Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 | Page 2

not shrink from describing the unnatural meal of
Ugolino. The best modern critics approve my choice. "All depends on

the subject," says Matthew Arnold, talking of great literature: "choose a
fitting action--a great and significant action--penetrate yourself with the
feeling of the situation: this done, everything else will follow; for
expression is subordinate and secondary."
Socrates was found guilty of corrupting the young and was put to death
for the offence. His accusation and punishment constitute surely a great
and significant action such as Matthew Arnold declared was alone of
the highest and most permanent literary value.
The action involved in the rise and ruin of Oscar Wilde is of the same
kind and of enduring interest to humanity. Critics may say that Wilde is
a smaller person than Socrates, less significant in many ways: but even
if this were true, it would not alter the artist's position; the great
portraits of the world are not of Napoleon or Dante. The differences
between men are not important in comparison with their inherent
likeness. To depict the mortal so that he takes on immortality--that is
the task of the artist.
There are special reasons, too, why I should handle this story. Oscar
Wilde was a friend of mine for many years: I could not help prizing
him to the very end: he was always to me a charming, soul-animating
influence. He was dreadfully punished by men utterly his inferiors:
ruined, outlawed, persecuted till Death itself came as a deliverance. His
sentence impeaches his judges. The whole story is charged with tragic
pathos and unforgettable lessons. I have waited for more than ten years
hoping that some one would write about him in this spirit and leave me
free to do other things, but nothing such as I propose has yet appeared.
Oscar Wilde was greater as a talker, in my opinion, than as a writer,
and no fame is more quickly evanescent. If I do not tell his story and
paint his portrait, it seems unlikely that anyone else will do it.
English "strachery" may accuse me of attacking morality: the
accusation is worse than absurd. The very foundations of this old world
are moral: the charred ember itself floats about in space, moves and has
its being in obedience to inexorable law. The thinker may define
morality: the reformer may try to bring our notions of it into nearer

accord with the fact: human love and pity may seek to soften its
occasional injustices and mitigate its intolerable harshness: but that is
all the freedom we mortals enjoy, all the breathing-space allotted to us.
In this book the reader will find the figure of the Prometheus-artist
clamped, so to speak, with bands of steel to the huge granitic cliff of
English puritanism. No account was taken of his manifold virtues and
graces: no credit given him for his extraordinary achievements: he was
hounded out of life because his sins were not the sins of the English
middle-class. The culprit was in[1] much nobler and better than his
judges.
Here are all the elements of pity and sorrow and fear that are required
in great tragedy.
The artist who finds in Oscar Wilde a great and provocative subject for
his art needs no argument to justify his choice. If the picture is a great
and living portrait, the moralist will be satisfied: the dark shadows must
all be there, as well as the high lights, and the effect must be to increase
our tolerance and intensify our pity.
If on the other hand the portrait is ill-drawn or ill-painted, all the
reasoning in the world and the praise of all the sycophants will not save
the picture from contempt and the artist from censure.
There is one measure by which intention as apart from accomplishment
can be judged, and one only: "If you think the book well done," says
Pascal, "and on re-reading find it strong; be assured that the man who
wrote it, wrote it on his knees." No book could have been written more
reverently than this book of mine.
FRANK HARRIS. Nice, 1910.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] [Transcriber's Note: Printer error. In the 1930 U.S. edition the word
"in" is deleted.]

OSCAR WILDE: HIS LIFE AND CONFESSIONS

CHAPTER I
On the 12th of December, 1864, Dublin society was abuzz with
excitement. A tidbit of scandal which had long been rolled on the
tongue in semi-privacy was to be discussed in open court, and all
women and a good many men were agog with curiosity and
expectation.
The story itself was highly spiced and all the actors in it well known.
A famous doctor and oculist, recently knighted for his achievements,
was the real defendant. He was married to a woman with a great
literary reputation as a poet and writer who was