Wilde's extraordinary charm largely depends upon something invincibly
boyish and youthful in him. His personality, as he himself says, has
become almost symbolic--symbolic, that is, of a certain shameless and
beautiful defiance of the world, expressed in an unconquerable
insolence worthy of the very spirit of hard, brave, flagrant youth.
"The Importance of Being Earnest" is perhaps the gayest, least
responsible, and most adorably witty of all English comedies; just as
"Salome" is the most richly colored and smoulderingly sensual of all
modern tragedies. One actually touches with one's fingers the
feasting-cups of the Tetrarch; and the passion of the daughter of
Herodias hangs round one like an exotic perfume.
In "De Profundis" we sound the sea-floor of a quite open secret; the
secret namely of the invincible attraction of a certain type of artist
and sensualist towards the "white Christ" who came forth from the tomb
where he had been laid, with precious ointments about him, by the
Arimathaean.
In "The Soul of Man" another symbolic reversion displays itself--that
reversion namely of the soul of the true artist towards the
revolutionary organization which, along with insensitiveness and
brutality, proposes to abolish ugliness also.
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