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Oscar Wilde: The Critic as ArtistAuthor(s): Fumihiko KatoSource: The Harp, Vol. 1, Second International Conference (1985), pp. 26-32Published by: IASIL-JAPANStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20533293.
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8/10/2019 Oscar Wilde the Critic as Artist
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Oscar
Wilde:
The Critic
as Artist1
Fumihiko
Kato
Kyoto
Women's
University
Critical
assessment is
inevitably
a
form of
reduction. While
it
may
enable
an
emancipation
of
its
object
of
enquiry,
nevertheless
it
con
fines that
object
within
some new
boundary.
In
this
way
a
succession
of
eminent
critics
have
continued
to
reappraise
the nature
and
signifi
cance
of the
critical
writings
of
Oscar
Wilde,
yet
at
each
stage
have failed
to
perceive
or
follow
through
the
full
implications
of their
analyses.
It
was
thus
by
his
sympathy
with
the
organic
imagination
of the
romantic tradition that
Frank Kermode
was
able
to
abstract from
Wilde's critical
dialogues
such
concepts
as
the
autonomy
of
art
and the
coterminousness
of
form and
matter,
to
see a
vital
connection
between
Wilde
and
his
romantic
precursors
on
the
one
hand,
and
to elevate
him
to the
status
of
a
forerunner of modernism
on
the
other.
Today
when
we
have
reached
a
vantage
point
from
which
the
affinities between
writers
once
seen
as
apparently
distinct,
such
as
Walter
Pater
and Wallace
Stevens,
can more
readily
be
perceived
and
acknowledged,
it is
much
easier
to
see
the
connections
made
by
Kermode
than
it
was
twenty
years
ago,
when his
Romantic
Image
was
first
published. Important
ly,
however,
Kermode dismissed
the
overall
characteristic
of the
Wildean
dialogue
as
affectedly
exultant and
confusingly
am
biguous, 2
and
although
this
attitude
may
have
been inevitable
in
the
pioneering
venture
of
rescueing
the
better
part
of the
author's
work
from almost
complete neglect,
it also
seems
to
be
true
that
the
ambivalence
on
the
part
of the
critic arises
from the demand made
on
him of
maintaining
some
standard
of
rationality
as
the
hallmark of
sound criticism.
If,
then,
such
dialogues
as
The Critics
as
Artist
or
The
Decay
of
Lying,
are
to
be
understood
more
in
the
sense
of
something
artistic rather
than
critical and
expository,
we
ought
to
be
able
to
begin
to
do
justice
to
that
particular
quality
of th?
dialogical
discourse,
which
was
been
and
is
generally
disparaged.
For the
standard
of
rationality
or
of
sound
logic
does
not neces
sarily apply
to
the realm of art, and yet it is
precisely
for its
artistic
nature
that the
Wildean
dialogue
seems
to
have
the
greatest
relevance
for
us
today.
In
his
comparative
study
of
the manifesta
tions
of the
artistic
will
as
the
source
of
absolute
freedom
in
the later
nineteenth
century
philosophical-literary
milieu,
Stephen
Donadio
pointed
out
the
difficulty
involved
in
coming
to terms
with
Oscar Wilde
as
a
serious
author and how
Wilde
had often
been
taken for
the
very
opposite
of that
on
the
basis
of
the
largely
mistaken
conventional identifi
cation of
seriousness
and
solemnity.3
Long
before this observation
was
printed,
and
in
fact
even
before Lionel
Trilling,
several
years
earlier,
in
his
Sincerity
and
Authenticity,
had
pointed
out
that neither his
dandyism
nor
his
martyrdom
could
any
longer
obscure Wilde's
^intellectual
significance,4
there
seems
to
have
been
a
marked
change,
if
affecting only
the
minority,
in
the
critical
trends
on
one
side
of
the
Atlantic
at
least
towards
rejecting
what had
once
been
upheld, namely
the
rigorous
dis
tinction
between
the
objective
and the
sub
jective
within the
critical
process.
One notable
instance
of such
a
move,
as we
may
recall,
was
made
by
Susan
Sontag's
essay
Against
Inter
pretation
in
1964.5
With
its
anti-mimetic
spirit,
it
largely
shared
its
basic
assumptions
with the kind of formalism
professed
in
the
two
dialogues
of
Oscar
Wilde
which
sought
to
dislodge
the
conventional
opposition
bet
ween
form and
content.
