Oscar Wilde by André Gide Read Free Book Online

the starting-point for a fresh development …” When, in the case of an artist, for external or inner reasons, the creative spring runs dry, the artist settles down, renounces and makes of his weariness a wisdom which he calls: having found the Truth. For Tolstoi, as for Wilde, this “truth” is approximately the same—and how could it be otherwise?
    â€œ The starting-point for a fresh development! ”… My mind is made up: I shall mix my voice as little as possible with Wilde’s, that is, shall, as often as possible, content myself with quoting him; the sentences which I shall extract from the book will illuminate it better than anything I might say about it.
    â€œ I hope to be able to recreate my creative faculty, ” writes Wilde desperately. While waiting, he covers over the only retreat left to him with all the sophistries that he can muster: “ I have got to makeeverything that has happened to me good for me. The plank bed, the loathsome food, the hard ropes shredded into oakum till one’s finger-tips grow dull with pain, the menial offices with which each day begins and finishes, the harsh orders that routine seems to necessitate, the dreadful dress that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, the silence, the solitude, the shame—each and all of these things I have to transform into a spiritual experience. There is not a single degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualising of the soul. ” And again: “ Whatever is realised is right. ” And finally: “ While for the first year of my imprisonment I did nothing else, and can remember nothing else, but wring my hands in impotent despair, and say, ‘What an ending, what an appalling ending!’ now I try to say to myself, and sometimes when I am not torturing myself do really and sincerely say, ‘What a beginning, what a wonderful beginning!’ It may really be so. It may become so ” Then without quite realizing, or admitting to himself, that he is going cruelly counter to that “absolute humility” which he is extolling: “ In the very fact that people will recognize me wherever I go and know all about my life, as far as its follies go, I can discern something good for me. It will force on me the necessity of again asserting myself as an artist, and as soon as I possibly can. If I can produce only one beautiful workof art I shall be able to rob malice of its venom, and cowardice of its sneer, and to pluck out the tongue of scorn by the roots. ”
    â€œ I feel, ” he goes on to say, “ that not to be ashamed of having been punished is one of the first points I must attain to, for the sake of my own imperfection, and because I am so imperfect.
    â€œ Then I must learn to be happy. Once I knew it, or thought I knew it, by instinct … Now I am approaching life from a completely new standpoint, and even to conceive happiness is often extremely difficult for me. ” Then elsewhere: “ And if I am not ashamed of my punishment, as I hope not to be, I shall be able to think, and walk, and live with freedom. ”
    For those who knew Wilde before and then after prison, such words remain doubtfully painful; for his artistic silence was not the pious silence of a Racine, and humility was only a pompous name that he gave to his impotence. “ Many men on their release carry their prison about with them into the air, and hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, and at length, like poor poisoned things, creep into some hole and die.”—“Like a poisoned thing,” yes, that is quite how I here see the tremendous Wilde; no longer the brilliant conqueror whom society, about to sacrifice him, cajoled, alas, but mottled, deformed, tired; wandering like Peter Schlemihl inquest of his shadow, heavy and lamentable, and saying to me with an attempt at laughter which sounded like a sob: “ They have taken away my soul; I