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A STUD Y OF
OSCAR WILDE
Walter Winston Kenilworth
AUTHOR OF "psychic CONTROL THROUGH SELF-K^^O^VLE©GE,"
"thoughts on things psychic,'' "the life
of the soul," etc., etc
4.
R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
18 EAST 17th street :: NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1912 BY
R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
A Study oj Oscar Wilde"
f-
CONTENTS ^
PAGE
Foreword 9
Impressions 15
Reflections .j 29
Revelations 43
Intentions 59
Aspirations; 73
Realizations l._ 89
Illuminations 103
Conclusions 121
Afterword ;.. 137
FOREWORD
The Angel of Death has already come
and gone for the personality of Oscar
Wilde some years since, but it has not, nor
can it touch the immortality of his
thought or of his soul. These are eternal,
joyous off-shootings of the Soul of God.
Earthly judgment may praise or censure
the man of whom this is written, but it
cannot interfere with the judgment of
Him who wots of poets' ways even, verily,
as His Very Own. And in the fulfill-
ment of things it has come to pass that
the present generation sanctions the
greatness and the wisdom of Oscar
Wilde, whom his own generation failed
to understand. Now he is seen to have
been the philosopher throughout, under
the happy disguise of the dramatist, the
artist and the satirist. And underlying
all his literature there is now recognized
9
FOREWORD
to have been the personal greatness and
the personal sincerity of the man. His
life proves the text, "A prophet is not a
prophet in his own land," and Oscar
Wilde felt himself more at oneness with
his nature, it may be said, in the romantic
.'itmosphere of France than in the conven-
r ion-ridden society of England at which
he directed the analytical power and the
\rit of his dramatic faculties.
That he has enriched the English lan-
;.:!iage goes without saying. That the
English-speaking peoples are indebted to
him for this goes, likewise, without say-
ing. In the light of a newer criticism
Oscar Wilde will be seen to have also been
the prophet of the modern social gospel.
And in the ^^De Profundis'^ and in "The
Sf^ul of Man Under Socialism'^ we have
not only the moulder of fine sentences,
but the heart and very soul of a man.
Some have spoken of Oscar Wilde, saying
that he was ever the man of attitudes and,
10
FOREWORD
that lie posed. Verily lie was that, but
each attitude was a poem, a perfect work
of idealism and each pose a masterpiece
of human life, and each attitude and each
pose was of the genuineness and of the
greatness of life. And all his attitudes
and all his poses spoke more widely and
more beautifully of the souFs existence
and of the existence of an ideal world and
of ideal things than do all the noisy and
clap-trap formalities of life as it is com-
monly lived. And they spoke also and
more deeply of real human sincerity and
of true human idealism.
In the realms of art, where life is most
real, Oscar Wilde has rendered imperish-
able service to his age in having assisted
it to reconstruct its theories regarding
the meaning and functions of art. He
read life through the beauty and reality
of art. Art was even the medium through
which he observed the philosophical
world. The problems of philosophy he
11
FOREWORD
accepted and interpreted as problems of
art, and therefore solved them the easier.
In poetry Oscar Wilde gave birth to a
new style and, above all, to a new spirit
and to a new method of treatment.
But this work is to serve rather as an
understanding of the man through a con-
sideration of his literature. It purposes
a revelation of the man, and it purposes
to show that surmounting all the great-
ness of any outward expression was the
greatness and the genius of the man him-
self. It is the man who concerns us; let
this be in the nature of an understanding!
The Author.
12
3fmpression0
IMPRESSIONS
"A man should be judged, not by his caste or creed,
The meat he eats, the vintage that he drinks;
Not by the way he fights or loves or sins
But by the quality of thoughts he thinks."
Like a great flame bound by the dark-
ness its own intensity cannot illumine,
was the soul of Oscar Wilde in the atmos-
phere of his own age. A soul that stood
alone, dwelling within its own genius,
living upon its own glory — that, indeed,
he was. In what a great darkness did he
go down into death ! And how true, with
regard even unto himself, is that terrible
summary he made of the complex person-
ality :
"For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die."
