OSCAR WILDE
Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 and unfortunately for the literary scene he died soon in 1900 but, although he did not physically overstep the fringe of the nineteenth century, his works keeps on enjoying the twentieth century reader`s mind and soul. "Genius lasts longer than beauty" Lord Henry said in Wilde`s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, "Beauty" referring to the sitter or the object of inspiration whose appearance is accidental and short.
Wilde`s education started with classical studies at Trinity College, in Dublin, and went on with a scolarship to Oxford where he also studies John Ruskin`s Aesthetic theories. After graduation he moved to London and established himself as a representative of the school of "Art for Art`s Sake". According to Yeats, Wilde was gifted as a spokesman "I never before heard a man talking with perfect sentences , as if he had written them all overnight with labour and yet all spontaneous". After he had gained attention through his conversation, Wilde decided to wear colourful costumes, "a flamboyant style of dress", similar to those worn at the beginning of his century. Another shocking aspect of Wilde`s was his sexual life. Despite of having a wife and two children he also met with a young poet, Alfred Douglas, whose father accused Wilde of homosexuality. His trial and the two years of jail affected both his life and work.
There
is a strong and un 323g64d explainable relation between Wilde`s life and his work.
Critics noticed the coincidence between Wilde`s death and Earnest Worthing`s,
his character in The Imporatnce of Being
Earnest ( 1895 ). They both died in a hotel in
Oscar Wilde impresses through the variety of his art, he starts with critical essays written in the form of "Platonic dialogue" suggesting the dialogue of his later comedies. He focuses on morality and social cliches beig an aesthete and an iconoclast at the same time: The Decay of Lying ( 1889 ) and The Critic as Artist ( 1890 ). He also concerned with the relation between nature and art, the latter being "far more than a mere imitation of nature". In The Truth of Masks, Wilde deals with the connection between truth and art "A Truth in Art is whose contradiction is also true".
The novel The Picture of Dorian Gray ( 1890 ) is his most important work as a prose writer; in spite of its internal contradictions, the novel is a masterpiece of the time. In 1891 the author wrote a Preface to the novel which is in contradiction with the novel, at least with its end, since in the former he states that art and morality are separate while the work ends as "a moral lesson on the evils of self - regarding hedonism".
The Preface is focused on the artist and the work of art, on reality seen through art, on the reality of the work of art. Each and every sentence is an essence; put together they are shocking like Wilde`s later plays.
Referring to the relation between morality and art he states that "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are written, or badly written". Another statement leads to the modern reader theory as his attacks are directed against the readers: "It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors", Wilde writes.
According to Sanders "The narrative that follows ( the novel ) is a melodramatic, Faustian demonstration of tne notion that art and morality are quie divorced". Seeing the picture Dorian Gray said: "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. If it were only the other way ! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old ! For that - for that - I would give everything! Yes, thare is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!" With Sanders "Dorian Gray is atragedy of sorts with the subtext of a morality play: Its self-destructive,darkly sinning central character is at once a desperate suicide and a martyr".
The firs chapter is a very interesting poetic text.
Basil Hallward expounds his ideas about the connection between artist, work of art and sitter in a conversation with his friend Lord Henry. Initialy Basil stated that he would not exhibit Dorian Gray`s picture because "there was too much of him in it", statement that amused Lord Henry who considered it childish. The truth is that Basil puts the essence of the process of art in it, that special transformation placing the artist in his creative state: "every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secreat of my soul".
First Basil explains that a work of art is based on the reaction of his soul and not of his mind, it brings into light that hidden incomprehensible part of the artist. The artist become a medium through which feelings are materialised on canvas. The sitter is the happy accident, the unpredictable that tortures the artist until he finishes his creation. The word "accident" used by Wilde will become the starting point for a whole theory concerning the process of creation and the role of the accidental / hazard that makes the process start and continue.
When Basil explains how the sitter`s absence makes him even more present the reader should remember how Lily Briscoe succeeded in finishing Ramsay`s portrait, after the latter`s death.
The picture is a reflection of the image projected in the artist, when the sitter is not there the painter gives more of him, he implies more and also alienates the image more. Those curves and "subtitles of colours" that suggest Dorian are the impulses of the work of art that imposes itself, that creates itself by influencing the artist.
The Picture of Dorian Gray announces the modern novel and expresses some of the main ideas that are the base of the litarary theory in the beginning of the twentieth century. The novel allows an approach from the point of view of the classical Faustian theme, which in its turn can be led towards interpretations suggesting the process of creation. But the novel remains a document of Wilde`s social environment.
Two years later, in 1895, Wilde`s masterpiece was staged - The Importance of Being Earnest. The play was published in 1899 after the playwright had reduced it from four to three acts.
In Wilde`s plays the striking element is the " orality" of their dialogue. Despite the artificiality caused by the frequent paradoxes there is a permanent spontaneity conferring vividness to the dialogue. Through his language Wilde succeeds in changing the focus from the situational comedy to the intellectual comedy giving birth to the theatre of ideas.
Language is the perfect instrument used by Wilde to shock his audience.
The reader should neglect Wilde`s protesting attitude against certain "ugly aspects" of Victorian culture and society. There is a core of truth in any absurd statement or situation, which leads the reader towards Beckett and Pinter. This aspects supports realism as permanent in Wilde`s plays. Wilde`s being concerned about the co-existence of the opposites becomes obsessive, one can always refer to the interference of the natural and the supernatural, the good and the bad, the credible and the incredible. The playwright`s propensity for paradoxes extends to the paradoxes of situation and of character, Jack is rich while Earnest has no money; because of that Jack as Earnest does not pay when he eats at the Savoy:
"Algernon: Why on earth don`t you pay them? You have got heaps of money.
Jack: Yes, but Earnest hasn`t, and I must keep up Earnest`s reputation".
Paradoxically Jack turns out to be Lady Bracknell`s nephew and Algernon`s brother. With Wilde it seems that social settlement is arbitrary and absurd, he criticises the moral and social conventions. Lady Bracknell`s earnestness is of a different order, yet she embodies Wilde`s sternest critique. As Ian Clarke states, "the famous scene where she interviews Jack to test his eligibility as a suitor is primarily richly comic, yet what can supposedly be passed off as the extravagant logic of an English eccentric or a comedic parody of theatrical conventions in fact exposes the heart of the power base of the class she represents. The thematic centre of society drama, the threat of misalliance, is revealed through Lady Bracknell as a political as well as social and moral issue.
The ending of The Importance of Being Earnest, in keeping with the play`s genre, re-establishes disrupted social order, that Jack really is earnest and is of acceptable social possition - his mother a Lady, his father a general. Yet the play equally suggests that the social settlement is as arbitrary and as absurd as when he was the foundling Jack Worthing and descended from hand luggage.
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