The other
event
that
marked the
decisive
turn
towards the
open-ended
interpretation
akin
to
the Wildean
doctrines
was
the
symposium
on
The
Lan
guages
of
Criticism and the
Sciences
of
Man 6
held under the
auspices
of Johns
Hopkins
Humanities
Center
in
the fall of
1966,
when
almost all the works of Roland
Barthes,
Jacques
Derrida,
and
Tzvetan
Todorov,
not to
mention
those of
Jean-Francois
Lyotard,
had
yet
to
be
introduced
to
the
English
speaking
audience.
26
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8/10/2019 Oscar Wilde the Critic as Artist
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How
many
of those who
happend
to
witness
Jacque
Derrida
wheeling
his
deconstructive
sword
on
L?vi-Strauss7
have foreseen the
com
ing
of
a
time
when
deconstruction
finds
its
way,
as
it
does,
deep
into the
consciousness
of
scholars
and
critics
regardless
of their
assump
tions? Whether all this has benefited or damag
ed
literary
studies
has
yet
to
be
judged
by
the
generations
to
come,
but
it
is
at least
clear
that
Oscar Wilde
studies have
nothing
to
lose.
Indeed,
very
possibly,
they
may
have
a
lot
to
benefit from
the deconstructive
turn
of mind.
The
prediction
of
Northrop
Frye,
made
in
his Secular
Scripture,
to
the
effect
that
a
new
age
in
literature
heralded
by
Wilde would
take
another
century
to
penetrate
the
aware
ness
of critics,8 has
to
allow for
some
excep
tions
at
least.
Geoffrey
Hartman
and Harold
Bloom
among
others have
shown
the
extent
the
creativity
of criticism
can
take
us
in
their
respective
ways.
Bloom's notion of mis
prision 9
recreates in
a
somewhat
more
esoteric
manner
the
main tenets
of the
two
dialogues,
while Hartman's
answerable
style
as
well
as
his
comparison
of
Wilde
with
Georg
Luk?cs10
is
perhaps
one
of
the
most
serious
critical
responces
that
Wildean
criticism
has
given
rise
to.
And
yet,
neither
Bloom
nor
Hartman
can
be
said
to
have
done
full
justice
to
the
artistic
nature of
Wilde's
critical
writings.
Edward Said
has taken
up
the
same
com
parison
between Wilde and the realist
critic,
but
his
emphasis
on
the
functional
aspect
of
criticism
seems
to
distract further
away
from
the
ontological
condition
of
Wildean
criticism.
Said
upholds
the
critic's task of
discovering,
and then
setting
as
a
standard,
a new
set
of
values
and
ideals,
which,
according
to
him,
must
necessarily
be
epitomized
in
the form
of
the
essay
the
critic
writes
himself. This idea of
the critic
as
the
creator
of
a new
standard
may
be
perfectly
in
line with
the
function
of
the
critic
as
it
was
envisaged
by
Matthew
Arnold
or
T.S.
Eliot,
but
it
is
not
the
central
issue
of the
critic
as
artist
in
the Wildean
sense.
Interestingly enough,
however,
Said
sees a con
nection
between
his
own
notion
of the
re
velatory
and
exemplifying
function
of the
critic and what
R.
P.
Blackmur,
after
G.M.
Hopkins,
called
the
bringing
of
literature
to
performance.
According
to
the
author
of
The
World,
the
Text,
and the
Critic,
the
critic
is
responsible
for
finding,
and
exposing
or
giving
articulation
to
that
which
is
hidden
in
the
texts
but silenced
under
a
system
of
forces
institutionalized
by
the dominant
culture.11
In
the ultimate status accorded to the hidden but
veritable
presence
of voices
or
the
immanent
meaning,
he
is
simply betraying
his
own so
called
logocentric
bias.
Although
Wilde did
espouse
the
expressive
or
revelatory
nature
of
art
in
De
Profundis,
we
should
not
under
estimate
how
he could
equally
go
to
the
other
extreme
as
he does
in
The Critic
as
Artist
in
which
Gilbert
gives
flamboyant
expression
to
the
view
that
performance,
whether
musical
or
dramatic,
is
a
realization of the
performer's personality
rather
than
that
of the
original
composer.
As
we
may
recall,
this
is
a
position
in
accord
with
his
impressive
theory
of
art
according
to
which
the function
of the
critic
as
interpreter,
to
show
a new
relevancy
of
a
work
to
his
own
age,
is
designated
to
be
the
secondary.
