Wilde Parsa ang_12080.pdf - Dipòsit Digital de la UB - Universitat ...

fact all of them, given that, if being limited, it can be developed-, and so they can speak about a
minimal beauty thanks to which, according to the laws of pederasty, they fall in love with them.
Nevertheless, true beauty, that is, the possession of the science of virtue belongs to adults and
these ones, as soon as they have finished their educational mission, that is, after the ugly
adolescents have become handsome, give up loving them in order to search for new disciples.
As a matter of fact, Stoicism takes Diotima’s words to their last consequences and follows the
model of master which is represented by the Socrates at the end of the Symposium. What could
Wilde expect of Bosie Douglas, of his Greek boy? He could contemplate his beauty, be inspired
by it and, if his aim was to become a true Greek erastés, he had to extract from him and out of
himself an intellectual and not somatic beauty 59 . But, according to his words, the reverse was the
case, thus confirming that Diotima and the Socrates who despised Alcibiades had already shown
a short cut in order to avoid an old way which was not intellectual and which was really
dangerous. It was certainly Wilde, as adult, and not Bosie, who was expected to know that
compassion is not always a good adviser; that comedy in its pureness is as strange and rare as a
whole life without tears, without the frequent and human experience of tragedy; that joy can also
be a mask and, behind it, there can be waiting someone who will cause a real katastrophé; that
pleasure, when it becomes the only pole of an unstable balance which needs another one to
survive, may well spoil human beings; that he should have dominated and should not have been
dominated; that his superior character should have “triumphed” over Bosie’s inferior one; that art
and Ethics are not always two completely different realms; that passion not only causes
enthusiasm but, when it lacks any sort of limit, may well turn inevitably into something base and
ugly; that he should have the positive influence in order to develop Bosie’s little brain, awaken
his dead imagination and give him the heart he had not; and, finally –as seen some pages above-,
that he should have avoided being fascinated by destruction and being drawn into the abyss.
In a letter (12-II-1894), which is addressed to Ralph Payne, Wilde writes: “Basil Hallward is
what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be –in
other ages, perhaps (SL 116). A brief report of the theses defended by Hallward and Lord Henry
Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray in addition to an also brief passage from the transcriptions
of the trials of O. Wilde shows how difficult it was to accept the transcendent dictates of Platonic
love or, in other words, how many Victorians need to correct Plato in order to take him back to
that earlier sensualism upon which his philosophy had been based. Here is in the first place the
definition of the ideal:
. “The love that he bore him (Basil Hallward /Dorian) -for it was really love- had nothing in it that
was not noble and intellectual. It was not that mere physical admiration of beauty that is born of the
senses and that dies when the senses tire. It was such love as Michelangelo had known, and
Montaigne, and Winckelmann, and Shakespeare himself. Yes, Basil could have saved him. But it
59 (Diotima): ‘So when a man’s soul is so far divine that it is made pregnant with these from his youth,
and on attaining manhood immediately desires to bring forth and beget… and if he chances also on a soul
that is fair and noble and well endowed, he gladly cherishes the two combined in one; and straightway in
addressing such a person he is resourceful in discoursing of virtue and of what should be the good man’s
character and what pursuits; and so he takes in hand the other’s education. For I hold that by contact with
the fair one and by consorting with him he bears and brings forth his long-felt conception’ (209b-c -
translated by W. R. M. Lamb. Loeb Classical Library. London: William Heinemann Ltd.; Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983: ὅταν τις ἐκ νέου ἐγκύμων ᾖ τὴν ψυχήν, ᾔθεος ὢν καὶ
ἡκούσης τῆς ἡλικίας, τίκτειν τε καὶ γεννᾶν ἤδη ἐπιθυμῇ... ἂν ἐντύχῃ ψυχῇ καλῇ καὶ γενναίᾳ καὶ
εὐφυεῖ... πρὸς τοῦτον τὸν ἄνθρωπον εὐθὺς εὐπορεῖ λόγων περὶ ἀρετῆς καὶ περὶ οἷον χρὴ εἶναι τὸν
ἄνδρα τὸν ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἃ ἐπιτηδεύειν, καὶ ἐπιχειρεῖ παιδεύειν. ἁπτόμενος γὰρ οἶμαι τοῦ καλοῦ καὶ
ὁμιλῶν αὐτῷ, ἃ πάλαι ἐκύει τίκτει καὶ γεννᾷ).
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