Marius The Epicurean and Imaginary Portraits
Pater was now at the centre of a small but gifted circle in Oxford – he had tutored Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1866 and the two remained friends till September 1879 when Hopkins left Oxford – and he was gaining respect in the London literary world and beyond, numbering some of the Pre-Raphaelites among his friends. Conscious of his growing influence and aware that the 'Conclusion' to his Renaissance could be misconstrued as amoral, he withdrew the essay from the second edition in 1877 (he was to reinstate it with minor modifications in the third in 1888) and now set about clarifying and exemplifying his ideas through fiction.
To this end he published in 1878 in Macmillan's Magazine an evocative semi-autobiographical sketch entitled 'Imaginary Portraits 1. The Child in the House' about some of the formative experiences of his childhood. This was to be the first of a dozen or so "Imaginary Portraits", a genre and term Pater could be said to have invented and in which he came to specialise. These are not so much stories – plotting is limited and dialogue absent – as psychological studies of fictional characters in historical settings, often personifications of new concepts at turning-points in the history of ideas or emotion. Some look forward, dealing with innovation in the visual arts and philosophy; others look back, dramatizing neo-pagan themes. Many are veiled self-portraits exploring dark personal preoccupations.
Planning a major work, Pater now resigned his teaching duties in 1882, though he retained his Fellowship and the college rooms he had occupied since 1864, and made a research visit to Rome. In his philosophical novel Marius the Epicurean (1885), an extended imaginary portrait set in the Rome of the Antonines, which Pater believed had parallels with his own century, he examines the "sensations and ideas" of a young Roman of integrity, who pursues an ideal of the "aesthetic" life – a life based on αίσθησις, perception – tempered by asceticism. Leaving behind the religion of his childhood, sampling one philosophy after another, becoming secretary to the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius, Marius tests his author's theory of the stimulating effect of the pursuit of sensation and insight as an ideal in itself. The novel's opening and closing episodes betray Pater's continuing nostalgia for the atmosphere, ritual and community of the religious faith he had lost. Marius was favourably reviewed and sold well; a second edition came out in the same year. For the third edition (1892) Pater made extensive stylistic revisions.
In 1885, on the resignation of John Ruskin, Pater became a candidate for the Slade Professorship of Fine Art at Oxford University, but though in many ways the strongest of the field, he withdrew from the competition, discouraged by continuing hostility in official quarters. In the wake of this disappointment but buoyed by the success of Marius, he moved with his sisters from North Oxford (2 Bradmore Road), their home since 1869, to London (12 Earl's Terrace, Kensington), where he was to remain till 1893 and where he was to enjoy his status of minor literary celebrity.
From 1885 to 1887 Pater published four new imaginary portraits in Macmillan's Magazine, each set at a turning-point in the history of ideas or art – 'A Prince of Court Painters' (1885) (on Watteau and Jean-Baptiste Pater), 'Sebastian van Storck' (1886) (17th-century Dutch society and painting, and the philosophy of Spinoza), 'Denys L'Auxerrois' (1886) (the medieval cathedral-builders), and 'Duke Carl of Rosenmold' (1887) (the German Renaissance). These were collected in the volume Imaginary Portraits (1887). Here Pater's examination of the tensions between tradition and innovation, intellect and sensation, asceticism and aestheticism, social mores and amorality, becomes increasingly complex. Implied warnings against the pursuit of extremes in matters intellectual, aesthetic or sensual are unmistakable. The second portrait, 'Sebastian van Storck', a powerful critique of philosophical solipsism, is perhaps Pater's most striking work of fiction.
Read more about this topic: Walter Pater, Career and Writings