Criticism As Art: Form in Oscar Wilde's Critical Writings Author(S): Herbert Sussman Source: Studies in Philology, Vol

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Criticism as Art: Form in Oscar Wilde's Critical Writings Author(s): Herbert Sussman Source: Studies in Philology, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Jan., 1973), pp. 108-122 Published by: University of North Carolina Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4173795 . Accessed: 30/09/2013 04:53

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This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:53:29 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Criticismas Art: Form in OscarWilde's CriticalWritings

By HERBERTSUSSMAN

IN the yearsI889 and I890 OscarWilde produceda variedgroup of prose works-" The Decay of Lying " (I889); " Pen, Pencil and Poison" (I889); "The Portrait of Mr. W. H." (1889); "The Critic as Artist'" (i 890)1-that have as their unifying purpose the expressionof what he called his "new views on art, and particularly on the relationsof art and history."2 Although scholarshave recently begun to take Wilde's critical writings seriously,' this seriousness is usually shown by, in Frank Kermode'sapologetic phrase, " ruithlessly abstracting" Wilde's critical principles from the varied ways in which they are expressed. The form itself-the dialogue, the narrative frame, the self-consciousirony-is usually dismissedby critics as mere " entertainment," as a distressinglyflippant means of expressingseri- ous ideas. This assumptionof a disparitybetween form and content

'Dates refer to first publication. "The Critic as Artist" originally appeared under the title, "The True Function and Value of Criticism: with some Remarks on the Importanceof Doing Nothing: a Dialogue." " The Decay of Lying," " Pen, Pencil and Poison," and "The Critic as Artist" were published in Intentions in I89I. 2 Rupert Hart-Davis, ed., The Letters of Oscar Wilde (New York, I962), p. 236. Further references to the Letters will be given parentheticallyin the text. George Woodcock, The Paradox of Oscar Wilde (New York, 1950), Chap. VII; Epifanio San Juan, Jr., The Art of Oscar Wilde (Princeton, I967), Chap. III; Stanley Weintraub, ed., Literary Criticism of Oscar Wilde (Lincoln, Neb., I968), pp. lx-xxxvl. 'The Romantic Image (New York, x964), p. 44. ' San Juan, Jr., p. 74. See also Seymour Migdal, "The Poseur and the Critic in Some Essays of Oscar Wilde," Dalhousie Review, XLVIII (i967), 65-70.

io8

This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:53:29 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HerbertSussmn lO9 is a particularlymisleading approach to Wilde'sprose, for, as I shall arguein this essay,Wilde is consciouslyworking to createnew forms of criticaldiscourse through which he can adequatelyexpress his "new views." Writing to an admirerof "The Decay of Lying,"he tells of his determinationto expresshis views " in a form that would be understoodby the few who, like yourself,have a quick artisticin- stinct" (Letters,p. 236). And under Wilde's touch, the traditional formsof the criticaldialogue, the biographicalsketch, and even the shortstory are transformedto appealto those of " quick artisticin- stinct,"are reshapedinto new literaryforms that expresshis deeply Paterian,radically modem sensibility. Furthermore,the reductionof Wilde's criticalwriting to coherent systemis distortingbecause the centralprinciple of theseworks is the questioningand the redefinitionof intellectualactivity itself. Drawn to the Paterianbelief that the only knowablereality is that of mental impressions,Wilde showsintellectual discourse to be a meansof fix- ing theseimpressions rather than a way of describinga stableexternal reality. The variedforms of his worksall dramatizethe processde- scribedin the " Conclusion" to The Renaissance,the processby which intellectualformulations, "principles of things,"dissolve, are "dissipated" into a " groupof impressions" within " the narrowchamber of the individualmind." In Wilde'sworks, then, intellectualdiscourse is " aestheticized,"shown to be a form of art, not only as a means of giving form to feeling, but as evanescent,dependent upon the ceaseless,shifting flux of emotion. Like art, intellectualformulations are, for Wilde, not to be judged by mimeticcriteria, by their correspondenceto a materialworld, but as autonomousartifacts whose validitylies in their self-sufficientcoherence. The Wildeandialogue becomes, then, a soloperformance in which, to the admirationof the minorcharacter, the principalfigure moves fromassertion to assertionjust as an actorshifts from role torole. But, as Wilde notes of "The Decay of Lying,"the purposeof this " fan- tasticfonn " is "au fond . .. serious" (Letters,p. 236). The dialogue as performanceis a Pateriantour de force, a form suggestingthat intellectualformulation is itself a type of artisticcreation which, for a moment,fixes in the formof languagethe complexof mentalsen-

