On Literature

WILDE: PARADOX AND APHORISM

There is nothing more difficult to define than an aphorism. This Greek term, originally meaning "something put aside as an offering," "an oblation," comes to mean in the course of time "a definition, saying, or concise proverbial statement." An aphorism is thus, according to the Italian Zingarelli dictionary, a "brief maxim expressing a norm of existence or a philosophical conclusion."

What distinguishes an aphorism from a maxim? Nothing, except its brevity.

It takes little to console us since it takes little to afflict us.

(Pascal, Pensées, Brunschwicg ed., 136)

If we did not have defects ourselves we would not take such delight in noting those of others.

(La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 31)

Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.

(Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest)

Several thoughts that I have and that I could not sum up in words were actually derived from language.

(Kraus, Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half Truths)

These maxims are also aphorisms, while those that follow are too long to be aphorisms:

What an advantage nobility is: already at eighteen years of age it places a man in an elevated position, and makes him known and respected, in a way that another could manage to deserve only in fifty years. This is an advantage of thirty years gained without effort.

(Pascal, Pensées, Brunschwicg ed., 322)

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

(Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray)

Alex Falzon, in editing Wilde's Aphorisms (Milan: Mondadori, 1986), defines an aphorism as a maxim where what counts is not only the brevity of its form but also the wit of its content. In doing so, he follows a widespread tendency to privilege the grace or brilliance of the aphorism over the acceptability of what is said in terms of truth. Naturally, as far as maxims and aphorisms are concerned, the concept of truth is relative to the intentions of its author: saying that an aphorism expresses a truth means saying that it is meant to express what the author intends as a truth and which he wants to convince his readers of. However, in general, maxims or aphorisms do not necessarily aim to be witty. Nor do they always mean to offend current opinion. Rather, they aim to go more profoundly into a matter on which current opinion seems superficial, and has to be corrected.

Here now is one of Chamfort's maxims: "He who is frugal is the richest of men; he who is miserly, the poorest" (Maxims and Thoughts, I, 145). The witticism lies in the fact that public opinion tends to consider a person frugal when he does not waste the few resources he has in order to meet his needs sparingly, while the miser is someone who amasses resources beyond his needs. The maxim would appear to go against public opinion, unless we agree that while "richest" is understood to refer to resources, "poorest" is meant to refer not just to its moral sense, but also to the satisfaction of daily needs. Once the rhetorical game has been cleared up, this maxim no longer goes against public opinion but corroborates it.

When, on the other hand, an aphorism goes violently against public opinion, so much so that at first it appears false and unacceptable, and only after a judicious deflation of its hyperbolic form seems to bring some crumb of truth, which is just barely acceptable, then we have a paradox.

Etymologically, paradoxos is what goes park ten doxan, beyond current opinion. Thus originally the term denoted a statement that was far from everyone's beliefs, strange, bizarre, unexpected, and in this sense we find it also in Isidore of Seville. That this unexpected statement might yet be a harbinger of truth seems to me to be an idea that makes only slow progress. In Shakespeare a paradox is false at a certain point, but with the passing of time becomes true. See Hamlet III.1.110 ff.:

OPHELIA. What means your lordship?

HAMLET. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.

OPHELIA. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

HAMLET. Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.

Logical paradoxes are a separate category; these are self-contradictory statements whose truth or falsehood cannot be proved—like, for instance, the paradox of the Cretan liar. But gradually the para-rhetorical sense comes in, for which I refer to the Italian Battaglia dictionary definition:

Thesis, concept, statement, conclusion, witticism, mostly formulated during an ethical or doctrinal discourse, which contrasts with widespread or universally held opinion, with common sense and experience, with the belief system to which it refers or with principles or elements of knowledge that are taken as given (and often does not possess the power of truth, being merely reduced to a sophism, dreamed up through love of eccentricity or to display dialectical skill; but it can also contain, beneath an apparently illogical and disconcerting shape, a grain of objective validity, which will in the end establish itself in opposition to the ignorance and simplistic approach of those who uncritically follow majority beliefs).

