Oscar Wilde Read Free Page B

makes the work of nature? Do you know what makes them different? For, after all, the flower of the narcissus is as beautiful as a work of art—and what distinguishes them can not be beauty. Do you know what distinguishes them?—The work of art is always unique. Nature, which makes nothing durable, always repeats itself so that nothing which it makes may be lost. There are many narcissus flowers; that’s why each one can live only a day. And each time that nature invents a new form, she at once repeats it. A sea-monster in a sea knows that in another sea is another sea-monster, his like. When God creates a Nero, a Borgia or a Napoleon in history, he puts another one elsewhere; this one is not known, it little matters; the important thing is that one succeed; for God invents man, and man invents the work of art.
    â€œYes, I know … one day there was a great uneasiness on earth, as if nature were at last going to create something unique, something truly unique—and Christ was born on earth. Yes, I know … but listen:
    â€œWhen, in the evening, Joseph of Arimathaea went down from Mount Calvary where Jesus had just died he saw a young man seated on a white stone and weeping. And Joseph approached him and said, ‘I understand that your grief is great, for certainly that Man was a just Man.’ But the young man answered, ‘Oh! that’s not why I’m weeping. I’m weeping because I too have performed miracles! I too have restored sight to the blind, I have healed paralytics and I have raised up the dead. I too have withered the barren fig-tree and I have changed water into wine … And men have not crucified me.’”
    And it seemed to me more than once that Oscar Wilde was convinced of his representative mission.
    The Gospel disturbed and tormented the pagan Wilde. He did not forgive it its miracles. The pagan miracle is the work of art: Christianity was encroaching. All robust artistic unrealism requires an earnest realism in life.
    His most ingenious apologues, his most disturbing ironies were designed to bring the two ethics face to face with one another, I mean pagan naturalism and Christian idealism, and to put the latter out of countenance.
    â€œWhen Jesus wished to return to Nazareth,” herelated, “Nazareth was so changed that He no longer recognized His city. The Nazareth in which He had lived had been full of lamentations and tears; this city was full of bursts of laughter and singing. And Christ, entering the city, saw slaves loaded with flowers hastening toward the marble stairway of a house of white marble. Christ entered the house, and at the rear of a room of jasper He saw lying on a regal couch a man whose disheveled hair was entwined with red roses and whose lips were red with wine. Christ approached him, touched him upon the shoulder and said, “Why leadest thou this life?’ The man turned about, recognized Him and replied, ‘I was a leper; Thou hast healed me. Why should I lead another life?’
    â€œChrist went out of that house. And lol in the street he beheld a woman whose face and garments were painted, and whose feet were shod with pearls; and behind her walked a man whose coat was of two colors and whose eyes were laden with desire. And Christ approached the man, touched him upon the shoulder and said, ‘Why dost thou follow that woman and regard her thus?’ The man, turning about, recognized Him and replied, ‘I was blind; Thou hast healed me. What should I do otherwise with my sight?’
    â€œAnd Christ approached the woman. ‘The road which you follow,’ He said to her, ‘is that of sin;wherefore follow it?’ The woman recognized Him and laughingly said to Him, ‘The road which I follow is a pleasing one and Thou hast pardoned me all my sins.’
    â€œThen Christ felt His heart full of sadness and wished to leave that city. But as He was leaving it, He saw at length beside the moats