This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:53:29 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions iiO Criticism as Art sations or, in Wilde's terms, gives "reality to every mood."6 But, as the representationof mental states, such discourse must be, in the metaphor of Pater's " Conclusion,"constantly " weaving and unweaving," for it is dependent upon, and determined by, the ceaseless flux of mental life. Wilde's transformationof assertionsinto artifactsis emphasizedby constant reminders that the critical works are themselves fictions. This self-reflexive quality appears in its simplest form in " The Truth of Masks," a work written in i885 and included in an ex- panded form in Intentions. In this work, the speaker suddenly states at the end of his defense of archeologicallyaccurate stagings of Shake- speare: " Not that I agree with everything I have said in this essay. There is much with which I entirely disagree. The essay simply representsan artistic standpoint, and in aesthetic criticism attitude is everything" (432). Here, the admission is jarring because of a con- fusion of form. Up to this point, the essay has used a reliable personal voice, the standardform of Victorian critical essays, and at the end the reader is surprised to find that this supposedly reliable voice is but a mask, a fictional construct setting forth a position the validitv of which lies solely in its internal coherence. In the dialogues, where Wilde uses overtly fictional charactersrather than a personal voice, he is more successful in suggesting to the reader that the critical pronouncementshave the only self-consistencyof art. In " The Decay of Lying" Vivian, discussing how life imitates art, tells of a man named Hyde who, shortly after the publication of Robert Louis Stevenson's story, accidentally knocks over a child while walking in the city and escapes from a hostile crowd by taking refuge in a nearby surgery: "The name on the brass door-plateof the surgerv caught his eye. It was ' Jekyll.' At least it should have been" (310). In "The Critic as Artist," the self-reflexive comments are equally forceful in reminding the reader that the critical discourse is a work of art, a coherent fiction, ratherthan the typically Victorian statement of the speaker'sbeliefs. After listening to Gilbert discuss the varied uses of the dialogue by critics of the past, Ernest comments, "By

8 Richard Ellmann, ed., The Artist as Critic (New York, 1969), p. 391. Fulrther page reference to this edition will appear in parentheses in the text.

This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:53:29 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HerbertSussman I II its means, too, he can invent an imaginary antagonist, and convert him when he chooses by some absurdlysophistical argument " (391). These pointed reminders that the critic is behaving like an artist provide a momentary relaxation from the strain of establishing a " standpoint" (432), a position of temporarystability within the flux. And yet a major effect of these works lies in just this sense of strain, in their dramatizationof both the limitations and the power of language in giving form to varied, often antithetical, forms of mental life. Just as the White Queen could, with practice, believe " as many as six impossible things before breakfast,"the protagonistsin Wilde's criticism delight in taking up seemingly "impossible" critical positions. The speaker in " The Truth of Masks " deftly redefines terms and scatters paradoxes in order to praise Sir Henry Irving's his- toricalproductions of Shakespeare,even if the same voice later admits that this praise is only an aesthetic " attitude " (432). In the dialogues, the characters take up almost any position that is offered. After Ernest discusses the assertion that "the Greeks had no art- critics" (349), Gilbert, with equal grace, describes the Greeks as " a nation of art-critics"(349). In making difficult, often contradic- tory positions attractive,the aim is not only the pleasure of watching a performerovercome difficulty with ease, of seeing the trapeze artist perform his skillful if wholly useless art, but also the illustration of the essentially aesthetic nature of discourse. If all assertionscan be given a self-consistent form, then none is more valid than another, "All principles of things " are, in the terms of Pater's " Conclusion," but inconstant modes or fashions." This attackupon the descriptivefunction of intellectual formulation appearsin the pervasiveformal pattern of the dialogues, the reduction or dissolution of all assertionsinto their constituent mental impressions. Here, most clearly, the dialogues dramatize the psychological process described by Pater's " Conclusion," in which the forms and formulationsof the external world upon " reflection" are " dissipated" and reality" dwindlesdown " into groupsof impressions. As in Dorian Gray,7 the charactersin the dialogue are masks, objectifications of

