Morrissey & the Oscar Wilde Influence

[Raphael Lambach]

Do you mean that reading Oscar Wilde somehow led you to listen to The Smiths? Interesting.

Exactly. My begining was "Happy Prince" and after this one I never stopped of reading Wilde

 

[Gregor Samsa]

Thank you Gregor. Perhaps Stephane should update this information, for what it's worth at least.

He really should.

Bless your avatar, btw.

 

[goinghome]

Exactly. My begining was "Happy Prince" and after this one I never stopped of reading Wilde

So was it reading a review of something by Wilde where the Smiths were mentioned that made you curious enough to search out the music?

Maybe for Morrissey, Wilde's ideas about what it is to be an artist, all his insights about the role of emotions, creativity and contemplation, were lessons he took to heart. Wilde was the supreme verbal illusionist, and on a see-saw of extremes he shook up his readers, as in this prose poem:

1. THE ARTIST
ONE evening there came into his soul the desire to fashion an image of The Pleasure that Abideth for a Moment. And he went forth into the world to look for bronze. For he could think only in bronze.

But all the bronze of the whole world had disappeared, nor anywhere in the whole world was there any bronze to be found, save only the bronze of the image of The Sorrow that Endureth For Ever.

Now this image he had himself, and with his own hands, fashioned, and had set it on the tomb of the one thing he had loved in life. On the tomb of the dead thing he had most loved had he set this image of his own fashioning, that it might serve as a sign of the love of man that dieth not, and a symbol of the sorrow of man that endureth for ever. And in the whole world there was no other bronze save the bronze of this image.

And he took the image he had fashioned, and set it in a great furnace, and gave it to the fire.

And out of the bronze of the image of The Sorrow that Endureth For Ever he fashioned an image of The Pleasure that Abideth for a Moment.http://www.literaturepage.com/read/wilde-essays-lectures-121.html


His upbringing was very priviledged. His academic ability in the study of classics was unequalled, and he dashed off his erudition of the ancient worlds, particularly Greek, with the greatest of ease. He returned often to Christian symbols and stories.

In The Critic As Artist Wilde said, "To know anything about oneself one must know all about others. There must be no mood with which one cannot sympathise, no dead mode of life that one cannot make alive...and so it is not our own life that we live but the lives of the dead and the soul that dwells within us is no single spiritual entity, making us personal and individual, created for our service, and entering into us for our joy".

In The Soul of Man under Socialism, which is a misleading title as most of the essay is again about the life of an artist, he said, "For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are....Pain is not the ultimate mode of perfection. It is merely provisional and a protest. It has reference to wrong, unhealthy unjust surroundings."

How be-wilde-red his wife must have been by events especially if he did act the fond husband who sent her endearments like this:

Poem: To My Wife - With A Copy Of My Poems
I can write no stately poem
As a prelude to my lay;
From a poet to a poem
I would dare to say.

For if of these fallen petals
One to you seem fair,
Love will waft it till it settles
On your hair.

And when wind and winter harden
All the loveless land,
It will whisper of the garden,
You will understand.

In his super-confident stylish pronouncements and infatuation with the pursuit of aesthetic indulgence, he's like a demi-god who fell to earth for a lifetime, not of this world, which might explain his profoundly enduring appeal as well as his fatally reckless behaviour.

 

[goinghome]

Just found this, supposed to be Wilde channeled!



Accompanying information: "Heres a virtual movie or should I say a ghostly happening. Here's the great Oscar Wilde (apparently) speaking to us from the twilight world of the otherside the "afterlife" LOL.

The sound recording comes from very intrigueing paranormal website "Oscar Wilde Returns" at this link a fascinating and very enteraining website even to sceptics like me.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/wildera.html" -

 

[Anaesthesine]

In his super-confident stylish pronouncements and infatuation with the pursuit of aesthetic indulgence, he's like a demi-god who fell to earth for a lifetime, not of this world, which might explain his profoundly enduring appeal as well as his fatally reckless behaviour.

Interesting.

Although one could also say that it is Wilde's all-too-human flaws (his reckless behavior and grave misjudgments) that are the key to his enduring appeal.

What if he had simply been clever, stylish and insightful, but kept his nose clean? He would certainly be remembered as one of those charming Victorians who helped foster a love for aesthetics and self-realization, but I think he would largely be forgotten.

It was his terribly flawed humanity (combined with the intolerance of the times) which led to his martyrdom, and probably a good part of his immortality.

Of course, this is all in hindsight - we are discussing a mythical Oscar Wilde at this point. In his time he was probably considered by many to be somewhat tiresome, but a great dinner guest.

 

[goinghome]

In his time he was probably considered by many to be somewhat tiresome, but a great dinner guest.

I'd prefer Morrissey, but maybe if ever they can add a dimension or two to that spirit channelling business, we could have the two together.

