Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince

Stephen Fry Reads Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Story “The Happy Prince”
http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/stephen_fry_reads_oscar_wildes_childrens_stor...

Great reading. But I find it very odd that Fry, an aggressive atheist, would feel such kinship with The Happy Prince, or that he or anyone would describe it as being fundamentally "about the cost of beauty."

This is apes theorizing about fire.

Wait what? What does his being "an aggressive atheist" have anything to do with that?

Well, because the story itself is so fundamentally a parable of Christian love and sacrifice. It is indeed about beauty—about how true beauty is self-sacrificing love, responding to suffering, and not outer beauty, pleasure or romantic fascination. Beauty is beatitude, or "happiness." Good grief, the story ends with God himself announcing the meaning. (And Wilde himself echoed it many years later in his last work—"Happy they whose hearts can break And peace of pardon win!")

But even if one is squeamish about God, perhaps imagining that Wilde's God is misdirecting, and so look for other meanings, so much of the rest all points in that direction too—a direction which does not foreclose its homoerotic undertones either. No contemporaneous reader, and no contemporary one with a knowledge of Christian thought, could miss it. It's hitting you over the head with it every other line.

Fry is welcome to his belief, and his frequent proselytism of it. We all have our beliefs. But just as I would not expect a Christian to adore a transparently, didactically atheistic story, I'm surprised at his love of this. The answer is, however, clear. Fry completely misses the point, imagining that a story about a statue who sacrifices its beauty to help poor people, never regrets it and is rewarded with true love and happiness and beauty in heaven, is really about "the cost of beauty."

>3 timspalding:

To be fair, the end is rather tacked on, and the story could stand without it. And without the end, it could easily be read other than as a Christian story, perhaps even about the cost of beauty.

Not the best reading, given the importance of suffering for the suffering in the body of the story (i.e. the parable of Christian love and sacrifice), but a possible reading.

What a disgusting take on Wilde, literature, Fry, atheism...

Tim, "The happy prince" and other Wilde's stories were my favourite childhood reads.

Theorize apishly about that all you want.

>5 LolaWalser:

FWIW, I do not deny you or Fry your pleasures in it. It's a very pleasing story, and praiseworthy in ways apart from its message. But I don't see how to separate its message from, well, Christian charity.

Of course, that doesn't mean only a Christian can enjoy it. Christian charity is not the opposite of other views—for example, yours or Fry's, I presume. And even if it were, so what? We all enjoy stories from views others. But if I were to claim that His Dark Materials, which I love, was really about how great God is, I too would be misunderstanding it on a really fundamental level. So here. "The Happy Prince" is not about the sadness of lost beauty. To make that the main message is to misunderstand it.

If you think it is, well, defend that.

But I don't see how to separate its message from, well, Christian charity.

Of course you don't.

And yet you get off where exactly calling other people "apes"?

Your view's parochial and monstrously offensive. This is just more reflection of the garbage about atheists or anyone else not buying into your faith being incapable of understanding, goodness, charity etc.

There's nothing to argue. To me it was a heartbreaking yet uplifting story about selfless love and sacrifice and their worth even in an uncomprehending, cold world; I take it as a matter of course that someone else will find something else in it--including you and your "Christian charity" (same charity no doubt that's being sown with bombs in the Middle East).

And Fry is right, or at least as right as anyone can be, because Wilde was an aesthete, a million miles away from a blinkered religious bigot, and felt acutely the pathos of beauty, of its passing and loss. The Happy Prince loses his physical beauty as he had lost his illusions, but becomes all the more beautiful in spirit (the inverse of Dorian Gray). What do you think Fry meant by the "nobility of thought"? What's an ape got to do with "nobility of thought"? Or why he talks of Wilde's "extraordinary soul"? Or his stories as "parables"? Spirituality doesn't reduce to Christian categories.

FWIW, I do not deny you or Fry your pleasures in it

How very charitable of you...

The reference to apes was not a personal attack on Mr. Fry. I'm sure he's a delightful man. It's to the image of an animal confronted with something out of his experience. I apologize to Mr. Fry for any implication that he is subhuman. He is merely completely baffled, like an ape called to theorize about fire.

There's nothing to argue. To me it was a heartbreaking yet uplifting story about selfless love and sacrifice and their worth even in an uncomprehending, cold world;

We agree about what it's about—"selfless love and sacrifice and their worth even in an uncomprehending, cold world." We agree, and despite your ill-tempered accusations, I am not surprised that you, an atheist, feel this about it. But this only underscores that, in fact, it's not about "the cost of beauty" at all.

I take it as a matter of course that someone else will find something else in it

Actually, I'm not finding much more than you. I merely have a technical name for "selfless love and sacrifice" which, because it involved Christianity, you deplore.

You obvious both despise Christianity and find it irrelevant to your understanding of the world. But you didn't write this. Wilde did. Wilde, who was not a post- and anti-religious zealot, but spent decades grappling over and over with Christianity and Christian love, in circles of many religious seekers—many of whom, including Wilde, died Catholics—would hardly have regarded that label as immaterial.

including you and your "Christian charity" (same charity no doubt that's being sown with bombs in the Middle East).

This is a silly non sequitur. And considering that you support Assad and his military, busy dropping barrel bombs on his citizens and now, with your Russian friends, far larger bombs, it's not a very effective attack.

The Prince and bird's love is more than something in a cold world. It is the thing that warms the world, as the swallow is warmed by cooperating in the Prince's selfless act. It is the worldly example and mirror of redemptive suffering in a universe that isn't cold at all.