Thus the aphorism seems to be a maxim that is meant to be recognized as true, though it deliberately appears witty, whereas the paradox presents itself as a maxim which is prima facie false but which, on mature reflection, apparently aims at expressing what the author considers to be true. Because of the gap that exists between the expectation of public opinion and the provocative form it assumes, the paradox appears witty.

The history of literature is rich in aphorisms and not quite so rich in paradoxes. The art of aphorism is easy (and proverbs are also aphorisms: you've only one mother; a dog's bark is worse than his bite), whereas the art of paradox is difficult.

Some time ago I dealt with an author who was a master of aphorisms, Pitigrilli.^* Below are several of his most brilliant maxims; while some of them are undoubtedly quite witty, they aim to state a truth that does not go against commonly held opinions:

Gourmet: a cook who has been to high school.

Grammar: a complicated instrument that teaches you languages but prevents you from ever speaking.

Fragments: a fortunate excuse for writers who cannot put a whole book together.

Dipsomania: a scientific word that is so nice it makes you want to start drinking.

Others, rather than express a presumed truth, affirm an ethical decision, a rule of action:

I can understand kissing a leper but not shaking hands with a cretin.

Be indulgent with the person who has done you wrong, because you never know what others have in store for you.

However, in the very collection, entitled Dizionario antiballistico (Milan: Sonzogno, 1962), in which he collected his own and others' maxims, sayings, and aphorisms, Pitigrilli, who always wanted above all to be taken for a cynic, even if it meant confessing his own escapades openly, warned how insidious aphorisms can be:

In this spirit of confidentiality, I acknowledge that I have abetted the reader's hooliganism. Let me explain: in the street, when a fight breaks out or there is a traffic accident, there suddenly emerges from the bowels of the earth an individual who tries to poke one of the two disputants with his umbrella, usually the driver. The unknown hooligan has thus projected his latent anger. The same happens in books:

when the reader who has no ideas, or only ideas in an amorphous state, finds a picturesque, brilliant or explosive phrase, he falls in love with it, adopts it, comments on it with exclamations like "Excellent!," "Quite right!," as though he had always seen things that way, and as if that phrase were the quintessence of his way of thinking, of his philosophical system. He "takes a stance," as II Duce used to say. I offer the reader a chance to take a stance without having to go deep into the jungle of various literatures.

In this sense an aphorism expresses a commonplace in a brilliant way. To call a harmonium "a piano that got fed up with life and turned to religion" merely reformulates with a powerful image what we already knew and believed, namely, that a harmonium is a church instrument. To call alcohol "a liquid that kills the living and preserves the dead" adds nothing to what we knew about the risks of intemperance or about what happens in anatomy museums.

When Pitigrilli makes his protagonist in Esperimento di Pott (Milan: Sonzogno, 1929) say that "intelligence in women is an anomaly one occasionally comes across, like albinos, left-handed people, hermaphrodites and those born with more than ten fingers or toes" (p. 132), he was saying exactly what the male reader (and probably also the female reader) in 1929 wanted to hear.

But in criticizing his vis aphoristica, Pitigrilli also tells us that many brilliant aphorisms can be reversed without losing their force. Let us look at some examples of reversal that Pitigrilli gives us in his Dizionario (op. cit., [>] ff.):

Many despise riches but few know how to be liberal with them.

Many know how to be liberal with riches, but few despise them.

We make promises according to our fears and keep them according to our hopes.

We make promises according to our hopes and keep them according to our fears.

History is nothing but one of liberty's adventures.

Liberty is nothing but one of history's adventures.

Happiness resides in things, not in our tastes.

Happiness resides in our tastes, not in things.

In addition he drew up lists of maxims by different authors, which certainly contradict each other, and yet seemed always to express an established truth:

One only deceives oneself out of optimism (Hervieu).

One is more often deceived by diffidence than by confidence (Rivarol).

People would be happier if kings were philosophers and philosophers were kings (Plutarch).

