4. I.e., the large dome of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1899). London. 2. An intricate dance involving four couples facing 1. Heart of True Love, a waltz by the Austrian com-each other in a square. poser and 'Waltz King' Johann Strauss (1825? 3. A slow and stately dance, originating in Spain.
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THE CRITIC AS ARTIST / 168 9
Sometimes a horrible marionette
Came out, and smoked its cigarette
Upon the steps like a live thing.4
25 Then turning to my love I said,
'The dead are dancing with the dead,
The dust is whirling with the dust.'
But she, she heard the violin,
And left my side, and entered in;
30 Love passed into the house of Lust.
Then suddenly the tune went false,
The dancers wearied of the waltz,
The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl,
And down the long and silent street,
35 The dawn, with silver-sandaled feet,
Crept like a frightened girl.
1885, 1908
From The Critic as Artist1
[CRITICISM ITSELF AN ART]
ERNEST
Gilbert, you sound too harsh a note. Let us go back to the more
gracious fields of literature. What was it you said? That it was more difficult
to talk about a thing than to do it?
GILBERT
[After a pause.] Yes: I believe I ventured upon that simple truth.
Surely you see now that I am right? When man acts he is a puppet. When he
describes he is a poet. The whole secret lies in that. It was easy enough on
the sandy plains by windy Ilion2 to send the notched arrow from the painted
bow, or to hurl against the shield of hide and flamelike brass the long ash-
handled spear. It was easy for the adulterous queen to spread the Tyrian
carpets for her lord,3 and then, as he lay couched in the marble bath, to
throw over his head the purple net, and call to her smooth-faced lover to stab
through the meshes at the heart that should have broken at Aulis.4 For
4. In an illustration for the poem by Althea Gyles our actions it may be that those who call them( approved by Wilde), the marionette is pictured as selves good would be sickened by a dull remorse, a man in evening dress. and those whom the world calls evil stirred by a 1. In 'the library of a house in Piccadilly,' Gilbert noble joy.' The excerpt printed here begins immeand Ernest, two sophisticated young men, are talk-diately following this digression. ing about the use and function of criticism. Earlier 2. Troy. Gilbert is referring to Homer's Iliad. in the dialogue Ernest had complained that criti-3. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae. Aeschylus's cism is officious and useless: 'Why should the art-tragedy of that name tells how his wife, Clytemist be troubled by the shrill clamour of criticism? nestra ('the adulterous queen'), and his cousin Why should those who cannot create take upon Aegisthus ('her smooth-faced lover') conspired to themselves to estimate the value of creative work?' murder him. He hubristically walked on carpets Gilbert, in his reply, argues that criticism is crea-dyed purple, a color derived from shellfish off Tyre tive in its own right. He digresses to compare the (a city located in what is today Lebanon). life of action unfavorably with the life of art: 4. Where Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter actions are dangerous and their results unpredict- Iphigenia (so that the Greek fleet could sail for able; 'if we lived long enough to see the results of Troy), thus incurring Clytemnestra's wrath.
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1690 / OSCAR WILDE
Antigone5 even, with Death waiting for her as her bridegroom, it was easy to pass through the tainted air at noon, and climb the hill, and strew with kindly earth the wretched naked corse that had no tomb. But what of those who wrote about these things? What of those who gave them reality, and made them live forever? Are they not greater than the men and women they sing of? 'Hector that sweet knight is dead.'6 And Lucian7 tells us how in the dim underworld Menippus saw the bleaching skull of Helen, and marveled that it was for so grim a favour that all those horned ships were launched, those beautiful mailed men laid low, those towered cities brought to dust. Yet, every day the swanlike daughter of Leda comes out on the battlements, and looks down at the tide of war. The greybeards wonder at her loveliness, and she stands by the side of the king.8 In his chamber of stained ivory lies
