its occasional injustices and mitigate its intolerable harshness: but
that is all the freedom we mortals enjoy, all the breathing-space
allotted to us.
In this book the reader will find the figure of the Prometheus-artist
clamped, so to speak, with bands of steel to the huge granitic cliff
of English puritanism. No account was taken of his manifold virtues
and graces: no credit given him for his extraordinary achievements: he
was hounded out of life because his sins were not the sins of the
English middle-class. The culprit was in[1] much nobler and better
than his judges.
Here are all the elements of pity and sorrow and fear that are
required in great tragedy.
The artist who finds in Oscar Wilde a great and provocative subject
for his art needs no argument to justify his choice. If the picture
is a great and living portrait, the moralist will be satisfied: the
dark shadows must all be there, as well as the high lights, and the
effect must be to increase our tolerance and intensify our pity.
If on the other hand the portrait is ill-drawn or ill-painted, all the
reasoning in the world and the praise of all the sycophants will not
save the picture from contempt and the artist from censure.
There is one measure by which intention as apart from accomplishment
can be judged, and one only: "If you think the book well done," says
Pascal, "and on re-reading find it strong; be assured that the man who
wrote it, wrote it on his knees." No book could have been written more
reverently than this book of mine.
FRANK HARRIS.
Nice, 1910.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] [Transcriber's Note: Printer error. In the 1930 U.S. edition the
word "in" is deleted.]
OSCAR WILDE: HIS LIFE AND CONFESSIONS
CHAPTER I
On the 12th of December, 1864, Dublin society was abuzz with
excitement. A tidbit of scandal which had long been rolled on the
tongue in semi-privacy was to be discussed in open court, and all
women and a good many men were agog with curiosity and expectation.
The story itself was highly spiced and all the actors in it well
|