<h2><SPAN name="THE_DAILY_CHRONICLE_ON_DORIAN_GRAY" id="THE_DAILY_CHRONICLE_ON_DORIAN_GRAY"></SPAN>"THE DAILY CHRONICLE" ON "DORIAN GRAY."</h2>
<p><SPAN name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</SPAN></p>
<p>Dulness and dirt are the chief features of <i>Lippincott's</i> this month.
The element in it that is unclean, though undeniably amusing, is
furnished by Mr. Oscar Wilde's story of "The Picture of Dorian Gray." It
is a tale spawned from the leprous literature of the French D�cadents—a
poisonous book, the atmosphere of which is heavy with the mephitic
odours of moral and spiritual putrefaction—a gloating study of the
mental and physical corruption of a fresh, fair and golden youth, which
might be horrible and fascinating but for its effeminate frivolity, its
studied insincerity, its theatrical cynicism, its tawdry mysticism, its
flippant philosophisings and the contaminating trail of garish vulgarity
which is over all Mr. Wilde's elaborate Wardour-street �stheticism and
obtrusively cheap scholarship.</p>
<p>Mr. Wilde says his book has "a moral." The "moral," so far as we can
collect it, is that man's chief end is to develop his nature to the
fullest by "always searching for new sensations," that when the soul
gets sick the way to cure it is to deny the senses nothing, for
"nothing," says one of Mr. Wilde's characters, Lord Henry Wotton, "can
cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but
the soul." Man is half angel and half ape, and Mr. Wilde's book has no
real use if it be not to inculcate the "moral" that when you feel
yourself becoming too angelic you cannot do better than rush out and
make a beast of yourself. There is not a single good and holy impulse of
human nature, scarcely a fine feeling or instinct that civilization, art
and religion have developed throughout the ages as part of the barriers
between Humanity and Animalism that is not held up to ridicule and
contempt in "Dorian Gray," if, indeed, such strong words can be fitly
applied to the actual effect of Mr. Wilde's airy levity and fluent
impudence. His desperate effort to vamp up a "moral" for the book at the
end is, artistically speaking, coarse and crude, because the whole
incident of Dorian Gray's death is, as they say on the stage, "out of
the picture." Dorian's only regret is that unbridled indulgence in every
form of secret and unspeakable vice, every resource of luxury and art,
and sometimes still more piquant to the jaded young man of fashion,
whose lives "Dorian Gray" pretends to sketch, by every abomination of
vulgarity and squalor is—what? Why, that it will leave traces of
premature age and loathsomeness on his pretty facy, rosy with the
loveliness that endeared youth of his odious type to the paralytic
patricians of the Lower Empire.</p>
<p>Dorian Gray prays that a portrait of himself which an artist (who raves
about him as young men do about the women they love not wisely but too
well) has painted may grow old instead of the original. This is what
happens by some supernatural agency, the introduction of which seems
purely farcical, so that Dorian goes on enjoying unfading youth year
after year, and might go on for ever using his senses with impunity "to
cure his soul," defiling English society with the moral pestilence which
is incarnate in him, but for one thing. That is his sudden impulse not
merely to murder the painter—which might be artistically defended on
the plea that it is only a fresh development of his scheme for realizing
every phase of life-experience—but to rip up the canvas in a rage,
merely because, though he had permitted himself to do one good action,
it had not made his portrait less hideous. But all this is inconsistent
with Dorian Gray's cool, calculating, conscienceless character, evolved
logically enough by Mr Wilde's "New Hedonism."</p>
<p>Then Mr. Wilde finishes his story by saying that on hearing a heavy fall
Dorian Gray's servants rushed in, found the portrait on the wall as
youthful looking as ever, its senile ugliness being transferred to the
foul profligate himself, who is lying on the floor stabbed to the heart.
