Wilde, Oscar - The picture of Dorian Grey (2)

Oscar Wilde

“The picture of Dorian Gray”: the preface

“The artist is the creator of beautiful things”, as “Ode on a Grecian Urn” makes something eternal; what is beautiful is eternal.

“To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim”: reveal art itself, this gives us an idea of the artist, but we don’t know him. From this line we can know only art. We are simply looking at something that is eternal; what is eternal is beautiful.

“Translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things”: from the work of art, talk about another matter. This perfection stresses a sort of spirituality. Oscar Wilde suggested that art is for art’s sake.

“The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a made of autobiography”: personal interpretation of the result on autobiography, an eternal work of art from his own point of view.

Content words: noun, adjective, verbs that say an action, are useful to understand the meaning.

He does not respect what the work of art is.

Corruption: find ugly meanings in beautiful things.

Cultivated: someone finds beautiful meaning in beautiful things.

An artist needs to freeze a moment; there is not a moral intent, they want to describe what is in front of them. They are unable to appreciate perfection, what is uncorrupted by time.

Critics do not see the real intention of the artist. Critics are common people and they don’t understand what the artist wants to suggest. If you say that there’s ugliness, it is your own opinion; you judge something that is forever. True poetry eternizes.

Esthetic movement: art is for art’s sake. Eternal value of art, freezing something.

“Books well written or badly written, that is all”: we have not to give a judgment to a book. Books, canvas, urn are the same. Give us an image. Books teach something to us.

Beauty is the only important thing.

Realism and Caliban

“The 19th century dislike of realism in the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass”: people dislike the real situation that they see. Realism suggested ugliness.

Caliban is a character of “The Tempest” by Shakespeare; he is an inferior fellow, as a worker of the Victorian age, or a savage that the British consider inferior.

Personal interpretation of reality. Don’t see the own image in a glass. Caliban is an ugly fellow.

Caliban is a servant and Dorian pretended to live pleasure, but he is dominated. They are enslaved. Away from the perfection of art. Existence that can’t be changed.

Perfection doesn’t exist in Caliban and Dorian. Reflection of real situation, realistic image that Dorian sees. A follower of what the esthetic philosophy is.

Dorian is young forever, but this is not a real situation.