Oscar Wilde by Philippe Jullian (review)

1971 BOOK REVIEWS 453 He examines primitive drama at the same time that he breathes the fresh air to which Himalayan mountaineers are accustomed. His explorations in this most stony area of the globe are distinctly fruitful. On the one hand, there are no barren or tedious attempts to overrefine definitions of such terms as drama, ritual, ceremony, or dance. On the other hand, much that is eminently cogent is said on their interrelations. At the root of his study is an analysis of the place of meaning in art. Presumably the relations of art to religion prove of secondary though by no means negligible interest. At risk of too violent a summary, it may be said that the author holds the meaning or esoteric symbolism of these dance-performances, when experienced within the native community itself, as known with any fullness or authority only to the lama who presides over them. Even the chief lama, or abbot, at times admits that he may overlook some connotations lost in the course of generations or centuries. The lesser monks are presumed to know less. The audience comprehends little indeed of these symbolic meanings but devoutly believes in the magical efficacy of the performances and greatly enjoys them. The abbot extends his blessings; attendance at the festival is itself a blessed event which lies somewhere between the experience of participating in the Christian Mass and attending an old-fashioned American village circus. Many cups of tea and considerable drinks of a stronger nature are enjoyed in the course of the performances by both actors and spectators. Attendance at the festivals is a joy occurring only once or twice a year, substantially relieving the extreme severity of daily life in the freezing shadow of the Himalayas. A day's entertainment by the dancers or mimists consists of thirteen scenes, all symbolical, eleven of them serious, two farcical. In only one, the second of the comic scenes, are words spoken by the performers. Each episode lasts approximately twenty minutes. There is much instrumental music together with an accompaniment of innumerable prayers chanted by the monks. Drama, if it be drama, is indeed present only in an incipient or embryonic form; even the dancing is somewhat attenuated by the thinness of a mountain air that discourages the more violent movements. Nevertheless, the dancers or actors express basic concepts both of Buddhist thought and primitive religion. To an informed student these ceremonious performances look northward to the extraordinary religious dramas of Tibet, now silenced by the Communist invasion, and southward to one of the most eloquent of dramatic literatures, that of the Sanskrit playwrights. Any student of Asia's ancient drama, accordingly, does well to consult the book. Anyone who speculates on the essence and origins of the theater and of performing arts in general should find it happily rewarding. HENRY W. WELLS Columbia University OSCAR WILDE by Philippe Jullian. translated by Violet Wyndham. Constable & Co. Ltd., London, 1969. 420 pp. 50s net. It is scarcely an accident that the dust jacket of this wonderfully readable translation of Philippe Jullian's recent and distinguished biography of Oscar Wilde (in France it won the Prix Femina Vacaresco) is graced with a four-inch drawing of a green carnation, the homosexual symbol of the 1890's. Neither is it accidental that a considerable portion of M. Jullian's text deals with Wilde as incipient homosexual, practicing homosexual and homosexual legally at bay in a society in which homosexuality, as we now know, flourished sub rosa in spite of the 454 MODERN DRAMA February threat of criminal prosecution and social ostracism. After all, the sixties have become, in some respects, the homosexual decade, and Wilde can now be safely presented to middle class readers, if a biographer wishes to distort the facts, as homosexual martyr, saint and prophet. M. Jullian is far too Gallic to softpedal this aspect of Wilde's career, but to his credit he refuses to purvey a stereotyped view of Wilde's sexual aberrations. For Jullian, Wilde is neither martyr nor saint; prophet perhaps, but before everything else a man of inimitable charm and a writer many-sided enough to be worth the toil of exacting...