7See Wilde's letter stating that the characters in Dorian Gray represent different parts of his own personality. Letters, p. 352.

This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:53:29 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions I12 Criticismas Art differentintellectual possibilities present in Wilde himself. As Wilde acknowledges(390-I), this use of dialogueto expressopposing critical views is in keeping with a literary tradition that goes back to Plato. In " The Criticas Artist,"Wilde is not to be identifiedwith Gilbert. Rather,both Gilbertand Ernest are masksfor modes of thoughtattractive to Wilde. The aptly-namedErnest not only holds conventional,Arnoldian views, such as the inferiorrole of the critic in relation to the artist,but representsa conventionalsensibility which presentssuch beliefs as generalizedassertions, as descriptivestate- ments. In contrast,Gilbert represents the aestheticsensibility that dissolves such assertionsinto the underlying reality of mental impressions. But unliketraditional critical dialogues, the interactionof these two characters,or masks, shows neither the presentationof differing positions nor the logical pattern of assertion-proof-refutation;instead it shows assertion dissolving into impressions. Emest speaks most often in generalizedstatements. For example, he asks Gilbert, " What was it you said? That it was more difficultto talk about a thing than to do it?" (36 I). Gilbert'sreply apparentlyfollows the form of logical argument in contrasting the transitorynature of the actions in the Trojan War to the eternalityof the deeds as recordedin the Homeric epic. He speaks first of the warriors: " It was easy enough on the sandy plains by windy Ilion to send the notched arrow from the painted bow, to hurl against the shield of hide and flame-likebrass the long ash-handledspear." He then speaks of the poets: "What of those who wrote about these things? What of those who gave them reality, and made them live forever?.... Every day the swan- like daughter of Leda comes out on the battlements,and looks down at the tide of war" (36 I). But for all the ostensibly logical form of contrast, the use of the same mock-Homericstyle to describe both the historical actions and actions in the etemal present of literature makes the reader unable to determine whether a particular line is describing the Trojan Wars or the Iliad. As throughout Wilde's writing, the stylistic unity, the reduction of event and literary description of the event, of life and art to the same ornate style, suggests that the essential form of the work is not the comparison of assertion to phenomenal events, but the expression of a single sensi-

This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:53:29 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HerbertSussman I 13 bility. And as art, as the objectificationof a privatemental vision, Gilbert's" argument"succeeds not throughlogic, but through an intensitythat suspendsdisbelief. Ernestcan only reply," While you talk it seems to me to be so" (362). In "The Decayof Lying,"too, the charactersare masks for similarly antitheticalmental possibilities present in Wilde. Cyrilrepresents the sensibilitygiven to setting realityinto orderedintellectual formulations, Vivian the sensibilityworking to dissolvethese assertionsinto mentalimpressions. Speaking in abstractlanguage, Cyril asks, " [Do] you seriouslybelieve that Life imitatesArt? " (307). Vivian'sanswer is, again, almosta parodyof logical argument.After restatingthe assertion,he ostensiblydemonstrates the influenceof art on life by describinghow the paintingsof Rossettiand Burne-Jonesshape the appearanceof modernwomen. He tells of seeing in the women at the galleries"the mystic eyes of Rossetti'sdream," "the sweet maidenhoodof 'The GoldenStair,' the blossom-likemouth and weary lovelinessof the 'Laus Amoris,'the passion-paleface of Andromeda" (307). Although these descriptionsappear to have the traditional argumentativefunction of examplesproving an assertion,the language describingthe appearanceof actualwomen is self-consciouslythat of impressionisticart criticism. Here again, the descriptionof art and life in a singlestyle remindsthe readerthat the workis not showing the correspondencebetween the externalworld and an assertion,but givingcoherent form to the mentalimpressions of a single sensibility. This Pateriansense of intellectualactivity as the objectificationof the "whirlpool " of mentallife is furtheremphasized by Wilde'suse of the dialogueto transformcritical discourse into drama. In the typicalVictorian critical essay, Ruskin or Arnoldspeaks in a single, reliablevoice.8 This form suggeststhat the assertionsare not only descriptiveof a stableexternal reality, but arethe beliefsof an equally stable and unified personality.Wildean criticaldialogue, however, existsas a dramaticaction, a formshowing the processby which intellectualformulation shifts over time and is dependentupon the con-

