Igor Tretyakov. Oscar Wilde's new mask

The main goal of the critic is to see the object he is considering as what it actually is not.
O. Wilde

Why are biographies of celebrities written? And, what’s even more interesting, why are they read? Curiosity in the intimate details of the lives of politicians, dictators or generals is also somehow explainable. These characters become bronzed during their lifetime. And the temptation is great to scrape off a piece of gilding from their pompous busts: it turns out that the celestial beings who decided the destinies of millions also suffered from a runny nose or diarrhea. But why stir up the bones of dead poets? Everything they could tell us about themselves, they said in their works. What will the fact that at the time of their writing Alexander Sergeevich suffer from migraines add to the charm of Pushkin’s lines? “If only you knew from what kind of rubbish...” They found out. What's next? And then - silence.

In general, silence is a good state of the environment, especially conducive to thinking. When you think about it, you understand: not everything is so simple. There are biographies and biographies. Genius, true genius, as opposed to talent, ability or mediocrity, is, if you like, a kind of space-time continuum, where form (that is, the circumstances of place and time) is inseparable from content and no less important than it.

A genius spends his whole life, from birth, creating his main work - his Destiny. Who he is in this process, the creator or the material of creativity, God knows. But the larger the scale of genius, the more exciting the work of art we end up with. And there is no need to be upset because we, ungrateful ones, value only the dead. The work must be completed; unfinished creations are not shown to laymen.

In what genre is such a work of art created as the fate of a genius ? Of course, this is a tragedy. And it is certainly an ancient tragedy, the plot of which is Myth, and the characters are unthinkable without their masks. The fate of a genius is mythological, and his truth is the “truth of masks.” An attempt to dispel the myth, tear off the mask and show “how it really was” is doomed to failure: after all, in art, truth is always multivariate. The biographer only puts on a new mask for his character - not always better than the previous one.

Therefore, biographies of brilliant personalities should be assessed not from the point of view of factual, scientific accuracy (although this should certainly be taken into account), but according to the method of theater reviewers: how does the author decipher the internal dramaturgy of the character’s fate, identify its leitmotifs and counterpoints? How much does the author's original concept - of course, if it is present at all - resonate with the main motives of the character's fate?

Applying these criteria to the biography of Oscar Wilde written by the British literary critic Richard Ellman, we can say that the author is quite close to the ideal. Of course, his task was simplified by the fact that such magnificent material as Wilde’s life, no matter how hard he tries, is difficult to spoil. In terms of the density of direction, his fate is comparable only to the fates of Socrates or Pushkin. You have to be completely untalented to write a bad, uninteresting book about Wilde. However, this circumstance does not detract from the author’s merits.

It is important that R. Ellman loves his hero very much. And the key to success in art is the degree of emotion under the influence of which a work is created. It doesn't matter if it's love or hate. And let the author not discover America. Almost all the facts presented in the book are known from previously published sources. But, firstly, here they are collected in their entirety under one cover, and secondly, Ellman did not find himself buried under a pile of factual material - only the name index includes 586 personalities - but built his own system. If you want, I defined the ultimate task of this difficult life.

From the very beginning, with a story about Wilde's childhood, the author focuses on the themes of fate, prosecution, voluntary martyrdom, dishonor - themes that accompanied his hero all his life. The dramatic effect created by these well-placed accents does not allow the reader to get bored with the sometimes overly conscientious enumeration of names, facts and circumstances. It is also valuable that in Ellman’s book three detailed biographies of the character - creative, public and intimate - intersect and complement each other.

The author begins the story not even with birth, but with the ancestors of Oscar Wilde, but when reading the book there is a strange feeling that he was born as an already formed personality and, despite all the hesitations and hesitations, in the main remained such until his death. It remains unclear to whose account - the hero or the author - this paradox can be attributed.

According to Ellman, the only truly turning point in Wilde's biography was his homosexual initiation at age thirty-two. And although it is described in detail in the book both from the words of Wilde himself and based on the testimony of his first partner Robert Ross, some doubts remain. Based on the previous chapters of the book, it can be assumed with a high degree of probability that such a late and too literary beginning of unconventional sexual life is another hoax of Oscar Wilde. The author either does not notice or does not want to notice the evidence in favor of this version: he cites it in the text, but without any comment. Sapienti sat.

However, touching on the “hottest” - homosexual - side of the hero’s life, Ellman finds what is called a golden mean. He does not try to gloss over or, God forbid, hide any facts - on the contrary, he describes the material in all, sometimes very unappetizing, details. But he happily manages without that savoring of piquancy, which is sometimes present in the works of representatives of the “gay” subculture.

It remains to be regretted that in one of the key issues of Wilde’s biography - the issue of his relationship with Alfred Douglas - R. Ellman remains within the framework of the traditional approach and does not find anything other than black to describe this “evil genius”. Undoubtedly, the facts cited by the author in this regard are quite eloquent. But such an unambiguous and, excuse me, banal interpretation of them is somewhat disappointing.

It is pleasant that the Russian publishing house that published Ellman's book maintained a level of printing that is almost adequate to the level of the text. Although, for my taste, the volume of Oscar Wilde's letters , published in 1997 by the Agraf publishing house, was designed more stylishly. However, there is no arguing about tastes.

...So why are biographies of dead poets written? Aristotle believed that the purpose of a work of art is catharsis, that is, obtaining a new emotional experience through compassion and empathy for the character. Oscar Wilde's drama of fate, as narrated by Richard Ellman, provides us with such an opportunity. And this is not at all little.