In
spite
of the similarities in
terminology,
Wilde's
notion
of the
performative
nature
of
art
seems
to
be radically different
from
Said's,
or
either from
Hopkins's
or
Blackmur's12
for
that
matter.
Wilde's
impressionistic theory
of
art is in
fact much
in
keeping
with twentieth
century
awareness
of
literature
as
event rather
than
as
substantive
entity
to
be
deciphered:
an
awareness
to
be found
among
the
critics
of
such
diverse
persuasions
as
Jean-Paul
Sartre,
Georges
Poulet,
Hans
Robert
Jauss,
Wolfgang
Iser,
Louise
Rosenblatt,
Michael
Riff
aterre,
Norman
Holland,
and
Stanley Fish.13
As for
the affinities and
repulsions
that
are to
be
found between Wilde's critical ideas and
those
of the reader-oriented
theoreticians, any
dis
cussion
must
inevitably
end
up
in
a
hair
splitting quibble
which
is
out
of
our
present
concern.
It
may
suffice
here
to
point
out
the
crucial difference between Wilde
and those
critics.
The former
is
peculiarly
marked
by
his
lack
of
tenacity
and
earnestness
in
sustaining
any point
of
view
as
absolutely
true
and
final,
while
the latter
are
full of
enthusiams
which is
quite
alien
to the
mercurial
spirit
of
the
Wildean
dialogue.
27
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8/10/2019 Oscar Wilde the Critic as Artist
4/8
Ren?
Wellek's remains
the
most
rigorous
and
comprehensive
attempt
at
abstracting
Wilde's
critical
contentions,
and
is
typically
ambivalent
in its attitude toward the
nature
of
his
writings.
The
line of
appraisal
this
representative
critic
of the older
generation
follows
in
his
celebrat
ed A
History of
Modern
Criticism: 1975
195014
can
be
fairly
neatly
summarized
as
follows.
In the first
place,
he
points
to
what
he
takes
to
be the
most
notable demerits
in
Wilde's
writings,
characterising
them
as an
inconsistency
in
argumentation
and
an
ir
ritatingly
unbalanced
style. Secondly,
Wellek
rather
condescendingly
acknowledges
that the
irrationality
involved
both
in
the
style
and
content
of Wildean criticism does
in
fact
reveal
issues
otherwise hidden
by
reasoned
argumentation
and the
conscientious
weighing
of
pros
and cons. It
was
his
style
of
juggling
and
flippancy, according
to
Wellek,
that
gave
Wilde
range
and
scope
and made
him the
representative
figure
of the
English
aesthetic
movement.
Thirdly
and
in
order
to
facilitate
some
kind
of
historical
comparison
and dimen
sion,
Wellek
sees
Wilde's
contentions
as
falling
within three
basic
categories:
a) panaestheti
cism;
b)
the
autonomy
of
art;
and
c)
decorative
formalism. The first
category
includes
the
whole
variety
of assertions
scattered
among
Wilde's works
in
such
essays
as
The
Decay
of
Lying
with
its
anti-mimetic,
mythopoeic
principles,
The
Soul
of
Man Under Socialism
with
its
imposition
of artistic criteria
even on
government,
The Critic
as
Artist
with
its
exaltation
of
the
life of
contemplation
over
the
life of
conduct,
and
finally,
De Profundis
with its
analogy
drawn
between Christ
and
a
work
of
art.
For this
representative
critic of
the older
generation,
the
second
category
is
indisputable
so
far
as
it
remains
in
concord
with what
he
deems
to
be
the
central
tenet
of the
great
idealist
tradition,
the
union
of
form and
content,
that
is.
Much
to
Wellek's
deep
regret,
however,
this idea
of the
autonomy
of
art
tends
to
degrade
itself
into
an
allegedly
false formalism
in
Oscar
Wilde's
case,
which
places
too
high
a
stake
on
decorative
arabesques
on the one
hand,
and leads to an unfounded
identification
with
autobiography,
on
the
other.
The
third
category
called decorative for
malism
is
simply
there
for
Wellek
to
deplore.
The
adjectives
deployed
by
him
in
relation
to
decorative
art
are,
however,
not
so
much
descriptive
of
the
art
they syntactically
qualify
as
of
the
personal
nature
of
judgment
on
the
part
of the
great
theorist
himself:
false,
mere,
sheer,
and
empty.
It
is
important
to note
the
unconscious
contradiction
Wellek
has fallen
into in
his
assumption
of the
super
iority
of
idealist aesthetics
over
the
decorative.
