Oscar Wilde

good evening my name is Tom Everett and I'm an undergraduate assistant at the Notre Dame Center for ethics and culture on behalf of david solomon director of the center i would like to welcome you to this year's Catholic culture series every fall since 2002 the center has sponsored the Catholic culture series a set of lectures focused on prominent figures in the catholic literary tradition the series sprang from the center's desire to expose Notre Dame undergraduates and the entire Notre Dame community to the richness of the Catholic literary heritage highlighting such major Catholic figures as Flannery O'Connor GK Chesterton Graham Greene Walker Percy and JRR tolkien we at the center hope to promote such writers both for the quality of their works and the uniquely Catholic dimension of their literary perspectives last autumn the series examined the complex relationship between William Shakespeare and Catholicism in Elizabethan England this year the series focuses on for Catholic satirist evylyn Hwa Baron Corvo Hilaire Belloc and Oscar Wilde since classical times satire has been a keen weapon of criticism used by rhetorician Zinn Western civilization some of the greatest satirist of modern times have been Catholics yet from the Catholic perspective there are also reservations about whether cap by whether satire is truly a meaningful is instrument in a dialogue of evangelization this year Sirius seeks to contribute to this debate by examining the critique of modern society which these four men offered through their Senate ire mark your calendars for Tuesday October 28th when father Charlie Gordon will join us here in this room to conclude the series tonight we are privileged to welcome Professor Joseph Pierce to deliver an address on Oscar Wilde previously a radical activist an agnostic editor of two extremist magazines in Britain an undeniable love of the work of GK Chesterton brought Peirce to the Catholic Church he is now the author of several critically-acclaimed best song biographies of great 19th and 20th century Christian authors such as Chesterton j.r.r tolkien Oscar Wilde Hilaire Belloc CS lewis and most recently William Shakespeare he is also the co-founder and co-editor of an international magazine dedicated to reclaiming Catholic culture and as writer in residence and assistant professor of literature at Ave Maria University in Naples Florida please join me in welcoming professor Pierce I'll be with you in a technology sorted out here thank you well first of all I like to say it's good to be back it's always a delight to come back to not to Dame in general and certainly to be part of this particular lecture series open up to the center for ethics and culture we certainly have an interesting selection of people that have you been if you've been here in talks about this this particular year and all of them I think probably have a claim to being controversial bowing Corvo perhaps as they well known but now you know about him you see how he's controversial Hilaire Belloc certainly was no stranger to controversy and even war similarly no stranger to controversy but I think that I'm not exaggerating if I say that Oscar Wilde is probably the one that's the most controversial of all and I wrote my book the unmasking of Oscar Wilde Lively in frustration at the fact that nobody seems to be doing Oscar Wilde justice and I'm thinking particularly not just objectively and obviously ultimately justice is about objectivity but subjectively in the sense that I don't think that Oscar Wilde himself would have felt that he had his reputation had been dealt with justly in the century since his death hundred years just like 100 years missus death it seems to me these days that Oscar Wilde is either seen on the one side as a gay icon as a sort of a hi corner of homosexuality as maybe a sexual Liberator early pioneer of gay rights etc on the other extreme he sometimes looked upon as a decadent pariah as someone who because of his lifestyle is someone that's an untouchable that we should not talk about or read or spend any time with which just point the finger of scorn at and it seems to me the Oscar Wilde has been the victim of both of these errors the error of the permeant and the error of the Puritan to the one to the prurient Wilde is a war cry a battle cry - the Puritan he's a warning to one a war cry to the other warning one betrays Oscar Wilde with a kiss and the other with a curse it seems to me that Oscar Wilde has been caught between Judas and the Pharisee and it's been my sort of hope that my own work would liberate him from the unwelcome clutches of either not Oscar Wilde in his book in his essay De Profundis said that the best way of understanding him was to see his art it was through his art that he expressed himself most truly and most perceptively and insightfully and one of the things the great shame about that is that osterwald now is far better known for the scandal surrounding the libel trial and then his own trial related to his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas that his work has largely been eclipsed there's no doubt at all that world would've been horrified by this and Welles si de profundis is is perhaps very very valuable because Wilde as we know that beguiling lee and sometimes infuriating Lee held a mask for much of his life he concealed and revealed himself through the use of masks that's why my books called the unmasking of Oscar Wilde but the one of the wonderful thing about De Profundis is there is no mask first of all he's imprisoned secondly this is a private letter written to one person he's not expecting ever to be published thirdly he's broken his health spiritually and physically has been broken by the experience of prison when he watched a poor fundus he's wearing no masks and that's why that Polly can essay in many ways is a key to understanding Oscar Wilde and as part of my research something very interesting I went