Wilde

The Regency period was a time that swung between extreme elegance and sodden brutality; exoticism and excess; an age when William Wilberforce was denouncing the slave trade as Beau Brummell was denouncing an imperfect cravat with equal gravity. As such, it was also an age that saw Oscar Wilde promote the life of Jesus without recognising his divinity, whilst blending Christianity with his own self-realised Aestheticism without a hint of facetiousness. It was Christ who showed Wilde that sorrow is the ultimate type of existence; that by turning one’s life into a compelling subject for aesthetic appreciation, he could transform his into the most perfect work of art, the most sublime of tragedies.

By uniting personality with artistic perfection, creating himself out of his own divine imagination and imparting beautiful words, Christ had fashioned himself as the supreme individualist. He proved once and for all the power of personal magnetism and what it can accomplish. His life was the prototype for all dandies; one that affected others through its very existence rather than through any efforts of work or persuasion. Christ sympathised with sinners as Wilde sympathised with criminals; he was a precursor of the Romantics and a master of paradox; he was the first modern artist.

Alas, Wilde enticed his age to crucify him, and of course it was acquiescent in such matters as other ages. Style is when they’re running you out of town and you make it look as if you’re leading the parade. Wilde wanted the public to see him pilloried – with the court at the foot of the cross - for like all dandies worth their name, his belief in the ultimate autonomy of martyrdom was his sword, his shield, and his crown. He wanted his audience to see him, like Christ, as a male heroine; a passive public sufferer. Indeed, after being taken into custody, passive resignation would be Wilde's only performance. Self-pity hereby became the dandy’s own mesmerising litany - their grief being too exorbitant, too pure for this world. And so by making his life a spectacle, Wilde had emasculated himself just as Christ had done before him, leaving nothing but his own glorious image.

Living in a self-made tempest for all to see, the true dandy finds solace from mediocrity; Christ was crucified for our sins, Wilde for our gaze; both for our adoration.

‘The world has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you. It will always worship you… Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.’