What
Wellek found
most
repellant
among
Wildean
doctrines
was
the
autobiographical
nature the
criticism is
claimed
to
have.
But
he
seems
to
have
been
quite
unaware as
to
how
completely
his
own
personal
history
con
ditioned and
was
reflected
in
his
aesthetic
preferences.
Needless
to
say
there
is
no
more
warrant
for the
superiority
of the
idealist
theory
of
art,
than
there
is
one
for
presuming
the
preeminence
of
decorative
art-of
the
Celtic
or
Japanese
tradition,
say.
That
is
just
a
matter
of
personal
taste
which
is
as
autobiographical
as
one's
prejudices
or
sympathies.
But
there
is
no
way
to
call
it
willful
or
fantastic
as
Wellek
does the
Wildean
theory
of
the
subjective
nature
of
criticism.
For,
after
all,
are
not
critical
judgments
so
many
choices and
deci
sions
which
are
by
definition
arbitrary,
ac
cidental,
or
existential
if
you
will,
and
as
personal
and
subjective
as
one's beliefs?
We should
finally
but
very
quickly,
em
phasise
here the
significance
of
the
part
played
by
Wilde's
paradoxical
contradictions
in
style
and
content.
These
are
not
something
that
went
unnoticed
by
Wellek. But
it is not
as
he
suggests
in
spite of
but
because
of
the
irrationally
paradoxical
nature
of them
that
the
critical
writings
of
Oscar
Wilde
can
be
more
relevant
to
us
today
than
they
could
been
to
any genera
tion
before
us.
Our
own
age
is
one
which has
witnessed
virtually
every
paradigmatic
opposi
tions
reinterpreted
and
dismantled,
and tradi
tional values
and
categories
exchange
their
relative
ascendancies.
It
would
not
be
an
overstatement to
say
that
most of
the
inver
sions and
dismountings
of
oppositions
which
have taken
place during
the last
seventy
years
or so
have
their
counterparts
in
Oscar Wilde's
writings.
The
development
of
the
linguistic
and
28
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8/10/2019 Oscar Wilde the Critic as Artist
5/8
semiological
turn
of
mind,
in
particular,
can
be said
to
have been
prefigured
in
the
kind
of
antinomian
formalism manifest
in
Wilde.
Lying
and
truth-telling,
for
instance,
could
never
have
been
expected
to
be
set
over
against
each
other
with the
lying
taking
the
ascendancy
in
the
Platonic-Christian
context.
Once
the
signifi
cance
of
lying
is
reinterpreted,
as
it
has
been,
and the
fabricating ability
of human
language
is
set
against
the mimetic
function
of
it,
which
the
truth-telling
is
now
identifiable
with,
the
opposing
terms
do take
on
a
different
hierarchy
with
lying
asserting
its
superiority
over
the
other
term. For the
fiction-making,
the
creat
ing-otherness
is
arguably
the last
resort
the
living
organism
is
left
with
in its
struggle
against gravity
and
repose
as
George
Steiner
tersely
summed
up
in
After
Babel15
One
conspicuous exception
we
would have
to
acknowledge
is
the
opposition
between
speaking
and
writing
which
Wilde did
not
overturn,
but affirmed
in
favor
of
speaking.
But
here
again,
in
his
categorical
negation
of
spontaneous
poetry
as
such and
in
his
detecting
the
alleged
penetration
of the
conscious,
critical
operations deep
into the most
primitive
of
poetry,
it
will
not
be
difficult
to
see an
almost
disconcerting
isomorphism
with
Jacques
Derrida's
notion
of
archi-writing
or
dif
f?rance.16
But
to
verify
this
means
another
paper
itself.
We
may
now
turn to a
consideration of the
criticism-creation
relationship
which lies
at
the
heart
of the
colloquy
The Critic
as
Artist.
In
pointing
out
those three
views
as
the
con
stants
in
the
critical
theory
of
Wilde,
Rene
Wellek
did
not
fail
to
blame what
he
deemed
to
be
inconsequential
shifts
among
them
which
made for
the
difficulty
on
the
part
of the
reader
to
follow the
argument.
In
fact
the shift
is
only
one
of the
many
aspects
of the
way
wardness
of the
dialogical
process
which
many
others have
found
annoying
and
complained
about. Just
as
in
many
other
crucial
turning
points,
the shift
takes
place
during
the
dis
cussion
of
the
central
issue
of the
dialogue,
that
is the
alleged
creative
nature
of
the
criticism.
