A736412 -The Importance of Being Oscar
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/736412
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING OSCAR
An academic specialising in Anglo-Irish literature put to a conference audience the question:
'Is Oscar Wilde really a great writer? Why do so many of those who study his works end up by calling him "Oscar" in a rather over-familiar fashion?'
Nobody who aspires to being truly academic should make such a comment.
Oscar's life and writings surgically lance the boil of pomposity that harbours the ignorance underlying this negativism. Here is a genius whose works are avidly read, studied, and performed over a hundred years after the London Establishment were congratulating themselves on having finally 'Got Wilde'. Poems, essays, epigrams, children's stories, novels and plays delighting and intellectually stimulating diverse audiences all over the globe, and were they to bear any other name could not fail but be equally enjoyed and admired.
Equally admired but perhaps not equally loved. There is a difference. In this case the difference is 'Oscar'.
Reading 'De Profundis, 'his long testament written in Reading jail, it is not difficult to see behind the mask of wit and bon viveur, 'the spendthrift of my own genius' and his self portrait is as large and as uncompromising as his life. We are reminded of Hamlet's famous scene with his mother when he beseeches her 'To look here upon this picture and on this' as the author relentlessly illustrates the good and the bad in himself.
We are made to wonder at Oscar's folly, decry his sometimes bloated self-importance, bemoan his hedonistic lifestyle and condemn his virtual abandonment, for self-indulgence, of his wife and two children. We, the readers, gradually come to accept his faults as they are, mere shadows which could not forever keep in shade the essential goodness, kindness, sensitivity, courage and Christ-like forgiveness that this towering giant of a man reveals to us after disaster strikes. A disaster that was patently avoidable, but was not, because Oscar would not or could not control the forces that were swirling him towards his fate. All the traits in his personality were combining to facilitate decisions which flouted reason and good advice, to hurtle him to destruction. We are witnesses to a Greek tragedy which moistens our eyes with tears at the same time as bringing a wry smile to our lips as we suspect that Oscar would adore the description of his downfall as being 'Greek'.
We call him 'Oscar' because we love him. Our love does not add one whit to the merit of his works but adds joy to our reading and seeing them. Who would not recognise Van Gough when the name "Vincent" is used in the context of art? Who would dare suggest that he was less than a great artist because there is a suggestion of being over-familiar? Who can look at his canvasses and not empathize with the man who painted them? Like Oscar he had his mask too, the "uncouth boor", who yet could write those exquisitely sensitive letters to his brother which inspire us to think of him simply as 'Vincent'.
So it is with Oscar.
His place in literature is unique in that it is constantly being revised upwards as more becomes known about the man, his humility and humanity, not least through the latest publication by his grandson of a complete collection of his letters.
We can answer the so-called academic's question about whether writers can be great if those studying their works speak of them by using their first names by asserting that no less a genius than Oscar Wilde himself realised 'The Vital Importance of Being Oscar.'
