Oscar Wilde, Aestheticism, Whiskey & Peacocks

Just published is this essay on the 19th century Aesthetic Movement, and its chief proponents, the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, and the American expatriate painter James A.M. Whistler. As "aesthetes," the two were satirized in an 1881 comic-opera by Gilbert and Sullivan, titled Patience. It became so popular in Europe that plans were made to tour it in the US and Canada. Wilde was commissioned to travel ahead to those locations to educate the audiences on the nature of aesthetics. He arrived in the US in January 1882, and departed in November, having lectured 141 times. This is an account of his tour, as well as the US acquisition of a masterpiece of the Aesthetic Movement, Whistler's co-called Peacock Room.

Mary Snyder Behrens | Rift

Rift (2005) © Mary Snyder Behrens

Above Selected work from a series of intricate handmade bundles (called Trammels) with undisclosed contents, about palm size, made in 2004-2005 by Iowa artist Mary Snyder Behrens. Copyright © the artist.

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Carl Van Doren Three Worlds. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1936, p. 110 (this reads like a concise restatement of the rationale of the Aesthetic Movement).—

Odysseus is not good: he is adulterous and crafty; Faust is not good: he sells his soul for the sake of forbidden power; Gargantua is not good: he buffets and tumbles the decencies in all directions; Henry V is not good: he wastes his youth and wages unjust war; Huckleberry Finn is not good: he is a thief and a liar. The heroes, the demigods, the gods themselves occasionally step aside from the paths into which men counsel one another; there are at least as many stories about gorgeous courtesans as about faithful wives. It is not the "goodness" of all such literature but the vividness that gives it perennial impact. Better a lively rogue than a deadly saint.