |
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Review by Emmanuel Vernadakis |
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Rewriting was a common practice in ancient Greece
and Rome as it was in Shakespeare's England and Racine’s France. Angela Carter, Jeannette Winterson, Tom
Stoppard, Will Self and other contemporary writers who have explicitly rooted
their writings in specific works of the past suggest that rewriting is also a
common practice in our own era. The
Importance of Being Earnest … Revisited (Woodfield, 2005) by Christopher
Nassaar, an overt rewrite of Wilde’s comedy, seems to confirm the case. |
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Christopher Nassaar, an academic, is widely known
as the author of Into the Demon Universe: A literary Exploration of Oscar
Wilde (Yale, 1974), a volume which was considered a breakthrough in Wilde
studies. Since then he has published
number of books and articles on decadent and Victorian literature in general
and on Oscar Wilde in particular. The
Importance of Being Earnest… Revisited discloses his ambition to go
beyond the limits of academic writing.
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In his preface, Dr Nassaar admits that the
rendering of the play as a novel took hold of him after his reading of The
Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Novel for Serious People by Charles
Osborne (St Martin’s Press, 2000). As he puts it, the idea was brilliant, the
execution of it masterly ‘but nonetheless disappointing. (…) To
produce a work that would attract the audience in the 21st century as
strongly as the original does,’ claims Dr Nassaar, Wilde’s Earnest
‘had to be expanded and rewritten as well,’ something that ‘only a Wilde
scholar or someone who knew all of Wilde very well could do’ (p.v). As
Dr Nassaar ‘was eminently qualified for the task’ (p.v), all he had to do was
to yield to this irresistible temptation.
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The Importance of Being Earnest …Revisited
is a novel made up of fourteen chapters.
It would perhaps be more appropriate to call it a novella, since its
176 pages can be read at one sitting. The plot is set in London and Hertfordshire
in the eighteen nineties and is faithful to the original. So are the characters. However, more characters from Wilde’s other
works find their way in the dialogue.
In chapter three, for instance, Lady Bracknell refers to Lord
Dartmoor, a character from The Picture of Dorian Gray also remembered
by Frank Harris in his confessions. |
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‘Incidentally, what is this foolishness about Lord
Dartmoor wanting to marry an American? It is quite scandalous.’ |
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‘It is rather fashionable to marry Americans just
now,’ replied Algernon. ‘Her name is
Hester Worsley. But who are her
people? Has she got any?’ |
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‘I imagine she must have. Even Americans have parents, I’m
told,’ [Lady Bracknell] said
meditatively. (p.32) |
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In chapter seven there is question of Mr Hopper from Lady
Windermere’s Fan, now a friend of Jack and Cecily. |
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‘Mr Hopper, an Australian friend of ours, told me
[Australia] is full of darling kangaroos that jump around all the time.’ (p.80) |
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The Canterville Ghost is also one of the referred
to characters as it haunts both the Manor House and Cecily’s diary. |
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‘Please stop pretending that your brother is dead,’
[Cecily] pleaded. ‘If such a thing
were to happen, the dear old ghost would have appeared. In the attic room. It always does before such occasions. You know that, uncle Jack.’ Cecily was convinced that the famous
ghost of Canterville Chase has taken residence in the Manor House. (94) |
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‘When [the diary] appears in volume form I hope you
will order a copy. Autobiography as
you know is the highest form of fiction. The only Problem was the many
references to the Canterville ghost.
People are so narrow-minded and so prejudiced against ghosts,’
[Cecily] reflected. (p.107) |
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She prudently refrained from adding that the
Canterville ghost had blessed the engagement.
Being a ghost, he could of course see into the future and had assured
her the marriage would be a particularly happy one. (p.109) |
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It appears therefore that in Earnest…
Revisited, Wilde’s works are used in order to conjure up a ‘real-life’
literary universe comparable to that Balzac built up in The Human Comedy—a
‘small world’ in which each character knows everyone else. Those among the readers who are Wilde
enthusiasts recognise them all and might feel quite at home with the book,
perhaps consider themselves part of the family. |
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Within this context of casual etiquette the story
is told by a third person omniscient narrator, almost a character and perhaps
Dr Nassaar’s spokesperson. The
narration is scattered with Wildean miscellanies. For instance, in order to characterise
Algernon, the narrator resorts to Wilde’s poetic rewrite of the myth of
Narcissus, the prose poem ‘The Disciple’. |
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Algernon looked at [Lane] languidly. ‘I don’t think that I am much interested in
your family life, Lane.’ He was far
too self-centred to have any real interest in anyone than himself. In fact, he was not too different from the pool
Narcissus used to gaze at himself in.
The story goes that, when Narcissus died, his pool changed from a cup
of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears
(…) (p.3) |
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A choice of Oscar Wilde’s wit from elsewhere has
been woven into the dialogue of Earnest…Revisited. The phrasings are either exact or slightly
altered in order to fit each specific context. |
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[Cecily] paused for a second, then continued. ‘[Dr. Chasuble] has been so sad
recently. A missionary friend of his
was killed by cannibals.’ (…) ‘Doesn’t [Dr. Chasuble] know that missionaries
are the divinely ordained food of cannibals? Whenever the poor, hungry
cannibals have reached the end of their tether, and are about to starve to
death, God sends them a nice plump missionary…’ (114) |
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Besides wit, several passages from Intentions
are inserted here and there in sections referring to ‘modern culture.’ |
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‘Modern life would be very tedious if the truth were
pure and simple, and modern literature a complete impossibility!’ |
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‘That wouldn’t be at all a bad thing,’ replied
Jack. ‘Mr Henry James writes fiction
as if it were a painful duty. Mr
Rudyard Kipling is our first authority on the second rate (…) George Eliot’s
novels are like the sweeping of a Pentonville omnibus, and M. Zola’s characters are much worse.’ (p.17) |
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Informative details issuing from Dr Nassaar’s
academic experience are also incorporated into the dialogue. Through Algernon’s lines, for instance, the
author reminds us of the Irish dramatist George Farquhar whose name passes on
to Mary Farquhar, Lady Bracknell’s favourite guest (33). |
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The Importance of Being Earnest… Revisited
involves several among Wilde’s characters into its narrative, weaves many of
Wilde’s fireworks into its dialogue and sticks close to Wilde’s original work.
