Edited by Moe Meyer - Get a Free Blog

Recommendations

Info

48 THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF CAMP claim. The very choice of rewriting the myth of Narcissus signals an intervention into the psycho-mythology of Victorian sexology. In his massive Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Havelock Ellis provides a synopsis of the sexual relevance of Narcissus in the late nineteenth century. He states: It has, however, recently been suggested that there really was present in the Greek mind the idea of Narcissus embodying an attitude of mind which would now be termed auto-erotic. In a fragment of a comedy by Kratinos there is an uncertain phrase which Meinecke reads as “the olisbos of Narcissus.” The olisbos, as we know, was primarily an instrument for the sexual gratification of women. But there is reason to believe that even in the days of Greek myth it was recognized that such a device could have a masculine use per anum, and there is a story of Dionysus in point. Kratinos would thus be making fun of a Narcissist, though. as he wrote in the spirit of caricature and parody he was only concerned with a physical manifestation of that disposition. (1900:3: 348) I will examine the problematic interplay of narcissism and sexual inversion marked here at length. For the present it is sufficient to recognize that the mere invocation of Narcissus suggests the potentiality of sexual inversion, and that this potentiality is further activated within Wilde’s text by its linkage with a textual inversion. 5 While there is little within the text of “The Disciple” aside from the use of the trope of inversion to signal a direct engagement of the images of the invert carried within Ellis’s description, the image of Narcissus also plays out a complicated web within Wilde’s canon and life, a dispersion of textual images and historical moments that leads us further into the language of sexology. The house at 16 Tite Street, into which Wilde moved in January of 1885, sported dark green walls, and “On the mantelpiece was a small green bronze figure of Narcissus” (Ellmann 1988:257). The green of the walls might suggest to us the green of the Oreads’ tresses in “The Disciple.” It is a color that repeatedly tints Wilde’s writings at crucial and understated moments. “Pen, Pencil and Poison,” for example, is subtitled “A Study in Green” (1889:320). The reason for the phrase is only lightly tossed off in the study. In describing the character of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, a minor member of the literati, noted dandy, and notorious murderer, Wilde mentions that “He had that curious love of green, which in individuals, is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals” (324). Yet this seemingly trivial question of style is pointedly stressed by the title of the study; and in any event, Wilde himself has warned us to press such trivial details: “In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential” (1894:433). Or, if we trace not the walls but the bronze itself, we might find this to be the same Narcissus who resurfaces in “The Critic as Artist,” the bronze Narcissus whose
NARCISSUS IN THE WILDE 49 “eyelids…are folded in sleep” and who appears when Gilbert yearns to “play… some mad scarlet thing by Dvorak” (1891:349). Frank Harris published “Pen, Pencil and Poison” in The Fortnightly Review in January 1889, and “The Critic as Artist” appeared in Wilde’s essay collection, Intentions, in 1891. Given these dates we might safely assume that the text bears at least a possible familiarity with the cultural currents that produced Havelock Ellis’s Sexual Inversion, which first found publication in 1897. 6 Yet the need for a direct chronology is undermined by Wilde’s own inverted advice: “The ages live in history through their anachronisms” (1894:434). Moreover, the case for an intertext is again supported by the color green, for in a curious moment in Ellis’s “scientific” tract, we are presented with a lesson in the history of fashion: “It has also been remarked that inverts exhibit a preference for green garments. In Rome cinaedi were for this reason called galbanati. Chevalier remarks that some years ago a band of paederasts at Paris wore green cravats as a badge” (1901:177). This “coloring” of the invert surfaces again in the tract and again draws us back to Wilde, for Ellis suggests a correlation between sexual inversion and synesthesia, the physiological process whereby impressions associated with one sense become translated through a different sense: Or we may compare inversion to such a phenomenon as color-hearing, in which there is not so much a defect, as an abnormality of nervous tracks producing new and involuntary combinations. Just as the color-hearer instinctively associates colors with sounds, like the young Japanese lady who remarked when listening to singing, “That boy’s voice is red!” so the invert has his sexual sensations brought into relationship with objects that are normally without sexual appeal. (1901:186–187) Wearing green and hearing red become analogies for the invert—and remind us, of course, that the bronze Narcissus against the green walls of Wilde’s house resurfaces in “The Critic as Artist” at the precise moment that Gilbert yearns to hear “some mad scarlet thing by Dvorak.” 