It
is
essential
to
take
into
account how the
dialogue
moves
from
one
point
of
view
to
another
without
substantially
terminating
the
arguments
on
any,
not
to
mention
reaching
an
agreement,
in
order
to
grasp
the
dialogic
strategy
involved
here,
which
is
significantly
different
from
the
one we
are
accustomed
to
in the
Platonic
dialogues.
Gilbert has
expounded
on
the
critical
faculty
of
selection,
which
is
rather
reminiscent
of
Matthew
Arnold's
sense
of the
critical
power.
Without
having
come
to
any
agreement
on
the
relative
value of
it
vis-?-vis
what
Ernest,
his
interlocutor,
believes
to
be
the
superior
faculty,
that
of
creation,
his
discourse drifts
into
another
realm of
opposition;
the
opposi
tion
between literature and
life,
linguistic
representation
and
action,
and his
argument
further deflects
into
another
opposition,
that
is
the
one
between moral and
immoral actions
which he
proceeds
to
invert in
favor of
the
immoral,
only
to come
back
to
the
earlier
opposition
between
description
and
action.
The
initial
shift
takes
place
under the
nose
of
the
interlocutor,
or
of the
reader for that
matter,
through
the medium of
the double
meaning
of
two
phrases.
Ernest,
when
provoked
by
Gilbert's assertion of the
critical
over
against
the
creative
faculty,
says:
After
all,
even
you
must
admit
that
it
is
much
more
difficult
to do
a
thing
than
to
talk
about it.
It
should
be
obvious
that
by
the
phrase
to do
a
thing
Ernest
meant
the
actual
creative
activity,
and
by
to
talk
about
it,
the
critical.
But
when
Gilbert
takes
up
the
phrases
he
employs
another
set
of
meanings
to
shift
the
opposition
into
another
ground:
to
do
a
thing
in
actual
life
means
action,
and
to
talk
about
it,
linguistic
representation
of
the
action. It is
very
much
more
difficult,
retorts
Gilbert,
to talk
about
a
thing
than
to
do it.
In
the
sphere
of
actual
life
that
is of
course
obvious.
Anybody
can
make
history.
Only
a
great
man
can
write
it.
The last
statement
is
arrived
at
by
means
of
metaleptic
conversion,
or
by
the
deployment
of
a
m?tonymie
restatement
of
the
phrases
which
were
metaphorical
restatements
themselves.
The
slippage
of
meaning
first
through
the
metaphorical
or
paradigmatic
axis,
then the
projection
of
the
newly
highlighted
sense
onto
a
new
syntagma
tic
one.
To
put
it
anotherway,
there is
here
a
deliberate
confusion of the
rhetorical
and
the
logical
which
is
being
29
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8/10/2019 Oscar Wilde the Critic as Artist
6/8
creatively
exploited by
Gilbert's
discourse.
Metalepsis
is
one
of
the
ploys
human
language
is
naturally
endowed
with for
the
multiple
articulations
of the world
out
of
the
basically
limited
number of
fragmentary
units.
What
is
called
bricolage
in
structuralist
anthropology17
is a good enough illustration of the creative
potential
of
the
metaleptic
process.
Another
form
of
aberration
from
logical
ratiocination arises
when Gilbert
abruptly
brings
up
the identification of criticism with
creation,
by
saying
criticism
is itself
an
art.
And
just
as
artistic
creation
implies
the
working
of
the critical
faculty,
and
indeed without
it
it
cannot
be said
to
exist
at
all,
so
criticism
is
really
creative
in the
highest
sense
of the
word.
Criticism
is,
in
fact,
both
creative
and inde
pendent,
In
these words and
much
more
that follow the
two
are
said
to
be
identical
on
two
grounds.
One
is:
because neither
is
constrained
by
the standard
of
faithfulness
to
their
object,
in other
words
by
outside
reference.
(This,
needless
to
say,
is
what
the
main
thesis of The
Decay
of
Lying
and the
Wildean
impressionism
of The
Critic
as
Artist
are
boiled
down
to.)
And
the second: because
both
creation and criticism
use
as
their
mate
rials
elementary
creations
by
the hands
of
other
creators.
The
equation
is
obviously
carried
out
by
neglecting
all
the irrelevant
factors
which
otherwise
make
for
the
distinctive
features of
the
two
respectively.
The
arbitrary neglect
is
a
form of reduction
which
may
even
be
com
pared
to what
is
understood
by
phenomenologi
cal
bracketting.