' To consider the Victorian critics as speaking in a single reliable voice is some- what of an over-simplification.Victorian writers also experimented with means of expressing their own divided self, as in Carlyle's Sartor Resartus or Arnold's Friendship'sGarland.

This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:53:29 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions I I4 Criticism as Art tinuous flux of the inward life. The ceaselessmovement of the Wildean dialoguein which assertionsdissolve into impressions,im- pressionsre-emerge as new formulations,dramatizes Wilde's mod- emist view that intellectualactivity proceeds not by the rules of logic but is shapedby deeperpsychic forces. Each dramaends in the same way. Gilbertbecomes " tired of thought"; Vivian says, "We have talkedlong enough." Intellectualdiscourse ends, then, not when a logical conclusionis reached,but when emotionalin- tensityslackens. By transformingcritical discourse from the personal statementof the essayto the continuousprocess of the drama,Wilde achievesa new formthrough which he can expressthe " new views" he so praisedin Pater'sAppreciations: "In mattersof art, at any rate,thought is inevitablycoloured by emotion,and so is fluidrather thanfixed, and, recognising its dependenceupon moods and upon the passionof fine moments,will not acceptthe rigidityof a scientific formulaor a theologicaldogma" (232). But if the dialogues show a constant stylistic pressure toward the reductionof all reality to the impressionsof a single mind, they are not exercisesin pure solipsism. The virtue of Wilde's critical writing lies in its balance between an attraction toward solipsism and a clear hold on the belief that a world of natureand of men exists independentlyof the mind. As much as the dialoguessug- gest that intellectualactivity is the momentaryformulation of eva- nescentmoods, they still provideliterary judgments and suggestnew theoreticalformulations, such as the shapingeffect of art upon per- ception.9 Wilde's use of the two opposing masks, of the abstracting intellect and the impressionistic sensibility, suggests his own refusal as critic to identify with either pure impressionismor what he calls the " rigidity of a scientific formula." The virtue of Wilde's critical writings is that he sets forth his "new views" and specific literary judgments in a form that implicitly suggests the tentative nature of his assertionsand the impressionisticbasis of his judgments. As dramasof his own divided psyche, the dialogues show a pattern of action illustrating that one cannot remain locked in the solitary

o The purpose of this essay is not to provide another outline of Wilde's critical ideas. For such outlines see San Juan, Jr., or Weintraub.

