ÒThe Picture of Dorian GrayÓ
-from
the preface, distinguishing between artists and critics:
ÒThe
artist is the creator of beautiful thingsÉThe critic is he who can translate
into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest
as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.Ó[1]
-Here
Wilde originates the idea of the holiness of art, he portrays the artistÕs
realm as something somewhat sacred, truly only a field of genius.
-ÒÉthe
great aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing.Ó[2]
-With
the advent of the Aesthetic movement and its implications for the leisure
world, the already-thin line between the bohemian Ôphilosphy of easeÕ and the
upper class reality is permanently erased.
-ÒHe
played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed
it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it irridescent with fancy, and winged
it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy,
and Philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of Pleasure,
wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like
a Bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being
sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod
the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grapejuice rose round
her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the
vatÕs black, dripping, sloping sidesÉÓ[3]
-Here
we find a seminal description of the 19th century post- modern
concept of forcing the previously separated worlds of beauty and intellect into
one, new (however inorganic) lifeforce. As the bohemian world slowly merges
with Aestheticism the philosphical realm of the culture creeps away from the
modern notion of subversity into this new, abstract, existential realm of
thought.
-ÒThere
is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should
sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about
lifeÕs sores the better.Ó[4]
-A less intense indication of the same trend of post-modern ideals.