Again, you might dislike this. You don't believe in such spooks. It's not what you would have written. So go write that.

As for me and my "Christian Charity," Wilde was scarcely interested in such nonsense.



Note that here, as in the "Happy Prince," and as in the Beatitudes, happiness is paradoxic—the reverse of what you'd imagine. The man who's heart can break is "happy." The statue who strips himself of everything, and whose heart does in fact break is "happy." "Happy" are those who suffer, for they shall be comforted.

In other words, if you see in the Happy Prince no more than love and sacrifice in a cold world, I think you're missing the point slightly. But Fry, seeing this as just about "the cost of beauty," is nowhere close.

Nor you, it would seem...

The ape comment does seem out of character and tone-deaf.

If you watch the promo video, Wilde says he loved the fairy tales because they weren't just adventure or fantasy, they were about nobility, and in the case of The Happy Prince, the relationship between the statue and the swallow. Fry is not a stupid person. He certain understands the Christian concept of sacrifice. There is merit in his perspective.

Then too, if Christian stories can only be "truly" appreciated or understood by Christians, we're all up a creek. The point of art is to let us see and understand the world through the eyes of others. If it can't do that, it fails as art. I don't think Wilde is a failure as an artist.

Plus, it is a 2 minute video clip designed to be a fundraiser. You can't help but wonder what what edited out.

The Happy Prince always reminded me of The Giving Tree -- another universally loved sacrifice story, but one that always filled me with a kind of horror. Perhaps because, like Fry, I have no faith in the existence of anything but this "cold world" (which really isn't very cold at all, by the way) and so the idea of sacrifice as noble in itself is absurd to me. But am I "missing the point"? Or is everyone else? Or do we each bring to every story our own set of assumptions?

Should one read “The Happy Prince” in light of “The Soul of Man under Socialism?”

I haven't read The Happy Prince yet, but I know the general story. I don't see a contradiction between enjoying a story about love and self-sacrifice, and admiring those values, while not believing in the big man upstairs. I also love the Narnia books and happily read them to my kids word for word, even knowing exactly what they are.

I can't judge whether I think "the cost of beauty" comes into it before I've read it, but I've long believed different readers are going to have different takeaways from the same book (thanks to our different backgrounds, religious differences being one of them) and so be it.

>14 Cecrow: Well said.

I don't see a contradiction between enjoying a story about love and self-sacrifice, and admiring those values, while not believing in the big man upstairs. I also love the Narnia books and happily read them to my kids word for word, even knowing exactly what they are.

As I said: "Of course, that doesn't mean only a Christian can enjoy it. Christian charity is not the opposite of other views—for example, yours or Fry's, I presume. And even if it were, so what? We all enjoy stories from views others."

Then too, if Christian stories can only be "truly" appreciated or understood by Christians, we're all up a creek. The point of art is to let us see and understand the world through the eyes of others. If it can't do that, it fails as art. I don't think Wilde is a failure as an artist.

As I said: "Of course, that doesn't mean only a Christian can enjoy it. Christian charity is not the opposite of other views—for example, yours or Fry's, I presume. And even if it were, so what? We all enjoy stories from views others."

You don't need to read that passage, or other times I say it. For I am absolutely sure that this nonsense idea will be ascribed to me again. So you'll get to read it again.

As regards "see and understand the world through the eyes of others," I entirely agree. And, indeed, that's my whole point.

Should one read “The Happy Prince” in light of “The Soul of Man under Socialism?”

Absolutely. Although written later—as is "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"—it's entirely appropriate to read it against that. And in reading that, one might not only note potential touch-points between the two texts with regard to poverty and suffering, but also that text's deep preoccupation with Christ, mentioned dozens of times in a short essay.

Some modern readers take works written at earlier times and put them through a sieve of their own interests. So, here, if God and Christian charity appear in the Happy Prince, ignore it. If they are the main theme, dream up some other theme, like the "cost of beauty," even if it contradicts the main theme. Instead of grappling with the otherness of another author's mind, substitute your own mind and rewrite the text in your image. This is an dishonest and impoverished way to read literature.

Plus, it is a 2 minute video clip designed to be a fundraiser. You can't help but wonder what what edited out.

I have to say, I find Fry's insistence in one video that he never read the stories until adulthood, and in another that he read and loved them as a child, rather eyebrow raising. Honesty versus promotion, or just a faulty memory?

The Happy Prince always reminded me of The Giving Tree -- another universally loved sacrifice story, but one that always filled me with a kind of horror. Perhaps because, like Fry, I have no faith in the existence of anything but this "cold world" (which really isn't very cold at all, by the way) and so the idea of sacrifice as noble in itself is absurd to me. But am I "missing the point"? Or is everyone else? Or do we each bring to every story our own set of assumptions?

We do. And it's entirely appropriate for you to feel this way. What's inappropriate is for you to imagine that the authors feel as you did, and therefore rewrite the story. Foolish or not, the Happy Prince communicates the notion that sacrifice is in fact noble, and that there is more to this cold world.

Incidentally, I think you've put your finger on something with the Giving Tree. The horror of that work is a common theme in my high-achieving, secular set, especially, I would add, among the mothers. The tree just gives and gives and gives and hardly gets anything back! Personally, I suspect that of being more about modern fears about self-gift and sacrifice, and about the fear that this falls on women most of all. One can almost hear "Doesn't the tree deserve to have a career too?"

>9 timspalding: this only underscores that, in fact, it's not about "the cost of beauty" at all.