This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:53:29 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HerbertSussman I15 worldof mentalimpressions. Each takes place in a room," the library of a house in Picadilly" or "the libraryof a country house in Nottinghamshire."For the aestheticsensibility the enclosedroom is a centralsymbol representing solipsistic retreat into mental impressions. It is "the narrowchamber of the individualmind" which, for Pater,encloses all reality;the old schoolroomin which Dorian's portraitis locked;the mansionin which Des Esseintes,the hero of Huysmans'A Rebours,creates his own palace of art. In these fablesof decadence,salvation comes only when the roomis opened, when a connectionis madebetween the psycheand the socialworld. Des Esseintesmust leave his mansionor die. When Doriandecides to give up his self-centeredlife, he dies, the schoolroomis broken into, and the true natureof his soul is revealedto society. And at the end of both dialogues,the charactersemerge from a room,from enclosurein the self-containedspace of the psyche. Vivian says, " Now let us go out on the terrace."Gilbert asks that they " Draw back the curtainsand open the windows wide." To escape from the " narrowchamber" of the self, Gilbertand Ernestmust attempt to re-enterthe socialworld, " go down to CoventGarden and look at the roses." In the dialogues,then, Wilde illustratesone of his favoritepara- doxes, that one can be " far more subjectivein an objectiveform than in any otherway" (Letters,p. 589). By abandoningthe Vic- torianconvention of the critic speakingdirectly to the audienceas sage, a mode suggestingwhat Wilde calls " the permanenceof personality" (334), he finds forms to expressthe fragmentednature of the self.10 Cyril and Vivian, Gilbertand Ernestdramatize frag- ments of self, distinctyet antitheticalpsychic possibilities present in Wilde. Similarly,by rejectingthe novel, a genre that uses psy- chologicallyunified characters,for forms borderingon allegoryin which charactersexemplify distinct moral and intellectual types, Wilde is able successfullyto dramatizethe multiplicityof the in- dividualpsyche. His own moralconflict is renderedwith greatcom- 10See Yeats' description of Wilde as exemplifying the phase in which " Unity of Being is no longer possible, for the being is compelled to live in a fragment of itself and to dramatise that fragment." Quoted in Richard Ellmann, ed., Oscar Wilde, A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., I969), p. 22.

This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:53:29 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Criticismas Art plexityin The Pictureof DorianGray; the intellectualissues of his criticismare presentedwith complexambiguity in "The Portraitof Mr. W. H."11 Like the dialogues,"The Portraitof Mr. W. H." dramatizes Wilde's dividedresponse to Pateriansolipsism, the tensionbetween his sense of realityas createdwholly by the mind and his belief in a realityexisting independently of the mind. The complexityof the narrativethrough which the theory is presentedsuggests that the purposeis not so much to set forth a particulartheory about Shake- speareas to test the limitsand the necessityof criticaland historical descriptionitself. As in the dialogues,the charactersare masks,ob- jectificationsof the antitheticalpossibilities of the abstractingand the impressionisticmind. In Part I, Erskinetakes the role of Ernestor Cyrilin the dialogues.On firsthearing Cyril Graham'stheory as to the identityof Mr. W. H., he treatsit as a descriptionand asks for "some independentevidence" (I63) showing that it corresponds to an extemal reality. Cyril, who is, significantly,an actor, repri- mandshim for his "philistinetone of mind" (I63), his bourgeois identificationof realitywith the materialworld. Driven by a desire to conformto bourgeoisviews, Cyrilhas the false portraitdone, but, on discoveryof the forgery,returns to the positionof aestheticcritic by statingthat the originof the painting" does not affectthe truthof the theory" (I65). To the aestheticsensibility, a theorymust be judgedin the same way as a workof art, on its internalcoherence and the intensitywith which it representsthe individualvision of the creator,not on its correspondenceto an externalreality. Cyril's death, an act designed"to show . . . how firmand flawlesshis faith in the whole thing was" (i66), becomes,within the terms of aes- theticism,a vindicationby showinghis theoryas the form given to his own intensefeeling. But as in the dialogues,the narrativeform of conflictbetween masks prevents the readerfrom identifying Cyril's views with Wilde's. Erskine'scomment that "a thing is not neces- sarilytrue becausea man dies for it" (I66) must be read in terms "lLike Wilde's other critical writings, this allegory is either dismissed as mere entertainment, a " mockscholarly]eu " (Russell Fraser, ed., Selected Writings of Oscar Wilde [Boston, I969], p. 293) or discussed as an expression of Wilde's psychic life (Ellman, The Artist as Critic, p. xix).

