Masters of Chiasmus: Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Our next Master of Chiasmus is the inimitable Oscar Wilde, one of the greatest writers and wits—and certainly one of the most colorful characters—in literary history. Wilde experimented with chiasmus innumerable times in both his writings and in his everyday conversation. I'll present a number of my favorite chiastic quotes from "The Oscar" here. If you enjoy this feature, please let me know what you like about it, and why. If I fail to include an essential quote, or err in some way, let me know that as well. Your comments will make this a better site for other visitors in the future.

In this observation—which may have been inspired by George Sand's, "Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life"—Wilde conveys his belief that the purpose of life is self-expression, with art being a great aid in that endeavor. It's a fitting observation from one who once said, "I have put my genius into my life; I have put only my talent into my work."

This chiastic self-assessment comes from De Profundis, Wilde's famous 1897 letter to his former great friend and lover, Lord Alfred Douglas.

Wilde was the toast of London in the 1880s and early 1890s, as people of all social classes hovered around him in hopes of hearing witty bon mots and clever epigrams. Wilde was fond of recycling his favorite lines, and this was apparently one of them. This version appears in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), but Wilde reportedly used it again and again in conversations with friends and associates.

"When a man says he has exhausted life one always knows life has exhausted him."

This was another one of Wilde's favorite lines, showing up in innumerable conversations. Here's how it finally appeared in A Woman of No Importance: "I hope you don't think you have exhausted life … When a man says that, one knows that life has exhausted him." Below are several more examples of sayings that show up both in conversation as well as in Wilde's plays and writings:

Wilde wrote literary reviews for The Pall Mall Gazette from 1885 to 1890. While highly regarded as a writer, Wilde did not apparently distinguish himself as a critic. Hesketh Pearson, Wilde's biographer, explains it this way: "He was too gentle a man to hurt people's feelings, too good-natured to make a good critic." Wilde could, however, be caustic and derisive in his overall opinions about the state of English writing, as he does in this observation about modern English novelists. He also wrote, also chiastically, "The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction."

Wilde could also be pretty tough on the readers and audiences of his day, whose taste he often questioned. This line from The Soul of Man is clear—when it comes to literature, the public can be counted on to judge what is good as bad, and vice versa. Wilde's view of the public's taste extended even to the audiences at his own plays. When asked how he felt after one of his plays met with a disappointing reaction, he said, "The play was a success, but the audience was an absolute failure."

When discussing individual artists, Wilde could be critical in a thoughtful, penetrating way, as in this comment on Algernon Swinburne. Wilde believed that Swinburne was both the master and slave of his literary style. He added: "Words seem to dominate him. Alliteration tyrannizes over him. Mere sound often becomes his lord. He is so eloquent that whatever he touches becomes unreal."

From Dorian Gray, there's a fascinating chiastic truth embedded in this observation. First of all, though, here's how Wilde set up the line: "The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists; good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible." Wilde's observation illuminates a fascinating chiastic phenomenon—the best artists often look pretty average, while the average ones often look the most creative.

"In France … they limit the journalist, and allow the artist almost perfect freedom. Here we allow absolute freedom to the journalist, and entirely limit the artist."

Wilde's comparison of England and France says something about the two very different cultures in the late 19th century. In another chiastic comparison of the two countries, Wilde wrote: "The great superiority of France over England is that in France every bourgeois wants to be an artist, whereas in England every artist wants to be a bourgeois."

Chiasmus is often used to ask questions of a "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" nature, and this line from Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) is a whimsical example. Here's another example, from A Woman of No Importance: "There was … I remember, a clergyman who wanted to be a lunatic, or a lunatic who wanted to be a clergyman, I forget which, but I know the Court of Chancery investigated the matter, and decided he was quite sane."

This line from The Duchess of Padua suggests a number of chiastic spin-offs to me, including this one: "Nowadays, it seems as if all the college girls are dressing like hookers, and all the hookers like college girls."

