Anti-Hellenism and Anti-Classicism in Oscar Wilde’s Works. The Second Pole of a Paradoxical Mind1 Pau Gilabert Barberà2 Universitat de Barcelona (University of Barcelona) To Jill Kraye, Charles Hope and François Quiviger On this occasion, PARSA3 has gathered in Barcelona to reflect on “Classicism and AntiClassicism as intellectual necessities”. Its aim, therefore, is quite clear and is justified by the lack of enthusiasm with which, save honourable exceptions, classical scholars, leaving aside a tyrannical sense of fidelity, have known how to turn Classicism –stricto sensu in this case- into the target of their criticism4. O. Wilde had an excellent knowledge of classical literature -and of classical world and its Culture- as a result of his university studies at Magdalen College, Oxford5 –19th century, second half-, and it is always remembered, with regard to the centuries-old opposition Medievalism / Classicism, that his clear wager was on Greece and its legacy: “... whatever, in fact, is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks. Whatever is an anachronism is due to mediaevalism” (CA I, CW 1117)6. On the other hand, the superb monographs by F. M. Turner and R. Jenkyns, entitled respectively The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain7 and The Victorians and Ancient Greece8 –to which, given Wilde’s often Platonic temper, we should add Patricia Cruzalegui: The Platonic Experience in Nineteenth-Century England9-, explain magisterially to what extent the relation between an entire historical period and the sprit of the ancient Greeks was intense and passionate10. And thirdly, it would be absurd no to mention now that Greek friendship of the Irish writer with Lord Alfred Douglas, his beloved or erómenos, 1
This article has been possible thanks to a grant for research in foreign countries -British Library and the Warburg Institute; London, August 2004- bestowed by “l’Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (AGAUR)” of the Generalitat de Catalunya. It was published in English in Itaca. Quaderns de Cultura Clàssica 21, 2005, 229-270. 2 Ordinary Teacher in the Department of Greek Philology at the University of Barcelona. Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 585, 08007 Barcelona. Telephone: 934035996; fax: 934039092; e-mail: pgilabert@ub.edu; personal web page: www.paugilabertbarbera.com 3 Pôle Alpin de Recherches sur les Sociétés Anciennes. 4 The most emblematic case would be F. Nietzsche’s opposition to the rationalism of Socrates and Euripides. Curiously, Nietzsche and Wilde died in 1900 and both advocated a clear revision of every sort of consolidated value. 5 See, e.g.: Ellmann, R. Oscar Wilde. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987, or Raby, P. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, Cambridge: C. U. P., 2003 (5th edition), chapter I, “Biography... ”, by Merlin Holland, 3-18. On his biography, see also: Schroeder, H. Additions and Corrections to Richard Ellmann’s Oscar Wilde. Braunschweig: The Author, 1989; Holland, M. The Wilde Album. London: Fourth State, 1997; Morley, S. Oscar Wilde. London: Pavilion, 1997; Calloway, S. The Exquisite Life of Oscar Wilde. London: Orion Media, 1997 and Coakley, D. Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Irish. Dublin: Town House, 1994. 6 If I do not indicate otherwise, all the quotations will correspond to: Oscar Wilde. Complete Works. Glasgow: Harper Collins, 2003 (5th edition) and the numbers in brackets refer to it. I will use the following initials: CA = The Critic as Artist; TM = The Truth of Masks; DL = The Decay of Lying; SMUS = The Soul of Man Under Socialism; DG = The Picture of Dorian Gray; DP = De Profundis; SL = Selected Letters; P = Poems; S = Salome; LWF = Lady Windermere’s Fan; WH = The Portrait of Mr. W. H. 7 New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1981. 8 Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980. 9 Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Fondo Editorial, 2006. 10 See also: Raby, P. (ed). Op cit, chapter 2, “Wilde and the Victorians”, by Regenia Gagnier, pp. 18-34.
1