This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:53:29 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HerbertSussman TI7 of Wilde'sambivalent attraction toward solipsism. It is both the sign of an obtusefailure to realizethat theoriesare only artifactsand a reminderthat one must still acknowledgethat an extemal world exists. To symbolizethe need to escape imprisonmentwithin the " narrowchamber" of the mind, the narratorleaves " the library" of Erskine's" pretty little house in BirdcageWalk" (I 52) to return home " throughSt. JamesPark" ( i68). The narrator'sreturn to his own room markshis movementinto his own psyche, his Paterianreduction of realityto wholly private mental impressions.As he studies the texts, themselvesthe frag- mentaryobjectifications of Shakespeare'smind, he createsa solipsistic visionof Willie Hughes. Intenselyfelt and self-consistent,it is created entirelywithin the mind: "Willie Hughes became to me a kind of spiritualpresence, an ever-dominantpersonalitv. I could almost fancy that I saw him standingin the shadowof my room,so well had Shakespearedrawn him, with his golden hair, his tender flower- like grace, his dreamydeep-sunken eyes, his delicate mobile limbs, and his white lily hands" (I77). But when the narrator attempts to communicate this belief to Erskine in a letter, he finds that he gives away his "capacity for belief in the Willie Hughes theory of the Sonnets" (212). For attempting to share this vision is to misunder- stand its nature. It is to turn an autonomouscreation into a description of an external reality, into a statement that can be independently verified by separate minds. As in the dialogues, the narrative suggests that intellectual formulationsare essentially a means by which we give form to the flux of emotion. The narratoris trapped by the Paterian paradox that at the highest pitch of intensity, the moment is already vanishing; "by finding perfect expression for a passion-" the narratorhas " exhausted the passion itself " (2I2). And as specu- lation ends in " The Critic as Artist" when Gilbert becomes " tired of thought," belief in Willie Hughes dissolves when the narratorbe- comes " tired of the whole thing " (2I3). If the narratorachieves the Paterian awareness that thought is a form of feeling, Erskine, equally subject to the flux of emotion, now becomes obsessed with the theory. He still represents the empirical mode. In the manner of those who have " been sent to Cambridge

This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:53:29 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions I I8 Criticismas Art to studyscience " (2I6), he tries" in everyway to verify" (217) the hypothesis,to treatit as a descriptionof an historicalreality. The narratorfinally receives a letterfrom Erskine stating that, like Cyril, he will "give his own life alsoto the samecause " (2I7). On visiting the scene of death, however,the narratoris told by the doctor,the man of science, that Erskinedied of consumptionand wrote the letter knowingthat he had only a few days to live. Does Erskine's death suggest that the validity of an assertiondepends upon the intensitywith which it is held and that one can give to the sordid circumstancesof life the coherentform of art? As the narratorasks, " Did Erskinemerely want to producea dramaticeffect? " (219). Or is Erskine'ssuicide a distortion,a refusalto face the physicalreality of death? The meaning of the fable lies in just this ambiguity,in Wilde'srefusal to identifyreality solely with either physicalchange or with the solipsisticfashioning of life into art. The fable ends with the narratorattempting to maintainthis balancedview. He keepsin his roomthe portrait,a workwhich, ostensiblyan imitation of physicalreality, is actuallythe objectificationof the mental impressionsof a single sensibility. And he does not tell his contem- poraries" its truehistory " (220). He maintainsthe necessaryfiction that what pass in societyfor descriptionsof the physicalworld are actuallyexpressions of mentalsensations. The ambiguousconclusion to the fable suggestsanother issue of Wilde'scritical writings, what he called" the relationsof art and history" (Letters,p. 236). As a criticat the end of the century,Wilde was faced with the problemof whetherthe past is a continuityin- dependentof the individualmind or whetherit is entirelya creation of the presentage. The problemis suggestedby Pater. In the " Con- clusion,"Pater says that if realityconsists of the flux of impressions, since " timeis infinitelydivisible," each of theseimpressions must also be "infinitelydivisible" and all that is "actual,"all that can be truly known is but the "single moment."The questionof how a continuitycan exist betweenthese momentsand how there can be a continuityof self remainsunanswered, obscured in Pater'smeta- phorof the " strange,perpetual weaving and unweaving of ourselves." The unresolvedcontradiction between the doctrineof momentsand

