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Feb. 2nd, 2004 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sebastienneat bridie's party on saturday there was this unecessarily pretty couple.
i mean, you could not tell which of them was male, and which female, although i am led to belive they were indeed a het couple.
today was a bit stereotypically teenage, but i shall recount it nevertheless. i spent a lot of my lessons wondering why i bother - classics with DJMC is always a joke, i have come to the conclusion that he doesn't really know what he's doing and we just go through the plays in the vague hope that we're all intelligent enough to draw our own conclusions. c'est-a-dire, i don't think i've learnt anything from him this year i could not have learnt 10 times better, in half the time, with a copy of the texts and one decent classical crit book.
and as for french; she gave us a test on a reading comp we'd already done, and then i aced my speaking (well, the verbal feedback was that i'd aced it - guess i oughtta wait for the mark, really) having done NO preparation whatsoever.
then i sat outside, on a bench in the freezing cold. for a whole hour. just to be alone and read andré gide.
i like this book so far. the more i read between wilde and camus, the more i realise it's not a few isolated genii, it's a whole movement. a whole movement of artists expressing in myriad beautiful & articulate ways that which i knew instinctively before i knew most of said artists existed. but it seems the rest of the world do not know. and need to be told.
oh, here's a one-hour timed essay on TIOBE
‘The characters’ compulsive dishonesty is not only comic: it is also creative.’
How far, in your view, does this comment offer a helpful insight into The Importance of Being Earnest?
There is no doubt that dishonesty is creative in The Importance of Being Earnest, indeed, the entirety of the plot of mistaken identity would be impossible without it.
Some examples of dishonesty being creative within the plot are Cecily lying about Miss Prism’s headache to escape from lessons by having her tutor go for a walk with Doctor Chasuble, and Lane lying to protect Algy from the shame of having eaten all the cucumber sandwiches. Both of these seem to be polished, effortless lies, as if the characters lied like that all the time.
There are two distinct types of dishonesty discernible in The Importance of Being Earnest. The first is active deceit, such as the act of bunburyism, and the second is the inconsistencies in the characters’ speech which leads us to doubt a lot of what they are saying – they seem to value style above sincerity.
All these examples are in fact part of the same truth about these characters – that they obey impulse rather than social convention. They may be operating in a world which mirrors late Victorian society to the point of occasional sharp satire, but they are not governed by its rules.
On analysis, we see that the characters are governed by two things only: the impulses of themselves and others, and absurd, chance events.
In doing only that which comes naturally to the exclusion of that which they might have been expected to do, the characters’ changeability must have made them seem comically dishonest to a Victorian audience. However, this supposed dishonesty is in fact a very modern kind of honesty – an acknowledgement that human beings have no permanent self, and that the only way to ‘be oneself’ is to follow our every impulse, to ‘never change, except in [our] affections’. David Parker sums this up by saying ‘obedience to impulse is a defiant way of asserting some sort of basic identity…as impulses vary, so must the attitude of the individual’ .
This is a proto-existentialist idea, foreshadowing the works of authors such as Sartre and Camus by fifty years.
One of the main problems of existential philosophy for Camus, the one which he tried so hard to confront was the way that it so easily led to nihilism. If there are no absolute values, if everything is whimsical, it is easy to draw the conclusion that nothing matters.
In an introduction he wrote to the French translation of Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol entitled ‘The Artist in Prison’, Camus said: ‘the supreme aim of art is to confound all judges, to abolish all accusations, and to justify everything, life and mankind, in a light which is the light of beauty only because it is the light of truth’ . Not only does this echo the ‘beauty is truth’ philosophy espoused by the Victorian Aesthetes, it also justifies what Wilde is doing in The Importance of Being Earnest. As David Parker puts it, Wilde ‘rejoices in [chaos and disharmony], embraces them courageously and takes them as a challenge to human wit and ingenuity.’
This leads to the creativity to which the critic in the question is referring. Wilde begins with the premise that there is no unified force or reason behind existence, and proceeds to create from this premise one of the greatest comedies in the English literary tradition. Wilde’s characters begin from the premise that they must do whatever they feel like, and so a farce of truly unlikely proportions unfolds itself. When Algy says that he hates people ‘who are not serious about meals. It is so trivial of them’, he means what he says. Why should meals be less important to one than marriage (‘if I were ever to marry, I would certainly try to forget the fact’) when none of society’s belief structures have anything behind them but tradition? All the characters in The Importance of Being Earnest understand this important principle, even Lady Bracknell who, at first glance, appears to embody these social conventions. She speaks quite freely of being able to alter the fashionable side of Belgrave Square, and is equally open about her mercenary marriage to Lord Bracknell, despite the fact that she has just that moment condemned such marriages.