And
this
process
can
be traced
behind
any
kind of formalism whether
literary,
philosophical,
or
linguistic,
and
the
reversal
of
the
relative
value of form and
content
within
the
Symbolist
context,
for
instance,
could
not
have
been
possible
without this.
And
then,
surprisingly enough,
Wilde's
colloquist
jumps
onto
his
next
assertion: the
superiority
of
one
of
the
parties
he
has
just
contended
to
have
one
and the
same
status
as
the
other. The
criticism
is
said
to
be
superior
to
creation
because
one
is
impressive
in
princi
ple
and
the other
mimetic.
That
this
is
a com
pletely self-contradicting
comparison
is
too
obvious:
he
is
distorting
his
comparison
into
an
unfair
weighing
of the
relative value with
the
ideally
superior
member of
a
class
on one
end of the scale and
with
the
inferior
member
of
another
on
the other. What
happened,
one
may
justly
wonder,
to
the
paragons
of
non
mimetic creation he has
earlier commended:
Homer,
Shakespeare,
Keats?
No wonder
so
many readers have complained about the
inconsistency
involved
in
his
discourse. And
his
later
admission of
the
insincerity
of
the
critic,
and
his
appreciation
of
incompleteness
per
se
as
the
factor that makes the
critic
develope
permanently
and
makes
beauty complete,
give
only
a
false
impression
of the
coherence
of his
argument.
Relying
on a
logical
point
of
view
as
the
basis
for
their critical
analyses,
not
only
Wellek
but
most
of
the
critics
I have
mentioned
so
far,
have
been
destined
to
find the
dialogues
of
Wilde
more
or
less
an
assemblage
of alien
parts,
each
of
which
remains
an
independent
exposition
of
a
thesis
rather
than
a
step
towards
a
larger
unit of
argument.
Edward
Roditi
was
the first critic
who
pointed
this
out in
the
comparison
he
made
between
the
Platonic
dialogues
and
Wilde's
in
his
monograph
on
this
then-largely-forgotten
artist in
1947.18
He
was
not
wide
of
the mark
in
pointing
out
the
fragmentary
nature
Wilde's
dialogues
must
inevitably
present
against
the
Platonic
norm.
And
the
discourse
of
Wilde's
protagonist
is
characterized
by
its
apparently
whimsical recoils from
dialectical
debate
on
the
one
hand,
and
by
sudden
bursts
of
colorful
tirades which
are
more
vulnerable
to
counter
arguments
than
overwhelmingly
persuasive
on
the
other.
In
short
his is
not
the
well-manuever
ed
strategy
of
Socrates
whose
deliberate
ques
tioning
is
designed
to
lead his
opponents
to
the
admission of
the truths
they
have hitherto been
unaware
of.
But
we
must
here
insist
that this
first substantial critic
on
Wilde's
literary
achievement
was
not
doing justice
to
the
raison
d'?tre
of his
dialogues
when
he
makes
an
un
warranted inference that Wilde seemed
to
have
been
obscurely
aware
of
the weaknesses of his
own
dialectics,
or
again,
when
he
refers
to the
alleged
failure
on
the
part
of the
author
to
achieve
his
high
aim
in
the
dialogues
as
in
other
writings
where he
emmulated classical
models.
Obviously,
Wilde's
aim
was not
dialectical
elucidation
as
such. It
was
only
within
the
30
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8/10/2019 Oscar Wilde the Critic as Artist
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logocentric
tradition
that the
perfection
of
metaphysical
logic
was
erroneously
identifed,
as was
done
by
Roditi,
as
Wilde's
goal.
Wildean
coloquys
with
their
inconsistencies
and self
contradictions,
together
with
all
the
other
so
called
critical
writings
of him
propounding,
as
often
as
not,
for
contradictory
theses
among
themselves,
never
contribute
to
the
verification
of
any
single
truth,
but
prevent
any
of the
inversions
of values
from
rigidifying
into
new
orthodoxies
in
their
turn.
All
of those
means
of
inconsistency,
logical
aberration,
and
contradiction,
constitute
the
process
of creation which
is
nothing
more
than
an
endless
process
of
self-differentiation
or
becoming
in
a
cozier
term.
With
Wilde's
notion
of
the
essential
incompleteness
of
art
this self
differentiation
seems
to
emancipate
literature
from
the
burden
of
the
principle
of
outside
reference
and almost achieves
the innocence
of
pure
play
similar
to
the
kind
of
play
classified
as
ilinx
or
the
vertiginous
by Roger
Caillois
in
Man,
Play,
and
Games.19
Almost
but
not
quite,
a
deconstructionist
may
say.
