Page:Writings of Oscar Wilde - Volume 01.djvu/25



The writings of Oscar Wilde, brilliant and even beautiful as they are, are but the marginalia, so to say, of a striking fantastic personality. Some writers seem to be all writer. As with a silkworm, we forget them entirely in what they produce. They themselves have no personal existence or interest for us. With Oscar Wilde it was precisely otherwise, as he himself hinted when he said that he gave his talent to his writings—but kept his genius for his conversation. A certain very great Norwegian, happily still alive, once said to me of Ibsen: "He is only a pen!" Perhaps one might imagine a worse fate than to be only a pen such as Ibsen; but there is no need to emphasize what the speaker meant. Perhaps the really great writers are only pens—scriveners of the universe and humanity, rather than human beings, with