As the author concludes in his preface, he likes to think that Wilde
would have approved of this project which he hopes will find favour with the
readers who peruse it. |
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v
Emmanuel Vernadakis teaches at the
University of Angers. His paper on ‘Oscar
Wilde, Tennessee Williams and the Palimpsest of the Courtesan’ was given at
the Colloquium La Reprise en
Littérature – Rewriting/Reprising In Literature’, 14th and 15th
October 2006 at the Université de Lyon – Lumière |
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Editor’s Note (i):
Christopher Nassaar has kindly allowed us to publish a chapter of The
Importance of Being Earnest … Revisited, so readers may have a
foretaste. This will be found in our LIBRARY.
Click its icon. |
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Editor’s Note (ii):
We also publish this month a bibliography of Christopher Nassaar’s
writings on Wilde. Please click the
icon to reach it. |
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3. Loving Dangerously
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Deborah Lutz: The Dangerous Lover: Gothic Villains, Byronism, and the
Nineteenth-Century Seduction Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State University
Press 2006. ISBN 10 0-8142-1034-1, pp.
117. |
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Review by Linda Dryden |
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In The
Dangerous Lover Deborah Lutz surveys over 200 years’ of romantic
literature in order to explore the motivations, inner life and existential
dilemmas of a host of what she terms, ‘dangerous lovers.’ From the outset
Lutz states her intention not to place her debate within the ‘gendered
paradigm’ of more recent studies, but rather to consider all the texts under
discussion as ‘equally legitimate and as existing on the same textual plane’
(xii). Her subject is the male lover in such fictions and she makes no
excuses for her deliberate exclusion of the inner life these fictions’
heroines. What Dangerous Lovers
consequently offers us is a very focused philosophical consideration of the
nature, attributes and psychology of the ‘dangerous lover’ in English
literature. This is an ambitious project, but it works because its determined
focus allows Lutz to move across genre and historical period without
diversion or the digressions demanded by adherence to a theoretical hegemony.
In place of a feminist, or indeed a postcolonial framework, Lutz opts for a
thesis informed by a Heideggerian approach to history, and the book is all
the more refreshing and elegant for this narrowing of the field of
investigation. |
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The opening chapter, ‘The Erotics of Ontology,’
deals largely with the twentieth century historical romance and its often
overt eroticism. Drawing on a wide range of popular romances, with glances at
some more well-known twentieth-century novels, Lutz seeks to illuminate for
us the appeal of the various dark and dangerous heroes and anti-heroes
encountered in these fictions. She argues that their erotic attraction is
located in their brooding, angst-ridden existentialism, and their need to
interiorise their spiritual wounds. The struggle the lover endures defines
his battle to maintain autonomy in the face of the need of the heroine to see
external and emotional evidence of commitment and passion. Lutz outlines the
formula of these historical romances as existing within this struggle,
usually resulting in the ultimate victory of the heroine in eroding the
hero’s resolve to remain aloof, emotionally cold and unattainable. As Lutz
argues: ‘The dangerous lover narrative exemplifies, in its movements and its
central concerns, the angst of being itself’ (20). The evasions and
misunderstandings of these romances are seen as mirroring and perhaps even
enacting the inevitable paradox of life itself: its proximity to the mystery
of death and the perpetual struggle to avoid the ultimate fate. This
fascinating chapter reminds us that the historical romance verges on the
pornographic at the same time as it probes some of our most subtle erotic
urges. It makes for a fascinating and very well informed read and is an
excellent beginning for the volume. |
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In the second chapter, ‘The Spectral Other and
Erotic Melancholy,’ Lutz turns her attention to the Gothic novel from the
early modern to the Regency periods. Her reading of Pamela is particularly perceptive, as when she analyses the
heroine’s externalising of her desire through letter writing and concludes
that the letter becomes ‘a substitute for sex’ and that the ‘highest point of
sexual satiation is the text’ (30).
Referring to Freud and Heidegger’s fascination with unheimlich, Lutz argues that to ‘love the dangerous lover is to
feel the creepy uncanniness of finding the familiar at the heart of
terrifying strangeness’ (32), and this realisation informs her subsequent
discussion of the dangerous lover in Gothic fiction. She focuses on the early
Gothic novel with references to the more recent historical romance, and
throughout this debate we find useful insights into the nature of the gothic
itself, as when she states that ‘The blocked speech of the Gothic novel
continues in the dangerous lover narrative: lovers who cannot speak their
“inner meaning”—their love for the other—hold their essence in abeyance until
the final transcendence of the narrative’ (35). Such insights highlight the
fact that The Dangerous Lover has
much to offer those researching nineteenth-century romance and the gothic.
Furthermore, Lutz provides a very detailed reading of Wuthering Heights. Her emphasis on the fragmentary nature of the
love between Cathy and Heathcliff is persuasive, and it must be said that the
volume would have been even more useful to critics and researchers had it
contained more sustained critiques such as this. |
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Nevertheless, her next chapter, ‘Love as
Homesickness,’ is one of the best discussions in the volume. Here the focus
shifts to the romantics and Byron and ‘Byronism’ in particular. Byron’s place
in the Romantic Movement and in the development of the gothic is central and
thus a chapter devoted to his work and influence at the core of this volume
is wholly appropriate. Lutz’s concern here is with the lover as brooding,
nostalgic, self-styled outcast, conditions that define the Byronic hero and
Lutz’s subject. For, as she says herself: ‘The deeply unhappy, estranged
brooder, with outward signs of the darkness that is inside him, has become a
ubiquitous trope for the dangerous lover narrative’ (53). The longer
discussions here of Childe Harold and A Tale of Two Cities are particularly
welcome. They emphasise the pivotal position of the anti-hero in romantic
fiction because the ‘dangerous lover believes everything is fragments of his
own mindscape,’ and thus ‘his self-loathing remorse is a small step away from
lashing out at others; his self-punishment so easily becomes
other-punishment’ (67). It is for insights such these alone that The Dangerous Lover is worth reading,
but it has much more than this to offer, and it repays careful reading with
pithy comments that are thought provoking and illuminating. |
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Readers of the Oscholars,
however, may well be slightly disappointed with the final chapter, ‘The
Absurdity of the Sublime.’ While the discussion of the history and cultural
significance of the dandy is welcome, and the overview of his place in
nineteenth-century fiction is carefully charted, the argument for the dandy
as ‘dangerous lover’ could be more forcefully and convincingly made. There
are still some acute observations, though, this being amongst the most
useful: ‘The depiction of the dandy was a way to domesticate the Byronic
figure, to bring him from the outside to the inside; to control him by making
the immaterial material’ (72). This comes in the context of Disraeli’s Vivian Grey and the so-called
‘Silver-Fork’ novel and offers us a welcome segue from the previous chapter.