This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:53:29 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HerbertSussman I I9 the notion of continuitythrough time appearson a largerscale in Pater'streatment of historicalsubjects. In The Renaissance,Pater worksas both an aestheticand an historicalcritic. He describesboth momentsin his own sensibilityand a continuityor historictradition.12 But Wilde rejectseven this admixtureof historicism.Carrying to an extremethe implicationsof the Pateriananalysis, Wilde aestheticizes the past as he aestheticizesintellect. Through the reversalof con- ventionalhistorical modes, he suggeststhat the "past " is entirelyan objectificationof a presentmoment of psychiclife. As critic,Wilde, unlike Pater,seldom takes as his subjecteither other writersor other times. Ratherthan writing of a literarytra- dition, Wilde describeshimself, or rather his possible selves ob- jectifiedin masks. His only extendedhistorical work is the biogra- phical sketch, "Pen, Pencil and Poison,"ostensibly a portraitof ThomasGriffiths Wainewright, " poet ... painter. . . art-critic. .. antiquarian. . . forger. . . andsubtle and secret poisoner" (321). Here the psychologicalpressures which made Wilde shape Waine- wright as the projectionof his own personalvision of the artistas criminal18 fuse with his purposesas critic in parodyingthe form of historicalbiography to show how the past is the creationof the present.Wainewright is clearlyand insistentlydescribed as a man of the present,as an aesthetic,deeply Paterian young man. " He writes aboutLa Gioconda,and early Frenchpoets and the ItalianRenais- sance.. . . With Gautier,he was fascinatedby that 'sweet marble monster'of both sexes that we can still see at Florenceand in the Louvre" (324). "Asan art-critiche concernedhimself primarily with the compleximpressions produced by a workof art" (326). The man appearingout of his time is a commonVictorian notion. Hallam appears" ere the times were ripe"; Winckelmannwith his Renais- sance sensibilityis bom into the eighteenthcentury. But whereas Tennysonand Patersee these figuresas appearingin an unexpected orderwithin a linearcontinuum moving from past to future,the form of Wilde's sketch suggeststhat this historicalfigure is modernbe-

12 Philip Appleman, "Darwin, Pater, and a Crisis in Criticism,"in z859; Enter- ing an Age of Crisis, ed. Philip Appleman (Bloomington, 1959), pp. 81'9S 13Ellmann, The Artist as Critic, p. xix.

This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:53:29 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions I 20 Criticism as Art cause it is entirelya creationof the author'smind. The narrative voice is so intrusive,the use of contemporaryidiom so self-conscious, the speakerso differentfrom the self-effacinghistorian, that the readeris primarilyaware, not of the past being retrieved,but of the presentself of the speakercreating the past. Historybecomes equated with artisticcreation through a consistent metaphoricalpattern. The personof " true historicalsense " sees the figuresof the past as "puppetsof a play" (340). Wainewrightis compared to Julian Sorel (324), for he is a fiction, as much the objectificationof specific mental possibilitiesof the author as the char- acter of a novel. As if to call attention to his own transformation of Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt's biographicalmemoir into an autonomous artifact,Wilde notes that the historicalWainewright was transformed into the hero of a Dickens story and a Bulwer-Lyttonnovel. The final sentence-" To be suggestive for fiction is to be of more importance than a fact "-self-consciously comments on Wilde's own method, his translationof historical " fact " into " fiction," into the expression of a present moment in his own psyche. The dialogues, too, reverse conventional forms to undercut the belief in a continuous past, particularlybelief in the Arnoldiannotion of historical traditionas an objective moral and literary standardout- side the self by which we can evaluate the present. "The Critic as Artist" appears to follow the form of Victorian Hellenism, the use of ancient Greece as the norm against which to judge the vulgar present. For example, the Hellenic ideal is introduced with an abstract statement, "In the best days of art there were no art-critics" (346). In the recurring formal pattern of the work, however, this assertion immediately dissolves into the uniform ornate style that is applied throughout the work to both art and life: " The sculptor hewed from the marble block the great white-limbed Hermes that slept within it. The waxers and gilders of images gave tone and texture to the statue, and the world, when it saw it, worshipped and was dumb" (346). The use of the ornate language and languid rhythms of impressionisticart criticism to describe the phenomenal world suggests that the passage is not so much describing an actual society in the past as a purely personalvision of a single mind in the present.