I wonder if you might not be having trouble "grappling with the otherness of another author's mind," here -- the other author being Fry, in this case. What, for example, does Fry mean by "the cost of beauty"? My guess is that it doesn't merely mean the cost of looking pretty, but that it has to do with beauty of spirit: compassion, mercy, self-sacrifice, all those good things. This type of beauty isn't the special province of Christians or even theists.

I have to say, I find Fry's insistence in one video that he never read the stories until adulthood, and in another that he read and loved them as a child, rather eyebrow raising. Honesty versus promotion, or just a faulty memory?

Once again, one perhaps needs to lend a little charity. What Fry actually says is that his mother read him all kinds of fairy stories, including Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde. If Fry's mother was anything like my mother, she might not have made much of a point of who actually wrote all the stories she was telling him, so that, although he knew the stories, he might not have connected them with the author of "The Importance of Being Earnest", which he claims changed his life at age 11.

>16 timspalding: "Of course, that doesn't mean only a Christian can enjoy it. Christian charity is not the opposite of other views—for example, yours or Fry's, I presume. And even if it were, so what? We all enjoy stories from views others."

Lots of people enjoy lots of things. I enjoy listening to choral singing even though I don't speak Latin, am only passingly familiar with the forms of the Mass or the liturgical seasons, and thus don't necessarily know the significance of Bach's sacred music when I'm listening to it.

But you imply -- pretty strongly -- that if a person doesn't agree with the author, they can't understand the full truth of the work. I don't think our relationship to art is that simplistic. And a person can acknowledge what an author intends, and still find truths the author did not intend, but are nevertheless there. It's always a dual process, art. The one who creates, and the one who receives the creation. The speaker and the listener.

The tree just gives and gives and gives and hardly gets anything back! Personally, I suspect that of being more about modern fears about self-gift and sacrifice, and about the fear that this falls on women most of all. One can almost hear "Doesn't the tree deserve to have a career too?"

Well that is one interpretation, albeit a fairly superficial one. Consider, instead, the lesson of the tree (or the prince) -- surrender and sacrifice -- against other possible ways to live: respect and cooperation, for example. The little boy could tend the tree, plant the seeds of the apples, make an orchard. But no, he uses what he can until he uses everything up. It's practically a metaphor for global warming!

But I have a deep horror of ... not sacrifice, but the way we admire and fetishize martyrdom. It speaks to a fatalistic mindset to me, this admiration of those who run towards death. I don't fault the bravery of the person who dies for a cause, but I do fault our society for requiring it of them, and then salivating over the sacrifices they have made, as if such bravery somehow redeems us. It doesn't.

But you imply -- pretty strongly -- that if a person doesn't agree with the author, they can't understand the full truth of the work.

If you took that as my implication, I misspoke or you misheard. It is not a question of can't. It can, however, be a question of "don't."

The sad fact is that Christian sentiment, and sentiment that, while not explicitly Christian, happens within a culture imbued and preoccupied with Christian ideas, is now as foreign to many contemporary readers as Homer or Shikibu. It's a foreign literature.

When it comes to foreign literature, there are two negative ways to go. One is to feel estranged and bored. Homer is a bad adventure story. The Tale of Genji is a lousy historical drama. Another is to misinterpret. In the case of religion, a common approach is to secularize it—to snip out the religion, as religion has been snipped out of much of our culture. But just as one can't snip Greek-ness from Homer or Japanese-ness from the Tale of Genji without misunderstanding the work and creating a work comforting only to our own interests and limitations, one can't snip the religion out of a religious work and expect to understand it.

In doing this, it can help to inhabit the same mental universe as an author, or one closer to it than others. The Japanese student approaches Genji better prepared than the American. The Catholic approaches Dante better prepared, and the Evangelical no doubt has a leg up on LaHaye. We can increase our preparation—I spent years trying to get there with Greek literature. A "foreigner" can sometimes even surpass the natives in understanding. But we have to be aware of that gap, that moat, around foreign literature.

I don't think our relationship to art is that simplistic. And a person can acknowledge what an author intends, and still find truths the author did not intend, but are nevertheless there. It's always a dual process, art. The one who creates, and the one who receives the creation. The speaker and the listener.

I think there's much truth to that. Literature is a two-player game. But, perhaps it's my training in Classics, but I would insist that grasping the former must transpire before the latter can be attempted. If we approach a piece of literature unequipped and unwilling to process the text as its author and intended readers did(1), but just proceed onto our own fancies, we're juggling bowling balls on thin ice. It's not merely that we can go badly astray seeing new things, but that we see only our own image everywhere in everything. Offered the chance to see another mind, we've satisfied ourselves with looking in mirrors.

Well that is one interpretation, albeit a fairly superficial one.

Meh. I think there's some truth to it. And I agree, incidentally, that there's something uncomfortable in the relationship depicted.

Consider, instead, the lesson of the tree (or the prince) -- surrender and sacrifice -- against other possible ways to live: respect and cooperation, for example.

Sure. Or, for example, self-giving which is healthily gratuitous—where the tree isn't sad that the boy isn't there—or, to flip things around, one might imagine a book in which the boy is eventually sorry, and does what he can to make it right.

---

1. Note, I'm not tied to any theory of authorial intent per se.

Shorter Tim:

"People who don't interpret literature the exact way that I do are completely missing the point."

>20 AsYouKnow_Bob:

Shorter Bob: "People I disagree with I shall caricature."

Or quote verbatim.

>3 timspalding: " Fry completely misses the point"

>22 AsYouKnow_Bob:

I think it's possible to miss the point of something. Intolerant me.