The chapter ranges effortlessly over some of the iconic novels of the
mid-to-late Victorian period, taking in Dombey
and Son, David Copperfield, and
The Mill on the Floss. Yet possibly
the most notorious dandy of Victorian fiction, Dorian Gray, receives scant
attention, barely one and half pages, and those hoping for a new insights
into Wilde’s novel will be disappointed: Dorian
Gray needs a much more lengthy discussion as one of the most dangerous
lovers of the fin de siècle, as indeed does the vampire and Dracula in particular. |
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The Conclusion sums up Lutz’s arguments with
clarity, and this is followed by an Appendix that details the narrative
timeline of ‘The Gothic Romance, the Erotic Historical Romance and the
Regency Romance.’ In terms of structure this make for a slightly odd
positioning. The argument of the volume could have benefited from a longer
and more detailed contextualizing of these novels after the Introduction.
Coming as it does as an appendix, this discussion loses its force and
historical impact. Lutz is a gifted writer with a seemingly instinctive sense
how to combine the flow of words and argument into a fluid and satisfying
read, but one feels here perhaps that the need for a more conventional
structure should have taken precedence over aesthetic considerations. Indeed
it may have been an even more satisfying volume if Lutz’s eloquence had been
given free rein to explore the historical significance of this genre as a
context for the subsequent discussion. This is, however, a minor criticism
and should not detract from the overall excellence of this volume, and indeed
other readers may disagree. |
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The
Dangerous Lover is a short volume at only eighty-nine pages of actual
critical commentary. Its argument is elegant and often lyrical, making it a
fascinating and highly enjoyable read. Lutz has a writing style to be admired
and envied, and there is no doubt that this book is an excellent addition to
studies of the novel of romance and to studies in the gothic. It may have
been even more impressive if it had extended its discussion to include a more
sustained critique of the issues mentioned above. At the end one is left with
a feeling of admiration for the author and her illumination of the dangerous
lover in such a wide range of literature. Yet, having finished, there is
still a sense of wanting more—one has to hope that Lutz is turning her
considerable talents to another project and this reader will eagerly await
the resulting publication. This is an excellent book: some say that the best
things come in small packages, and this is certainly a small, but valuable
package, and very beautifully wrapped. The publishers should be congratulated
on producing such an appealing cover design and a quality binding. The
content does justice to its promise, and, despite the caveats above, this is
a volume that will reward the careful reader with sophisticated and at times
lyrical appreciations of some of the most compelling and complex male characters
in English literature. |
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v
Linda Dryden is Senior Lecturer in
Cultural Studies at Napier University in Edinburgh. Her The Modern Gothic and Literary
Doubles: Stevenson, Wilde and Wells was published by Palgrave in 2003. |
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4.
SADOMASOCHISM and Sympathy
|
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Catherine Maxwell: Swinburne. Tavistock: Northcote House Publishers Ltd 2006. Series ‘Writers and their Work’, in
association with the British Council. |
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Review by Jarlath Killeen |
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Algernon Charles Swinburne has unfortunately
suffered the fate of many literary figures who had the temerity to be
scandalous in their own lifetime: in an attempt to deflect attention away
from the political and social implications of their ‘indecent’ personal and
intellectual lives, their contemporary opponents and posthumous pathologisers
have tried to have them labelled second-rate or frivolous. In Swinburne’s case, his rather unfortunate
physical appearance (red-haired and physically small) provided ammunition for
the caricaturist, and his curious sexual interests allowed his detractors to
suggest that an acquaintance with his poetry was potentially morally
debilitating for the reader, although we must acknowledge that Swinburne was
more interested in talking about sexual transgression than actually getting
down to it. Catherine Maxwell calls
his constant return to ‘perversion’ part of a ‘fantasy discourse between men
that gave its participants the frisson of illicit excitement’ (98). As Edmond de Goncourt told Wilde in 1883,
posing as a sodomite was important to Swinburne’s philosophical and political
viewpoint, but he was not actively involved in sodomitical acts, and as
Maxwell records here, was probably ambivalent about its expression in reality
as opposed to fantasy. Swinburne was
once heard declaiming against ‘that hateful theory’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets,
and also wrote a letter about one of his friends who had been arrested for
buggery suggesting he may need to cut him out of his acquaintance: ‘evidently
some kinds of “sin” were permissible only if they did not assume too fleshy a
form’ (99). |
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Despite his physical reservations, Swinburne’s
views on sexuality were heady stuff. For some, notoriety will almost always
indicate intellectual and therefore literary flippancy. Oscar Wilde had for a century to endure the
fact that his imprisonment for ‘gross indecency’ was considered more
interesting than – or indeed, indicative of – his writing, and even now
Swinburne’s appearances at a flagellation brothel in 1868 produces titters
rather than theses. Indeed, as
Catherine Maxwell makes clear in her very useful new study of Swinburne, he
was not greatly served by some of those who should have been defending
him. Even his first biographer Edmund
Gosse ‘went out of his way to focus on Swinburne’s eccentricities’ (6), going
so far as to describe him as ‘like that little geyser in Iceland which is always
simmering, but which, if it is irritated by having pieces of turf thrown in,
instantly boils over’. With friends
like these…His physical stature encouraged caricaturists to depict him
dwarfed by the work of his contemporaries Tennyson and Browning, and that he
peopled his 1866 volume of Poems and
Ballads with hermaphrodites, sadomasochists, necrophiles, adulterers,
lesbians, murderers and flagellants shocked one group of critics and
alienated another for whom ‘seriousness’ and sexual curiosity do not go side
by side. A re-appraisal of Swinburne
began in the 1950s and 1960s and has continued in fits and starts but, as
Maxwell notes, much of the best work on this crucial Victorian is out of
print or difficult to obtain, and a huge amount of primary material remains
unpublished. Maxwell’s purpose is