How strikingly was this applicable of
his very own nature! What lives he led;
they were a hundred or more rolled into
one burning flame of personality. Each
15
IMPRESSIONS
episode of liis varied career was, in itself,
a life. For within him was such sensi-
tiveness of soul and delicacy of response
of soul that what is a day's experience to
the soul of average vision was to him in-
communicable worlds of pain or joy. The
poet's nature is the nature of a thousand
souls in one, — and Oscar Wilde was a
poet among them. To him the ordinary
sunset was worlds of flame, and the shin-
ing of the moon on any common night
was, to him, the door-way to great heav-
ens in the spiritual repose.
Who shall gauge the depths of any sin-
gle soul! Who shall say of it, *^in this
motive there was genius, or in this in-
tention there was the light of the seven
deaths of sin." There is no judge of these
things but Divinity; and shall any man
proclaim himself such a judge! Who
aspires to divinity, verily let him judge!
Shall any man say unto another, "Yea,
verily, this didst thou mean; unto this
16
IMPRESSIONS
pass liast thou come in thy thought !" If
so, indeed, let the anathema be upon him,
— unless he be God ! Who is his brother's
keeper in these centuries of sin, when
every man stands guilty because of the
Time's own poverty of soul!
The rascal and the hypocrite went with
the publican into the temple and they
said, ^'Behold, O assemblies of men, who
are greater than we! See ye not that
we are saints I'^ And with folded hands
they accepted the tithes that the fools of
men offered them. But there came into
the temple and unto these same assem-
blies of men one who carried the fires of
the Most High in his hand, and in whose
eyes shone worlds of spiritual flame and
upon whose brow were written, in tem-
pestuous light the words, ^'Behold, I am
the spokesman of the creation of Godl"
But these assemblies of men who live on
small thoughts and petty standards of
things cried out : ^'Get thee gone !" 'And
17
IMPRESSIONS
therewith they took up the sacred vessels
of the temple and the furniture thereof
and they cast them upon the spokesman
of God and he fell in that place, and the
world cried out joyously, "Behold, he is
dead !''
Indeed, he of whom this is written was
a spokesman of God, for is not every poet
the spokesman of God! And what shall
we say of great poets! Shall they be
judged by those standards that men set
up — and yet, though having set them up
in the public highways of their thought,
nevertheless defile them for the man who
can ^'ajford/' and thus escape. O terrible,
diabolically terrible are the standards of
our times! Who are the judges of men?
Aye, they who seem pious, but within
themselves are cess-pools of iniquity.
They wear the garments of great piety,
but their souls are leperous. Aye, damn
the smallness of men ! O for that Super-
Man of whom great Friederich Nietschze
18
IMPRESSIONS
dreamed ! But then these pious men and
these same assemblies of man-fools pro-
claimed this arch-apostle of the New Age
a fool I Shall the soul have any chance in
the kingdom of the judges of men!
Behold a great wave of light came upon
the world, and so great was the light that
men perceived it as darkness, but what
cares the light for the blindness of the
eves of men I Every poet is a member of
that body of greater things for whicli
Christ sacrificed himself upon the cross
and for which Shelley wrote his songs.
The Christs alone have compassion and
they of their making, — the poets, the ar-
tists, the musicians, — and this because
their vision is of things beyond the com-
mon understanding. What shall trades-
people know of the Sun ! What shall the
weavers of cloth know of the Weavers of
Dreams! Shall the poet make apologies
to men ! The embodiment of his person-
ality in the poetry he bequeathes to the
19
IMPRESSIONS
world, — is that not the explanation!
What need for apologies!
Oscar Wilde saw deep into the eyes of
life, and for this reason he held with all
philosophers that life must be lived as
one finds it. And shall any man take
credit unto himself for the blood that is
in his veins because he has no tendency
to certain lines of life! Let the race
blame the race, but let no man blame an-
other! In the great economy of nature,
morality is an episode. It is the rut into
which all average men fall. There is still
a greater vision — and that is of the soul.
Who has seen the soul, is he not the king
among his fellows, is he not the man
among men ! Whosoever has entered into
his own soul, like the sun enters a mass
of clouds, or like a lion enters the forest,
or like an elephant enters the intermin-
able jungle — let the world beware whether
it stigmatizes him either "good'' or "bad."
For what is goodness but a common deter-
20
IMPRESSIONS
mination to leave hands off certain cus-
toms that are not "respectable." What
is "respectable" in London-town may not
be "respectable" in Baloochistan ; or what
was "respectable" in the world of Pericles
or Plato may not be "respectable" in the
world of trade-chasing Manchester. But
it is not the fault of Baloochistan, al-
though in our conceit we may call Baloo-
chistan barbaric ; nor yet is it the fault of
Pericles or Plato, although in our pre-
sumptuous pride we claim we have tran-
scended these kings in thought.