to the the manuscript room of the British Library in London and I got access to the original manuscript they profundus that that wild world in prison and what's very interesting about that is that when he's writing about religion the handwriting is very very calm and then the whole SAT oscillates between this calm meditation upon truth and this anger at Lord Alfred Douglass and his role in Wiles downfall and that you had liking yourself go to being very very calm when he's talking about religion talking about Christianity talk about are talking about the Renaissance talking about all of these issues and then it would just oscillate from there to a wild florid large handwriting attacking vituperative Lee his former friend Lord Alfred Douglas and again this is a way in which we can really get a view into the heart of the real Oscar Wilde and yet also De Profundis serves as a metaphor fired up by the way of the way in which the real Oscar world is not addressed or not looked at by our culture because when De Profundis was first published almost a hundred years ago the early early 20th century all the reference to the scandal all these angry part of the letter were excised they were removed so what's left is this truncated letter where Oscar Wilde is seem to be sort of a serene mystical meditate upon the truths of our culture and religion and all of that's in there but of course it's a distortion we just leave in this other side out and then on the centenary of Oscar was death back in 2000 I was part of some celebrations to commemorate that of event at the National Theatre in London and as part of the events that took place that weekend there was a dramatic monologue by Colleen Redgrave I don't know how many of you know Colleen Redgrave as famous acting family Michael Redgrave was his father Vanessa Redgrave is his sister but calling Redgrave has always been like Vanessa Redgrave er a Marxist has an extreme position he's also always been very outspoken about his own homosexuality but this dramatic monologue of De Profundis did the exact opposite of what happened a hundred years earlier all of the religion all of the aesthetics all of this serene meditation upon the deepest mysteries of life were left out all that was left then was the anger the bitterness the the the vituperative approach toward order for Douglas alright watch this I just thought sort of the metaphor poor Oscar Wilde you know one way or the other no one is seems to be at understanding who the person was himself so that was why I wrote my book and also the Enigma at the heart of Oskar wall because why does the man who more than any other in 92 20th century literature perhaps epitomize decadence an iconoclastic approach to conventional morality why is it that this person is received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed now as it was mentioning it in the introduction my own conversion to Catholicism was largely influenced by GK Chesterton and one of the things about Chesterton that I really loved was Chesterton use of paradox and of course one of the major influences of conscience that his use of paradox was Oscar Wilde who was of course in his own way a master of paradox but this paradox struck me you have the man who is an untouchable pariah who has received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed what is that all about what's the answer to that mystery and that's what I said about trying to solve sure that by the way that the evidence for Oscar walls reception to the church because there are elements you know that in denial about it is without doubt there were only two people present at walls death they didn't know each other beforehand and as far as I'm aware never met each other again afterwards one was Robert Ross walls longtime friend and one of the very few people to stand behind Oscar Wilde after his downfall to stay loyal to him everybody else shunned him and left him and the other was father Cuthbert done who was the priest that Robert wass went to get when Wilde was clearly approaching death those two people didn't know each other Robert was in his memoirs makes it perfectly clear that Wilde was received into the church on his deathbed Father cut but done running fifty years later shortly before his own death remembered this event and basically his account it parallels exactly what what washes so there's no doubt that Oscar Wilde was received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed now was this a moment of madness was this that something very different from who Oscar Wilde what was how could the cultural and sexual iconoclast be received into the Catholic Church well when you study Oscar Wilde's life it's not a surprise at all it's actually in many respects it's the conclusion of his life in both senses of the word that which comes at the end but that which follows is the conclusion he came to through through the holy spirit of his life Oscar Wilde first became interested in Catholicism when he was an undergraduate at Trinity College in Dublin and he fell under the influence of Cardinal Newman and he had many priest friends and he seemed to be on the verge of conversion as an undergraduate now Oscar walls father was horrified by this and by way of trying to save him from the clutches of the of Rome he sent his found a way of getting his son sent to Oxford now that was the equivalent of Oscar Wilde jumping from the frying pan into the fire because where was numa's influence most strong who it wasn't in Dublin it was in Oxford where was Newman receding to the church it wasn't in Dublin there was an Oxford what was the main movement of Anglo Catholicism called within the Anglican Church it was called the Oxford movement so basically Wilde was moving into a far more Catholic environment at Moodle and College Oxford where he went to then he then when he was at Trinity College Dublin and amongst the influences when he arrived there as well as the lingering