Thanks for the discussion. It put words on some of my difficulties reading Oscar Wilde, Selma Lagerlöf and G. K. Chesterton.

The only person missing the point is you, Tim.

>24 bnielsen:

Wilde wasn't a Christian author, if that's the drift of your bundling him up with the others.

>25 LolaWalser: Wilde wasn't a Christian author

He seems to have flirted with it, though.

>26 southernbooklady:

As far as I can tell, that's utterly meaningless.

But there's something to Gide's characterization, « deux morales ... le naturalisme païen et l'idéalisme chrétien ». Pater and Ruskin, if you like. Which Ellmann saw directly in Salomé and Jokanaan.

Which is why what he wrote about post-Renaissance Christian charity seems pertinent. And how some might see ironizing in the fairy tales.

>28 MMcM:

Agreed, especially on irony (which suffuses everything Wilde wrote). I thought earlier today of Gide (another Protestant) as a type of writer closest (but not of "the same type" at all, temperamentally or philosophically) to Wilde, in terms of an unusual combination of religiosity and personal dedication to individualism and artistic freedom, in contrast to the above "examples", especially such as Chesterton.

I wouldn't mind talking about that... but not with anyone who calls non-Christians "apes" and doesn't admit any interpretations but his own as "getting the point".

>25 LolaWalser: Wilde wasn't a Christian author

From De Profundis:

"If ever I write again, in the sense of producing artistic work, there are just two subjects on which and through which I desire to express myself: one is ‘Christ as the precursor of the romantic movement in life’: the other is ‘The artistic life considered in its relation to conduct.’ The first is, of course, intensely fascinating, for I see in Christ not merely the essentials of the supreme romantic type, but all the accidents, the wilfulnesses even, of the romantic temperament also. He was the first person who ever said to people that they should live ‘flower-like lives.’ He fixed the phrase. He took children as the type of what people should try to become. He held them up as examples to their elders, which I myself have always thought the chief use of children, if what is perfect should have a use. Dante describes the soul of a man as coming from the hand of God ‘weeping and laughing like a little child,’ and Christ also saw that the soul of each one should be a guisa di fanciulla che piangendo e ridendo pargoleggia. He felt that life was changeful, fluid, active, and that to allow it to be stereotyped into any form was death. He saw that people should not be too serious over material, common interests: that to be unpractical was to be a great thing: that one should not bother too much over affairs. The birds didn’t, why should man? He is charming when he says, ‘Take no thought for the morrow; is not the soul more than meat? is not the body more than raiment?’ A Greek might have used the latter phrase. It is full of Greek feeling. But only Christ could have said both, and so summed up life perfectly for us."

>30 jburlinson:

I said he wasn't a Christian author (responding to the post that lumped him with Chesterton), not that he wasn't a Christian. (In fact, if memory serves I drew Tim's attention to the latter fact during the Dorian Gray discussion, when he was busy besmirching him.)

Wilde is nothing like Chesterton and his ilk in this regard, in how they functionalised their faith.

>31 LolaWalser:
OK, now I see what you mean. I was on the verge of sending a message along the lines of >30 jburlinson:. An ambiguity has been sorted.

Though maybe "instrumentalized" is more appropriate than "functionalized"?

>32 krolik:

If you wish--I got functions on my mind, professional deformation... :)

I find this thread depressing and enraging, it almost made me delete my catalogue and leave LT today. I've been on the verge once or twice before, but... not like this. I thought previously some of us were of opposite minds, but I couldn't have believed (although in retrospect there have been hints) that one side sees the other as not-human. I mean, I knew this person had no problem dismissing other people and their children as "collateral damage" but, stupidly, I didn't think such dehumanisation spread to people he was actually "talking" to here.

Therefore, and to begin with, I'll red-x this thread. My one general suggestion to those interested in Wilde would be to read, for starters, a good biography such as Ellmann's Oscar Wilde, and Wilde's letters. De profundis, for instance, is unintelligible without knowing Wilde's path and the tragedy that broke him.

>32 krolik: >33 LolaWalser: maybe "instrumentalized" is more appropriate than "functionalized"?

Either way, I'm not sure I understand how this differentiates Wilde from, say, Chesterton. Doesn't Wilde's insistence on leading an authentic, "flower-like" life "functionalize" his faith, in the same way that painting can make a water-absorbing material waterproof?

>33 LolaWalser: I find this thread depressing and enraging, it almost made me delete my catalogue and leave LT today.

I hope you decide not to act on this urge. I don't have all that many friends, on LT or anywhere else, so losing track of another one isn't something I relish. Nobody has your unique blend of acuity and fervor.

As for the dehumanizing remark, I was surprised when I read it and don't want to believe it was intended to be an insult. To be honest, "this is apes theorizing about fire" pretty well describes what I think of myself when I speculate about matters above my pay grade.

I said he wasn't a Christian author (responding to the post that lumped him with Chesterton), not that he wasn't a Christian.

Good. I'm sure you're aware of his lifelong preoccupation with it, and with Catholicism especially. But for SBL's benefit I urge a quick read of, say, his Wikipedia entry. We can't be entirely sure how to use evidence from later life, when De Profundis and the Ballad of Reading Gaol were written, when he begged the Jesuits to allow him on a six-month retreat and when he was actually received into the Catholic church. But his first major episode came at Oxford:

"He was deeply considering converting to Catholicism, discussing the possibility with clergy several times. In 1877, Wilde was left speechless after an audience with Pope Pius IX in Rome. He eagerly read Cardinal Newman's books, and became more serious in 1878, when he met the Reverend Sebastian Bowden, a priest in the Brompton Oratory who had received some high profile converts. Neither his father, who threatened to cut off his funds, nor Mahaffy thought much of the plan; but mostly Wilde, the supreme individualist, balked at the last minute from pledging himself to any formal creed. On the appointed day of his baptism, Father Bowden received a bunch of altar lilies instead. Wilde retained a lifelong interest in Catholic theology and liturgy.