"Respectability" is what one's fore-
fathers may have done ten centuries ago,
or it may be what average people call
"virtue." But shall any man be limited
down to the thought of his great, great
ancestors, or be pent up in the narrow
prison-house of the opinion of the crowd !
In this mess of a world, there is only one
thing that is "respectable"— and everyone
is quite agreed to this — and that is might,
21
IMPRESSIONS
It is might that makes "respectable'^ the
outrages of the Congo, because their per-
petrator lives in a king's palace and wears
a king's livery. It is might that excuses
the animality of multi-millionaires and
excuses their heinous crimes on the plea
of "eccentricities." In international af-
fairs the word "respectability" is second-
cousin to a cannon-ball. In private af*
fairs "respectability" covers a host of
secret sins, because a man has money.
Who is not "the sinner?" Said a great
man, "A man has his evil deeds quite in
common with the rest of mankind, but
his virtues stand out separately, and it
is by his virtues that he should be
judged." And it is by the glory of the
light it sheds that genius should be
judged. And of them that are dead in
the line of genius and sanctity what trag-
edies in sin might have been enacted. But
the centuries have clothed their sins in
deep forgottenness and only the light
22
IMPRESSIONS
stands forth. But that is as it should be.
For shall a man gloat constantly and for-
ever over the sins of his fellow ! It is the
sinner who sees the sin — and for that mat-
ter the whole world is a sinner.
Slow is the recognition of the world!
Before it praises, it must erstwhile have
blamed. It has always the nature of the
beggar who takes without thanks. In
fact, in most instances, it is like a thief
who comes in the night and robs genius
of its merit and then turns accuser on
genius because its capacity to give has
been exhausted.
Genius, alone, is possessed of vision,
but for that reason must genius suffer.
The genius is always of the temperament
of the redeemer. He makes the world see
its own shams. He makes it conscious of
its own behavior. He makes it aware of
its own limitations. And because of this
must genius be crucified by the sons of
men, even as Christ was nailed to the
23
IMPRESSIONS
cross. Does a uew world-ghost make it-
self present with maukiud, like Wagner,
it is despised because of the greatness of
its message. And for the "eccentricities'^
of genius let the race blame the race, even
as it becomes morally blind in the ability
to find sin under a cloth of gold.
There were certain wise men who had
taken up their abode in the compound of
a temple, but seeing that men pursued
them, they retreated into a forest, where
they lived upon their thoughts, like the
mountains stand upon their base. But
the foolishness of men pursued them still.
There were those who came unto these
wise men, after they had discovered their
hermitage. But the wise men saw them
not because they had plunged into eternal
meditation. But these foolish men caught
hold of the sages and spoke unto them,
"Evil men, why have you deserted socie-
ty?'' And then these same wise men
turned upon their questioners like a
24
IMPRESSIONS
mountain of fire and said, "Because so-
ciety sees in little ways and can only see
conventions."
But these foolish men could not under-
stand and they called a multitude of such,
like unto themselves, and they cast the
wise men into a foul dungeon where they
perished, — but with them, likewise, per-
ished their wisdom, so far as this foolish
world goes.
So did the foolish men of the world
come unto Oscar Wilde. They said, "Be-
hold, thou art a sinner I And we, who are
not like God, condemn the sinner and not
the sin.'- Therefore and in that hour they
cast him into a prison-house and mur-
dered his soul.
"And every human heart that breaks,
In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the lord,
And filled the unclean leper's house
With the scent of costliest nard."
It is gone some years now — the soul of
25
niPKESSlOXS
Oscar Wilde, escaping from the worn-out
ibodj that suffered the tortures of seven
hells before it sunk down into death. Now
the world is kinder. It has allowed his
hooks to be published. It has allowed his
plajs to be staged. It has seen wisdom in
his essays and learning in his art. Above
all, it has seen a soul in the garment of
his poetry.
