The Soul of Man under Socialism

Oscar Wilde

• Publisher: Elsinor Verlag
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9783939483663
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Filosofía social

When "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" first saw the light of day in 1891, this, the only explicitly political essay by Oscar Wilde, was hardly noticed, for he published four books in that year alone. It did not trigger a scandal, even though it is devoted to the scandal of man exploiting man at such length and in such a knowledgeable way that it is topical even today. Having seen this scandal with his own eyes in the United Kingdom and Ireland as well as in the United States and France, Wilde formulated insights nowadays brought forward by thinkers and historians of globalisation. His English is brilliant as ever and provocative, also it is informed by his profound reflections on socialism and individualism in the context of Christianity.

The Soul of Man under Socialism

APHORISMS ABOUT LITERATURE¹

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.

The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are cultivated. For these there is hope.

They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban² seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.

Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type.

All art is at once surface and symbol.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those who can read the symbol do so at their peril.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

OSCAR WILDE
Presumably on 24 April 1891
as “announced in The Times” that day
under the heading “‘Publications
To-day’”: “Preface” to The Picture of Dorian Gray
in book form³

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bibliography of Oscar Wilde, ed. Stuart Mason, with a Note by Robert Ross, Limited Edition Facsimile of the Original Edition, Mansfield Centre, Martino Fine Books, Ct., 1999 (1914).

Wilde, Oscar: Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray. Der unzensierte Wortlaut des Skandalromans, ed. and tr. Jörg W. Rademacher, introduced by Michael Szczekalla, Coesfeld: Elsinor, 2012.

Id.: Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray – Märchen – Erzählungen – Essays, ed. Friedmar Apel, with commentary, time chart, bibliography, and a postface by Friedmar Apel, München: Winkler, 1988.

Id.: Der Künstler als Kritiker und andere Essays, tr. Georg Deggerich, Zürich: Haffmans Verlag, 1999.

Id.: Œuvres, ed. Jean Gattégno, Paris: Gallimard, 2001 (1996).

Id.: The Complete Works, introduced by Vyvyan Holland, Glasgow: Collins, 1983 (1948; 1966).

Id.: The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Uncensored Wording of the Lippincott’s Text, ed. Jörg W. Rademacher, with a preface by Danny Morrison, Coesfeld: Elsinor, 3rd edition, 2021.

Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Dinah Birch & Kathy Hooper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ⁴2012. (COCEL)

Eagleton, Terry: The Gatekeeper. A Memoir, London: Allen Lane, 2001.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang: “Aus dem Nachlass. Über Leben und Literatur”, in: id., Maximen und Reflexionen, ed. Max Hecker (1907), with a postface by Walther Killy, München: C. H. Beck, 1989 (1988).

Lock, F. P.: Edmund Burke. Volume I: 1730-1784, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.

Pope, Alexander: Poetical Works, ed. Herbert Davis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983 (1966, 1978).

Rademacher, Jörg W.: “1891: Durchbruch als Buchautor” (Breakthrough in the book market), in: Oscar Wilde, München: dtv, 2000, pp. 91-103.

Id.: Oscar Wilde. A Writer Trapped by His Own Words, Coesfeld, Elsinor, 2017, pp. 77-125.

Rose, David Charles: Oscar Wilde’s Elegant Republic. Transformation, Dislocation and Fantasy in fin-de-siècle Paris, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.

Shakespeare, William: The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990 (1988).

The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, ed. Peter Raby, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

The Oxford Companion to British History, ed. John Cannon, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

The Oxford Companion to French Literature, compiled and ed. Sir Paul Harvey and J. E. Heseltine, Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1959.

The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature, ed. Robert Welch, Oxford: OUP, 1996 (corrected reprint).

The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary, ed. J. Coulson et al. Second edition ed. Dorothy Eagle, London: Book Club Associates, 1980 (1962; 1975).

The Scofield Study Bible. King James Version, New York: Oxford University Press, 1945 (1909, 1917; 1937).

The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley, ed. and introduced by Harold Bloom, New York: Meridian Books, 1978 (1966).

NOTES

Preface

1Oscar Wilde, Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray – Märchen – Erzählungen – Essays, ed. Friedmar Apel with commentary, time chart, bibliography, and postface by Friedmar Apel, Munich: Winkler, 1988, p. 715. – If not otherwise indicated, all translations from the German are by the editor.

2The commentary presented in the annotations to the text cannot claim to be exhaustive. Above all, this applies when regarding partial biblical quotations or Wilde’s self-plagiarisms which several editors in different languages have chosen to gloss according to varying approaches. The text used here is that of the edition: The Soul of Man Under Socialism, London, Arthur Humphreys 1900, digitized text – Google-Such-e+text&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&gfe_rd=cr&d cr=0&ei=rJeIWvC5MsvCXtPjnvAB (Access: 17th February 2018).

3Johann Wolfgang Goethe, “Aus dem Nachlass. Über Leben und Literatur”, in: id., Maximen und Reflexionen, ed. Max Hecker (1907), with a postface by Walther Killy, Munich: C. H. Beck, 1989 (1988), p. 172.