More than flirting, I'd say.

Now is he a Christian writer? Depends on what that means. If it means "Was he a Christian who wrote, the answer seems to be 'Yes.'" If you mean whether he was a writer who put his interest in Christianity into his works a fair amount, the answer is 'certainly.'" If you mean whether he was a writer who primarily wrote on "Christian" topics, with an eye to illustrating Christian themes in a fictional context or to convincing people to become Christians, obviously not. For what it's worth, however, the notion of "Christian authors," composed of authors as "professional Christians" is more Protestant and English than universal. I think Wilde, who knew non-English and Medieval literature so well, was well past it.

So it's clear that religious faith and Christian, especially Catholic, theology, morality and aesthetics were a factor in Wilde's life. And we have ample evidence of Christian themes and images in his writings. So when we come across like "The Happy Prince," which is so imbued with Christian themes and images, and even theology, not to mention actually including God, it's reasonable to propose that, even though Wilde is not a "Christian author," the piece has Christian content.

mean, I knew this person had no problem dismissing other people and their children as "collateral damage" but, stupidly, I didn't think such dehumanisation spread to people he was actually "talking" to here.

I do not dismiss unintentional death in war, but I am not a pacifist. As such, I think civilian bombing is invariably wrong, but I still support attacking military objectives, even if we know some civilians will die. In other words, I'm still in favor of fighting Hitler. I'm also in favor of attacking Assad, whereas you favor Assad. It's unclear to me how favoring Assad is connected to your horror of collateral damage!

My one general suggestion to those interested in Wilde would be to read, for starters, a good biography such as Ellmann's Oscar Wilde, and Wilde's letters. De profundis, for instance, is unintelligible without knowing Wilde's path and the tragedy that broke him.

Sure. Good advice. I've been reading up too. But is your contention that this will tell people seeing Christian ideas in De Profundis, or, from much earlier, The Happy Prince, is wrong?

As for the dehumanizing remark, I was surprised when I read it and don't want to believe it was intended to be an insult. To be honest, "this is apes theorizing about fire" pretty well describes what I think of myself when I speculate about matters above my pay grade.

Well, I have apologized for the implication that Fry is an ape. As I explained, the image was of someone trying to understand something utterly outside their experience. As is clear from this thread, some extreme secularists, even those aware of Wilde's lifelong preoccupation with Christianity, can read the Happy Prince and see nothing "Christian" going on. I am frankly amazed by this.

>36 timspalding: but mostly Wilde, the supreme individualist, balked at the last minute from pledging himself to any formal creed. On the appointed day of his baptism, Father Bowden received a bunch of altar lilies instead. Wilde retained a lifelong interest in Catholic theology and liturgy.

More than flirting, I'd say.

But nowhere near conviction and commitment, which I all I meant to imply.

As is clear from this thread, some extreme secularists, even those aware of Wilde's lifelong preoccupation with Christianity, can read the Happy Prince and see nothing more than something "Christian" going on.

Fixed that for you.

>37 southernbooklady: Yeah, that fix is exactly right!

>37 southernbooklady:

His interest was pretty damn strong. In the Oxford, his parents threatened to disown him if he turned Catholic. We could go though his biographies hunting, but if Wilde isn't counted as someone deeply engaged with Christian ideas, then I'm not sure who is.

Fixed that for you.

I don't at all deny that "more" is going on. But it's not primarily about "the costs of beauty." And any reading that ignores the "Christian" ideas is woefully off track.

Indeed, I think it's reductive to talk about it as having "Christian" ideas at all. It's like saying Nabokov has "memory ideas." The Wilde story ties into a very specific cluster of ideas and images within Christian thought and culture, which connects organically to everything else going on (and why shouldn't it?). It only seems like a special "Christian" layer through the lens of ignorance and distaste.

>39 timspalding: I don't at all deny that "more" is going on. But it's not primarily about "the costs of beauty." And any reading that ignores the "Christian" ideas is woefully off track.

I have a feeling we're arguing about something we don't actually disagree on, but I'll just say here that the latter statements appears to contradict your first one.

Indeed, I think it's reductive to talk about it as having "Christian" ideas at all.

Would that it were so. :-) But "sacrifice" does seem to be a particularly Christian virtue in the context of the story.

>40 southernbooklady:

I hear you. I just think there's this way that "Christian" gets in the way. It's too blunt. It's like if we were to talk about Huck Finn as being about "American ideas." Or, for example, it'd be like saying Dostoyevsky was about "Christian" ideas. These labels would make sense to a Martian, or a secular Danish undergraduate, but they're too "far up" to shed any light. They only really matter if someone denies them--if someone says Huck Finn has nothing American about it, etc.

But "sacrifice" does seem to be a particularly Christian virtue in the context of the story.

One might equally say it is a peculiarly human, earth-ist or milky-way-galaxy-ist virtue. But some labels are too high-up.

Perhaps there isn't any point to miss. The meaning of any text to a reader, to some minds, is constructed during the act of reading, between the text and the reader alone, and whatever the author meant is almost irrelevant. As I change, the meaning of things I've read more than once change as well.