Wilde’s use of dishonesty in his characters is undeniably comic, but I believe that it is also creative, and I agree with the critic in the question because the existentialist ideas I find in Wilde’s work. He accepts that he starts with nothing but an absurd set of principles called ‘society’, and he uses that as a starting point to create something beautiful.
classics trip tomorrow. means time away from school, although i have to rush back for house drama dress rehearsal. i welcome the possibility that tomorrow i may actually learn something useful/interesting.
i mean, you could not tell which of them was male, and which female, although i am led to belive they were indeed a het couple.
today was a bit stereotypically teenage, but i shall recount it nevertheless. i spent a lot of my lessons wondering why i bother - classics with DJMC is always a joke, i have come to the conclusion that he doesn't really know what he's doing and we just go through the plays in the vague hope that we're all intelligent enough to draw our own conclusions. c'est-a-dire, i don't think i've learnt anything from him this year i could not have learnt 10 times better, in half the time, with a copy of the texts and one decent classical crit book.
and as for french; she gave us a test on a reading comp we'd already done, and then i aced my speaking (well, the verbal feedback was that i'd aced it - guess i oughtta wait for the mark, really) having done NO preparation whatsoever.
then i sat outside, on a bench in the freezing cold. for a whole hour. just to be alone and read andré gide.
i like this book so far. the more i read between wilde and camus, the more i realise it's not a few isolated genii, it's a whole movement. a whole movement of artists expressing in myriad beautiful & articulate ways that which i knew instinctively before i knew most of said artists existed. but it seems the rest of the world do not know. and need to be told.
oh, here's a one-hour timed essay on TIOBE
‘The characters’ compulsive dishonesty is not only comic: it is also creative.’
How far, in your view, does this comment offer a helpful insight into The Importance of Being Earnest?
There is no doubt that dishonesty is creative in The Importance of Being Earnest, indeed, the entirety of the plot of mistaken identity would be impossible without it.
Some examples of dishonesty being creative within the plot are Cecily lying about Miss Prism’s headache to escape from lessons by having her tutor go for a walk with Doctor Chasuble, and Lane lying to protect Algy from the shame of having eaten all the cucumber sandwiches. Both of these seem to be polished, effortless lies, as if the characters lied like that all the time.
There are two distinct types of dishonesty discernible in The Importance of Being Earnest. The first is active deceit, such as the act of bunburyism, and the second is the inconsistencies in the characters’ speech which leads us to doubt a lot of what they are saying – they seem to value style above sincerity.
All these examples are in fact part of the same truth about these characters – that they obey impulse rather than social convention. They may be operating in a world which mirrors late Victorian society to the point of occasional sharp satire, but they are not governed by its rules.
On analysis, we see that the characters are governed by two things only: the impulses of themselves and others, and absurd, chance events.
In doing only that which comes naturally to the exclusion of that which they might have been expected to do, the characters’ changeability must have made them seem comically dishonest to a Victorian audience. However, this supposed dishonesty is in fact a very modern kind of honesty – an acknowledgement that human beings have no permanent self, and that the only way to ‘be oneself’ is to follow our every impulse, to ‘never change, except in [our] affections’. David Parker sums this up by saying ‘obedience to impulse is a defiant way of asserting some sort of basic identity…as impulses vary, so must the attitude of the individual’ .
This is a proto-existentialist idea, foreshadowing the works of authors such as Sartre and Camus by fifty years.
One of the main problems of existential philosophy for Camus, the one which he tried so hard to confront was the way that it so easily led to nihilism. If there are no absolute values, if everything is whimsical, it is easy to draw the conclusion that nothing matters.
In an introduction he wrote to the French translation of Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol entitled ‘The Artist in Prison’, Camus said: ‘the supreme aim of art is to confound all judges, to abolish all accusations, and to justify everything, life and mankind, in a light which is the light of beauty only because it is the light of truth’ . Not only does this echo the ‘beauty is truth’ philosophy espoused by the Victorian Aesthetes, it also justifies what Wilde is doing in The Importance of Being Earnest. As David Parker puts it, Wilde ‘rejoices in [chaos and disharmony], embraces them courageously and takes them as a challenge to human wit and ingenuity.’
This leads to the creativity to which the critic in the question is referring. Wilde begins with the premise that there is no unified force or reason behind existence, and proceeds to create from this premise one of the greatest comedies in the English literary tradition. Wilde’s characters begin from the premise that they must do whatever they feel like, and so a farce of truly unlikely proportions unfolds itself. When Algy says that he hates people ‘who are not serious about meals. It is so trivial of them’, he means what he says. Why should meals be less important to one than marriage (‘if I were ever to marry, I would certainly try to forget the fact’) when none of society’s belief structures have anything behind them but tradition? All the characters in The Importance of Being Earnest understand this important principle, even Lady Bracknell who, at first glance, appears to embody these social conventions. She speaks quite freely of being able to alter the fashionable side of Belgrave Square, and is equally open about her mercenary marriage to Lord Bracknell, despite the fact that she has just that moment condemned such marriages.
Wilde’s use of dishonesty in his characters is undeniably comic, but I believe that it is also creative, and I agree with the critic in the question because the existentialist ideas I find in Wilde’s work. He accepts that he starts with nothing but an absurd set of principles called ‘society’, and he uses that as a starting point to create something beautiful.
classics trip tomorrow. means time away from school, although i have to rush back for house drama dress rehearsal. i welcome the possibility that tomorrow i may actually learn something useful/interesting.
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-02 02:08 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-02 02:29 pm (UTC)we're doing 3 short scenes from that play, that my friend alex has somehow managed to make sense with plot etc.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-02 02:40 pm (UTC)When I was in the 6th form I did 'the american dream' by edward albee, 'hay fever', by coward, one by me, and 'hall of healing' by sean o'casey.
Let me know if you win (I assume it's a competition)
Re:
Date: 2004-02-09 11:45 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-02 02:41 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-02 11:20 pm (UTC)it's a strange old place - boys & girls are seperate for all assemblies, house events, and even lessons (apart from in the last two years) but together for free time, orchestras, school plays, etc.
but, i do like it here.