The day I want to punish a province I will have it ruled by a philosopher (Frederick II).

I propose the term "transposable aphorism" for these reversible aphorisms. A transposable aphorism is a malaise of the urge to be witty, or in other words, a maxim that is untroubled by the fact that the opposite of what it says is equally true so long as it appears to be funny. But the paradox is a genuine reversal of a commonly held viewpoint, and it presents an unacceptable world, provoking resistance and rejection. And yet if we make the effort to understand it, it produces knowledge; in the end it seems funny because we have to admit it is true. The transposable aphorism contains a very partial truth, and often after it has been reversed, it reveals to us that neither of its two propositions is true: it seemed true only because it was witty.

The paradox is not a variation of the classical topos of "the world upside down." The latter is mechanical, it foresees a universe where animals talk and humans make animal noises, fish fly and birds swim, monkeys celebrate mass and bishops swing through the trees. It proceeds through accumulation of adynata or impossibilia without any logic. It is a carnival game.

In order for it to become a paradox the reversal has to follow a logic and be circumscribed to a portion of the universe. A Persian arrives in Paris and describes France the way a Parisian would describe Persia. The effect is paradoxical because it forces one to see everyday things not according to established opinion.

One of the proofs for distinguishing a paradox from a transposable aphorism consists of trying to reverse the paradox. Pitigrilli quotes a definition of Zionism from Tristan Bernard, which was clearly valid before the establishment of the state of Israel: "One Jew asking another Jew for money to send a third Jew to Palestine." The fact that this paradox can't be reversed is a true sign that its original form genuinely contained a truth, or at least what Bernard wanted us to accept as truth.

Now let us consider a series of Karl Kraus's famous paradoxes.^* I will not attempt to reverse them because, if you think about them a little, it is not possible. They contain an unconventional truth that goes against the grain of common opinion. They cannot be twisted to express the opposite truth.

The scandal starts when the police put an end to it.

To be perfect all she needed was just one defect.

The ideal of virginity is the ideal of those who want to deflower.

Sexual relations with animals are forbidden, but slaughtering animals is allowed. But has nobody reflected on the fact that that might be a sexual crime?

Punishment serves to frighten those who do not want to commit sins.

There is an obscure corner of the earth that sends explorers out into the world.

Children play at being soldiers. But why do soldiers play at being children?

Mad people are definitively recognized as such by psychiatrists because after being interned they exhibit agitated behavior.

Of course, Kraus too falls into the sin of transposable aphorisms. Here are some of his sayings that can be contradicted easily, and therefore reversed (the reversals are, obviously, my own):

Nothing is more unfathomable than the superficiality of a woman.

Nothing is more superficial than the unfathomability of a woman.

Easier to forgive an ugly foot than ugly socks!

Easier to forgive ugly socks than an ugly foot!

There are women who are not beautiful but have an air of beauty.

There are women who are beautiful but do not have an air of beauty.

Superman is a premature ideal that presupposes man.

Man is a premature ideal that presupposes superman.

The true woman deceives for pleasure. The others seek pleasure to deceive.

The true woman seeks pleasure to deceive. The others deceive for pleasure.

The only paradoxes that almost never seem to be transposable are those by Stanislaw J. Lec. Here is a short list from his Mysli nieuczesane ( Uncombed Thoughts):

If one could only pay the death penalty by sleeping through it in installments!

I dreamed of reality: what a relief to wake up!

Open Sesame: I want to get out!

Who knows what Columbus might have discovered had America not blocked his way!

Horrible is the gag smeared with honey.

The prawn goes red after death: what exemplary refinement in a victim!

If you knock down monuments, spare the pedestals: they can always be used again.

He possessed knowledge, but was unable to make her pregnant.

In his modesty he considered himself an incurable scribbler. But he was actually just an informer.

Burning pyres don't light up the darkness.

You can die on Saint Helena without being Napoléon.

They embraced each other so tightly there was no room left for feelings.

He covered his head in ashes: those of his victims.