‘fill a gap’ (10), and provide for the undergraduate and the general reader a
helpful introduction to some of the most important aspects of Swinburne’s
writing, and hopefully stimulate more interest in this still-neglected
figure. In this she does an admirable
job. |
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One of Maxwell’s considerable achievements is the
eloquence with which she examines the connection between Swinburne’s outré
sexual subjects and the political and psychological radicalism that marked
his work. Although she suggests that
from a biographical standpoint Swinburne’s sadomasochism is relatively
uninteresting (a judgement I confess to being baffled by), she explicates
very clearly the powerful intellectual challenge his poetry makes in taking
up these subjects. Sadomasochism,
after all, is a practice which thoroughly destabilises boundaries between,
for example, pleasure and pain, passivity and aggressiveness, femininity and
masculinity, self and other, and by addressing this subject matter in a
concomitantly destabilising poetic form Swinburne radicalised sexual
transgression, moving it from the zone of titillating gossip to political
commentary. Rather than provide his
readers with a fixed moral location within the poem from which sexual
transgressors could be judged (harshly) by the morals of the day, Swinburne’s
speakers, and their subject positions refuse to stay still, shifting in tone
and personality constantly. This has
the effect, Maxwell argues, of destabilising the reader also, and
undercutting their ability to take a moral position on or even an ontological
position in relation to what they are reading. As divisions between self and other are
being deconstructed through the sadomasochistic content of the poem, so the
poetic form operates to challenge ontological stability as well. The reader becomes confused and unable to
place him/herself, and at times, becomes one with the speaker of the poem who
appears to be not only reporting such unacceptably perverse behaviour, but also
(perhaps) lyrically celebrating it. Just like the speaker, then, the reader too
is forced (sadistically) to try on all kinds of transgressive personae, so
that the poem becomes both a sadomasochistic assault on the reader –
assailing her with a series of ever more perverse activities which she is
expected to suspend intellectual and moral judgement on (so making the poem a
painful experience) – but also a seduction of the reader through the rhythms
and metre the poem adopts (so therefore pleasurable). |
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Maxwell brings out very well how this is as much
a political as well as an aesthetic achievement. The ability to project the self into
sympathy with another was, after all, central to nineteenth-century ideas of
political progress: having sympathy with your fellow man was supposed to make
you a better person and enable you to bridge divisions of class and therefore
help prevent social revolt. The
landlord capable of sympathy for/with his tenants, or the factory owner
capable of sympathy for/with his workers, would be less likely to oppress them. Likewise, the tenant and union member,
capable of sympathetic understanding of his landlord or boss would be less
inclined to rise up against him in some organised revolution. Sympathy was a thoroughly traditional idea
dressed in some radical-looking clothes and operated conservatively in
Victorian society as a whole, encouraging cohesion rather than social
change. However, as Maxwell explains,
Swinburne noticed the potential political radicalism of sympathy. Sympathy was always circumscribed in the fiction
and poetry of conservatives: it stopped at certain boundaries. You could not have sympathy with the
sexually transgressive. You could not
have sympathy with strikers. You could
not have sympathy with those who expressed certain unacceptable opinions
(atheists, for example, or republicans).
Sympathy was actually a means of social conformity. Logically, however, there is no reason why
sympathy should not be extended to these kinds of figures; indeed, for a
political radical, there are all kinds of reasons why it would be important
to sympathise with them. Sympathy,
moreover, could in the right hands and the right mind allow one person to
briefly become another, and thus fundamentally undermine the notion of an
essential and unchanging self. |
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In promoting a sadomasochistic notion of
sympathy, Poems and Ballads was a
political manifesto of sorts in that it attempted to co-opt its readers into
a sympathetic understanding of those within society who had singularly failed
to find a sympathetic hearing from the great and the good. Through formal manipulations, and the
erasure of both conventional moral standpoints and clear boundaries between
(perverse) speaker and (conservative) reader, Swinburne shockingly signs his
readers up to all kinds of views and positions they would otherwise be
unwilling to subscribe to. As Maxwell
eloquently puts it, ‘One of the major characteristics of his poetry is the
way in which he persuades his readers to entertain or give mental space to
ideas and feelings with which they would normally not be in sympathy by bringing them into proximity with
characters and situations they would habitually shun’ (26). This radicalism stretches further. The series of poems in this collection
offers antidote after antidote to the sexual and gender stereotypes of
Victorian culture, and serves to undermine both Angel-in-the-House femininity
and muscular Christian masculinity, offering instead a hermaphrodite and
androgynous version of gender, as well as many versions of a dangerous and
aggressive femme fatale and effeminate weeping male lover. In a close reading of ‘Before the Mirror’
and ‘Sapphics’, Maxwell demonstrates cogently the link between formal
innovation and thematic transgression, establishes convincingly how they
translate into political and social commentary, and then traces this to
Swinburne’s poem ‘Pasiphae’ which is published for the first time for a
general audience at the end of the study. |
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Although she defines the difference between Poems and Ballads and Swinburne’s subsequent
poetry as the difference between sexual and erotic transgression in the
former and political radicalism in the latter, the actual strength of
Maxwell’s study is that it finds the politically and sexually transgressive
connected in both places. The second
chapter does focus more on political elements in Swinburne’s work, and
skilfully traces the influence of the Italian Risorgimento on the neglected Songs Before Sunrise (1871). However, rather than ‘pure’ politics,
Maxwell finds here a continuation of Poems
and Ballads’ metaphorical and literal cross-dressings, with Swinburne
conferring ‘masculine’ qualities on ‘feminine’ characters, and encouraging
his readers to substitute pagan figures for debased Christian ones. In a third and insightful chapter on
‘Swinburne’s Aesthetic Prose’, Maxwell demonstrates how it was formative in
providing Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, W. B.