influence of Cardinal Newman was the influence of John Ruskin and Walter Pater now these were the two great Renaissance scholars of the 19th century of the Victorian era and they had two very different readings of what the Renaissance was but John Ruskin the Renaissance was the flowering of the whole medieval culture it was the coming to fruition of Christendom of Catholicism Ruskin talks about how this early Renaissance Catholic flowering decayed into a late Renaissance neo-paganism he came up with a very memorable phrase about how Venice changed from being a medieval virgin to being a Renaissance Venus he talked about the various works of art that showed that change for him this was the decay of something beautiful now his young rival Walter Pater agreed with a large part of that thesis that yes the Renaissance was a blooming a blossoming a flowering of this Christian culture this Catholic Christianity of the Middle Ages but that the decay and he accepted it was as a good decay but the decay was healthy the decadence was healthy because it was a liberating of the Renaissance spirit from the shackles of of Catholicism and that's putting things very very bluntly but one is basically very Catholic tradition oriented the other is very decadent wild attended Ruskin's lectures he flaunted the influence of Walter Pater he read Peters history of the Renaissance and particularly introduction which had a profound effect upon him but it's clear in this debate when you look at Oscar Wilde as an Oxford undergraduate he sided very decidedly on the side of Ruskin on the side of the traditionalist as against the the decadent and what you actually find in Oscar Wilde's work these two fundamental forces at war the moral dimension of wilds work is always this traditional Orthodox Christian dimension but the antagonist to that is the these decadent ideas so this conflict between Ruskin and Pater would have a lasting impact upon world but it's very interesting if you read wild correspondence and and memoirs about Wilde as an undergraduate Oxford decided very definitely on the side of tradition has against decadence further evidence of this is the fact that again in Oxford Oscar Wilde came very close to converting to Catholicism he kept pictures of photographs of Cardinal Manning and Pope Pius the ninth in his rooms in Oxford this is itself interesting because at that time there was there were she would say tensions in the church between the Olfa Montagnes those that supported the doctrine of papal infallibility and the in opportunists those who such as Newman who believed in papal infallibility but thought it was not the opportune time to define it dogmatically and it's interesting that two sides in this Cardinal Manning was the leader because they aren't item a Cardinals at this time when he at history correct they both became Cardinals but Manning was the leader of the ultra Montagnes those that were in favor of the Declaration of papal infallibility Newman was the leader of Ian's opportunist those who thought it was not the right time to make that definition it's interesting in that debate again who sired those Oscar will come down on on the side of Cardinal Manning Ultra Montaigne leader of the traditional Catholics if you like and his other great hero Pope Pius the ninth who was actually a prisoner of the Vatican at this time following Victor Emmanuel's march on Rome and taking of Rome and the Pope was a prisoner seen as a martyr against secularism and Manning umpires the ninth are Oscar walls heroes as an undergraduate in 1878 he meets father Sebastian Bowden at the Blum tonometry in London many of several of walls friends had converted to Catholicism and he had connections and one of them was at the london oratory where father Bowden was the father Bowden was known forgetting for being instrumental in in high-profile society converts to Catholicism he was a scholar he was a person that was responsible for collecting the the the writings of Richard Simpson who really did the the groundwork for evidence for Shakespeare's Catholicism which was the subject of last year's lecture series and my new book the quest for Shakespeare a lot of it is based upon which is Simpsons groundbreaking work in the Victorian people father Bowden had gathered this material together and published it he would also be responsible for receiving chess returns and bail offs great friend Maurice bearing in to the church but quite a few years after this so this great intellectual and they had this meeting father bowed and moto letter we tried a public reprint at length in my book on Wilde really is a really perceptive insight into Wiles psyche into wilds what motivates Wilde basically predicting the wild either had to accept the grace of Christ which would obviously been given him that's what took him to father bout in the first place or he would basically have a serious downfall in his life later warm very very candid uncompromising letter which that say I won't publish now the reason that Wilde didn't actually take the plunge was because his father made the ultimate threat of disinheriting him if he became a Catholic he'd be disinherited so this held world back his father died around this time his mother's office is still alive clementa her that's there but for world half brother dies and leaves two thousand pounds two wilds brother and only one hundred pound too wild and also refused to give wild their house that he had a half share in his half because of wilds Catholicism and made it clear in the will that if what the world would have to not be a cat comic a thief next five years in order to inherit this so wild basically suffered financially for his flirtation with Rome for his almost converting and basically didn't become a Catholic because of this he said as much a few weeks before he died in a newspaper interview said if his father had not prevented him from becoming a Catholic he's sure that if he'd become a Catholic