VIVIAN.I assure you it is the case,and the amusing part of the whole thing is that the story of the cherry-tree is an absolute myth.However,you must not think that I am too despondent about the artistic future either of America or of our own country.
Listen to this:-
'That some change will take place before this century has drawn to its close we have no doubt whatsoever.Bored by the tedious and improving conversation of those who have neither the wit to exaggerate nor the genius to romance,tired of the intelligent person whose reminiscences are always based upon memory,whose statements are invariably limited by probability,and who is at any time liable to be corroborated by the merest Philistine who happens to be present,Society sooner or later must return to its lost leader,the cultured and fascinating liar.Who he was who first,without ever having gone out to the rude chase,told the wandering cavemen at sunset how he had dragged the Megatherium from the purple darkness of its jasper cave,or slain the Mammoth in single combat and brought back its gilded tusks,we cannot tell,and not one of our modern anthropologists,for all their much-boasted science,has had the ordinary courage to tell us.Whatever was his name or race,he certainly was the true founder of social intercourse.For the aim of the liar is simply to charm,to delight,to give pleasure.He is the very basis of civilised society,and without him a dinner-party,even at the mansions of the great,is as dull as a lecture at the Royal Society,or a debate at the Incorporated Authors,or one of Mr.Burnand's farcical comedies.
'Nor will he be welcomed by society alone.Art,breaking from the prison-house of realism,will run to greet him,and will kiss his false,beautiful lips,knowing that he alone is in possession of the great secret of all her manifestations,the secret that Truth is entirely and absolutely a matter of style;while Life -poor,probable,uninteresting human life -tired of repeating herself for the benefit of Mr.Herbert Spencer,scientific historians,and the compilers of statistics in general,will follow meekly after him,and try to reproduce,in her own ****** and untutored way,some of the marvels of which he talks.
'No doubt there will always be critics who,like a certain writer in the SATURDAY REVIEW,will gravely censure the teller of fairy tales for his defective knowledge of natural history,who will measure imaginative work by their own lack of any imaginative faculty,and will hold up their ink-stained hands in horror if some honest gentleman,who has never been farther than the yew-trees of his own garden,pens a fascinating book of travels like Sir John Mandeville,or,like great Raleigh,writes a whole history of the world,without knowing anything whatsoever about the past.To excuse themselves they will try and shelter under the shield of him who made Prospero the magician,and gave him Caliban and Ariel as his servants,who heard the Tritons blowing their horns round the coral reefs of the Enchanted Isle,and the fairies singing to each other in a wood near Athens,who led the phantom kings in dim procession across the misty Scottish heath,and hid Hecate in a cave with the weird sisters.They will call upon Shakespeare -they always do -and will quote that hackneyed passage forgetting that this unfortunate aphorism about Art holding the mirror up to Nature,is deliberately said by Hamlet in order to convince the bystanders of his absolute insanity in all art-matters.'
CYRIL.Ahem!Another cigarette,please.
VIVIAN.My dear fellow,whatever you may say,it is merely a dramatic utterance,and no more represents Shakespeare's real views upon art than the speeches of Iago represent his real views upon morals.But let me get to the end of the passage:
'Art finds her own perfection within,and not outside of,herself.
She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.
She is a veil,rather than a mirror.She has flowers that no forests know of,birds that no woodland possesses.She makes and unmakes many worlds,and can draw the moon from heaven with a scarlet thread.Hers are the "forms more real than living man,"and hers the great archetypes of which things that have existence are but unfinished copies.Nature has,in her eyes,no laws,no uniformity.She can work miracles at her will,and when she calls monsters from the deep they come.She can bid the almond-tree blossom in winter,and send the snow upon the ripe cornfield.At her word the frost lays its silver finger on the burning mouth of June,and the winged lions creep out from the hollows of the Lydian hills.The dryads peer from the thicket as she passes by,and the brown fauns smile strangely at her when she comes near them.She has hawk-faced gods that worship her,and the centaurs gallop at her side.'
CYRIL.I like that.I can see it.Is that the end?
VIVIAN.No.There is one more passage,but it is purely practical.It simply suggests some methods by which we could revive this lost art of Lying.
CYRIL.Well,before you read it to me,I should like to ask you a question.What do you mean by saying that life,'poor,probable,uninteresting human life,'will try to reproduce the marvels of art?I can quite understand your objection to art being treated as a mirror.You think it would reduce genius to the position of a cracked looking-glass.But you don't mean to say that you seriously believe that Life imitates Art,that Life in fact is the mirror,and Art the reality?