 

[goinghome]

Without wishing to go overboard on this topic, for anyone still interested in the enduring charisma of Oscar Wilde, and who missed this before, a rather fine documentary of observations offered by many of the figures involved in the making of the acclaimed 1997 film 'Wilde' is available in 3 parts to view on YouTube. Stephen Fry starred, and his insights particularly emphasise the human side.

 

[CrystalGeezer]

I'd prefer Morrissey, but maybe if ever they can add a dimension or two to that spirit channelling business, we could have the two together.

Maybe Morrissey is Oscar Wilde in a way.

There, done and done.

Next?

 

[helen661]

Goinghome,Thanks for posting the youtube clips, very interesting indeed, I must have a look out for the film, Wilde is someone I only know the basics about really, and wouldn't really know where to start with him, but its a very interesting topic

 

[goinghome]

Maybe Morrissey is Oscar Wilde in a way.

There, done and done.

Next?

Not quite, I think. They're similar in having extraordinary populist appeal, lots to say, style, drive...

Oscar was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, was unobstructedly ushered into one of the top seats in society through his family's prominence and his elite education, was never a boy with the thorn in his side who needed connections, unlike Moz.

Goinghome,Thanks for posting the youtube clips, very interesting indeed, I must have a look out for the film, Wilde is someone I only know the basics about really, and wouldn't really know where to start with him, but its a very interesting topic

Yes, it's interesting enough and I was very surprised when I searched the site to find so little on this enduring element of Morrissey's artistic identity.

Wilde wrote 'De Profundis' in prison as a letter to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas/'Bosie' which appears to be one of the very last, if not the last, of his published works.

He explained in 'De Profundis' that the authorities putting him on trial had no interest in his relations with the rentboy witnesses but wanted to punish him for trying to put the still powerful Marquess, Bosie's father, in prison. In the earlier part of the letter he himself sizes up Bosie and judges him to be a monstrously doomed and hate-filled bad boy, full of his family's faults but also conventionally disobedient to his family's wishes. Given that Oscar had set himself up as a protector to Bosie against the brutalities of his father, this is all a bit vindictive and disingenuous, even if Bosie was often an unloving cur. Also while Oscar does accept blame, it's after evaluating himself as the heroic golden child of art and society who entrusted himself innocently to the affections of someone vastly beneath him, only to be betrayed. Taking responsibility at this point for his entanglements doesn't appear easy. Others loved him but over these he chose the titled playboy, symbol of an empire's aggression. I believe they were playing out something bigger than themselves.

Some quotes farther into the epistle -

"Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes. It is well to have learned that."

"I used to live entirely for pleasure. I shunned suffering and sorrow of every kind. I hated both. I resolved to ignore them as far as possible: to treat them, that is to say, as modes of imperfection. They were not part of my scheme of life. They had no place in my philosophy...The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a FLANEUR, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility...

...I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience. I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb. But to have continued the same life would have been wrong because it would have been limiting. I had to pass on. The other half of the garden had its secrets for me also.

Of course all this is foreshadowed and prefigured in my books. Some of it is in THE HAPPY PRINCE, some of it in THE YOUNG KING, notably in the passage where the bishop says to the kneeling boy, 'Is not He who made misery wiser than thou art'? a phrase which when I wrote it seemed to me little more than a phrase; a great deal of it is hidden away in the note of doom that like a purple thread runs through the texture of DORIAN GRAY; in THE CRITIC AS ARTIST it is set forth in many colours; in THE SOUL OF MAN it is written down, and in letters too easy to read; it is one of the refrains whose recurring MOTIFS make SALOME so like a piece of music and bind it together as a ballad; in the prose poem of the man who from the bronze of the image of the 'Pleasure that liveth for a moment' has to make the image of the 'Sorrow that abideth for ever' it is incarnate. It could not have been otherwise. At every single moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been. Art is a symbol, because man is a symbol.
It is, if I can fully attain to it, the ultimate realisation of the artistic life. For the artistic life is simply self-development. Humility in the artist is his frank acceptance of all experiences, just as love in the artist is simply the sense of beauty that reveals to the world its body and its soul."

"If ever I write again, in the sense of producing artistic work, there are just two subjects on which and through which I desire to express myself: one is 'Christ as the precursor of the romantic movement in life': the other is 'The artistic life considered in its relation to conduct.' ..."

