Oscar Wilde

Wilde was an interesting character to say the least. He biographical section was one of the most intriguing and odd because his fame ended in such a public way. Wilde, despite his personal life, was an excellent writer who excelled in writing different plays. I think he enjoyed the drama that went along with the plays. Although he is most famous for his plays, one of the works that stood out most to me in this section was "Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray".

This piece is very short, but it held a lot of meaning for me. Wild wrote this preface in defense of his novel "Dorian Gray". The footnotes say that many people thought this novel of his "fostered immoral ideas", so Wilde wrote this preface in response to those critiques(846). The work begins by telling the role of both the artist and the viewer. He writes,"The artist is the creator of beautiful thing./To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim./ The critic is he who can translate into another manner of a new material his impression of the beautiful thing."(846). These lines really place a lot of importance on the critic. He is basically saying that all the artist does is create the art for what it is, but it is the critics job to give that art meaning. The critic is so important because they get to translate what the art work is actually representing or if it is even representing anything more than a piece of art.

He states,"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book./ Books are well written, or badly written."(846). This quote was very interesting to me. Perhaps the art itself is not immoral, it is just what the reader is taking from that piece of art. He even states at one point if you don't see the beauty in art, then you are corrupt because you are missing the point. You are not seeing the art for what it is, but instead you are looking for deeper meanings that may be misleading you. He also says if you do see the beauty in art then you have hope. You may not be interpreting the work correctly, but at least you accept the art for what it is...art.

He goes on to discuss all of these things that artist do not do. After all of this he states, "All art is at once surface and symbol./ Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril./ Those who read the symbol do so at their peril."(847). These lines I believe are the most meaningful in this passage. He is trying to show that artists are not trying to prove anything. They simply make the art, but it is the viewer that helps define the meaning of this art, and they do so at their own risk.

I really liked this preface and especially this last quote because it makes you realize just how important the critic is in defining the art. I was just talking to my Dad the other day about how I enjoyed this English class because it forces you to engage in the readings and draw some insights on your own. In previous English classes that I have taken, we would read a work and the teacher would tell us "what the author was trying to say". I always had a problem with this because...how does the teacher know what the author meant when he was writing? I do think that art requires you to form your own opinions and I think that is why this passage stood out so much to me.