Oscar Wilde

I was so excited about reading Oscar Wilde. I had read The Importance of Being Earnest in high school and loved it. I was really looking forward to doing a blog on something that I felt very comfortable with. However, when I began to read the background of Wilde, I had a feeling that I was going to enjoy some of his other works too. While reading his background I found several things very interesting that I had not known previously such as Oscar’s relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas and his time spent in prison for indecent acts. A quote that I enjoyed from the background information is one that Wilde was celebrated for “I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.” (828). The book explains that this remark seemed to epitomize aestheticism, which is the acceptance of artistic beauty and taste as a fundamental standard, ethical and other standards being secondary. While attempting to find a deeper meaning to this quote via research I found a second quote of Wilde that I enjoyed. This second quote—“The two great turning points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison.” –can be found in his work De Profundis.

After reading the works provided in our books a few stood out to me. I enjoyed reading The Decay of Lying very much. I found it very interesting that the two characters having the discussion about lying, art, nature and life are Wilde’s two boys Cyril and Vivian (even though his son spells it Vyvyan). This allowed me to assume that the two characters were brothers and their arguing persuaded me to believe this just as well.

The entire play focuses on an article that Vivian is writing, in which he argues that the art of lying is vanishing. Vivian points out that “The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelists presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction.” (833-834). In my opinion, it seems that Vivian is arguing that art is suppose to be full of lies and exaggerations because that is what truly makes the story. I also found it very interesting that Cyril questioned “you don’t mean to say that you seriously believe that Life imitates Art, that Life in fact is the mirror, and Art the reality?” (839). To which Vivian responds “Certainly I do. Paradox though it may seem it is none the less true that Life imitates art far more than Art imitates life.” (839). In another of my classes, we discussed whether modern day media (television shows in particular) are a reflection of society or whether society is a reflection of these television shows. I thought it was interesting how this argument of Vivian seemed to go hand-in-hand with what we were discussing and wish I had read this sooner so I could have used it in my argument.

My favorite part of Vivian’s article is when he is describing Art:

"Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror. She has flowers that noforests know of, birds that no woodland possesses. She makes and unmakes many worlds, and can draw the moon from heaven with a scarlet thread. Hers are the "forms more real than living man," and hers the great archetypes of which things that have existence are but unfinished copies. Nature has, in her eyes, no laws, no uniformity. She can work miracles at her will, and when she calls monsters from the deep they come. She can bid the almond-tree blossom in winter, and send the snow upon the ripe cornfield. At her word the frost lays its silver finger on the burning mouth of June, and the winged lions creep out from the hollows of the Lydian hills. The dryads peer from the thicket as she passes by, and the brown fauns smile strangely at her when she comes near them. She has hawk-faced gods that worship her, and the centaurs gallop ather side.” (839).

I loved the extremely passionate descriptions and felt like I was actually seeing what was being described to me, much like Cyril as he replied “I like that. I can see it.” (839).