then that all of his later problems wouldn't have happened okay so this is wild almost becoming a Catholic as a young man he then wanders away from that though never actually leaves it if you look at his work Catholicism is always a presence in his life and imitating one sometimes they were taking one often but it's always a presence the one thing I also want to say at this juncture to make perfectly clear that one of the things irritates me about a lot of these sensation biographies a while that rejoice in his decadence they one-sidedly and basing this their thesis on errors is that the real heroine and the real victim of the tragedy is passed over with a dimension that's Constance Wilde Oscar Wilde's wife and and his two sons because the reality of wolves lifestyle when he went into his decadent phase was he he had been a very doting and loving father to his two young boys and to his wife and basically started neglect for them all and there's a really chilling story that's told of when asked the world basically starts living in hotels doesn't go home at all to his wife or family Constance Wilde turns up at the hotel room to deliver wolves mail and breaks down in tears and asks him when he when she gonna come home and he responds heartlessly now following the scandal in 1595 so eighteen of a Shakespeare on the moon sorry 1895 following the scandal Kostas world had to go into exile with the children she changed her name and she pre deceased Oscar well she died before he did leaving basically their two sons parentless following wolves death and yet in the midst of all of this the great victim of sacrificed on wild selfishness basically the sacrifice of world selfishness in this period his wife Constance never condemned Wilde as such in fact she said that Wilde is weak not wicked in spite of everything she saw it it was his weakness now let's look though now but it seems to me the heart of this paradox is there are there as many roads to Rome as there are people that go there so you can't just talk about two parts to Rome but it seems to me there are two main roads to Rome there's the high road of sanctity and the low road of sin of course even the Saints of sinners that even the sinners have their virtuous moments so I don't want to make you know too much of a second one from the other but there's the path of sanctity those who tries to try to live a holy life and take the high road when your mind of that Scottish song which the Loch Lomond which I want to sing to you at least to know you know you take the high road I'll take the low road and I'll be in Scotland afore ye well the high road had taken by the Saints she was saying it and in it this story people like Newman and Manning that we've mentioned and also people like Gemma Manley Hopkins great poet of the 19th century received into the church in 1866 by Newman becomes arguably the finest poet of the Victorian period and it also becomes a Jesuit priest now you know they also had their temptations Christ himself had his temptations but for the most part they walked the high road and then you have the way of sin you like the we could say the Blessed Virgin path and the Mary Magdalene path now Wilde is perhaps the most famous least in the literary circles convert to Catholicism who took the low road but he's not by no means alone and what I want to talk to you about briefly now as part of this picture is this whole decadent movement because on his honeymoon in Paris Oscar Wilde read a book by a novelist called llaves cold Christmas the novel was called a labor which is normally translated by the words against nature or against the grain and when you the date of this book first thing I think about is the marriage is in trouble when the best thing that Oscar well can find to do on his honeymoon is to read this decadent novel but this French Connection the influence of the French decadence and Oscar Wilde is phenomenal and we need to look at the French decadent movement to understand Wilde and where he's coming from and it's very interesting with a show Baudelaire the most famous of the French decadence wrote a volume of poetry quarterly fluid them are flowers of sickness or the sick flowers of evil flowers whoever you want to to translate it and there was a French critic who after reading a fluid Amal said that after such blasphemies the only thing left for Baudelaire was either the end of the nozzle of a gun or the foot of the cloth and show Baudelaire was received into the church shortly before his death I'm not going to get involved in the whole thing but I would say that there's a lot of awful lot of good solid Catholicism even in Lex Luthor mild but I'm not gonna go there no time but then we have Paul Verlaine the decadent poet now he's even more outrageous in many ways than Oscar Wilde he deserts his wife for a younger male lover when the younger male lover leaves him for another younger male he shoots the his male lover it doesn't kill him he shoots him and he's sent to prison I think for two years but I can't remember that exactly and while Paul villains in prison he converts to Catholicism and when he comes out of prison he published of whatever poetry called sage s wisdom which contains some fine decadent Catholic now there might be some people in here that tend to say well you know we don't need those sort of people converting thank you very much no they as always they're always the Pharisees amongst us and then there's yoga Scholl Christmas who was a novelist he was the person who Wilde read on his honeymoon his first novel have a Burn Notice call Chrisman's his first novel is all about someone who's so rich believed that that the lead character the main character in the novel so wealthy he can indulge every single whim and every single desire he becomes an aesthete par excellence that's the anesthetic extremists if you like he wants to experience every sensual pleasure that he can all five senses so there's long