Wilde said this about America after his celebrated trip to this country in 1882. Billed as "The Great Aesthete," Wilde's air of superiority was simultaneously off-putting and fascinating to Americans, who thronged to his lectures and loved to hear stories about him. When he arrived in America, Wilde was asked by a customs agent if he had anything to declare. He replied, "I have nothing to declare but my genius." Every newspaper in New York carried the story, and similar stories were soon being reported throughout his lecture tour, which took him to over eighty American cities.

"I know not whether Laws be right, Or whether Laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol, Is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, A year whose days are long."

This comes from The Ballad of Reading Gaol, written during Wilde's imprisonment in 1895-96. When the poem was written, no author's name was attached. It was signed, simply, "C.3.3." (for the prisoner of Cell 3, third landing). Gaol is the traditional way the English spell the word jail (although they pronounce the word as we do). It's still hard to believe, but Wilde's famous Ballad was written during his imprisonment—two years at hard labor—for "homosexual offenses" under England's Criminal Law Amendment! Wilde had been having an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, the son of the Marquess of Queensberry (yes, the same man who formulated the famous rules of boxing). Queensberry was horrified by his son's scandalous behavior and publicly accused Wilde of homosexuality. Against the advice of his closest friends and advisors, Wilde sued Queensberry for libel. In the most celebrated trial of the 19th century, the tables turned against Wilde and he was prosecuted for and ultimately convicted of homosexual conduct. In typical Wilde fashion, though, he didn't allow the ordeal of the trial to diminish his legendary wit. After being sentenced, Wilde was handcuffed and placed outside in the driving rain, waiting to be transported to prison. "If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners," he was heard to say, "she doesn't deserve to have any."

Two years of prison left Wilde a broken man. Formerly one of the most celebrated men in England, he was now a social pariah. He moved to France, where he spent the last years of his life plagued by ill health and near-bankruptcy. Oscar Wilde died at age 46 in the year 1900.

Oscar Wilde and Implied Chiasmus

In my Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You book, I introduced a concept called implied chiasmus, which occurs when the words of a popular saying are deliberately reversed. Some popular examples are Mae West's "A hard man is good to find," Kermit the Frog's "Time's fun when you're having flies," and Ziggy's "A waist is a terrible thing to mind."

If you examine these sayings, you'll notice that each one reverses the words of a popular saying: "A good man is hard to find," "Time flies when you're having fun," and the slogan of the United Negro College Fund, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

Implied chiasmus has been favored by wits and wordsmiths for many years, and Wilde was no exception. Here are several examples from his life and works.

Wilde was fond of saying that he detested work, claiming that he wrote only to give him the freedom to do nothing. Here, he cleverly communicates his disdain for the working life by reversing the words of the popular expression, "Drink is the curse of the working classes."

"The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water."

Cleverly reversing the biblical phrase about turning water into wine, this was Wilde's assessment of the wine-making skills of the English.

Wilde was referring to English writer Max Beerbohm when he asked this question of a friend, reversing the normal sequence of things, taking off a mask to reveal one's face.

In this line from A Woman of No Importance, Wilde reverses what people normally do—remember people's faces and forget their names.

I regard this popular line from The Importance of Being Earnest as an example of implied chiasmus, for it reverses the usual conception of hypocrisy—pretending to be good while really being bad. The English writer, Joseph Addison, noted a similar phenomenon in a 1712 essay: "Hypocrisy at the fashionable end of the town is very different from hypocrisy in the city. The modish hypocrite endeavors to appear more vicious than he really is; the other kind of hypocrite more virtuous." The same thing can now be observed in America's cities and suburbs. It's clear, then, that the street of hypocrisy runs in both directions, suggesting the following full-blown chiastic observation: "There are two kinds of hypocrites—the bad pretending to be good, and the good pretending to be bad."

I hope you've enjoyed this chiastic look at Oscar Wilde. Join me next month when we take a look at another chiastic master, George Bernard Shaw.