I dreamed of Freud. What does that mean?

Cavorting with dwarves ruins your backbone.

He had a clean conscience: he had never used it.

Even in his silence there were grammatical mistakes.

I admit I have a weakness for Lec, but until now I have found only one of his aphorisms to be transposable:

Reflect before thinking.

Think before reflecting.

Now we come to Oscar Wilde. When we consider the countless aphorisms scattered throughout his works, we have to admit that this is a fatuous author, a dandy who does not distinguish between aphorisms, reversible aphorisms, and paradoxes, so long as he manages to épater le bourgeois. What is more, he has the nerve to present as aphorisms witty statements that, aside from the wit, turn out to be wretched commonplaces—or at least commonplaces for the Victorian middle classes and aristocracy.

Nevertheless, this kind of experiment can help us see whether and to what extent an author who made provocative aphorisms the true essence of his novels, plays, and essays was a real author of penetrating paradoxes or a sophisticated collector of bons mots. My experiment is purely exploratory of course, and aims to encourage (and why not?) someone to do a thesis that will take the research to a systematic conclusion.

I will herewith provide a series of genuine paradoxes, and challenge you to try to reverse them (excluding the production of nonsense or of a maxim that is false for people with common sense):

Life is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.

A sensitive person is one who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken up teaching.

When people agree with me I always feel that I must be in the wrong.

A man who is much talked about is always very attractive. One feels there must be something to him, after all.

Every great man has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.

I can resist everything except temptation.

Falsehoods [are] the truth of other people.

The only duty we owe to History is to rewrite it.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest inkling of when to die.

However, there are countless Wildean aphorisms that seem to be easily reversible (the reversals are obviously my own):

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

To exist is the rarest thing in the world. Most people live, that is all.

Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.

Those who see no difference between soul and body have neither.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.

Life is too unimportant to joke about.

The world is divided into two classes; those who believe the incredible, like everyone else, and those who do the improbable, like me.

The world is divided into two classes; those who believe the improbable, like everyone else, and those who do the incredible, like me.

The world is divided into two classes; those who do the improbable, like everyone else, and those who believe the incredible, like me.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Excess is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like moderation.

There is a fatality about good resolutions—they are always made too late.

There is a fatality about wicked resolutions—they are always made at the right time.

To be premature is to be perfect

To be premature is to be imperfect.

To be perfect is to be premature.

Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.

Knowledge is like a delicate exotic fruit: touch it and the bloom is gone.

The more we study Art the less we care for Nature.

The more we study Nature the less we care for Art.

Sunsets are quite old-fashioned. They belong to the time when Turner was the last note in art. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism.

Sunsets are back in fashion. They belong to the time when Turner was the last note in art. To admire them is a distinct sign of one's modernity.

Beauty reveals everything because it expresses nothing.

Beauty reveals nothing because it expresses everything.

No married man is ever attractive, except to his wife. And often, I'm told, not even to her.

Every married man is attractive, except to his wife. But often, I'm told, even to her.

Dandyism, in its own way, is an attempt to assert the absolute modernity of beauty.

Dandyism, in its own way, is an attempt to assert the absolute unmodernity of beauty.

Conversation should touch everything but should concentrate itself on nothing.

Conversation should touch on nothing but should concentrate itself on everything.

I love talking about nothing. It's the only thing I know everything about.

I love talking about everything. It's the only thing I know nothing about.

Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure.

Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being clear.

Anyone can make history. Only a great man can write it.

Anyone can write history. Only a great man can make it.

The English have everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.

The English have nothing in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.

It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.

It is only the old-fashioned that ever becomes modern.

If we had to stop here our verdict on Wilde would be quite severe: the very incarnation of the dandy (though Lord Brummel and even Wilde's own beloved Des Esseintes got there first), he does not bother distinguishing paradoxes, those bearers of outrageous truths, from aphorisms, which contain acceptable truths, or from reversible aphorisms, which are mere jeux d'esprit that are indifferent to the truth. And in any case, Wilde's ideas on art would appear to authorize his behavior, seeing that no aphorism ought to aim at either utility, truth, or morality, but only beauty and elegance of style.