part of the novel about his collection of perfumes and he can get the experience of aromas and obviously all the other sensual experiences you could imagine he goes for all of these so it's a decadent novel Oscar Wilde says he was poisoned by that book that book was the model for the book that in novels novel the pitcher Dorian Gray Dorian Gray had been poisoned by the book the yellow book it's based upon this novel boy of yours called Weissman's but how does that novel end that novel ends with DES ascent the protagonist crying to heaven to a god that he doesn't even know exists because having lived an entirely selfish life in pursuit of the sensual only he's empty ventral ennui bored empty unsatisfied we need to remember that the word satisfaction comes from the latin word sartis meaning enough now if one is only intent on indulging one sensual appetites one never has enough by definition one is never satisfied that's why the great prophet of the 1960's was Mick Jagger I can't get no satisfaction if the message is not only negative but double negative so at the end of this novel what do we see you try to do this you live this life of self-indulgence where does it lead you it leads you to emptiness the boredom to despair and to acquire to an unknown God for deliverance and that's the novel is called Decker well it is decadent but its moral is not decadent its moral is Christian and we should have guessed from that first novel where we Simmons was going Eastman's next book was called a lab back down there and down there means hell and the protagonist in that novel get himself involved with the Satanists in modern-day Paris and the novel ends with an horrific depiction of the black mass that I'm not suggesting any of you regal own take the blame for it if you do it's a great novel though so that might tempt you but is shocking but again at the end what happens when the protagonist ends up this far in hell on earth he recoils in horror and in disgust so the next novel in the series with the same character is called on roots and on root is because he's on loot to the Catholic Church and the novel author that's called lack had Ted well the cathedral where he's received into the Catholic Church llaves cold Whisman spends the last years of his life in a monastery so the three key figures of the French decadent movement Baudelaire Berliner Eastman's all converted Catholicism when wild gets out of prison sorry no before that while his earlier that quiescent that entered a monastery walls response was entirely positive and he said I hope to be able to do the same myself one day know to what extent that's wild posturing and posing we don't know but there certainly then I'm at the truth there and when he came out of prison he wanted to go on a long retreat with the jesuis at farm Street as Oscar world so this French getting in my book on Oscar wall that this called the French Connection there's the chapter about the fetch decadence and the influence upon Oscar Wilde reading that novel on his honeymoon and at the influence of Baudelaire cetera so we had these decadent ideas entering in Oscar Walden and the thing that confuses people about Oscar Wilde two things first of all if you pick up a dictionary of quotations you'll have all sorts of quotes that about decadent outrageous quotes just says Oscar Wilde now I can resist everything except temptation for instance but of course most of these iconoclastic statements are not by Wilde at all for the most part some of them are but for the most part they're by characters in his plays and in his novel there are depicted as evil characters who actually that the new martyred the new on one of the plot get their comeuppance they come undone the hero a heroine wins out over these horrible characters as a parallel story a child we exist telling you I think that the the motto to my hideous school I went to in England about the auditorium was dis above all to thine own self be true William Shakespeare but now it took me years to realize that this above all that I earn self be true which of course is a nice relativist motto was written without the words a key said by Polonia in Hamlet who was a complete buffoon who gets himself killed because he's a complete buffoon and his advice to his salmet with where that comes form ends up getting his son killed but it's William Shakespeare this edit not Polonius but there's the Saint the same Oscar what was the victim of the same miss quotation or quotation abuse if you like while the most pernicious work is not his art which he always says is where he wanted what he wants to be read and the medium through which he expresses himself and reveals himself but his criticism and it's what it's involves critical essays that the the harmful Wilde is to be seen an essay such as the critic as artists decay of lying pen pencil and poison except for now these are manifestations of wilds confusion at the time bear in mind this time he's living a double life no he's a husband and father but now involved with the homosexual world in London he's living a duplicitous life he's betraying his wife and children and this is sort of some way of trying to turn morality inside out to invert morality to somehow justify well what's good is is even what evils good but in his art Oscar Wilde always comes out against some such nonsense in Finn's taunts his play a woman of no importance the critic and these pernicious views in his criticism are always revealed and exposed as being poisonous in his plays and in his fiction the The Critic in that play is Lord Illingworth mrs. Arbuthnot is the heroine Lord Illingworth is this planet pernicious poisonous critic even the name Hill were the woman of no importance was the irony of the title it's really about the critic no importance in the picture of dorian gray basil Hallward is the artist Lord Henry Wotton is the critic and Dorian Gray is guilty of art as idolatry and the critic is cynic and of