I
26
laeflcctions
REFLECTIONS
Life is, after all, an experiment. Each
man has his methods, and they are his
own, and he alone understands them. He
cannot communicate unto any other the
subtle distinctions of his personality,
those subtle shades of his feeling, that
make him act in accordance with the in-
stinct of certain moods. From what
does a poem come? Is it a sub-conscious
sensing of finer shades of physical or
spiritual reality? Does all poetry arise
from the depths of the soul, just as the
Sistine Madonna appeared to Raphael
before he embodied its spiritual beauty
and spiritual appeal and the gentle lofti-
ness of the Christ-child to canvas?
In the poet, nature expresses herself
more fully. The poet is in closer spirit-
ual relationship to the divine sentiency
w^hich is nature. The most heightened in-
29
REFLECTIONS
spiration, the most brilliant flashes of
insight, the most luminous penetration
into the heart of things — are of the soul
of the poet. His tread is light. His per-
sonality moves on swiftly in the direction
of ideal vision, just as the feet of the lover
are quickened with speed by the thought
or the hope of meeting with the beloved.
The world speaks to the poet as an
oracle to its priest. It speaks monstrous
realities to him. It initiates him into
the very soul of itself. It leads him
through ethereal forms of consciousness,
into the splendid portico of its inner
temple. Nature is God, and the poet is
the priest of God. He has anointed of
the Lord, Who is nature. Upon his soul
is the ineffaceable mark of priesthood;
and nature has placed upon his lips the
seals of prophecy and eloquent insight.
The same power that causes the sun to
set, causes the inspiration, the vision of
the poet, Indissolubly associated with
30
REFLECTIONS
the very spiritual essence of life is the
lieart-throbbings of the poet's career. He
is as much a glory as the glories he in-
terprets. His life affords as much of
vision, as he himself is possessed. In
his life the spectator may read Apocal-
yptic realities. For this reason should
the world reflect for a long, long period
of time, before it consigns any priest of
poetry, any priest of nature to the silence
and the shame and the inquities of the
house of shame — a prison.
I It is incalculable ingratitude to put be-
hind the prison bars a soul that has
dreamed larger realities into the life of
man. However he may sin, the sin of
torturing his soul is immeasurably great-
er. And poor indeed, is the recompense
of a tardy appreciation. Shall long-de-
ferred praise be given, when the ears of
him who has admittedly deserved praise
have gone to ashes!
Each man pays for his own fault ; and
31
REFLECTIONS
the most awful penalty is the conscious-
ness of fault. How deeply did this priest
of poetry, of whom this is written, be-
come conscious of his own woe; and yet,
underlying whatever sense of woe he
might have felt, was the triumphant con-
sciousness that he was divinely a poet.
He felt his own greatness. TMien the
whole world accursed him, he was stag-
gered. Yet, in the terrible confinement of
those prison-months when, as he says :
"We tore the tarry rope to shreds
With blunt and bleeding nails ;
We rubbed the doors and scrubbed the floors,
And cleaned the shining rails
And rank by rank, we soaped the plank
And clattered with the pails."
yet, in those terrible hours we have
glimpses of his resoluteness of soul. We
find him heart-broken indeed, but never-
theless conscious that his life had been a
mission and a message. As a person, he
had his confessions and his regrets, but
as a man with a message, he had no apolo-
32
REFLECTIONS
gies, nor confessions, nor regrets. He
was a man of his age and he knew what
brooding his own sonl had experienced,
so that man might have the glory of a
new vision from the very depth of his
thought.
Some, whose spiritual sight is blind,
have spoken of his personal testimony in
^'De Profundis'^ as insincere. They dared
say, that even when in the despair of his
prison experience, ^^he was posing.'^ Can a
man pose when in physical pain? Can he
smile when he is tortured? It may be;
but then he is like one of the Christian
martyrs, — who sees the glory of God
awaiting him and the gate-ways of Para-
dise open to receive him. Can a man be
glad in the house of shame, which is the
prison ; can he be merry when his soul is
tortured? Can he be "artistic" when he
is mad with pain? Can he "pose" when
the whole world is watching his agony,
when he finds himself deserted by every
33
REFLECTIONS
man — standing entirely alone and in
shame?
Dastard is such an aceustation of in-
sincerity against the soul of Oscar Wilde.
Unspeakably mean is such an analysis
of the soul of any man, but of the soul of
a sensitive poet, whose whole thought is
attuned to worlds of pain to which the
common man is a stranger no words can
describe the meanness from which such
calumny proceeds. Or else if it is not
meanness, it is most assuredly, to say the
least, criminal thoughtlessness. To turn
a happy phrase, to make a clever remark,
to be regarded as a "remarkable" ana-
lyzer of the soul of a poet need one go to
such criminal lengths?