Yeats and others with a language by which to articulate a
distinctively ‘aesthetic’ rather than moral theory of art. This chapter should be useful for anyone
attempting to understand the views found in Wilde’s Intentions. |
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It would be ungrateful to gripe about absences in
a book as concise as Maxwell’s. I
would have liked to see more on the theological transgressiveness of
Swinburne’s body poetics in, for example, the reading of ‘Sapphics’, or ‘Hymn
to Proserpine’, or ‘The Last Oracle’.
Although Maxwell notes Swinburne’s daring transposition of Christ’s
crown of thorns to the head of the lesbian pagan Sappho in ‘Sapphics’, such
theological transvestism is a major aspect of Swinburne’s entire poetic and
political mission. As the critic Carol
Poster has pointed out, sexual and religious perversity were closely
associated in legal terms in Victorian England (a conflation found both on
the statute books and in the Book of Common Prayer), and an assault on
Anglican understandings of the uses of the body was considered an attack on
the sources of a state whose legitimacy was imbricated in the Anglican faith. In many of Swinburne’s poems the Christian
metaphysical world is fractured by a resurgence of pagan, Dionysian power, a
fracture that transforms some of the central figures of Christianity –
especially the Virgin Mary and Christ – into pawns of a new pagan political and
sexual game. In the Virgin Mary, for
example, Swinburne finds the seeds of a sadomasochistic policy which can be
co-opted into his own intellectual program, while the vision of the Incarnate
Body of Christ racked with pain can meld into the sexual transgressor being
flagellated by his dominatrix.
However, one study cannot cover everything, and this book will be a
central item on the reading lists for some time to come. |
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v
Jarlath Killeen lectures at Trinity
College, Dublin. His The Faiths of
Oscar Wilde was published by Palgrave in 2005. |
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[Editor’s
Note: This series, launched in 1994, of which Isobel Armstrong is the
General Editor, is the successor to the ‘Writers and their Work’ series
published (also in association with the British Council) by Longmans. Catherine Maxwell’s Swinburne thus
replaces the work of the same name in that series by H.J.C. Grierson. The full list currently in print can be
found by clicking here.] |
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5. Evensong
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Auguste Rodin: All about Eve |
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Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, |
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23rd September-19th November 2006 |
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Reviewed by Nicola Gauld |
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‘Sometimes it seems that you can find nothing in
a model, then, all at once, a bit of nature shows itself, a strip of flesh
becomes visible, and that shred of truth gives the whole truth, and allows
itself to be raised by a leap to the absolute principle of things’. ––Auguste Rodin. |
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Rodin did indeed find the whole truth in the
Italian model who posed for Eve, but it was her pregnancy that forced
him to abandon the sculpture unfinished. Begun in 1881 and conceived as a
life-size bronze to flank The Gates of Hell alongside Adam, the
sculpture was not exhibited until 1899 when its appearance at the Paris Salon
caused a stir, (the following year Oscar Wilde was shown round Rodin’s work
on display at the Salon by the sculptor himself); in a departure from more
conventional biblical or mythical depictions, Eve was displayed simply
standing on the floor without a pedestal, as it is shown in this exhibition,
thereby emphasising her fallibility. Three versions of Rodin’s piece are on
display at Kettle’s Yard, two life-size bronzes from Cardiff and Southampton
and a smaller version from Liverpool situated within their own spaces. Shown
at the moment when she acknowledges her wrongdoing, Eve, as Rainer
Maria Rilke pointed out in his 1903 biography of Rodin, ‘bends forward as
though listening over her own body in which a new future begins to stir. And
it is as though the gravity of this future weighed upon the senses of the
woman and drew her down from the freedom of life into the deep humble service
of motherhood’ (Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, pub. 1903). |
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The influence of this simple unfinished sculpture
upon photographers forms a major part of the exhibition. Photographic studies
of the sculpture taken for Rodin by Stephen Haweis and Henry Coles, Eugène
Druet and Jacques-Ernest Bulloz, along with a recently rediscovered
photograph by Charles Bodmer (showing Eve with Adam from around
1882-83) are on show, as are recently commissioned studies of the sculpture
by Nicholas Sinclair and Iraida Icaza. |
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Of the early photographs, it is the series by
Haweis and Cole which best captures the unearthly nature of Eve;
indeed, Rodin himself came to recognise them as independent works of art.
Cole and Haweis had been students in Cambridge; College records for Haweis show
that he ‘did not graduate. Took up Art’. Inverted as carbon prints, the
images require an internegative or additional print to produce the correct
representation. Moreover, Eve was photographed within natural light
and against a dark background. The print was subsequently mounted on grey
Canson paper, which conveys a more mythical sensibility as well as
emphasising the ethereal sense of the sculpture and conveying a suitably sfumato
effect. These quiet, intimate images contrast with more recent photographs by
Sinclair and Icaza. Sinclair’s series was shot in situ at the National
Museum of Wales in Cardiff in 2006 and emphasises, in Sinclair’s words, the
enclosed nature of the bronze and her protective body language, her sense of
shame and rejection and her need to withdraw from the world. He is clearly
interested in Eve’s pitted, textured surface, which hints at her inner
turmoil, and the ambiguous muscularity of the bronze, at times suggestive of
androgyny. Sinclair is primarily concerned with Eve’s ambiguities,
particularly the interplay between male and female, external and internal. |
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For Iraida Icaza Eve is ‘an incantation’.
Her interest lies with the magical, spellbinding qualities of the piece and
contrasts markedly with Sinclair’s interest in the solidly human aspects of Eve.
One example of Icaza’s work depicts seven phases of Southampton City Art
Gallery’s version of the piece, photographed from all sides in an echo of the
relationship between sculptor, model and work, which also mirrors the experience
of the gallery visitor. In this study of intimacy, Icaza’s final image is
deliberately out of focus, depicting the ‘moment when she returns to be a
myth, an after-image’. Icaza also photographed the sculpture under
translucent plastic wrapping (the only part of her series which perhaps
doesn’t work so well), the idea being that the wrapping acts as a protective
veil and when shown as a dark silhouette, the bronze does not disappear in an
unformed shadow but retains its strong outline and body presence. In Icaza’s
words, Eve ‘can become simply translucent and ethereal, like air. This
is her magic’. |
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What is clear from All about Eve is that
Rodin’s sculpture offers alternative readings and interpretations, and it is
this aspect of the work that is so excellently explored by Kettle’s Yard, the
intimate nature of the sculpture ideally suited to the gallery surroundings.
