Oscar wilde the decay of lying. The Decay Of Lying by Oscar Wilde 2022-10-24
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Oscar Wilde's "The Decay of Lying" is a brilliant and satirical essay that explores the nature of art and the role of the artist in society. In the essay, Wilde argues that lying, or the creation of fiction, is a necessary and integral part of the artistic process.
Wilde begins by posing the question of why people lie, and asserts that lying is a natural and essential aspect of human nature. He argues that lying is not a moral failing, but rather a creative act that allows us to escape the dullness and mediocrity of everyday life. Through lying, we are able to imagine and create new worlds, and to bring beauty and meaning to our lives.
The essay then goes on to discuss the role of the artist in society. Wilde argues that the artist is not merely a creator of beautiful objects, but rather a creator of truth. The artist is able to see beyond the mundane and the superficial, and to reveal the deeper truths and beauty of the world.
However, Wilde also argues that the artist must be careful not to become too immersed in their own creations, as this can lead to a kind of decay or degeneration. The artist must maintain a balance between imagination and reality, and must not allow their art to become a mere escape from the world.
Overall, "The Decay of Lying" is a thought-provoking and engaging essay that offers a unique perspective on the nature of art and the role of the artist in society. Through his wit and eloquence, Wilde invites readers to consider the importance of lying and imagination in our lives, and to embrace the creative potential of the human spirit.
The Decay Of Lying quotes by Oscar Wilde
Art never expresses anything but itself. We are merely carrying out, with footnotes and unnecessary additions, the whim or fancy or creative vision of a great novelist. Life—and by extension people—thus attempts to express itself through art by mimicking it, and this counterintuitively suggests that art leads life, even though life seems to be reflective of art. I know that you are fond of Japanese things. If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture, and I prefer houses to the open air. They never paint what they see. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac.
Analysis Of Oscar Wilde's The Decay Of Lying By Vincent Van...
I am afraid you are not eligible. When I look at a landscape I cannot help seeing all its defects. In fact, she was a kind of Proteus, and as much a failure in all her transformations as was that wondrous sea-god when Odysseus laid hold of him. It was a most piteous tale, as the girl had ended by running away with a man absolutely inferior to her, not merely in social station, but in character and intellect also. She clothed her children in strange raiment and gave them masks, and at her bidding the antique world rose from its marble tomb.
This is the principle of my new aesthetics; and it is this, more than that vital connection between form and substance, on which Mr. And now let us go out on the terrace, where 'droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,' while the evening star 'washes the dusk with silver. By its means he has planted round his garden a hedge full of thorns, and red with wonderful roses. Being of course very much frightened and a little hurt, it began to scream, and in a few seconds the whole street was full of rough people who came pouring out of the houses like ants. Everything is subordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure. Why, even Morris's poorest workman could make you a more comfortable seat than the whole of Nature can.
The bright, vivid hues of Point Reyes Country Road express hope and energy, but the dark, somber colors of Wheatfield with Crows oozes with depression and ominous vibes. She can bid the almond tree blossom in winter, and send the snow upon the ripe cornfield. The only beautiful things, as somebody once said, are the things that do not concern us. Where the cultured catch an effect, the uncultured catch cold. But it was not so. But these things merely produce health, they do not produce beauty.
When I look at a landscape I cannot help seeing all its defects. In the meantime, you had better go back to your wearisome uncomfortable Nature, and leave me to correct my proofs. Many a worthy clergyman, who passes his life in admirable works of kindly charity, lives and dies unnoticed and unknown; but it is sufficient for some shallow uneducated passman out of either University to get up in his pulpit and express his doubts about Noah's ark, or Balaam's ass, or Jonah and the whale, for half of London to flock to hear him, and to sit open-mouthed in rapt admiration at his superb intellect. But he has lately committed literary suicide. Remote from reality, and with her eyes turned away from the shadows of the cave, Art reveals her own perfection, and the wondering crowd that watches the opening of the marvellous, many-petalled rose fancies that it is its own history that is being told to it, its own spirit that is finding expression in a new form. She has hawk-faced gods that worship her, and the centaurs gallop at her side. I don't know why I added that, but I remember I had a sort of dread over me that she might do the same thing.
Indeed at times, as in Germinal, there is something almost epic in his work. At first in the hands of the monks Dramatic Art was abstract, decorative and mythological. All that we desired to point out was, that the magnificent work of the Elizabethan and Jacobean artists contained within itself the seeds of its own dissolution, and that, if it drew some of its strength from using life as rough material, it drew all its weakness from using life as an artistic method. He hunts down the obvious with the enthusiasm of a short-sighted detective. But let me get to the end of the passage: 'Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. Sometimes it returns upon its footsteps, and revives some antique form, as happened in the archaistic movement of late Greek Art, and in the pre-Raphaelite movement of our own day. Shall I read you what I have written? Why, even Sleep has played us false, and has closed up the gates of ivory, and opened the gates of horn.
Elaborate rules were laid down for the guidance of mankind, and an important school of literature grew up round the subject. As for Balzac, he was a most remarkable combination of the artistic temperament with the scientific spirit. He ran and took refuge in a nearby building and eventually paid the crowd a small sum to induce them to leave him alone. His literature is a strong, political and social criticism. James Payn is an adept in the art of concealing what is not worth finding. Why, even Morris's poorest workman could make you a more comfortable seat than the whole of Nature can.
The Decay of Lying and Other Essays by Oscar Wilde
Young men have committed suicide because Rolla did so, have died by their own hand because by his own hand Werther died. He is too fond of going directly to life, and borrowing life's natural utterance. At present, people see fogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects. Indeed there are moments, rare, it is true, but still to be observed from time to time, when Nature becomes absolutely modern. The artist also thinks of nature as a thing of beauty and grandeur. It is not to be used or exploited but to be observed and contemplated. Hence came their objection to realism.
In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of a sunset. But the mere fact that they are interested in these things makes them unsuitable subjects for Art. One feels it as one wades through their columns. I admit, however, that he set far too high a value on modernity of form, and that, consequently, there is no book of his that, as an artistic masterpiece, can rank with Salammbo or Esmond, or The Cloister and the Hearth, or the Vicomte de Bragelonne. The theory is certainly a very curious one, but to make it complete you must show that Nature, no less than Life, is an imitation of Art. Champing his gilded oats, the Hippogriff will stand in our stalls, and over our heads will float the Blue Bird singing of beautiful and impossible things, of things that are lovely and that never happen, of things that are not and that should be.
It would seem as though artists draw the inspiration for their works from life, but in reality their desire for self-expression means artists actually end up drawing from art to inspire their lives. Ruskin once described the characters in George Eliot's novels as being like the sweepings of a Pentonville omnibus, but M. Something may, perhaps, be urged on behalf of the Bar. It was simply a very second-rate Turner, a Turner of a bad period, with all the painter's worst faults exaggerated and over- emphasised. And as for Life, she is the solvent that breaks up Art, the enemy that lays waste her house.