>42 msladylib:

Well, that opens up the larger question. It seems somehow democratic and non-judgemental but is it good enough? Should we assess the meaning of any reader whatsoever—smart, dumb, careful and thoughtful, or quick and sloppy—over the meaning intended by the author, the meaning found by its intended audience, or the meaning found by careful readers with a lifetime of experience understanding literary texts?

That leads to absurdities. If an author writes a novel, and no one reads it, does it have no meaning whatsoever? If an alien reads the Heart of Darkness, and, astounded by human anatomy, decides it's about the philosophy of two-handednes, is this really just as true as any other reading? If I read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as being about the many virtues of Southern slavery, am I right?

Are there no better and worse readings? Is there no way to miss the point? And if there's no way to miss the point with fiction, why confine it? Is the meaning of this very message really "constructed during the act of reading," such that it's just as valid to say it's heartily agreeing with you?

>43 timspalding:, you've got a point there. I can think of some authors off the top of my head, e.g. Ayn Rand, who would have a fit if you misread them even a little. Wilde was clearly aiming to tell a particular moral, and certainly self-sacrifice was an element. But there might be a certain analytical depth you can reach beyond which you earn the liberty of diverging in interpretation. If it were any more clear, our English university profs wouldn't have much to do.

>44 Cecrow:

Ayn Rand is all about how awesome the state is. :)

>42 msladylib: The meaning of any text to a reader, to some minds, is constructed during the act of reading, between the text and the reader alone, and whatever the author meant is almost irrelevant.

That's certainly true as far as it goes. But there are a number of ways of imagining the experience of reading. One might be called the "Christian" way of reading, which would require the reader to "love thy neighbor" (the author) by extending unconditional sympathy to the mind that created the text. (This does not mean agreeing with everything (or anything) the author says -- after all, there might be some irony going on and the reader would need to be sensitive to that.) Abraham Lincoln came close to the Christian way when he said: "Writing - the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye - is the great invention of the world ... great, very great in enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space." Of course, it takes two to converse.

So, on one level, reading might be considered a spiritual exercise.

I appreciated your breakdown of what it means to be a "Christian Writer," Tim. The term is so broad as to me almost meaningless. Any category that can hold Tim LaHaye and Flannery O'Connor is far too broad to actually say anything.

The term tends to mean Lewis, Chesterton, etc.—writers interested in advancing religious arguments in fiction.

But it has some use when it comes to the mental universe they inhabit. Granted, O'Connor and LaHaye inhabit very different universes—about as far as two modern "Christians" can, perhaps, not to speak of quality. But they have some common points of references, not unlike two different Japanese authors might. Among my contentions is that, to many contemporary secular readers, much "Christian" fiction is a foreign country. Here I include not only The Happy Prince, but much literature with even less Christian "intent" but simply existing within or engaging with Christian culture, even very critically.

One can, of course, bone up on a foreign country, and even become a great expert in its literature. But an American who hits Sei Shonagon or the Tale of Genji is simply going to have large parts of it fly over their head. (I know that was my experience, and it was my experience with Greek literature, which why I spent years trying to get "in" that culture.) Literary sensitivity resides in knowing that that happens, and maybe doing something about it. It does not lie in deciding the Japanese or Christian elements aren't there.

Much the same has come up before with "A Good Man is Hard to Find," although specifically about "Catholic" culture. I cited one of her letters back when— https://www.librarything.com/topic/152327#4013249 . There as elsewhere, a secular or Protestant reader can miss the point of O'Connor because they don't have a feel for the sensibility in play. There's another letter somewhere where she says a similar thing, but more pointedly, to a professor who misunderstood the story.

O'Connor reading "A Good Man…" is so delicious, it deserves another linking:
http://www.mhpbooks.com/audio-flannery-oconnor-reads-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find/

I know that I did not understand much of Dostoevsky until I spent a fair amount of time in Russia with Orthodox priests. At one point, after watching a priest go a very emotional rant about another priest, I realized, "Dostoevsky was not exaggerating!"

and yeah, another gander at "A Good Man..." although my favorite of her stories is Good Country People.

>48 timspalding: The term tends to mean Lewis, Chesterton, etc.—writers interested in advancing religious arguments in fiction.

In my part of the country, "Christian fiction" means fiction that promotes what might be called "Christian values" -- the importance of having faith in adversity, the general goodness of a life lived according to Christian principles. But whether those principles are focused on "don't have sex before you get married" or "live to serve others" varies pretty wildly from author to author and publisher to publisher.

>51 southernbooklady:

Right. I've heard that usage. It strikes me the way the way some people use "Christian" too. They mean they're evangelical Protestant, but they call it Christian because they're horizons are so narrow.

And then you have writers such as Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh who write about their struggles with Christianity.

>52 timspalding: they call it Christian because they're horizons are so narrow.

Some people are such fools.

Indeed, if you think American Evangelical Christianity is Christianity, you are a fool. You might be nice. But you are a fool.

>52 timspalding: They mean they're evangelical Protestant, but they call it Christian because they're horizons are so narrow.

It's big business in the publishing industry. More than a few major publishers have Faith-focused (ei "Christian) imprints and there are some very successful smaller Christian publishers. Their output tends towards a specific philosophy -- what I would call a "Christian philosophy" without either irony or any implication that the term was meaningless -- but it isn't exactly narrow. It's just not theological.

See also "Christian living." In my library talks I compare the "Christian living" tag, which has specific sectarian and genre valences, and the LCSH "Christian life," which does not.