However, this pursuit of aesthetic and stylistic provocation would not be enough to absolve Wilde, since he did not manage to distinguish between paradoxical provocation and mere fatuousness. As we know, to be true to his own principles he should have been sent to prison not for having loved Lord Douglas but for having sent him letters with lines like this: "It is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should have been made no less for music of song than for madness of kisses"—and not only for this, but also for having maintained during his trial that the letter was a stylistic exercise and a kind of sonnet in prose.

The Picture of Dorian Gray was condemned by the London judges for thoroughly stupid reasons, but from the point of view of literary originality, despite its undoubted charm, it is merely an imitation of Balzac's Peau de chagrin (The Wild Ass's Skin) and broadly copies (even though this was admitted indirectly) Huysmans' A rebours. Mario Praz noted that Dorian Gray also owes very much to Lorrain's Monsieur de Phocas, and even one of Wilde the aesthete's fundamental maxims ("No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity itself is a crime") is a version of Baudelaire's "A dandy can never be a vulgar man: if he commits a crime, he would lose none of his reputation, but if this crime were caused by a trivial motive, the damage done to his honor would be irreparable."

Nevertheless, as Alex Falzon commented in the Italian edition of Wilde's aphorisms cited above, it is difficult to collect aphorisms by an author who has never written a book of aphorisms—so that what we consider aphorisms were created not to shine alone, devoid of any context, but in a narrative or theatrical work, and therefore said by someone in a particular context. For instance, can one consider an aphorism weak if the author puts it in the mouth of a ludicrous character? Is what Lady Bracknell says in The Importance of Being Earnest an aphorism: "To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness"? Hence the legitimate suspicion that Wilde did not believe in any of the aphorisms he pronounced, nor even in the best of his paradoxes: he was only interested in putting on stage a society capable of appreciating them.

In places he actually says as much. Consider this dialogue from The Importance of Being Earnest.

ALGERNON: All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

JACK: Is that clever?

ALGERNON: It is perfectly phrased! And quite as true as any observation in civilised life should be.

Thus Wilde should be seen not as an immoral creator of aphorisms but, rather, as a satirical author, a critic of society's morals. The fact that he lived within that society's set of morals is a different matter, for that was his misfortune.

Let us reread The Picture of Dorian Gray. With just one or two exceptions, the most memorable aphorisms are voiced by ludicrous characters like Lord Wotton. Wilde does not offer them to us as aphorisms for life, which he himself could guarantee.

Lord Wotton pronounces, albeit wittily, an endless series of commonplaces about the society of his time (and precisely for this reason Wilde's readers enjoyed his false paradoxes): A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it. The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties (though later Lord Wotton will say that the real drawback of marriage is that it makes one unselfish). I don't suppose that ten per cent of the proletariat live correctly. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless but cannot. I don't want money: it is only people who pay their bills who want that, and I never pay mine. I do not desire to change anything in England, except the weather. To get back one's youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies. Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious. No woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. Women are wonderfully practical, much more practical than we are: we often forget to say anything about marriage and they always remind us. When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy. The real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial (who knows if Wotton had read The Communist Manifesto, where he would have discovered that the poor have nothing to lose but their chains?). To adore is better than being adored: being adored is a nuisance. For every effect we produce we make an enemy, so to be popular we have to be mediocre. Anybody can be good in the country; there are no temptations there. Married life is nothing but habit. Crime is the exclusive preserve of the lower classes: crime is for them what art is for us, a way out of the ordinary sensations. Murder is always a mistake: one should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner....

Alongside this series of banalities, which become brilliant only because he fires them out one after the other (just as in lists where the most trite words can astonish us through the incongruous relationship they set up with other equally trite words), Lord Wotton shows a particular genius for identifying commonplaces that would not be worthy even of being used in wrapping papers for chocolates, and then making them interesting by reversing them:

Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

What I want is information: not useful information, of course, but useless information.