It is
difficult
to
overlook the
pr?sense
of
one
trascendental
dimension
which
is
kept
untouched
by
the flux
of
changing
terms in
the
Wildean
universe.
The
name
given
to
that
transcendence
is,
of
course,
Beauty,
and
its
human
counterpart
is
called
the soul. The
privilege
the
pair enjoys
undergoes
little
change
throughout
Wilde's
writings,
and
all
the
binary
oppositions
with each
contradicting
terms
shift
ing
its relative
validity
are
maintainable
as
significant oppositions
only
by being
presided
over,
as
it
were,
by
the
transcendental
terms.
So
long
as
their
absolute
status was
never
put
under
a
sceptical
scrutiny
by
this
otherwise
deconstructive
precursor,
the
comparison
often
made
between
him
and
Nietzsche
must
neces
sarily
be
a
limited
one.
For
Wilde
Beauty
embodied
whatever
good
God
or
the
One
in the
Platonic
tradition
has
represented.
We
can
rest
assured,
if
we
like,
of the
fundamentally
monistic
sensibility
Wilde
never
parted
with,
even
under
the
guise
of
pluralism
manifest
in
his
style
of
writing
as
well
as
in
his
doctrines.
And
yet,
quite fortunately
for
thoe
who
admire his
artistic
style,
pluralism
was
enhanced
and
was
given
even
more
in
tensity
by
virture
of the
strength
of
his
monistic
under-pinning.
Pluralism
reveals
as
well
as
conceals his monism. It remains
Wilde's
ultimate
mask.
The
creative nature
of the
writings
of
the
author of The
Decay
of
Lying
rests
on
the
same
kind
of
logical indeterminacy
as
that
which
is
demonstrated
by
that
now-over
strained
Epimenides paradox:
All
Cretans
are
liars. 20
As
for the abstractable
contents
of
his
writings,
they
should
remain
ambiguous.
In
his
recent
article
in New
Literary
History,
Norman
Holland
arrived
at the
conclusion
that
creation
and
interpretation
are
coterminous
and
inseparable
through
his
analysis
of Robert
Frost's
writings.21
But
to
read
it
and
go
through
his
interdisciplinary
ratiocinations
conscientiously weighing
pros
and
cons
in
one's
mind,
should be
and is
a
distinctly
dif
ferent
experience
from one's
musing
over
Wilde's
dialogical performance
in
that
superbly
rich,
rhythmical
movement which
betokens
the
liar's
discourse
in
the Wildean
sense.
Critics
dealing
with Wilde's
writings
should
constantly
remind themselves
of the
fact
that
they
are
in
exactly
the
same
situation
as
they
would be
in
when
confronted
with
the
Cretan's
paradox.
If
one
is
willing
to
sit
over
the
Wildean dia
logues
once
in
a
while
and
go
through
the
vertiginous
journey
through
their
strange,
loop
ing
route,
one
can
do
without the
deconstruc
tive
hvffiene.
Notes
1
This
is
a
slightly
revised version
of
my
paper
presented
at
the
Second International Con
ference
of
IASAIL-JAPAN under the
title
Some
Implications
of the
Criticism
of
Oscar Wilde.
2 Frank
Kermode,
Romantic
Lmage
(London:
Routledge
&
Kegan
Paul,
1957),
pp.
44-47.
3
Stephen
Donadio, Nietzsche,
Henry
James,
and
the
Artistic
Will
(New
York: Oxford
Univ.
Press),
p.
53.
4
Lionel
Trilling,
Sincerity
and
Authenticity
(Cambridge,
Mass.
& London:
Harvard Univ.
Press),
p.
118.
5
Susan
Sontag,
Against Interpretation
(New
York: Farrar
Straus,
1966).
6 See
Richard
Macksey
&
Eugenio
Donato,
eds.,
The
Languages
of
Criticism
and
the
31
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8/10/2019 Oscar Wilde the Critic as Artist
8/8
Sciences
of
Man
(Baltimore
&
London:
The
Johns
Hopkins
Univ.
Press,
1970).
7
Jacques
Derrida,
Structure,
Sign,
and
Play
in
the
Discourse
of
the Human
Sciences,
ibid., pp.
247-65.
8
Northrop Frye,
The Secular
Scripture:
A
Study of
the
Structure
of
Romance
(Cam
bridge,
Mass.,
& London:
Harvard
Univ.
