Intentions. Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. His parents were successful Dublin intellectuals, and Wilde became fluent in French and German early in life. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and subsequently won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was heavily influenced by John Ruskin and Walter Pate. Wilde proved himself to be an outstanding classicist. After university, he moved to London and became involved with the fashionable cultural and social circles of the day. At the age of just 25 he was well-known as a wit and a dandy, and as a spokesman for aestheticism—an artistic movement that emphasized aesthetic values ahead of socio-political themes—he undertook a lecture tour to the United States in 1882, before eventually returning to London to try his hand at journalism. It was also around this time that he produced most of his well-known short fiction.

In 1891, Wilde published The Picture of Dorian Gray, his only novel. Reviewers criticised the novel's decadence and homosexual allusions, although it was popular nonetheless. From 1892, Wilde focussed on playwriting. In that year, he gained commercial and critical success with Lady Windermere's Fan, and followed it with the comedy A Woman of No Importance (1893) and An Ideal Husband (1895). Then came Wilde's most famous play, The Importance of Being Earnest – a farcical comedy which cemented his artistic reputation and is now seen as his masterpiece.

In 1895, the Marquess of Queensbury, who objected to his son spending so much time with Wilde because of Wilde's flamboyant behaviour and reputation, publicly insulted him. In response, Wilde brought an unsuccessful slander suit against him. The result of this inability to prove slander was his own trial on charges of sodomy, and the revealing to the transfixed Victorian public of salacious details of Wilde's private life followed. Wilde was found guilty and sentenced to two years of hard labour.

Wilde was released from prison in 1897, having suffered from a number of ailments and injuries. He left England the next day for the continent, to spend his last three years in penniless exile. He settled in Paris, and didn't write anymore, declaring “I can write, but have lost the joy of writing.” Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on in November of 1900, converting to Catholicism on his deathbed.

THE DECAY OF LYING

AN OBSERVATION

A DIALOGUE.

PERSONS: Cyril and Vivian.

SCENE: The Library of a country house in Nottinghamshire.

CYRIL. (coming in through the open window from the terrace) My dear Vivian, don’t coop yourself up all day in the library. It is a perfectly lovely afternoon. The air is exquisite. There is a mist upon the woods, like the purple bloom upon a plum. Let us go and lie on the grass and smoke cigarettes and enjoy Nature.

VIVIAN. Enjoy Nature! I am glad to say that I have entirely lost that faculty. People tell us that Art makes us love Nature more than we loved her before; that it reveals her secrets to us; and that after a careful study of Corot and Constable we see things in her that had escaped our observation. My own experience is that the more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature’s lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition. Nature has good intentions, of course, but, as Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out. When I look at a landscape I cannot help seeing all its defects. It is fortunate for us, however, that Nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we should have no art at all. Art is our spirited protest, our gallant attempt to teach Nature her proper place. As for the infinite variety of Nature, that is a pure myth. It is not to be found in Nature herself. It resides in the imagination, or fancy, or cultivated blindness of the man who looks at her.

CYRIL. Well, you need not look at the landscape. You can lie on the grass and smoke and talk.

VIVIAN. But Nature is so uncomfortable. Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects. Why, even Morris’s poorest workman could make you a more comfortable seat than the whole of Nature can. Nature pales before the furniture of ‘the street which from Oxford has borrowed its name,’ as the poet you love so much once vilely phrased it. I don’t complain. If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture, and I prefer houses to the open air. In a house we all feel of the proper proportions. Everything is subordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure. Egotism itself, which is so necessary to a proper sense of human dignity, is entirely the result of indoor life. Out of doors one becomes abstract and impersonal. One’s individuality absolutely leaves one. And then Nature is so indifferent, so unappreciative. Whenever I am walking in the park here, I always feel that I am no more to her than the cattle that browse on the slope, or the burdock that blooms in the ditch. Nothing is more evident than that Nature hates Mind. Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. Our splendid physique as a people is entirely due to our national stupidity. I only hope we shall be able to keep this great historic bulwark of our happiness for many years to come; but I am afraid that

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