>54 jburlinson: if you think American Evangelical Christianity is Christianity, you are a fool. You might be nice. But you are a fool.

What is it, then? Buddhism?

Just to be sure, we are talking about the American Evangelical Christian Churches (AECC), right? This body adheres to what is called "the essentials":

The Holy Bible as the infallible, written Word of God.
The God of Creation – Who manifests Himself in three personalities: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The virgin birth of Jesus, the Christ.
The deity and humanity of Jesus, the Christ.
The salvation of sinners by faith through the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ.
The guidance of our lives through prayer to the Father, through Jesus, the Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The visible return and eternal reign of the Savior – Jesus, the Christ.

Which one of these disqualifies it from being Christianity?

I think what he means is that saying that saying American Evangelical Christianity is Christianity is like saying that the SDS was the Left in the 60s. There are many variants, and not all agree.

>59 Arctic-Stranger: I think what he means is that saying that saying American Evangelical Christianity is Christianity is like saying that the SDS was the Left in the 60s.

Are you saying that the SDS was not on the left in the 60's?

What he seems to be saying is that "evangelical christianity", broadly speaking, is not really "Christian", in some way. (Maybe it's not nice enough?) If all he's saying is that a fundamentalist/evangelical type of christianity is not the entirety of Christianity, well, that hardly breaks new ground.

There are many variants, and not all agree.

Isn't the same true of catholicism?

What is it, then? Buddhism?

No, no. Misunderstanding. I'm not denying they aren't Christian. I don't mean it's not part of Christianity. I mean it's not "Christianity" itself.

fundamentalist/evangelical type of christianity is not the entirety of Christianity, well, that hardly breaks new ground

Right. I'm not. A LOT of Americans think this way, though. Christians are evangelicals or at least Protestant. There's no sense that the majority of Christians are Catholic, a larger majority belong to traditions very far from Protestantism (Catholicism, Orthodoxy and a few others), and even more belong to "liturgical" churches (Catholicism, Orthodox, Anglicanism, Lutheranism, etc. etc.), also unlike evangelical Christianity. Many Americans, both evangelical and also many secularists, similarly believe that "Christianity" holds fundamentalist views, that "Christians don't believe in evolution," for example, when the overwhelming majority of Christians around the world belong to denominations that believe in evolution.

It drives me bonkers. :)

>61 timspalding: . Many Americans, both evangelical and also many secularists, similarly believe that "Christianity" holds fundamentalist views, that "Christians don't believe in evolution,"

In the context of this conversation, though, the idea that Christianity is based in the idea that Jesus Christ sacrificed himself to redeem mankind, and that sacrifice for the good of others is a noble and even "beautiful" (to use Fry's term) thing -- it seems safe to say that is a heavily Christian concept. And hardly evangelical Protestant. It's the Catholics who are all about canonizing saints.

No, you're right. However, elements of this are more suited to a Catholic, or Anglican, mindset than to an American evangelical Protestant one. Some notes just don't ring right in an evangelical context:

* An evangelical Happy Prince might have helped people, but they would have responded by thanking God, or otherwise have been converted or changed. For a certain mindset, charity needs a second act, or what's the point?
* Nobody at any point talks about God, at least until the last two lines.
* I don't think an American evangelical would light on the notion that helping an artist finish a play would rates up there with helping a starving family. Of course, this is very Wilde. But the intrinsic value and divinity of beauty is also very Catholic—and one of the things that Wilde clearly appreciated in Catholicism.
* "you tell me of marvellous things, but more marvellous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery" just isn't something an evangelical would say.
* "but you must kiss me on the lips, for I love you" Wait, are they gay or something?

And, above all, Catholics (and Orthodox, a strain of Anglicanism, etc.) are much more interested in analogies and types, signs and mirrors of grace and of the world as a sacrament. As Greeley put it "Catholic imagination is 'analogical' and the Protestant imagination is 'dialectical'." In my limited experience, evangelical children's Christian literature tends to be about people being Christians. Being Christian is something that happens to people or doesn't; the world is stage for that choice, and the rest is a distraction. The Protestant likes a good allegory—a substitutive game—but not something murkier, where grace resides out of direct view and nobody talks about God or accepts Jesus. (Is the Happy Prince just Christ? No, it's not as cut and dried as that; they're instruments of grace, not, well, statues of Jesus.) Catholic (etc.) Children's literature, by contrast, partakes of the "sacramental imagination" of Catholic literature and Catholic thinking generally.

Anyway, I'm babbling, and not putting it quite right.

What I meant and what Tim explained was the the SDS was ON the the left, but they were not the ENTIRE left. Evangelicals are Christians, but they do comprise all sets of Christians.

>63 timspalding: In my limited experience, evangelical children's Christian literature tends to be about people being Christians. Being Christian is something that happens to people or doesn't; the world is stage for that choice, and the rest is a distraction. The Protestant likes a good allegory—a substitutive game—but not something murkier, where grace resides out of direct view and nobody talks about God or accepts Jesus.

I know this is off topic, but I have some very good friends who are deeply Southern Baptist Christian -- to the point where they often do volunteer missionary work in Africa -- and you know what their favorite books are? The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I have been treated to many an enthusiastic discussion on the many deeply Christian themes to be found in the story of Frodo's quest and eventual sacrifice. I don't know where that fits in your idea of Protestant dialectical imagination versus Catholic analogical imagination but it has made me conscious that the "meaning" of a story is never simple, and is always influenced at least in some part by what we, the readers, want or need it to mean.

