San Francisco Chronicle - Sunday, April 14, 1895
This report was originally published in English. Machine translations may be available in other languages.
LITERATURE - REVIEW, NEWS, NOTES
Far different is the class which runs after the false gods and goddesses of the erotic. Fresh in the memory of those who can recall events of twelve years ago is the esthetic craze, of which the now unspeakable Oscar Wilde posed as the high priest and prophet. It must be said to Oscar's credit that he posed like an artist and that he handled the esthetic fad like the master of charlatanry that he was. Grievous must have been the burden of this fad, but he had an eye single to the notoriety that meant to him hard coin and assured reputation, and he never neglected the minutest details of his posing until the play was laughed off the stage by Gilbert's "Patience." This spurious estheticism had its foundation in fleshly imaginings, like Rossetti's poetry, and this veiled indecency was far more suggestive, and therefore, far more dangerous than the coarseness of Congreve or Wycherley, Fielding or Smollett.