Osculating Words: Editing Oscar

As an amateur writer, I suppose it appears exceedingly presumptuous to offer advice to the old master. But this seems so right. And it's been percolating for nigh onto forty years now. Oscar, berate me if you will, but at least hear me out.

Way back in 1975 or so, upon reading The Picture of Dorian Gray for the first time (of at least several dozen subsequent forays), my motto in life became:

"We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices."

However right from the get-go, I knowingly and even willfully made an edit. To any and all who would listen in that still spirited Age of Aquarius, I always coined it:

"We are not sent into this world to air our moral prejudices."

Read carefully: note my substitution of the demonstrative adjective "this" for the definite article "the."

What difference can that possibly make, I hear you ask?

A lot. (Or as my students were so fond of, alot.)

You see, the definite article Wilde employed directly implies there is but one world, a single reality. Very Victorian of him to parrot that belief, but society has always had a propensity to crush the spirit of the individual. Hell, that might even be the definition.

But the demonstrative adjective makes it clear that one particular (of many possible) worlds is being addressed.

In a nutshell, "the" is a Platonist word, "this" a formalist word. The former implies singularity, the latter a plurality. And as you all know, thanks to my exposure to G. H. Hardy and his magnificent A Mathematician's Apology at the same time as Dorian Gray, to be a formalist was always in the cards. Hence my early edit to one of Wilde's greatest epigrams. I don't apologize for making it, and will continue to spout the revision.

One final thing. I find it curious that Wilde, who assuredly was a formalist in his life's conduct (barring the final incident) chose to go with the flow and utter this thought like a Platonist. However, I've come to the conclusion that in many ways he was as Victorian as Gladstone, Disraeli and even the Widow of Windsor herself. I'll ask you to consider carefully the line from the last stanza of The Ballad of Reading Gaol for confirmation: