Gruto wrote:Style and taste might very well come from the inside but it's doesn't mean that style and taste are in any way personal, authentic or interesting. We shouldn't forget that.
I agree that MODES are borrowed, in that we don't dress in togas like the ancients, or like the medievals, or like the Victorians. Nor did we invent a revolutionary new way to cover our nudity. However, taste and style are profoundly personal, authentic (and hopefully interesting) and apply to any and all ages and modes. Even these borrowed modes that give us a historical identity (the worsted suit, the tweed jacket, the flannel trousers, the Fedora hat, the Brogue shoe) are personalized according to the individual taste and style.
Gruto wrote:To quote Oscar W:
"Most People Are Other People. Their Thoughts Are Someone Elses Opinions, Their Lives a Mimicry, Their Passions a Quotation."
Excellent quotation - what Wilde means is to deplore those people who never "possess their soul" before they die, who never "come into contact with their soul", who never realize their true nature and potential. A great passage - here is the context:
"I bore up against everything with some stubbornness of will and much rebellion of nature, till I had absolutely nothing left in the world but one thing. I had lost my name, my position, my happiness, my freedom, my wealth. I was a prisoner and a pauper. But I still had my children left. Suddenly they were taken away from me by the law. It was a blow so appalling that I did not know what to do, so I flung myself on my knees, and bowed my head, and wept, and said, 'The body of a child is as the body of the Lord: I am not worthy of either.' That moment seemed to save me. I saw then that the only thing for me was to accept everything.
Since then - curious as it will no doubt sound - I have been happier. It was of course my soul in its ultimate essence that I had reached. In many ways I had been its enemy, but I found it waiting for me as a friend. When one comes in contact with the soul it makes one simple as a child, as Christ said one should be.
It is tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man,' says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are some one else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Christ was not merely the supreme individualist, but he was the first individualist in history. People have tried to make him out an ordinary philanthropist, or ranked him as an altruist with the scientific and sentimental. But he was really neither one nor the other. Pity he has, of course, for the poor, for those who are shut up in prisons, for the lowly, for the wretched; but he has far more pity for the rich, for the hard hedonists, for those who waste their freedom in becoming slaves to things, for those who wear soft raiment and live in kings' houses. Riches and pleasure seemed to him to be really greater tragedies than poverty or sorrow. And as for altruism, who knew better than he that
it is vocation not volition that determines us, and that one cannot gather grapes of thorns or figs from thistles?"
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De Profundis, Oscar Wilde
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