Saturday, January 01, 2005
New Years Resolution. posted by Richard Seymour
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was, as his very name suggests, not one for self-indulgent asceticism. As generous in nature as his enemies were mean, he never denied himself anything except a few years on the end of his life. An upper class socialist, a gay family man, a blasphemous aesthete for whom religion held some strange allure, an invert who became a convert - never has a human being so thoroughly had his cake, eaten it, then had a few more. He was a master of volupté, as volumous as he was voluble. Even in his disgrace, he managed to emerge from prison in the sensuous garb of humility: refashioned for the intended readers of De Profundis as Jesus Christ. Hence George Bernard Shaw's caustic remark that Oscar had come out of prison quite unaltered. All of which is a way of introducing you to the following bon mots from Wilde:"There is a fatality about all good resolutions. They are invariably made too soon."
"Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak."
That should put a stop to all of that frenzied moral revival you're beating into yourself today.