Those who knew of Oscar Wilde in his
last days — and they were few^ indeed —
know how spiritual his nature had be-
come. His whole personality had be-
come transfigured. Out of the hell of his
misfortune he emerged, — dead and for-
34
EEFLECTIOXS
gotten to the world, but lie lived in God,
having for his earthly companions only
his own soul and his own thought. For
him it was Vita Xuova, the Xew Life.
He had left behind him all the traffic and
the accusation of the world, ill the calum-
ny, all the stupid commiseration, as well,
and stood on the foundation-ground of
his own soul. His poem ^'Vita Nuova'^
is the key to worlds of understanding, so
applicable is it to his own cause :
"I stood by the unvintageable sea
Till the wet waves drenched face and hair with
spra}-,
The long red fires of the dying day
Burned in the west; the wind piped drearily;
And to the land the clamorous gulls did flee :
'Alas !' I cried, 'my life is full of pain,
And who can garner fruit or golden grain,
From these waste fields which travail ceaselessly!'
My nets gaped wide with many a break and flaw
Nathless I threw them as my final cast
Into the sea, and waited for the end.
When lo ! a sudden glory ! and I saw
From the black waters of my tortured past
The argent splendour of white limbs ascend !"
Here is the self-revealed soul of Oscar
Wilde, weary with the pain of the world,
35
REFLECTIONS
disconsolate, grieved and in despair, —
and yet, witlial, a surprisingly joyous
consciousness that liis life was not a fail-
ure, tliat lie had fulfilled a task, that he
had carried out a mission, that he had
given of that of which he was possessed,
that he was "right'' with himself and with
God.
It became quite true of him at the end
— that he had come to know happiness
within himself. He once remarked, "A
man who is master of himself can end a
sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleas-
ure.'' This was true of him. Sorrow had
made him ten times a thousand times
over the master of himself. Pain makes
everyone the master of himself, and the
pain that was so mercilessly heaped upon
Oscar Wilde made him conscious of many
spiritual facts. He became deep. For-
merly he had thought lightly of religion,
but in the end, w^hen he stood alone, it
was with God that he sought peace. In
36
REFLECTIONS
tlie end, wlien the world had left him,
God alone was with him. In the end he
had overcome both the pleasure and the
pain of life. His last illness brought
agonies of suffering, but he had learned
the uses of pain. He had become deep;
and a strange sweetness of disposition, a
strange reconciliation with sorrow made
life possible for him.
In the end he was more the philosopher
than the artist. The joyous energy that
characterizes all his earlier writings, the
evident sense of pleasure and power that
mark his dramas, wi th their telling ana l:
ysis of human nature, — all these left him
in theTiour of pain, and he became the
student of the Real. The artist was trans-
figured into the philosopher. And after
all, perhaps the whole task of his bitter
experience was to teach himself that he
was more the philosopher than the artist,
although he himself disclaimed that he
was the serious observer that philoso-
37
REFLECTIONS
pliers are. It made liim realize that in-
sight is deeper than art, that the intensi-
fied artistic consciousness and vision were
far superior to any artistic expression.
His prison experience had taught him
many things, among other things that,
"Prison regulations may enforce ^plain
living,' but cannot prevent ^high think-
ing,' nor in any way limit or contract the
freedom of a man's soul." This is the tri-
umph of the soul of Oscar Wilde couched
in as many words. The sorrow, the shame,
the deprivations, the hardships of prison
could not stifle his soul; they could not
kill in him the soaring of thought or the
vision of great ideals. He was hurt,
grievously hurt. The soul of him saw the
depths of pain; and yet his vision was
the steadier and the surer and the deeper
because of it.
'Tain is the Lord of this world, nor is
there any one who escapes from its net,"
he said, and he spoke truthfully. But
38
REFLECTIONS
the fires of pain, the fires of human agony
make the greatness of man. It made the
greatness of Oscar Wilde, and, withal,
a greatness far beyond that of his poetry,
far beyond that of his prose, far beyond
that of his art, — the greatness of the man
HIMSELF.
'39
Ketielations
REVELATIONS
If Oscar Wilde had a message, — then,