Press,
1976),
p.
46.
9
See Harold
Bloom,
The
Anxiety
of
In
fluence:
A
Theory
of
Poetry
(London:
Oxford
Univ.
Press,
1973),
and A
Map
of
Misreading
(London
&
New York:
Oxford
Univ.
Press,
1975)
10 See
Geoffrey
Hartman,
Criticism
in
the
Wilderness: The
Study
of
Literature
Today
(New
Haven & London: Yale Univ.
Press,
1980).
11
Edward
Said,
The
World,
the
Text,
and the
Critic
(Cambridge,
Mass.:
Harvard
Univ.
Press,
1983),
Ch. 1.
12
Cf.
Said, pp.
4Iff.
13 See
J.P.
Sartre,
Qu'est-ce
que
la
litt?rature?
(Paris:
Gallimard,
1948);
Georges
Poulet,
Phenomenology
of
Reading,
in
New
Literary
History,
1(1969),
53-68;
U.R.
Jauss,
Literaturgeschite
als
Provokation
(Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp,
1970),
Literary
History
as a
Challenge
to
Literary
Theory,
trans.,
Elizabeth
Benzinger,
in
New
Literary
History,
2
(1970),
7-37;
Wolfgang
Iser,
Indeterminacy
and the
Reader's
Response
in
Prose
Fiction,
in
Aspects
of
Narrative,
ed.,
J.H. Miller
(New
York:
Columbia
Univ.
Press,
1971),
pp.
1-45,
The Act
of
Reading:
A
Theory of
Aesthetic
Response
Baltimore:
The Johns
Hopkins
Univ.
Press,
1978);
Louise
Rosenblatt,
The
Reader,
the
Text,
the Poem: The Transactional
Theory of
the
Literary
Work
(Carbondale:
Southern
Illi
nois Univ,
Press,
1978);
Michael
Riffatere,
Semiotics
of
Poetry
(Bloornington:
Indiana
Univ.
Press,
1978);
Norman
Holland,
The
Dynamics
of
Literary
Response
(New
York:
Oxford Univ.
Press,
1968),
5
Readers
Reading
(New
Haven: Yale Univ.
Press,
1975);
Stanley
E.
Fish,
Is There
a
Text in
This
Class?:
The
Authority of
Interpretive
Communities
(Cambridge,
Mass.:
Harvard
Univ.
Press,
1980).
For other reader-ori
ented
theories
see,
the
two
collections
of
essays:
J.P.
Tompkins,
ed.,
Reader-Response
Criticism
(Baltimore
& London:
The Johns
Hopkins
Univ.
Press,
1980);
S.R.
Suleiman
&
Inge
Crosman, eds.,
The
Reader
in
the
Text:
Essays
on
Audience
and
Interpretation
(Princeton:
Princeton Univ.
Press,
1980).
14
Ren?
Wellek,
A
History
of
Modern
Criti
cism:
1975-1950,
IV
(London:
Jonathan
Cape,
1966),
pp.
407-16.
15
George Steiner, After
Babel:
Aspects of
Language
and
Translation
(London,
Oxford,
&
New
York:
Oxford Univ.
Press,
1975),
p.
222.
16 See
Jacques
Derrida,
Of
Grammatology\
trans.,
G.C.
Spivak
(Baltimore
&
London:
The Johns
Hopkins
Univ,
Press,
1974),
Margins of
Philosophy,
trans.
Alan
Bass
(Chicago:
Univ.
of
Chicago
Press,
1982),
pp.
1?27,
and
Speech
and Phenomena and
Other
Essays
on
HusserVs
Theory
of
Signs,
trans.
D.B. Allison
(Evanston:
Northwestern
Univ.
Press,
1973).
17
Cf.
Claude
L?vi-Strauss,
The
Savage
Mind
(Chicago:
Univ.
of
Chicago
Press,
1966),
p.
150.
18
Edouard
Roditi,
Oscar Wilde
(Norfolk:
New
Directions,
1947).
19
Roger
Caillois, Man,
Play,
and
Games,
trans.,
Meyer
Barash
(New
York:
Free
Press of
Glencoe,
1961).
20
See
Douglas
Hofstadter,
G?del,
Escher,
Bach:
An
Eternal
Golden
Braid
(New
York:
Basic
Books,
1979).
21
Norman
Holland,
The Brain
of
Robert
Frost
m
New
Literary History,
15
(1984),
365-85.
32
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