'I assure you there is no nonsense about the Americans.' 'How dreadful!'

I can sympathize with everything except suffering.

Nowadays most people ... discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

I don't think I am likely to marry. I am too much in love [but this is Dorian, infected by his master].

My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest of motives.^*

Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.

A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good.^†

Ugliness is one of the seven deadly virtues.

The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself.

Only shallow people do not judge by appearances.

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go around, nowadays, saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.

The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

One cannot deny that Lord Wotton invents some effective paradoxes however, such as:

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.

American girls are as clever at concealing their parents as English women are at concealing their past.

Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable.

I like Wagners music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self and one always ends by deceiving others.

A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do.

Women inspire us with the desire to create masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.

The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.

But Lord Wotton's paradoxes are more commonly reversible aphorisms (the reversals are, of course, my own):

Sin is the only real colour element left in modern life.

Virtue is the only real colour element left in modern life.

Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different.

Humanity does not take itself seriously enough. It is the

world's original sin. If the caveman had known how not to laugh, history would have been different.

Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

Men represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as women represent the triumph of mind over morals.

The truth is that Dorian Gray portrays the inanity of Lord Wotton, and at the same time denounces it. One character says of him: "Don't mind him, my dear ... He never means anything he says." The author says of him: "He played with the idea and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy and winged it with paradox. [...] He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him, and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose temperament he wished to fascinate seemed to give his wit keenness and to lend colour to his imagination."

Lord Wotton delights in what he thinks are paradoxes, but his acquaintances do not hold paradoxes in high esteem:

'They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris,' chuckled Sir Thomas, who had a large wardrobe of Humour's cast-off clothes.... 'Paradoxes are all very well in their way...,' rejoined the baronet.

It is true that Lord Erskine says: "Was that a paradox? I didn't think so. Perhaps it was. Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tightrope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them." Lord Erskine was not wrong, but Lord Wotton—not having anything to believe in—was mean with paradoxes, and on his tightrope it was common sense rather than Truth that performed acrobatics. But what did matter to Lord Wotton in any case?

'And now my dear young friend, if you will allow me to call you so, may I ask if you really meant all that you said to us at lunch?'

'I quite forget what I said,' smiled Lord Henry. 'Was it all very bad?'

In Dorian Gray few terrible things are said, but many are done. But basically Dorian does them because his friends have ruined him with their false paradoxes. In the end this is the lesson we can take from the novel. But Wilde would even deny this lesson, because he says clearly in the preface that "No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." And the style of Dorian Gray resides totally in the portrayal of fatuousness. Consequently, even though Wilde was himself a victim of the very cynicism that he so ostentatiously displayed, and that so delighted readers and audiences, we should not do him the injustice of quoting his aphorisms in isolation, as though they were intended or were able to teach us something.

It is true that some of the best Wildean paradoxes appear in those Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young, which he published as maxims for life in an Oxford journal:

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.

The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

In examinations the foolish ask the questions that the wise cannot answer.

Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure.

The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has discovered.

Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance.

Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness.

When one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.

Only the shallow know themselves.

The extent to which he considered these teachings to be true is evident in the replies he gave at his trial, when those sentences were objected to: "I rarely think that anything I write is true." Or: "That is a pleasing paradox, but I do not set very high store on it as an axiom." In any case, if "a truth ceases to be a truth when more than one person believes in it," to what collective consensus could a truth uttered by Wilde aspire? And since "in all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential, and in all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential," it is right not to ask Wilde for a strict distinction between (true) paradoxes, (obvious) aphorisms, and (false, or devoid of any truth value) reversible aphorisms. What he exhibits is a juror sententialis (which is a pleasurable rhetorical incontinence), not a passion for philosophy.

Wilde would have sworn by one single aphorism, and he staked his life on it in the end: "All art is quite useless."

Paper given at a conference on Oscar Wilde held at the University of Bologna on 9 November 2000.