course if you want to read wild postmodern critics they always quoting from the preface one particular part of the preface there's no such thing as a model of an immoral book but when the Picture of Dorian Gray was attack of being in it anymore book for its allusions to homosexuality Wilde said on the contrary that books weakness is it's more what is too obvious the moral is basically given by Lord Henry Wotton when he says by the way Dorian what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul Dorian Gray is horrified when he hears that and he says don't mock I know the soul is a real thing it can be bought bars have sold away and cuz he knows that because the picture is indeed the mirror of his own soul well says that the moral of that book is when you kill your conscience when you try to call your conscience you kill yourself and then of course in 1592 we have the prison sentence or the other trials and Wilde is seen as a by the modern world is you know as a sexual liberator as a martyr to the homosexual lifestyle let's actually see what happens here whilst he happened no one was going to arrest Oscar Wilde for his homosexual lifestyle he was wrecking his marriage he was betraying his children no one's gonna arrest him no one was interested in was private life except the father of the young man who Wilde was dad eing with who obviously took parental concern he's vilified by Walsh biographers and he left a card in whorls club to Oscar Wilde posing as a sodomite and Oscar Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensbury the whatever dog his father for libel for making that claim just in the card in his club well private detectives are hired and loads of evidence has shown that what Oskar world is not only posing as a sodomite he's practicing as one therefore the Marquis of Queensbury is acquitted of libel well at this point of course there's a whole load of evidence that's been collected that's on record in a court case it leaves the authorities with no excuse sorry no option but to charge Wald with the offense which is in illegal offense no one was good hunting him down no one was spying on him he basically shot himself in the foot so we send this to prison and that the tragedy is that this prisoner sentence is this scandal surrounding it is all we really hear about Oskar world now you know you should keep the recent fairly recent film on Wilde starring Stephen Fry we've done some excellent things but you know it was all about this aspect this sort of aspect of world's life not about his art and the other irony is here that in vapour fundis this letter which I said really shows the world stripped down no marks while we first his homosexuality as his pathology as his sickness now in today's world world will not only not be our homosexual liberates though if he lived in Canada or Scandinavia be put in prison because it's illegal to say that now so hate crime so Oscar Wilde far from being our homosexual Liberator could be called a homophobe but why was experience of prison was not so much a hell as a purgatory it brought him to a self realization which we see expressed not only in De Profundis the letter he wrote what is in prison but also in his poem The Ballad of reading jail where the men were memorable lines how else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in so when wall was received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed flat he look at his work his novel at his plays if you look at his life his attraction to the Catholic Church it's not actually that much of a surprise but even more he's following the footsteps of his French predecessors Baudelaire Berlin and Christmas but look at the other leading members of the decadent movement in England the firm world was the leader Robert was the man who most biographers seemed to think was the person that introduced Wilde through homosexual practices becomes a Catholic and also stays loyal to Wilde throughout everything he's the one that's there the only person there in Wales dying in poverty in Paris he becomes a Catholic John Gray the young man who is supposed to be so physically beautiful that Wow that he's alleged to be the model for Wilde's Dorian Gray or John Gray not only becomes a Catholic he goes off to Rome studies for the priesthood at the English College becomes the Catholic priests have served his parish in Edinburgh in Scotland and lives to old age unlike most of the decadence who for one reason or die young Andrey Vasilievich great friend of John glaze becomes a Catholic Ernest Dowson arguably the greatest of the decadent poets becomes a Catholic or be Beardsley very influential artist who who Illustrated Wiles plays Salome and it was published though I'd very young I think he was only 24 years old when he died but he became a Catholic lionel Johnson the other great decadent poet of the 1890s became a Catholic even Lord Alfred Douglas the young man who wore became involved with that led to his downfall the a sexual relationship even Lord Alfred Douglas becomes a Catholic and unlike many of these lives to a good healthy old age remains a Catholic to the end so this low road isn't something really strange that few people take this Mary Magdalene path is is a path which you actually look at the decadent movements in France and in England the paradox is that this path can lead to Christ it's a dangerous path and you carry on going down it leaves for the other place altogether not a path you listen necessarily recommend anybody takes but what actually happens of course when you live this lifestyle you're either get completely sucked in it chews you up spits you out and and that's it oh it's like taking a step into hell realizing that hell really exists and like the character in Christmas novel recoil in horror form it into the arms of Mother Church and I want to finish with a modern example some of you may have heard of the English writer and broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge the Malcolm Muggeridge reverted to Catholicism largely through filming a film documentary on Mother Teresa called something beautiful for God and the influence of seeing mother Teresa in action was the final thing a converted Malcolm Muggeridge but Malcolm Muggeridge had lived a very decadent lifestyle a very selfish lifestyle one of the great miracles of 20th century literature literary people is how the mud which married ever survived because she's wife stayed with him in spite of cereal cereal he was a serial fornicator to use an unfashionable term but an accurate one his wife had one affair I think just in spite that realized that she liked it and then do it again he had he had many somehow other they stayed together and in 1982 when Moggridge was 78 years old he becomes a Catholic and he lives for further eight years as a Catholic dies in 1919 but at the press conference in England after he was received into the church this journalist stood up I said now mr. mug rich I don't resent or begrudge you becoming a Catholic you know you're 78 years old but you basically did he live the life of indulgence self-indulgence you did all the things when you were young that now you become a Catholic you're telling us for you're not allowed to do now isn't it while the easy to say that when you're 78 years old you know do you regret all those good times you had when you were younger and while that's like Muggeridge last least got the humour of the situation we're responding the biddy regret his sins he said he regretted certainly the met the people that he harmed and hurted through his sinful actions obviously thinking largely of his wife in other words don't forget the hidden cost of this freedom but he said you know the most important thing is how one's life ends so every man's life is a Passion Play and we have passions we have illicit passions that we obviously supposed to control often we don't sometimes we don't if Malcolm agley said if my sins learning from my sins being repentant for my sins lead me to the foot of the cross knowing that I had nailed him there because of my sins then that's a happy ending and I can't regret the path that led me to the foot of the cross there's a paradox fit for wild or Chesterton every man's life is a passion play the key issue is how does it end so in that basis then this is to be controversial because I know some people think it's not fair most important thing is that Wiles life ends happily wells life being the season to the church shortly before his death had a happy ending we might even hope the light the Happy Prince in one of his many delightful Christian fairy stories he is living happily ever after thank you isn't there a Pharisee in the audience well most barbers agree that he was largely prompted to do so by Lord Alfred Douglas who hated his father and it was basically while doing what his one of the better work boyfriend wanted and I think that's certainly largely true but also yeah he had to think while didn't know that there was any evidence and he thought he was being discreet and he certainly didn't think that the Marquess of Queensbury would hire private detectives to follow people and find and get statements from male prostitutes and what-have-you so you know it was naive but an ill-judged but you know ultimately had no cause for complaining when he was obviously proved that he there was no libel in fact he was wasn't posing he was my problem there I think is how are we going to define satire so I'm not gonna go there now to take too long but if if we're going to define it in a way that we can call wild a satirist how because we define it another way he wouldn't be a satirist certainly the bulk of wilds work is a satire on his times on particularly on both the Peruvians of which is now a victim and the Puritanism of which is now a victim the hypocrisy of a Victorian Puritanism on the one hand is always being satirized by wild but also the hypocrisy and destructiveness of the anti puritanical cynicism of pesum pessimist pessimistic philosophers those in the school of shoppin how're the incidence these sort of ideas are being I mean I for the purposes of this discussion I'll call satirized in wilds plays and in his novel so he actually read wilds work all of it is really in a dialogue and a condemnation of those aspects of Victorian England and that certainly could be called satire and also and let me try to answer that first of all of course the Catholicism properly understood is the union of fetus at Mat Zo which is the good the true and the beautiful so to try to separate those is an error not your ever they know but but and it's a danger and certainly Oscar Wilde when we see his approach to Catholicism when he was a young man it's much more aesthetic approach it's the beauty but it's not just the beauty of you know he's dismiss it just you know swinging incense and beautiful choirs it's the beauty of the story of Christ's life it's the beauty of the symbolism of the crucifixion it's the beauty of the symbolism of the resurrection so that aestheticism is there but the sun is a danger that you see the beauty to the detriment of the rational and i think it's a fair criticism of wild that he had that tendency i would say with chester by the way I think Chesterton had the correct balance between the good that true in the beautiful and the other interesting thing is many of Chesterton's early works are a reaction against wild aestheticism and decadence and the man who was Thursday for instance if you wish and I do think that I would suggest you do you do at some stages to read the picture Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and lead the man who was 30 immediately afterwards because the one ISM is largely our response to the other and even in war as one who was very unhappy with the liturgical changes in the 1960s I think it would be an oversimplification even if war himself said so the war