Socrates was found guilty of corrupting the young and was put to death for
the offence. His accusation and punishment constitute surely a great and
significant action such as Matthew Arnold declared was alone of the highest
and most permanent literary value.
The action involved in the rise and ruin of Oscar Wilde is of the same kind
and of enduring interest to humanity. Critics may say that Wilde is a smaller
person than Socrates, less significant in many ways: but even if this were true,
it would not alter the artist's position; the great portraits of the world are
not of Napoleon or Dante. The differences between men are not important in
comparison with their inherent likeness. To depict the mortal so that he takes
on immortality--that is the task of the artist.
There are special reasons, too, why I should handle this story. Oscar Wilde
was a friend of mine for many years: I could not help prizing him to the very
end: he was always to me a charming, soul-animating influence. He was
dreadfully punished by men utterly his inferiors: ruined, outlawed, persecuted
till Death itself came as a deliverance. His sentence impeaches his judges.
The whole story is charged with tragic pathos and unforgettable lessons. I have
waited for more than ten years hoping that some one would write about him in
this spirit and leave me free to do other things, but nothing such as I propose
has yet appeared.
Oscar Wilde was greater as a talker, in my opinion, than as a writer, and no
fame is more quickly evanescent. If I do not tell his story and paint his
portrait, it seems unlikely that anyone else will do it.
English "strachery" may accuse me of attacking morality: the accusation
is worse than absurd. The very foundations of this old world are moral: the
charred ember itself floats about in space, moves and has its being in obedience
to inexorable law. The thinker may define morality: the reformer may try to
bring our notions of it into nearer accord with the fact: human love and pity
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