This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:53:29 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HerbertSussman I21 Gilbertcomments on this lengthy" description" of classicalGreece: "To give an accuratedescription of what has never occurredis not merely the properoccupation of the historian,but the inalienable privilegeof anyman of partsand culture" (349). Given the Paterian analysisof the difficultyof knowinganything beyond the presentmoment, the past "has never occurred,"and yet, Gilbert argues, it must still be describedwith accuracy.The paradoxneatly expresses Wilde's own complexattitude toward the solipsisticview of history. Just as his criticismmakes assertions through forms that suggestthe emotive and evanescentnature of these assertions,so his use of historyemploys an ideal of the past while suggestingthat this ideal past is a workof art, the objectificationof a purelypersonal vision. In this dialogue,Wilde uses the Hellenic ideal to show the neces- sity of what he calls creative criticism,while describingancient Greece in an impressionisticstyle that shows this ideal to be very much a creationof the present. To use Frank Kermode'suseful terminology,Wilde is seeing the past as a " fiction,"an orderingof time that is necessary,but mustbe " consciouslyheld to be fictive."14 Wilde'sunmentioned antagonist is Arnold,the "man of ... culture," who sees the past not as a " fiction" but, to use Kermode'sterms again,as a " myth,"an orderingof timethat is held to be " an adequate explanationof things as they are and were."15 That the past is a "fiction,"a creationrather than a description, is suggestedin the dialogues,as in " Pen, Pencil and Poison,"by the implicitidentification of historywith art. The ostensiblyhistorical ac- count of the Hellenic world quotedabove is, for example,indistin- guishablestylistically from the impressionisticcriticism of Browning's imaginativevision of the past: " There, creepsFra LippoLippi with cheeksstill burningfrom some girl's hot kiss. There, standsdread Saul with the lordlymale-sapphires gleaming in his turban"(345). Similarly,in the passageson the TrojanWars discussedearlier, the accountof men acting in the past-" It was easy enough on the sandy plains by windy Ilion to send the notched arrowfrom the paintedbow" (36I)-is renderedin the same mock-Homericstyle

"The Sense of an Ending (New York, I968), p. 39. 15 Ibid.

This content downloaded from 192.167.209.10 on Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:53:29 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 122 Criticism as Art as the descriptionof the Iliaditself: " Everyday the swan-like daughter of Ledacomes out on the battlements,and looksdown at the tide of war" (36I). The uniformityof style dramatizesthe reductionof all phenomena,whether in the fictionalworld of art or the worldof human action in the past to the compassof a single sensibility. Throughstyle, eventsand literarydescription of events,history and art becomeindistinguishable. The Wildeanview of historyis best symbolizedby the portraitof Mr. W. H. Althoughconsistent with commonly-heldviews of the societyas to the natureof the past, this workis neithera description of an event which actually" occurred " nor an objectdescending in lineartime from the pastinto the present.Autonomous and coherent, the painting,like the past, has only the validityof a work of art. And the properuse of the past is demonstratedby the narrator who,aware of its true statusas a createdartifact, employs the painting, not as an imitation,but as a stimulusfor emotionin the present, a sourcefrom which he can createhis own imaginaryportraits.

Northeastern University

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