This is a sham moral, as indeed everything in the book is a sham, except
the one element in the book which will taint every young mind that comes
in contact with it. That element is shockingly real, and it is the
plausibly insinuated defence of the creed that appeals to the senses "to
cure the soul" whenever the spiritual nature of man suffers from too
much purity and self-denial.</p>
<p>The rest of this number of <i>Lippincott</i> consists of articles of harmless
padding.</p>
<div class="footnote"><p><SPAN name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></SPAN> June 30th, 1890.</p>
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<p><i>When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.</i></p>
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<h2><SPAN name="OSCAR_WILDES_REPLY" id="OSCAR_WILDES_REPLY"></SPAN>OSCAR WILDE'S REPLY.</h2>
<h2>"DORIAN GRAY."</h2>
<p>To the Editor of the <i>Daily Chronicle</i>.<SPAN name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></SPAN><SPAN href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</SPAN></p>
<p>Sir,—Will you allow me to correct some errors into which your critic
has fallen in his review of my story, "The Picture of Dorian Gray,"
published in to-day's issue of your paper?</p>
<p>Your critic states, to begin with, that I make desperate attempts to
"vamp up" a moral in my story. Now I must candidly confess that I do not
know what "vamping" is. I see, from time to time, mysterious
advertisements in the newspapers about "How to Vamp," but what vamping
really means remains a mystery to me—a mystery that, like all other
mysteries, I hope some day to explore.</p>
<p>However, I do not propose to discuss the absurd terms used by modern
journalism. What I want to say is that, so far from wishing to emphasise
any moral in my story, the real trouble I experienced in writing the
story was that of keeping the extremely obvious moral subordinate to the
artistic and dramatic effect.</p>
<p>When I first conceived the idea of a young man selling his soul in
exchange for eternal youth—an idea that is old in the history of
literature, but to which I have given new form—I felt that, from an
�sthetic point of view, it would be difficult to keep the moral in its
proper secondary place; and even now I do not feel quite sure that I
have been able to do so. I think the moral too apparent. When the book
is published in a volume I hope to correct this defect.</p>
<p>As for what the moral is, your critic states that it is this—that when
a man feels himself becoming "too angelic" he should rush out and make a
"beast of himself." I cannot say that I consider this a moral. The real
moral of the story is that all excess, as well as all renunciation,
brings its punishment, and this moral is so far artistically and
deliberately suppressed that it does not enunciate its law as a general
principle, but realises itself purely in the lives of individuals, and
so becomes simply a dramatic element in a work of art, and not the
object of the work of art itself.</p>
<p>Your critic also falls into error when he says that Dorian Gray, having
a "cool, calculating, conscienceless character," was inconsistent when
he destroyed the picture of his own soul, on the ground that the picture
did not become less hideous after he had done what, in his vanity, he
had considered his first good action. Dorian Gray has not got a cool,
calculating, conscienceless character at all. On the contrary, he is
extremely impulsive, absurdly romantic, and is haunted all through his
life by an exaggerated sense of conscience which mars his pleasures for
him and warns him that youth and enjoyment are not everything in the
world. It is finally to get rid of the conscience that had dogged his
steps from year to year that he destroys the picture; and thus in his
attempt to kill conscience Dorian Gray kills himself.</p>
<p>Your critic then talks about "obtrusively cheap scholarship." Now,
whatever a scholar writes is sure to display scholarship in the
distinction of style and the fine use of language; but my story contains
no learned or pseudo-learned discussions, and the only literary books
that it alludes to are books that any fairly educated reader may be
supposed to be acquainted with, such as the "Satyricon" of Petronius
Arbiter, or Gautier's "Emaux et Cam�es." Such books as Le Conso's
"Clericalis Disciplina" belong not to culture, but to curiosity. Anybody
may be excused for not knowing them.</p>
<p>Finally, let me say this—the �sthetic movement produced certain curious
colours, subtle in their loveliness and fascinating in their almost
mystical tone. They were, and are, our reaction against the crude
primaries of a doubtless more respectable but certainly less cultivated
age. My story is an essay on decorative art. It re-acts against the
crude brutality of plain realism. It is poisonous, if you like, but you
cannot deny that it is also perfect, and perfection is what we artists
aim at.</p>
<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,</span></p>
<p><span style="margin-left: 28em;">OSCAR WILDE.</span></p>
<p><span style="margin-left: 3em;">16, Tite Street, June 30th.</span></p>
<div class="footnote"><p><SPAN name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></SPAN><SPAN href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></SPAN> July 2nd, 1890.</p>
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<p><i>We allow absolute freedom to the journalist, and entirely limit the
artist. English public opinion, that is to say, tries to constrain and
impede and warp the man who makes things that are beautiful in effect,
and compels the journalist to retail things that are ugly, or
disgusting, or revolting in fact, so that we have the most serious
journalists in the world, and the most indecent newspapers.</i></p>
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