Earthly and muscular, symbolic of temptation and procreation, fallible and
ashamed, Eve can also be ethereal, unworldly and otherworldly,
sensuous and intimate, as she slowly reveals herself to the viewer. |
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All about Eve is organised to coincide
with the Royal Academy’s major exhibition of Rodin’s work. It is accompanied
by a catalogue, which includes the photographic studies, and an essay by Sue
Hibbard. |
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v
Nicola Gauld works as a research
associate at the Fitzwilliam Museum for a planned exhibition in 2009 on
Charles Darwin and the arts. Her
thesis 'The Nature of the Beast: depictions of the exotic animal in 19th
Century British visual culture' gained her a doctorate from the University of
Aberdeen last summer. |
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6. Picture Restorers
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D.C. Rose |
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1. A picture
with Dorian Gray.
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As most will now know, the film ‘The League of
Extraordinary Gentleman’ introduces Dorian Gray as a character. The film was reviewed in our issue of
October 2002 by Eva Thienpont, and we are in agreement with her
hostile views, having dutifully watched the film once in a cinema and once on
the television (DVD). It inspired us
to scrutinise more closely the representation of Dorian Gray, as the film
doubtless has become ‘a cult classic’ or ‘iconic’ or whatever is the current
mumbo-jumbo – at any rate subject to analysis by popular culture/film
theorists. |
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The film is set in 1899 (the year of the outbreak
of the South African, or ‘Boer’ War, when ‘Goodbye, Dolly Gray’ was a popular
song), and Gray, who did not perish as Oscar Wilde recounted (Wilde is never
mentioned), joins Alan Quatermain, Mina Harker, The Invisible Man, Dr
Jekyll/Mr Hyde, Captain Nemo and Tom Sawyer in a league to combat the plans
for world domination of ‘The Phantom’.
The seven members of the League (cp. The Seven against Thebes, The
Seven Samurai, the Magnificent Seven etc) are recruited by ‘M’, a Bond
reference hardly lost on audiences drawn to the film by Sean Connery as
Quatermain. ‘The Phantom’ turns out to
be ‘M’ himself (remember the man in the darkened room in Scotland Yard who
recruits the six policemen to combat the anarchist machinations of ‘Comrade
Sunday’ in Chesterton’s The Man who was Thursday, Sunday of course
eventually being revealed as the Scotland Yarder). ‘The Phantom’ is he of the Opera, as
Quatermain himself lets us know. ‘Very
operatic,’ he says, when M mentions the name.
It was clever of Quatermain to pick up the reference in 1899, as 'The
Phantom of the Opera' was not published until 1911. ‘M’ turns out to be Professor Moriarty (or
his reincarnation). Connery/Quatermain
fights him as Connery/Bond fought Dr No, Goldfinger, Blofeld etc, and there
is a Bond-style super sports car, though how this was fuelled is not clear. A certain familiarity with origins is thus
required of the audience: Captain Nemo’s first lieutenant introduces himself
with the words ‘Call me Ishmael’, and indeed there may be other references
either too recondite or too simple for this spectator to have recognised,
raising the question of the intended audience. |
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Gray is another matter. He has been blackmailed by ‘M’ into joining
the League as M’s mole because ‘M’ now possesses the Portrait by Basil
Hallward. Dorian remains alive and unaging
as long as the portrait remains hidden: he will die if he ever sees it (‘“The
curse has come upon me,” cried the Lady of Shalott’?). This makes him invulnerable to
weapons. He is now living in the East
End (‘Is this where Jack the Ripper lives?’ asks The Invisible Man when the
members of the League arrive at a dockside warehouse). Gray, ahead of the Canary Wharf property
developers, seems to have moved the entire contents of his Grosvenor Square
house, though not Mrs Leaf, into this unprepossessing building. He also seems to have inherited the small
beard sported by Lord Henry Wotton. He
is notably fit, energetic and heterosexual if his references to having had an
affaire with Mina Harker are anything to go by. Certainly there are no homoerotic
relationships to disturb the traditional cinematic values of this farrago. Gray is not even tempted by the good looks
of Tom Sawyer, and indeed treats Sawyer (now a member of United States Secret
Service) with bored contempt. (If
Dorian looks more like the representations of Lord Henry, Sawyer looks more
like the representations of Dorian.)
For Alan Quatermain, however, Sawyer takes the place of a dead
son. This attachment, which
contributes to Quatermain’s death, gives an œdipal dimension to an otherwise
anodyne series of relationships.
Gray’s Byronic open neck shirt, at odds with his otherwise dandified
appearance, suggests that he is not all convention; and one must seek the
significance of going without tie or cravat among the psycho-social
historians of fashion. Unlike most
dandies, however, he seems to have only one suit of clothes. This never becomes rumpled, torn or dirty,
so perhaps it was made from the cloth invented by Alec Guinness in The Man in the White Suit. |
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The film
of course is complete rubbish, not even true to its own internal conventions;
but it gives us another picture of Dorian Gray to add to the Tate Postmodern,
or to Oscar as Popular Culture. We
await the sequel where the League is reconstituted and Algernon Moncrieff
leads A.J. Raffles, Alan Breck Stewart, Richard Hannay, Kim, Rudolf
Rassendyll and Sir Percy Blakeney, in combat against a conspiracy
masterminded by Arsène Lupin disguised as Mr Pooter: that would indeed be
bunburying. |
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Other views are invited, and perhaps a Stevenson,
Stoker, Verne, Twain, Haggard or Wells scholar would care to comment on the
depiction of the other members of the League. |
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CORRECTION |
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We erroneously reported that The League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen had been shown on French television. This was our mistake: the reference should
have been to its release in French cinemas. |
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2. Beauty and
Beast.