An online version is here - http://www.upword.com/wilde/de_profundis.html

 

[death below the stairs]

What a lovely post,
at last someone is comparing Morrissey to someone of artistic worth rather than the latest pop no hoper.
I agree with some of the above posts that Morrissey has a lot of wilde in him and that in a sense he was the Wilde of the post punk generation ( in the way that Bowie was the wilde of the pre punk generation).
I think the story about his mum thrusting a book into his hands age nine is just myth making. I expect he got into him via his pop stars of choice.
Wilde (like Burroughs) has always bean a touch stone to pop stars- Lennon,New york Dolls, Jagger,Bowie, Ray Davis etc are all massive fans of Wildes-also, James Dean was a fan as well as Morrisseys mate James Maker-who spites wilde when he speaks (more naturally than Moz maybe).
I wouldn't go as far as to say Morrisseys life reflects wildes in any real way at all.
Yes, they have both been to court but who hasn't. Going to court over royalties is hardly like going to court for Homosexuality at the turn of the last century, no matter how dramatic ones mind may be.
Also, wilde was a pleasure seeker finding his joys in men,women, drink and drugs.
Morrissey likes his comforts but he isn't a pleasure seeker in the least.
I think they are linked mainly by their depth of human understanding and that is the most important kind of understanding of all.

 

[helen661]

Thanks for the insight GH, looking forward to reading the link 'De Profundis' a little later on
I must get my hands on a copy of the film, I'm presuming the 1997 one is a remake of the 1960 version? or maybe they are two different things altogether, I'm just a complete novice, and most probably one of a very few who hasn't seen it

I try anything twice haha

 

[CrystalGeezer]

Wow, goinghome knows his stuff.

 

[death below the stairs]

I wouldn't waste your time on the modern toss known as Dorian Gray, it's light weight and silly and the acting makes Hollyoaks look oscar (excuse the pun) worthy.
It's a bit heavy handed to ban that chap on here isn't it? I know Americans loath rudeness but winding people up is part of the British working Class condition and it's a bit rich banning someone for being a wind up merchant when this web site is dedicated to one of the biggest wind up merchants in the country.

 

[goinghome]

I think they are linked mainly by their depth of human understanding and that is the most important kind of understanding of all.

Nice. Also perhaps in their quests for self-realisation, in one form or another.

Thanks for the insight GH, looking forward to reading the link 'De Profundis' a little later on
I must get my hands on a copy of the film, I'm presuming the 1997 one is a remake of the 1960 version? or maybe they are two different things altogether, I'm just a complete novice, and most probably one of a very few who hasn't seen it

I try anything twice haha

helen661, it appears that not just one, but two films about Wilde's trial were released in 1960 - see the section 'similar films' in this link - http://www.answers.com/topic/oscar-wilde-film . Another came along in the '80s. Several of his works have been adapted for the big screen, including last year's effort with Dorian Gray which moved along smartly but maybe showed a bit too much.

The definitive biography is supposedly that by Richard Ellmann published in 1988 - http://www.amazon.com/Oscar-Wilde-Richard-Ellmann/dp/0394759842.

He certainly left his mark, straddling worlds so publicly. When you go looking, there's no shortage of material, once or twice!

 

[helen661]

goinghome, you're a little star, Thanks for your help and kindness, the film is a must for me now, yes I will probably give the Dorian Gray a miss going off what Death below the stairs says, but in a way, that has just made me all the more curious, like when you were a kid and being told not to do something, and you go ahead and do it anyway, unruly girls eh?

 

[goinghome]

One further discovery is that, in the middle of last year, the Vatican's official newspaper published a review that evidenced several statements of approval for the life and work of Oscar Wilde, which was greeted suspiciously by at least one news report - http://www.getreligion.org/?p=15245 Morrissey's unorthodox religiosity has also been noted elsewhere, most recently in Gavin Hopps' book.

In the longer version of 'De Profundis', Wilde lectures 'Bosie' that "family life is not to be treated as a red flag to be flaunted in the streets, or a horn to be blown hoarsely on the housetops. You took Domesticity out of its proper sphere, just as you took yourself out of your proper sphere." This was a grave error, Oscar chided, because only the great, such as him, belonged there, in the influential public arena! Morrissey, of course, thinks and acts differently on this point in his art, not at all flinching from admitting to the barbarism in our midst.

Both their mothers were culturally nurturing beyond the norm, and both were of mixed Irish-English ancestry. And each could say, despite shifting circumstances and positions, 'my heart is open to you'.

 

[Je Suis Julie]

http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/oscar-wildes-manuscripts/330

^It's very interesting that the grandson of the Marquess of Queensberry, the man who brought about the downfall of Oscar Wilde, kept this volume and stamped the word "Forward" on the cover.

Thanks to a forum member, I have discovered the genius of Kate Beaton http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php

 

[goinghome]

Thanks, Je Suis Julie. There's something alive and exciting about that presentation, that we can trace back the connections. Fascinating! I must admit to being curious for reading a private mid-affair letter to Bosie if it was floating around out there! 'De Profundis' is directed at Bosie but Wilde seemed aware that it might become public as well.

The cartoon's also spot on; cheers!

 

[goinghome]

Win a cool Oscar Wilde T-Shirt!

http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkin...democracy+(openDemocracy)&utm_content=Twitter

Competition open until 31st January.