4Cf. a chapter in my own illustrated biography: Jörg W. Rademacher, “1891: Durchbruch als Buchautor”, (Breakthrough in the book market) in: Oscar Wilde, Munich: dtv, 2000, pp. 91-103.

5The question arises why Wilde did not include this essay in the collection published in May 1891. Presumably, there were pragmatic reasons. This essay has retained a somewhat singular position in his work, although Wilde did not fail to point out correspondences with his other essays.

6After the Good Friday Agreement from 1998 had apparently laid to rest the “Irish Question” in the late 20th century, the outcome of the Brexit Referendum in 2016 has made for a return of the issue, not least since the very chance of a “hard border” between the Republic and the North of Ireland had called for action both by the Republic and all the other states of the European Union.

7Referring to someone in the street with the cipher “175iver”, in German meant you were pointing out a gay man. This was still quite common when I grew up in the 1970s. Cf. Oswald Sero, Der Fall Wilde und das Problem der Homosexualität. Ein Prozeß und ein Interview, Leipzig: Max Spohr, 1896. This slight book contains quite a few quotations taken from the press articles on Wilde’s trials in 1895. Cf. also the time chart in Jörg W. Rademacher, Oscar Wilde. A Writer Trapped by His Own Words. An Exhibition Catalogue, Coesfeld: Elsinor, 2017, pp. 90-94.

8“Notice” for “L’Âme de l’Homme sous le Socialisme”, in Oscar Wilde, Œuvres, ed. Jean Gattégno, Paris: Gallimard, 2001 (1996), p. 1786. Exactly 50 copies were printed by Arthur L. Humphreys. Stuart Mason, Bibliography of Oscar Wilde, with a Note by Robert Ross, London: T. Werner Lauri Ltd. Limited Edition Facsimile, Martino Fine Books, Mansfield Centre, Connecticut, 1999 (1914), pp. 404-406.

9In his autobiography, Terry Eagleton provides such analogies on an individual level, juxtaposing a Dominican friar he met in person with Oscar Wilde in terms of their attitudes and world views. The Gatekeeper. A Memoir, London: Allen Lane, 2001, p. 24/25, p. 26.

10For more information on Oscar Wilde in English and German as well as an English blog see my: http://oscar-wilde-blog.de.

The Soul of Man under Socialism

1Charles Darwin (1809-1882), English natural philosopher, author of On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection (1859).

2John Keats (1795-1821), English poet of the Romantic period.

3Ernest Renan (1823-1892), French historian, author of Les Origines du Christianisme. (1863-1883). La vie de Jésus (1863) was the first instalment and Marc-Aurèle (1881) the last of a work that took him 25 years to write.

4Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French novelist and writer, author of Madame Bovary (1857) and “Hérodias”, a short story Wilde based his play Salome on, which he wrote in French in Paris in late 1891.

5Plato (c 429-337 BC), antique Greek philosopher, presumably in the myth of the cave in his dialogue Republic. Wilde had studied Greats at Trinity College Dublin and at Magdalen College Oxford, winning prizes for his knowledge of Greek and Roman writers as well as his linguistic skills.

6This remark refers to the essay “The Critic as Artist: The True Function and Value of Criticism; with some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing: a Dialogue” which had been published in two parts in The Fortnightly Review in July and September 1890.

7East End, very poor part of London where Dorian Gray, for example, goes to opiums dens. This part was also expanded by Wilde for the publication of the novel in book form.

8Reference to Esau, the younger twin brother of Jacob, who sells the latter the right of the first-born in a moment of extreme hunger for a pottage (Genesis, 25, 29-34).

9Abolitionists: Americans who fought for the prohibition of slavery before and during the American Civil War (1861-1865).

10In fact, it is not easy to believe which creed some ardent supporters of the 45th lodger in the White House trumpet as if they did not notice the way he had reined in their thinking while failing to realize at the same time his intention not to serve their interests.

11Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), Austrian-born wife of Louis XVI (1754-1793), the French King who was beheaded by the revolutionaries. Like her husband, Marie Antoinette was executed. – Vendée: a rural part in the West of France singularly untouched by the French Revolution and thus extremely loyal to royalty.

12A socialist among writers, J. B. Priestley (1894-1984), would one day publish a play entitled An Inspector Calls (1947), presumably not only inspired by Ibsenite psychological ‘talking cures’ involving “ordinary people” (COCEL), but also by Wilde’s idea expressed in this essay. – Hardly five years later it is Wilde himself who, once the accused and convict in a court case, is stigmatized as a criminal, while he had already treated deviations from socially normal behaviour usually called crime in his essays “The Decay of Lying. A Dialogue” and “Pen, Pencil and Poison. A Study”, both of which had equally appeared in The Fortnightly Review in January 1889. His arguments do not fail to carry as constant subtext the story of himself as deviating from the sexual norm whose activities among adults had been criminalized ever since the Labouchère Amendment dating from August 1885. Cf. Jörg W. Rademacher, A Writer Trapped by His Own Words, p. 91.

13Lord Byron (1788-1824), English Romantic poet.

14P. B. Shelley (1792-1822), English Romantic poet, who also wrote tracts such as The Necessity of Atheism when at Oxford, for which he was sent down, and, closer to Wilde’s world, An...