One Perfect Gem of a Little On-Line Find
Just Me
Mall_ . . .
There are essays on every subject from Yeats and Keats, Swinburne and
Whitman, even to no less than two singing of his delight in the
writings and carrying's on of "The Great Lady", George Sand.
And what's more, a real curiosity is here to be found in something he
penned under title of POETRY AND PRISON as published in the Pall Mall
Gazette, January 3, 1889, some six years before his own plummeting
descent into the darkly Dantesque climes of Reading Gaol, 1895.
And how very poetic of Justice, if not prophetic of Wilde to have been
musing over such thoughts as . . .
"Prison has had an admirable effect on Mr. Wilfrid Blunt as a poet
[busted in 1888 as a conspirator in the cause of the Irish
rebellion]. The Love Sonnets of Proteus, in spite of their clever
Musset-like modernities and their swift brilliant wit, were but
affected or fantastic at best. They were simply the records of
passing moods and moments, of which some were sad and others sweet,
and not a few shameful. Their subject was not of high or serious
import. They contained much that was wilful and weak.
"In Vinculis, upon the other hand, is a book that stirs one by its
fine sincerity of purpose, its lofty and impassioned thought, its
depth and ardour of intense feeling. ‘Imprisonment,’ says Mr. Blunt
in his preface, ‘is a reality of discipline most useful to the modern
soul, lapped as it is in physical sloth and self-indulgence. Like a
sickness or a spiritual retreat it purifies and ennobles; and the soul
emerges from it stronger and more self-contained.’"
[Yet how tragic that this turned out NOT to be the case for Wilde who
was terminally broken by it.]
"To him, certainly, it has been a mode of purification. The opening
sonnets, composed in the bleak cell of Galway Gaol, and written down
on the flyleaves of the prisoner’s prayer-book, are full of things
nobly conceived and nobly uttered, and show that though Mr. Balfour
may enforce ‘plain living’ by his prison regulations, he cannot
prevent ‘high thinking’ or in any way limit or constrain the freedom
of a man’s soul. They are, of course, intensely personal in
expression. They could not fail to be so. But the personality that
they reveal has nothing petty or ignoble about it. The petulant cry
of the shallow egoist which was the chief characteristic of the Love
Sonnets of Proteus is not to be found here. In its place we have wild
grief and terrible scorn, fierce rage and flame-like passion. Such a
sonnet as the following comes out of the very fire of heart and brain
[one can hardly fail in the context to think of the _Pisan Chronicles_
of Ezra Pound]:
God knows, ’twas not with a fore-reasoned plan
I left the easeful dwellings of my peace,
And sought this combat with ungodly Man,
And ceaseless still through years that do not cease
Have warred with Powers and Principalities.
My natural soul, ere yet these strifes began,
Was as a sister diligent to please
And loving all, and most the human clan.
God knows it. And He knows how the world’s tears
Touched me. And He is witness of my wrath,
How it was kindled against murderers
Who slew for gold, and how upon their path
I met them. Since which day the World in arms
Strikes at my life with angers and alarms."
Just Me
> Gutenberg has just made available Oscar Wilde's _A Critic in Pall
> Mall_ . . .
A more complete treatment of this matter is to be found in the post,
"The Hemlock to Oscar".
--
JM