ABSTRACT
If any fresh proof were needed of the cynical humour which distinguishes Mr. Wilde, it would be found in his idea of writing such a poem as The Sphinx in the metre of In Memoriam. Like its predecessor, too, the poem is written in an autobiographical form; but there the resemblance ceases. The poet imagines himself as a youth of twenty summers, and luxuriates in the licence of that callow age by limning in luscious lines the lewd imaginings suggested to him by a sphinx that has found its way into his study. The whole poem, which consists of about two hundred lines, is a catalogue (put in the form of questions) of the Sphinx’s amours, which, in the words of the American humourist, would appear to have been ‘frequent and free.’ Not very much is known about the Sphinx, and still less about her amours, and, at any rate, no one has before brought to her charge the reckless riot of self-indulgence of which she is here accused, so that the fullest credit may be given to Mr. Wilde for the ingenious fertility of his new conception of her. And certainly the most praiseworthy industry is here displayed in the collection of possible and impossible gods and other beings represented as attempting to satisfy the Sphinx’s apparently insatiable desires; while the turbid splendour in which the thoughts are clothed fully equalstheir Oriental profusion. Such lines, for example, as these might create astonishment elsewhere, but in the context they pass almost unobserved:
Or did you love the god of flies who plagued the Hebrews and was splashed With wine unto the waist? or Pasht, who had green beryls for her eyes? Or that young god, the Tyrian, who was more amorous than the dove Of Ashtaroth? or did you love the god of the Assyrian Whose wings, like strange transparent talc, rose high above his hawk-faced head, Painted with silver and with red, and ribbed with rods of oreichalch? Or did huge Apis from his car leap down, and lay before your feet Big blossoms of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured nenuphar?
