Imported Poems

<Aside> I think it's going to take me a year to read Byron's "Child Harolde's Pilgrimage". Scholars may say Don Juan is his best work - it's certainly witty and entertaining - but I demur, for every phrase of CHP is utter perfection, every stanza persiflage with the sublime, and if one can have emo-spiritual orgasms, I have them after every completed thought.

I can't seem to make if far without ceasing and drinking in his lyrical beauty. I swear, I would so have this man's babies. Too bad all his died before they could breed.

Back to the subject at hand:

Question: Basil representing his true nature -- what do you think Dorian's killing of him meant? That he wanted to get rid of his conscience and live a thoroughly hedonistic life?............

Well, since Basil and I are - in essence - the same individual, I think I might be able to answer that question: yes.

I know what it is like to be so consumed by the beauty and personality of a man, that it infuses one with an almost supernatural ability (at least in one's own eyes) to create art. And, I know what it is like to be absolutely horrified and in despair over the decisions and behavior of The Pretty, and to chasten him in an attempt to redeem his soul, and to consequently be killed off as result of that rebuke. I also know what it is like to look down from Basil Heaven and to watch as The Pretty embarks on a WW Self-Destruction tour, and to see his consequential misery and suffering, which could have easily been prevented had he simply heeded good advice.

If I could only find my Pretty's Lord Henry, I think I might kill him.

In how this relates to Wilde, his Lord Henry was both Boise and Ross, so Oscar was forced to kill himself. Oscar was 24, I think, when at the age of 17Ross determined to seduce him, and bragged about it to Boise after-the-fact. It was also Ross who led Oscar into the Victorian underground community, with Rent Boys and random strangers - "rough trade" as they call it. While Boise was certainly no saint - after all, in his contumacious rebellion he flaunted Oscar before his father, knowing, because of the situation with Boisie's older brother, his father despised Aristocratic homosexuals - he did not descend to that level of depravity.

Boisie's influence was more subtle but no less baneful. By his own account, Boisie consented to Oscar only to please him, and once OW saw that, he ceased those overtures. IMHO, he only stayed with Oscar because it infuriated his father so much, (for Oscar's part, he always attempted to obviate the hostility and managed to do so most of the time) and Oscar's lawsuit against DAD was primarily at B's urgance. In other words, to Boisie, Oscar was merely a good tool to lash out at dad.

After Oscar died, suddenly Boisie recanted his involvement with the group he belonged to which attempted to resurrect the Greek Ideal of Pederasty, converted to Catholicism, got married and lived a conservative lifestyle.
So, IMHO, Boisie's entire involvement with homosexuality was a ruse from concept, the whole goal to piss off dad. Oscar wasn't even a person to him.

Ross merely played the devil. When Oscar got out of prison, he banished himself and tried to reform, but Ross found him and dragged him back into that horrible world. While Boisie used Oscar as a irritant to his father, Ross wished to pull someone down to his level, to have someone depraved as himself.

So, Oscar is not entirely an unsympathetic character. Like Dorian, he had his Lord Henry's and he did have his Basils (his wife, Frank Harris, some less mentioned people) but he made the unfortunate and fatal mistake of heeding the Lord Henrys.

That's why I said that a person like Dorian should have to worry about is beauty and books and music. Not the book LH gave him but good strong books about what is truly beautiful..........

Yes, but stupid, brilliant Dorians never listen to wisdom - not that I know anyone like that. They're addicted to pleasure: that's their primary problem. I do believe John Piper (credit Pascal or Augustine here? Not sure) is right in saying pleasure is the ultimate goal in life and God is the ultimate pleasure. Unfortunately, most people fall short of the mark, and they become addicted to the feeling lesser pleasure produces. But God, in his wisdom, designed it so lesser pleasures have a decreasing effect: the more one seeks out / engages in, the less the emotional experience, to the point that eventually - too satiated on pleasure - one feels nothing at all. (Byron admitted as much in Childe Harolde - that he had grown numb to its effects).

At this point most people die in dissolution, completely unhappy.

For Jung held that a god-image must be a mixture of opposites "if it is to represent any kind of totality

How, well, fascinating! A mixture of opposites? Like God is an angry God but He is also loving? Meh, now I need to read Jung. Basil and Lord Henry are fascinated by what they are not -- I found that interesting because that is one thing, perhaps the one thing, that doesn't fascinate me. Who I am not. I'm not God (I'm still learning that one though)

Jungian psychology is supposedly based in Christianity, but much of his theory appears Buddhist IMHO. He's very big into archetypes. I think in this case this "mixture of opposites" means the true self and the shadow self. In Jung, supposedly everyone has a shadow: that which they are not. His belief is somehow we are supposed to incorporate this shadow into ourselves in some manner in order to be whole. This is where I completely lose him, since I have no desire to be an anti-social personalitied serial killer.
Maybe someone else can explain?

Basil/Henry's infatuation reflects that which they are not. I understand Basil's infatuation: like him I'm grossly infatuated by people completely different than myself - not boring, surface value people - but primarily, er, the narcissists. I love Narcissists exclusively. That is why it's best I be alone.

ASIDE: I've discovered an intimacy with Byron that lacks in Wilde. Both are fascinating, but Byron - for all his despondency and elation - is a much more integrated person, and has the full range of emotions / reflections at his desposal.