7 If Wilde’s writing seems to lead us toward Ellis, Ellis’s writing also leads us back to Wilde. Twice within his essay on Narcissism, Ellis uses Wilde as his grounding example: “Novelists have not only noted the spirit of Narcissus in their creations, they have sometimes demonstrated it in themselves, consciously or unconsciously. This is perhaps true of Oscar Wilde, the author of Dorian Gray” (1900: 3:352); “Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray…illustrates various aspects of Narcissism, to a greater extent probably than any other imaginative work in English literature, and in it Wilde directly invokes Narcissus” (3:369). “The Disciple,” then, leads us into an examination of sexual representation through two related, but different, courses. There is the direct path into sexology signaled by the content of the poem (the image of Narcissus). Then there are the vague and plural textual cathexes that shoot associations in multiple directions
Page 2 and 3:
THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF CAMP
Page 4 and 5:
First published 1994 by Routledge 1
Page 6 and 7:
CONTENTS List of plates vi List of
Page 8 and 9:
11 Richard Halverson as Lady Enid a
Page 10 and 11:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to tha
Page 12 and 13:
2 THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF CAMP
Page 14 and 15:
4 THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF CAMP
Page 16 and 17: 6 THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF CAMP
Page 30 and 31: 1 PERFORMING “AKIMBO” Queer pri
Page 54 and 55: Plate 1 Joan Jett Blakk, “The May
Page 56 and 57: Plate 3 Prince Rupert, from a broad
Page 58 and 59: Plate 5 Actor Robert Wilks, from Co
Page 60 and 61: Plate 7 Antinous and Dancing Master
Page 62 and 63: 2 NARCISSUS IN THE WILDE Textual ca
Page 112 and 113: 4 REVAMPING THE GAY SENSIBILITY Que
Page 114 and 115: 96 REVAMPING THE GAY SENSIBILITY re
Page 116 and 117:
98 REVAMPING THE GAY SENSIBILITY cr
Page 118 and 119:
100 REVAMPING THE GAY SENSIBILITY m
Page 120 and 121:
102 REVAMPING THE GAY SENSIBILITY t
Page 122 and 123:
104 REVAMPING THE GAY SENSIBILITY p
Page 124 and 125:
106 REVAMPING THE GAY SENSIBILITY c
Page 126 and 127:
108 REVAMPING THE GAY SENSIBILITY o
Page 128 and 129:
110 REVAMPING THE GAY SENSIBILITY J
Page 130 and 131:
112 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION pieces th
Page 132 and 133:
114 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION practitio
Page 134 and 135:
116 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION This meta
Page 136 and 137:
118 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION specifica
Page 138 and 139:
120 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION great tra
Page 140 and 141:
122 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION In her pr
Page 142 and 143:
124 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION Dynes emp
Page 144 and 145:
126 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION Case, Sue
Page 146 and 147:
Plate 9 Claire Moed as Sir Oliver S
Page 148 and 149:
Plate 11 Richard Halverson as Lady
Page 150 and 151:
Plate 14 Liberace in long cape with
Page 152 and 153:
Plate 16 Liberace was Count Dracula
Page 154 and 155:
THE CAMP TRACE IN CORPORATE AMERICA
Page 156 and 157:
Page 158 and 159:
Page 160 and 161:
Page 162 and 163:
Page 164 and 165:
Page 166 and 167:
Page 168 and 169:
Page 170 and 171:
Page 172 and 173:
The key value, however, among these
Page 174 and 175:
eternal youthfulness; and the way h
Page 176 and 177:
Page 178 and 179:
Page 180 and 181:
Page 182 and 183:
7 TAKING OUT THE TRASH Camp and the
Page 184 and 185:
THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF CAMP 15
Page 186 and 187:
Page 188 and 189:
Page 190 and 191:
Page 192 and 193:
Page 194 and 195:
Page 196 and 197:
Page 198 and 199:
Page 200:
homosocialism 35-6, 43-4 Hutcheon,
show all

Edited by Moe Meyer - Get a Free Blog

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?