had no aesthetic sensibility because you got notice that accessibility you wouldn't care anything about the liturgy presumably so I think he was that he had his own aesthetic side but he they think you're probably getting what you're saying from the fact that that both Chesterton and war made it perfectly clear they didn't come into Catholicism because the beauty they came into it because of the philosophy and I think that's true I think it was mainly a rational conversion for both war and Chesterton but that's not to say there's not an aesthetic aspect well the conflict there and that's one of the things that's why to get to grips with in my book but even in Oscar Wilde himself there's a conflict but the point is that when he talked when he's actually expressing himself artistically he's always on the side of the morally good and always critical of of this decadent lifestyle his definite philosophy which means that Wilde is aware that he's living a double life and knows which side is the right side and we started the wrong side the key thing is that world has a conscience and the conscience actually is guiding him correctly but he's also I think his wife knew him well he's not so much wicked as weak and you know he took the path of least resistance far too often and that got him into all sorts of trouble so that that I think's the key element but he always knew right from wrong and his and his instincts were correct there who's a Christian in that sense well yeah basically left the court case in 1592 in 1892 the court case in 1892 came as a complete shock to most people now Wilde was seen as you know being a wit who sometimes had a wicked edge to his wit but it was seen as being flippant and a fibber las' you know they were shocked when 'world's this court case happened now no one was aware that he was living this lifestyle until then and basically Wilde wrote next to nothing after that so you know when he was writing his works people were unaware of this double life we should also say but I read this double life anyhow and he lasted for a few years you know for most of time his writing he wasn't living this lifestyle it's the last few years but he wrote some very powerful stuff during those years that's certainly one way of saying it but you have to pick wild at his own word and I say the words and De Profundis I think are honest because he's done he's running for one person for no money you know you know in a place where everything's been stripped from him and he says you know what my art was to me the way which I revealed myself first to myself and then myself to the world so I'm really taking world with his word there my other thing by the way is that I'm also effectively going against the major bulk of his a world that sort of assumed that he's messed up like this because he has syphilis I mean Richard almond and his so-called different the biography builds his whole case on this and I show in my book that he didn't have syphilis and you know we can prove he didn't have syphilis on two occasions he was actually examined by doctors who were specialists in the in sexually transmitted diseases and he studied inhabit so in other words that the whole edifice of wild scholarship is built upon fallacious foundations so my book is ultimate trying to say okay with all that's wrong let's start see see what's right and that's that's the the unmasking must be well to get rid of this and try to find the real man okay I'll take one more question because I think some people obviously you know hoping to leave and so some have left and some are too polite to leave no the Englishman amongst you are still sitting there when you're looking at your clothes watches selfishly because you mustn't be polite in England by the way one of the reasons things are such a mess these days any one commandment thou shalt not be impolite so the Englishman is out there sort of selfish look at their watches hoping I'm going to finish so I am going to finish because I also don't believe in being impolite so I'll take one more question if there isn't one and them all and we'll conclude yeah why is he seen by so many or maybe a better but why is it that these fire person to me responding are so desperate to show that the worst date in front of us are similarly why why if there is need heaven be an emblem of gay rights well that people are trying to turn wild into a mythical creature that there's no relationship to the real man or the real work so we also live in a you know an age of post-modernism where you know we looking for an objective rational one objective reason is not that important so they they they they invent something which is a myth I mean Elmen sort of I think the must have seen what and the most absurd one was actually someone who Melissa Knox wrote a book called Oscar walls long and lovely suicide and her whole thesis was the world had syphilis but by the time she wrote this you know that had been debunked largely and she said well Wald may not have had syphilis but he believed he had syphilis and therefore this is the reason for everything because there's no evidence in writing any Wellesley he believed he had syphilis so he didn't have it and but he believed he did but then she still says that basically late on the book that he's had given it to his wife and to his children you know so is imaginary syphilis contagious - it - which I would say only amongst Welsh critics thank you very much same time same place brother Charlie Gore so there is a lecture on people and to Professor Pierson most recent books are available available outside for purchase

Channel: de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture ndethics

Views: 2,894

Rating: 4.8518519 out of 5

Keywords: C. S. Lewis (Author), Literature (Media Genre), center for ethics and culture, Catholicism (Art Period/Movement)

Id: uEbkpdHbDQE

Length: 64min 14sec (3854 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 25 2014