Literature and Science, 1660-1834, Vol. 2 Book

It is funny how sometimes books come at you (and when I say you, I mean me), sometimes almost in clusters. It is almost like there really is a God and He has infinite knowledge of the universe and knows just what it is that you need to be thinking about right about now, except He is curiously shy and so He doesn't like to come right out with it and tell you directly what's on His mind. So, instead, He leaves books lying around in places where you are fairly likely to trip over them and then pick them up and think about them - you know, it's been a while since I read a book about someone rotting away in prison, I ought to read this…

Except, it hasn't been a while since I did anything of the sort. Only the other week I was reading another perfectly good book written by a man who was rotting away in a perfectly good prison and that book also had him thinking about the consolation given to him by philosophy. This book isn't too different from that one (The Consolation of Philosophy Revised Edition). The big difference is that this should probably be called the consolation of art - but other than that I guess the message of both is much the same.

The Message is pretty much that we are alone in the world. If you are to live a life that isn't a cliché you have to learn that most people don't live their own lives, they live lives that should be bound by quotation marks. "Most people are other people." Wilde says himself. They think other people's thoughts, they mouth whatever are the most popular opinions of the day, they watch the same stuff on television that everyone else does and they can even put together sentences grouped into endless paragraphs on subjects of infinite fascination as the merits of the computer generated graphics they saw in Avatar.

If you are going to live a worthwhile life (and isn't that the only question of any interest in the whole of philosophy - which is probably why it is the one question modern philosophy seems to avoid) then Wilde's advice is to at least try to be yourself. He acknowledges that doing that is a hard thing - Christ, they might even put you in gaol if you try that sort of thing - but the alternative is a much worse prison cell and one where you are both prisoner and warder, where you turn the key that locks you in yourself.

Eliot, of course, was wrong - but being a poet he gets to be wrong as long as he is beautifully wrong. We don't think of the key, each sitting in our prison thinking of the key as if that confirmed the prison - the most frightening thing is that we don't think of the key at all - we don't think of the key because to think of the key is to acknowledge the prison. And for most of us that is too much to acknowledge. Prison? What prison?

But there is an escape plan. We are individuals and life is not the ordered, rational, scientifically verifiable and graphed out hypothesis in fifteen variables that someone of the Enlightenment might have decided you ought to think it is. Wilde sees the great conflict of the human soul as being that between Classicism and Romanticism and in that conflict we need to take sides and the side Wilde takes is Romanticism. As he says, "I am one of those who is made for exceptions, not for laws".

And let's face it, we do like our victims to find forgiveness for us after we have meted out our punishments of them. Wilde even discovers Christ, in a sense - though, I think the Christ Wilde discovers isn't quite the same Christ that many Christians would be familiar with. This is not Christ the punisher, Christ the faith-healer or Christ the disappointed friend - but rather a Christ who is wise enough to use children as his example to us of who we should strive to be like. Such a Christ is someone worthy of being followed.

His was a Christ who was the lover of ignorant people, the protector of the exceptions, the defender of those who might just prove to have a great idea.

I thought this was a remarkable book - and a terribly sad book too. Although in the end of this Wilde, like Boethius, is not as bitter with his fate as he could so easily be, although he envisions a future life that is not dedicated to the pursuit solely of pleasure, but rather to a life that also acknowledges darker shades and minor keys; art is seen as the means to free ourselves from the horrors this world presents us with dreadful, if not predictable, regularity.

This was a remarkable book - I found it incredibly moving and often painfully sad. I think, though, that it is often good to be reminded of both the infinite harm we can cause to other people and also the near perfect gift we give that is contained in our simplest act of kindness. This really is a lovely piece of writing.

The stuff on Hamlet is worth reading on its own - nothing is invariably good, and art must also be included in that - Hamlet creating the play within the play in which to watch the effect this causes is Hamlet the artist. Hamlet's madness is Hamlet the actor. And this plays a great part in what is the tragedy of Hamlet.

This is, like so many of Wilde's works, full of quotable quotes and so here are a quick selection of some of my favourites -

"There were Christians before Christ. For that we should be grateful. The unfortunate thing is that there have been none since" -

"A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he want to be. That is his punishment." -

"I must accept the fact that one is punished for the good as well as the evil that one does".