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As early as 1909, Jean Cocteau considered an
adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray for the stage, yet. This was not published until fifteen years
after his death (La Portrait Surnaturel de Dorian Gray. Pièce fantastique en quatre actes et cinq tableaux. Tirée du Portait de Dorian Gray. Paris: Olivier Obran, Collection
Les Inédits 1978). The blurb reads |
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C’est en
1909 que Jean Cocteau, aidé par son ami Jacques Renaud, entreprend une
adaptation théâtrale du roman d’Oscar Wilde, Le Portrait de Dorian Gray. |
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L’histoire
de Dorian Gray, cet ange brûlant et glacé, prêt à tout pour preserver sa
beauté menacée, pour dérober au temps de sa jeunesse, ne pouvait que séduire
Jean Cocteau. |
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Il a alors
vingt ans et une atmosphère tout wildienne emplit sa vie . . . Mais très vite
Cocteau va évoluer et suivre d’autres voies.
L’art moderne s’ouvre à lui et il étonna bientôt Diaghilev. L’Enfant Terrible s’efforcera aussi d’effacer
les traces wildiennes dans son œuvre, et ainsi le manuscrit de Dorian Gray
resta inédit. |
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En voici sa
publication, quinze ans après la mort du poète. |
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I have not discovered whether this version has
ever been performed, and it is not mentioned by Sprigge and Kihm (Elizabeth
Sprigge and Jean-Jacques Kihm: Jean Cocteau: the Man and the Mirror. London: Gollancz 1978, notably Chapter III:
‘The Debut of a Dandy’), or by other writers on Cocteau such as Brown, Dowlie
and Steegmuller, from the last of whom we learn that Cocteau met Vyvyan
Holland in Venice in 1908, an encounter Holland omits from his books (Francis
Steegmuller: Cocteau, A Biography.
London: Macmillan 1969 p.34).
Perhaps there will be a film where Vyvyan Holland and Cocteau have
dinner with Lord Henry Wotton and Aschenbach and Aspern at Harry’s Bar. |
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Note:
Dr Emily Eells (Université de Paris X – Nanterre) is working on Wilde
and Cocteau, and we look forward to learning more. |
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v
D.C. Rose is Editor of THE OSCHOLARS |
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7. Oscar
and Bosie are Forgettable in France (2)
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In our last issue we published under this heading
a review by Mathilde Mazau of Isaure de Saint-Pierre: Bosie and
Wilde. Paris: Éditions de Rocher
2005. ISBN 2 268 05634 1. 275pp €.
We now offer readers our English version, which Mathilde Mazau has
approved. |
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« And I, may I say something,
Madam? » |
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“Bosie and Wilde”. Let us pass over the title. We know at once which side will be taken
throughout this biography, or rather, this novel. For this is the first question – the
question that imposes itself from the very first pages, biography or novel? In fact, neither the one nor the other, but
something of both, and the result is debatable as far as one takes it into
consideration. But let us pass over
the form, there has already been enough said on that. |
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So there we have Bosie and Wilde, hybrid work by
Isaure de Saint-Pierre, which through the length (and oh, how long it is) of
its 272 pages, gives itself up to an evil folly of writing, describing and
alas! imagining scenes and (what is even worse) conversations between its
different characters. That, however, suggests
perhaps the only quality for which I can salute this book: its nerve. Indeed, it takes nerve to give lines to
Oscar Wilde when one has so little talent for them. This is only equalled by the confidence
with which to dare think that the dialogues can be for one instant credible
as a substitute for being well-written.
But let us pass over the dialogues: if there was nothing worse than
these in the book, one could give Isaure de Saint-Pierre the benefit of the
doubt. Doubt about her ability to
write at all on this subject. That
said, the doubt is quickly replaced by first amusement, and then
perplexity. For one laughs often when
reading this book. One laughs at its
mistakes (to list the errors would transform this review into a catalogue);
one laughs at the gaucheries of some scenes, and at all the
conversations. Then comes the
perplexity. Isaure de Saint-Pierre
clearly has taken it upon herself to regild Bosie’s coat-of-arms, and all
credit to her for this. But can one do
this without giving oneself up to a systematic and strict Oscar-bashing? For the Wilde found here is continually
vilified and disparaged beside an almost angelic Bosie. |
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Last of all, having passed over the title, the
form, the dialogues (such dialogues!), there is left the usefulness of such a
piece of writing in ending by reposing the question. It is not so much that the author makes
the attempt to rehabilitate Bosie as the manner in which she does it. If Bosie has popped up washed clean of all
blame and all fault, the unfortunate Oscar finds himself tricked out in the
absurd outfit of a personality at once backwoodsman and almost vulgar. Let us not omit the numerous passages where
Madame de Saint-Pierre lingers over the appearance and corpulence of Oscar
Wilde (not to say the passage right at the beginning of the books where
Bosie’s mother makes an unwarranted attack on Speranza: ‘I am not Speranza,
Bosie. The sort of woman who becomes
the mother of an Oscar, with too much flesh, too gross and resembling a
malevolent force of nature, is in fact much more fragile than I am.’) Similarly, the author appears to have an
account to settle (one can find no other words) with Robbie Ross, in whom she
has her knife quite literally up to the end of her book. |
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We will leave the critique of this book at that,
returning only for a last time to the title, which is, when all is said and
done, a perfect summing up of the content: with its portentousness and its
prejudice. Without teaching anything
to her readers, Isaure de Saint-Pierre has written 272 wretched pages of a
wretched biography, fictionalised and maladroit. |
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On reaching the last page, admirers of Wilde will
have one satisfaction only: the certainty that this book is perfectly
forgettable. |
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8. Mood on the Go
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Jeroen Olyslaegers |
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Het Toneelhuis, Antwerp |
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Mood on the Go was performed from 25th
September 2003 until 19th November 2003. |
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Review by Eva Thienpont. |
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‘Ich
unglücksel’ger Atlas! Eine Welt, |
[I, unhappy
Atlas! A world, |
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Die ganze
Welt der Schmerzen muß ich tragen, |
The whole
world of pain I have to bear, |
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Ich trage
unerträgliches, und brechen |
I bear
unbearable things, and my heart |
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Will mir
das Herz im Leibe’, |
Wants to
break in my body] |
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Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas sing at the
beginning of Jasper Brandis’ staging of Mood
on the Go. ‘Du stolzes Herz,
du hast es ja gewollt! [You proud heart, you wanted it yourself!]’,
Heine’s text goes on, reminding the audience that Oscar Wilde was the author
of his own fate. Jeroen Olyslaegers dramatises the fact that Wilde’s fatal
actions in 1895 ruined not just his own life, but also the lives of those who
were most deeply, and involuntarily, bonded with him: his sons Cyril and
Vyvyan. |
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Cyril and Vyvyan’s personalities have been
heavily marked by Wilde’s shattered reputation. Cyril (Koen van Kaam) feels
ashamed of his father and has tried to redeem the name of Wilde by performing
manly acts of bravery for England in the First World War, where he was killed
by a sniper. The war has made him cruel and hard, and he has come to hate and
reject his effeminate father. Vyvyan (Benny Claessens), on the other hand, is
portrayed as the son who desperately tries to ingratiate himself with his
father. He has read all Wilde’s writings and has, Cyril malignantly implies,
cashed in on their unhappy childhood by publishing his memoir Son of Oscar Wilde. Vyvyan affects
effeminate mannerisms and giggles, and constantly borders on hysteria. |
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Throughout the play, the two younger Wildes try
to establish a communication with their father that is more than superficial.
