"Art for | Art's Sake,"

<10 August 1917> |

So ran the comfortable creed of the chemist of | quarter of a century ago. But unfortunately for his | comfort, Madame Curie discovered a new element, the | now famous radium, that upset, or appeared to upset, | the major part of the dogma. It appeared to create | new energy in torrents, and even to change itself | into other elements. Today we know what really | happens. We must revise our notion of the atom. | Instead of being inert, indivisible, immutable, it is | a complex of a thousand factors, a mere monetary | phase betwixt change and change, a tornado of energy | playing upon the barest minimum of substance. Could | we but learn how to pack within its microcosmic | boundaries another myriad energy micro-units, to | change lead to gold were but child-play. And when the | day days on which we learn how to set free the energy | bound up in the atoms of a few tons of granite rock, | steam and electricity will be discarded as the | make-shifts of a barbarous age.

In this, we wonder, what, happens with such | examples of over-strung genius as Christopher | Marlowe, Shakespeare's contemporary and almost rival, | whose turbulent life was cut short at the threshold | of manhood through a chance blow in a drunken brawl? | - Shelley, the sweet singer, fierce | rebel, and clear-eyed prophet of a century ago. | - or Oscar Wilde, the apostle of the | school of "Art for | Art's Sake," comrade of Whistler and Morris, | and author of some of the finest moral essays in the | English language, but whose name nevertheless, is | with rough-minded men a by-word for perverted | crime.

A.G. Stevens would speak of these men as gifted | and afflicted with "extreme genius." Their works show | marvellous power of imagination. They create new | ideas - whole new trains of ideas. | Their work is even cloying from its very richness. | But there is relatively little of it. Shakespeare | wrote thirty plays in twenty years of acting, | rehearsing and theatre managing. His genius was of a | more ordered type. It was intense not extense. His | mind was the medium through which vast literary | treasure was bestowed upon mankind; Shelley, Wilde, | Marlowe, have given us, perhaps, even richer gems, | but in smaller measure. Shakespeare's mind sustained | the strain of his work; but the fierce flames of the | other men destroyed untimely the sources from which | they sprang.

To the Australian mind the fact that Wilde knew | what he was talking about - the fact that | "The Picture of Dorian | Gray," for example is largely a study of the | deterioration of the author's own character - | sympathetic, but not indulgent - | gives his work an added value. To the average | English critic it appears to be a condemnation, both | of the man and the work. (Vide article on Oscar Wilde | in Encyclopedia | Britannica .) This | novel is a study of the life of a man who, by virtue | of a magical process, is able to transfer to a | picture of himself, the physiological effects of his | debauched life. As a "morality novel" it stands | almost unique in English literature. Had it been | written by a clergyman, who knew nothing of what he | described, the volume would be well known as a Sunday | School prize. But it was written by Wilde whose | offences brought him to Reading gaol, and who | accepted prison as a penitence, and with a spirit of | determination that, no matter how wrong the penal | system might be, he at least would benefit by it. Of | this resolve he tells us in | "De Profundus," a most remarkable | essay written in gaol. That his struggle was not | crowned with success we gather from | "The Ballad of Reading | Gaol" (written after his release):~~

As befits the subject, "Reading Gaol" is "as long | as a wet week". It has a monotonous ring, and repeats | its typical phrases again and again. Despite its | undoubted power, and stirring appeal, we turn with | relief to some of the beautiful short poems.

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1856. His father | was a noted surgeon, and his mother a writer of some | talent. His university life was spent in Trinity | College and Oxford. At the latter place he became | acquainted with the circle of then revolutionary | artists that included Whistler, Morris, and others | whose acquaintance we hope to make at a later date. | His literary efforts and apostleship to the "Art for | Art's Sake" School occupied the greater part of the | remainder of his life but in 1895 his tragedy | overtook him. Two years he spent in gaol, and he only | survived his release by three years, mostly spent on | the Continent under an assumed name.