>65 southernbooklady:

Well, what's your point? That that isn't in the story?

Now, again, I don't think Tokien should be reduced to an edifying recapitulation of Christian truth. He'd throw up a little in his mouth at that. He saw that in Lewis and it bothered him. But "Christian stuff" is definitely one of the things going on in the Lord of the Rings. As Tolkien himself wrote in a letter:

"The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism."

I don't know if you disagree, but there are certainly many secularists who don't see this. Others, again, Protestants especially, get hung up on whether or not Gandalf or Frodo "is" Jesus. That's too simple. (It's even too simple to see, say, lembas as like the consecrated host, which is commonly said and which, I suspect, your Baptist friend did not fasten on as quickly to.) The Catholic in LOTR is, as Tolkien put it, "absorbed." It's not sloshing about on the surface, calling attention to itself.

>63 timspalding: Some notes just don't ring right in an evangelical context:

I'm not sure I agree with you there. A few remarks:

An evangelical Happy Prince might have helped people, but they would have responded by thanking God, or otherwise have been converted or changed.

Not necessarily. I think there is a certain sense that some people are beyond redemption; so while there is an injunction to feed the hungry etc., there is a recognition that this may not change the spiritual condition of the beneficiary of charity and that, if God is to be "just" it couldn't be otherwise. Relevant quote from Richard Baxter, English Puritan church leader: "All the works of God are good; and all that is good is amiable; though the misery of the creature be bad to it {the creature}, yet the works of justice declare the wisdom and holiness of God; and the more perfect we are, the more they will be amiable to us. For, God himself, and Christ, who is the merciful Saviour of the world, approve of the damnation of the finally ungodly. And the saints and angels in heaven do know more of the misery of the souls in hell, than we do; and yet it abates not their joys. And the more perfect any is, the more he is like-minded unto God."

"There is no Mystery so great as Misery" just isn't something an evangelical would say.

Again from Richard Baxter: "Should not the joys of all the saints and angels be your joy, as well as the sufferings of the wicked be your sorrows? But above all, the thoughts of the blessedness and glory of God himself, should overtop all the concernments of the creature with you. If you will mourn more for the thieves and murderers that are hanged, than you will rejoice in the justice, prosperity, and honour of the king, and the welfare of all his faithful subjects, you behave not yourselves as faithful subjects. Shortly you hope to come to heaven: mourn now for the damned, as you shall do then; or at least, let not the difference be too great, when that, and not this, is your perfect state."

>66 timspalding: Well, what's your point? That that isn't in the story?

No, my point was that it was in the story deeply enough to touch the religious sensibilities of my Southern Baptist Christian friends, who are evangelical, but certainly not Catholic. (In fact, rather suspicious of Catholicism). So from my perspective, there is something "Christian" about the story that won't be constrained by whatever keeps Protestant Christians and Catholic Christians apart. And no, they weren't trying to equate lembas with the consecrated host, or even Frodo with Jesus. They are more tuned into the many references to what I suppose might be called the presence of grace within him -- there's more than one observation that Frodo had a light "that shines out of him, somehow" is I think how Sam puts it.

Of course, there are plenty of not-Christian elements to the story as well. Tolkien owes as much to his fascination with Nordic mythology as he does to Catholicism. So is he a "Christian writer?" He can be if you are a Christian, at least. But he's not especially Christian to me.

No, my point was that it was in the story deeply enough to touch the religious sensibilities of my Southern Baptist Christian friends, who are evangelical, but certainly not Catholic.

And yet the point was also that the "Catholicism" is is so essential to the story that anyone that lacks a certain strain of faith cannot even begin to comprehend the notions involved...

>69 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

I'm unclear how failing to understand what I said gives you a good position from which to claim to understand actual literature.

Unclear you are, that I will grant you.

Regardess, I will leave you to your territorial pissings,

>1 timspalding: Fry reads excellently, but what a bizarre story! I don't recall that I've encountered it before, so thank you, Tim, for pointing it out.

As for its Christianness, sorry, but I don't really see that as an inescapable context. The prince, in my view, derives more from Siddhartha than any Christian model. And in the central portion of the story, I chiefly hear Amos (by whom, of course, Jesus was inspired). The swallow's love affair draws more than a little inspiration from Syrinx.

The coda is the bizarre part. So the god — whoever this god is — intends to fashion from the broken and indestructible heart of the prince a new golden and bejewelled statue in his golden city (at least that's how I read it; he could be reanimated — the text is ambiguous). Why? So that the prince can praise the god.

If the statue were recreated in the temporal city so that it could once again alleviate human suffering, I would see a stronger case for a Christian reading. With the ending that Wilde gave it, I think there is as good a case for reading the story as a strong critique of nineteenth-century high-church piety, whether Catholic or Anglican, with its reproduction baldachins and gilded apses.

> 1 etc.

Christianity is a Johnny-come-lately made up bunch of ape shit.

The original people back 50,000 years ago got it right. We should all be worshipping The Cave Bear. Those who refuse to are obviously atheists and should be offered as living sacrifices to The Cave Bear.

DO NOT question the will of The Cave Bear, as revealed by me his Prophet.

No one can prove me wrong. That is the beauty of it.

I have spoken.

>72 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

I would hope you'd describe #74 as a big steaming dump.

Following up my post above (>14 Cecrow:), I've now read the Happy Prince story and have to agree it's transparently Christian through and through. Even concludes with God talking to his angels. I didn't get "cost of beauty" out of it at all.