Each in their own way, they angle for paternal recognition and affection, but
all they get are different poses from a man who insists that they, too, play
a part by making them wear theatrical wigs like himself and Bosie Douglas.
Bosie (Jan Bijvoet) is, for once, the most likeable character on the stage.
He takes care of Oscar, preparing cucumber sandwiches for him and trying to
protect him against his children. His love is genuine, though not uncritical.
Oscar himself (Wim Opbrouck) is a man whose glamour has not survived prison.
He is unshaven and unkempt; the costume designed by An D’huys looks shabby;
he wears flip flops on his feet. Worst of all, his words no longer enchant.
He speaks either in perverted quotations from his own work or in mundane
metaphors; the poetry has gone from his language and his jokes miss the old
wit and refinement. According to the dictates of his swiftly changing moods,
Wilde assumes different roles: the decrepit old man, the fallen artist, the
camp queen, the suffering Christ, the whore of Babylon, the Virgin Mary, God
himself. Whatever the guise, he is thoroughly self-centred. |
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Cyril and Vyvyan have to face the fact that their
father simply cannot quit role-playing and express genuine feelings for and
to the sons he has abandoned. Even when he seems to be finally, touchingly,
confessing his love for them, explaining how he had to accept their loss and
cried bitterly over it, a remark from Bosie reveals that Wilde is again
quoting, now from De Profundis - a
letter addressed to Bosie rather than to them. At this point, Cyril and
Vyvyan decide to confront Wilde on his own territory, by participating in Salomé. |
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The staging of (again a perverted version of) Salomé is Mood on the Go’s moment suprême. Paradoxically, or perhaps
not, in this play in the play everybody removes their wigs. Oscar, swathed in
a long red curtain and reminding one very much of Alice Guszalewicz, takes
the part of Salomé; Bosie Douglas is John the Baptist. The timid Vyvyan
refuses to play Herod, but Cyril eagerly accepts the part. In the dance of
the seven veils he takes his revenge: to the tones of the Jon Spencer Blues
Explosion’s Chicken Dog he tears
the curtain from Oscar’s body, hits and kicks and eventually even rapes him.
He then forces his father to ask for Bosie’s head, a wish he gladly grants.
Cyril and Vyvyan then proceed to strangle Bosie with the red curtain. |
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The dying Bosie ends up in Oscar’s lap,
recounting to his cruelly impatient lover the prose poem of The Disciple, and
realising that like Narcissus to the pool, he has only ever been a mirror to
flatter Oscar’s vanity. He asks Wilde to give him new life with his words,
but instead Oscar stabs him and refuses to speak any more. Bosie’s body slips
down to the ground; the final pose of the lovers is that of a pietà. |
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The play is bewildering and confusing despite the
excellence of the actors. On leaving the theatre one is not sure just what
one has seen, and several passages are difficult to make sense of. It took me
several re-readings of the textbook in order to get the gist of a play that
at first seemed to me to be drifting in no particular direction. The stage
design is not very helpful: its main feature is a metal construction
reminding one of a Macintosh stained glass window. The musical interludes
provide a welcome change from the cruelty and harshness of the text, Wim
Opbrouck’s delightful falsetto being especially enjoyable, but what is the
meaning of Rossini’s ‘Petite messe solenelle’ sung by Oscar, Bosie, Cyril and
Vyvyan as a break from their non-communication? The religious music does fit
in with the many snatches of Catholic liturgy in the text; but these are
parodied whereas the little mass is – solemn. Nothing in the play justifies
or explains the sudden harmony in the singing. Also, a fragment sung by
Alessandro Moreschi, the last castrato, probably serves as a metaphor for
Wilde’s state as an artist now bereft of his creative powers, but why it
appears in between Vyvyan’s nervous breakdown and the overture to Salomé is a mystery. The
interpretation of The Disciple at the end of the play is inspired, but it
comes out of the blue; and why does Oscar stab Bosie and refuse to resurrect
him? But then I suppose we have moved a long way from the well-made play,
where all pieces of the puzzle must necessarily fall in place. |
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Despite its flaws, Olyslaegers’ Mood on the Go is an interesting
contribution to the body of plays and films that dramatise Wilde’s life. With
Thomas Kilroy (The Secret Fall of Constance
Wilde, 1997), Olyslaegers is one of the very few who dare criticise the
nearly saintly image ‘dear Oscar’ has acquired in our times. And if Mood on the Go’s treatment of Wilde
seems extremely cruel and harsh, it may be good to remember that each man
kills the thing he loves, and that Jeroen Olyslaegers sported a green
carnation on the play’s opening night. |
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v
Eva Thienpont is an Associate Editor of
THE OSCHOLARS. |
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Text: Jeroen Olyslaegers; Director:
Jasper Brandis; Stage design: Tjalien Walma van der Molen; Costume design: An
D’huys; Light: Joris Durnez; Dramaturgy: Griet Op de Beeck |
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Cast: Wim Opbrouck (Oscar
Wilde), Jan Bijvoet (Lord Alfred Douglas), Benny Claessens (Vyvyan) and Koen
van Kaam (Cyril) |
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To the Table of Contents |
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To see a complete
list of all works reviewed, click |
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