Oscar Wilde by André Gide Read Free Book Online Page B

exemplary about it; he sometimes abandoned himself to it without making any further effort to misinterpret it: “ To have continued the same life would have been wrong because itwould have been limiting. I had to pass on. ” This latent fatality, if I may say so, makes the beauty, the unity of his life, and intimately illuminates his work. Yes, the work of him for whom to “conceal the artist” was “art’s aim” becomes for us, as it were, confidential. “ Of course all this is foreshadowed and prefigured in my books, ” and he cites them one after the other in succession, and finally: “ the prose poem of the man who from the bronze of the image of the ‘Pleasure that liveth for a moment’ has to make the image of the ‘Sorrow that abideth forever’ …” Alas! alas! poor Wilde, that was not what your story said; quite the contrary, the artist of whom you speak smashed the statue of Grief in order to make of it that of Joy; and your wilful error remains more eloquent than an avowal.
    That is why I can not help feeling a certain irritation, upon reading in the preface which M. Joseph Renaud joins to his translation of Intentions: “These facts, imperfectly established, be it noted, which cast into prison a writer who was glorious, rich, and esteemed by all, prove nothing against his work. Let us forget them … Do we not read, despite their private lives, Musset, Baudelaire, etc.? If someone were to reveal that Flaubert and Balzac had committed crimes, would we have to burn Salammbo and Cousine Bette? etc… The works belong to us, not the authors.”—Are we still worrying aboutthat sort of thing! Doubtless these gracious words are said with the best intention in the world, but does not Wilde himself tell us in De Profundis: “A great friend of mine—a friend of ten years’ standing—came to see me some time ago, and told me that he did not believe a single word of what was said against me, and wished me to know that he considered me quite innocent, and the victim of a hideous plot. I burst into tears at what he said, and told him that while there was much amongst the definite charges that was quite untrue and transferred to me by revolting malice, still that my life had been full of perverse pleasures, and that unless he accepted that as a fact about me and realized it to the full I could not possibly be friends with him any more, or ever be in his company. ” And elsewhere: “ To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul ”
    What is the use of claiming that “if Flaubert had committed crimes,” Salammbo would not interest us any the less; how much more interesting and right it is to understand that “if Flaubert had committed crimes” it is not Salammbo that he would have written, but … something else, or nothing at all; and that if Balzac had wanted to live his Comédie humaine, that might have prevented himfrom writing it.—Wilde was in the habit of saying that “everything that is gained for life is lost for art,” and that is the very reason why Wilde’s life is tragic. —“Must we go, then, to Art for everything? ” he has one of the speakers say in the best dialogue in Intentions. “For everything ”, replies the second. “ Because Art does not hurt us ”
    No, in order to read his work better, regardless of what M. Joseph Renaud says about it, let us not pretend to ignore the drama of the man who, though knowing that it wounds, wished, nevertheless, to address himself to life; who, after having taught in so masterly a way that “ Art begins where imitation ends ” that “ Life is the solvent that breaks up Art, the enemy that lays waste the house, ” and finally that