THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 12, 1994 TAG: 9406090437
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BERNICE GROHSKOPF
DATELINE: 940612 LENGTH: Medium
NEARLY 100 YEARS ago Oscar Wilde, the brilliant Irish playwright, novelist, dandy and aesthete, was jailed for the ``crime'' of homosexuality. Charges were brought by the Marquess of Queensbury, because he objected to Wilde's relationship with his son, Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde, by that time a celebrated playwright, was subjected to a humiliating trial, throughout which, to the consternation of his critics and the delight of his supporters, he handled himself with dignity, his witty responses a defiant comment on the prevailing attitude toward homosexuality in Victorian England.
{REST} For Gary Schmidgall to attempt another biography of Wilde so soon after publication of Richard Ellmann's excellent Oscar Wilde (1988) is ambitious, if not presumptuous. But Schmidgall (Shakespeare and the Poet's Life, Literature as Opera) has his own purpose: to discover the ``profoundly strange'' Oscar Wilde who has ``become a stranger to us.''
According to Schmidgall, Ellmann's biography is a product of the ``older, more genteel and discreet biographical dispensation.'' In other words, it lacks sufficient detail about Wilde's sex life. Under the entry ``homosexuality'' in the index of Ellmann's book, however, there is a column of references.
The broad outlines of Wilde's life are generally known to those familiar with his work - plays such as ``The Importance of Being Earnest'' and ``Lady Windemere's Fan''; the novel, A Picture of Dorian Gray; and the poem, ``The Ballade of Reading Gaol.''
Born in Dublin in 1854, Wilde was the son of an Irish surgeon and a colorful, flamboyant woman who wrote under the name of Speranza. Wilde was a brilliant classical scholar who studied at Trinity College in Dublin, then at Magdallen College, Oxford, and became a disciple of Walter Pater and the cult of Art for Art's Sake.
In addition to plays, poetry and a novel, he wrote fairy stories for children. It was during his imprisonment that he wrote to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, bitterly reproaching him, and claiming that he, Wilde, stood ``in symbolic relations to the art and culture'' of his age. Titled ``De Profundus,'' it is Wilde's most moving work. His health ruined by his imprisonment, Wilde died in 1900, three years after his release.
Schmidgall has treated his subject thematically rather than chronologically, with chapters devoted to such subjects as the way Wilde appeared to others; the cartoons and jibes of him in Punch; Wilde's attitude toward closet homosexuals; the flamboyant way he dressed; the nature of his ``crime''; why Wilde refused the opportunity to escape England after accusations were brought against him; and his relationship with George Bernard Shaw. This organization results in repetition, for in covering each of his themes, the author goes over the same ground.
One has the impression that Schmidgall has long been searching for the homosexual subtext in Wilde's works, gleaning possible relationships between the works and his life. Although he has included all of the apparatus of scholarship - end notes, a bibliography, chronology and index - Schmidgall's writing style is journalistic, with repeated hints to the reader that ``we'll have more on this.'' He uses words such as ``chutzpah''; exclamations like ``Ouch!'' ``For Heaven's Sake!''; and unscholarly phrases such as ``kissed ass.''
In his chapter on ``Wilde Today,'' Schmidgall compares the treatment of Wilde to that of photographer Robert Maplethorpe or Salmon Rushdie. Were Wilde alive today, he might be a late-night talk-show habitue or host, a combination of Gore Vidal and Truman Capote, Schmidgall remarks.
Schmidgall's effort to focus on Wilde's homosexuality has resulted in a strangely unfocused book. Perhaps he believed he was providing a more complete, sympathetic and insightful portrait of Wilde. In reality, he has emphasized Wilde's less attractive excesses in manners, dress and choice of companions, instead of his love of language, beauty and the art of writing. While it is true that Wilde delighted in flaunting his homosexuality, deliberately trying to shock Victorian London, there was in his behavior, not only audacity, but courage.
At the end, Wilde comported himself admirably, knowing that he had committed no crime, that the crime committed was against him. His story is one of the great literary tragedies, and this book reminds one that in the century that has passed since these events, little progress has been made.
by CNB