Anaesthesine
Angel of Distemper
You're the first person I've come across who found Wilde first and then Morrissey!
As a fellow Wilde enthusiast I just wanted to add, respectfully, that I think the quotation of Wilde's mentioned above is not a condemnation. Or, if it is in the immediate context, elsewhere Wilde would have found that fact to be a matter of deep philosophical interest. Wilde regarded our personalities as malleable and it was on that basis he founded his hopes for a better society. The cosmopolitan mind, which he described in detail in "The Critic As Artist", was a mind capable of multiplying itself by borrowing other personalities. The less authentic you were, the more human you became. The less you insisted on yourself-- oyour homeland, your religion, your sexuality, etc-- the more likely you were to embrace and thereby reconcile opposites.
In my opinion Morrissey is a perfect Wildean disciple because he finds himself in other people.
Ooh, you are such a deep thinker - it keeps a body honest.
Yes, it is a bit of a simplification to say that it is a condemnation. In the context of the conversation, however, it seemed like a good short-cut.
Yes, Oscar found food for thought in all things, and his was not a judgemental or condemning nature. This is what I love about him. His notions of conventionality, tolerance and human intellectual potential are so complex, I find myself reflecting on them still.
I am currently reading R. S. Hichens "The Green Carnation," which was considered an attack on Wilde's character. It does, however, very deftly lampoon his philosophy while at the same time elevating it. This passage at the end, spoken by the protagonist, is somewhat familiar:
"For the artist is always conceited, just as the true Philistine is always fond of going to the Royal Academy. I have brought the art of preposterous conversation to the pitch of perfection; but I have been greatly handicapped in my efforts by the egregious wisdom of a world that insists upon taking me seriously. My lectures have been gravely discussed. My plays have been solemnly criticised by the amusing failures in literature who love to call themselves 'the gentlemen of the press.' My poems have been boycotted by prurient publishers... bishops have declared that I am a monster, and monsters have declared that I ought to be a bishop. And all this has befallen me because I am an artist in absurdity, a human being who dares to be ridiculous...
Despise the normal, and flee from everything that is hallowed by custom, as you would flee from the seven deadly virtues. Cling to the abnormal..." and so on.
This is how I see Morrissey. That he is consciously carrying Wilde's philosophy forward is undeniable, that he embodies the notion that unconventionality is liberating is also obvious. But he runs headlong into the same problem that Oscar did in his day. Both Oscar and Morrissey get caught up in the paradox of human nature - it IS possible to move forward, to free ourselves from convention, and realise our universal potential, but we must first be resolutely ourselves.
The artist and provocateur must reveal and transcend the conventional absurdities that govern our daily lives, and that means being absurd, and that is Morrissey's greatest Wildean achievement, in my eyes. But that comes at the cost of treading that fine line between the ridiculous and the sublime, and tripping over it.
I love him deeply for his willingness to go that far.