Basil’s and Lord Henry’s fascination with him represents Wilde’s obsession with a young dandy whose evasiveness and pseudo-aestheticism symbolize his own unconscious fears.
Conclusion
For Wilde, the purpose of art was to guide life, and to do this it must concern itself only with the pursuit of beauty, disdaining morality. Just as Dorian Gray’s portrait allows its owner to escape the corporeal ravages of his hedonism, and Miss Prism mistakes a baby for a book in The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde sought to juxtapose the beauty he saw in art onto daily life. This was a practical as well as philosophical project: in Oxford he surrounded himself with blue china and lilies; in America he lectured on interior design; in London he paraded down Piccadilly carrying a lily, long hair flowing.
In Victorian society, Wilde was a colourful agent provocateur: his art, like his paradoxes, sought to subvert as well as sparkle. His own estimation of himself was of one who «stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age». Wilde believed that the artist should hold forth higher ideals, and that pleasure and beauty would replace utilitarian ethics. When asked, in America, if he had really promenaded in such a way in London, Wilde replied, «It's not whether I did it or not that’s important, but whether people believed I did it». Ellmann argues that Wilde’s poem HΓ©las was a sincere, though flamboyant, attempt to explain the dichotomies he saw in himself:
To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play
Wilde’s deepest concern was with man’s soul; when he complained of poverty in «The Soul of Man Under Socialism» it was not the material well-being of the poor that distressed him, but their lack of enlightenment. He adopted Jesus of Nazareth as a hero, calling Christ the supreme individualist. For much of his life, Wilde advocated socialism, which he argued «will be of value simply because it will lead to individualism». He also had a strong libertarian streak as shown in his poem Sonnet to Liberty and, subsequent to reading the works of Peter Kropotkin (whom he described as «a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia») he declared himself an anarchist.
Wilde was concerned about the effect of moralising on art: following his vision of art as separate from life, he thought that the government most amenable to artists was no government at all. This point of view did not align him with the Fabians, the leading intellectual socialists of the time. In The Soul of Man Under Socialism he presents a vision of society where mechanisation has freed human effort from the burden of necessity — effort can be expended entirely on artistic creation.
Wilde became one of the most prominent personalities of his day. Though he was sometimes ridiculed for them, his paradoxes and witty sayings were quoted on all sides.
Bibliography
Ellmann, Richard (1988). Oscar Wilde. New York: Vintage Books. 1988
Holland, Merlin. De Profundis. 2000
Keyes, Ralph. Wit & Wisdom of Oscar Wilde: A Treasury of Quotations, Anecdotes, and Repartee. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1996
Leach, Maria, Ed. The Importance of Being a Wit: The Insults of Oscar Wilde. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1997
Mendelshon, Daniel; The Two Oscar Wildes, New York Review of Books, Volume 49, Number 15 Β· 10 October 2002
Pritchard, David. Oscar Wilde. New Lanark, Scotland: David Dale House, 2001
Wilde, Oscar. Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Glasgow, Scotland: HarperCollins, 2003
Wilde, Oscar. The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. Holland, Merlin & Rupert Hart-Davis, Ed. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000
Wilde, Oscar. The Letters of Oscar Wilde. Ed. R. Hart-Davis. London: Hart-Davis, 1962
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. Isobel Murray. London: Oxford University Press, 1974
Wilde, Oscar. The Soul of Man Under Socialism. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Collins. 1988
Photos
Oscar Wilde (1854−1900)
No. 34 Tite Street, Chelsea, the Wilde family home from 1884 to his arrest in 1895. In Wilde’s time this was No. 16 — the houses have been renumbered
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Lippincott's Magazine) 1890
Oscar Wilde’s grave
Pritchard, David. Oscar Wilde. New Lanark, Scotland: David Dale House, 2001, p. 46
Keyes, Ralph. Wit & Wisdom of Oscar Wilde: A Treasury of Quotations, Anecdotes, and Repartee. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1996, p. 154−159
Leach, Maria, Ed. The Importance of Being a Wit: The Insults of Oscar Wilde. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1997, p.228−230
Wilde, Oscar. The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. Holland, Merlin & Rupert Hart-Davis, Ed. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000, p. 189−195
Wilde, Oscar. The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. Holland, Merlin & Rupert Hart-Davis, Ed. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000, p. 378
Keyes, Ralph. Wit & Wisdom of Oscar Wilde: A Treasury of Quotations, Anecdotes, and Repartee. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1996, p. 202
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. Isobel Murray. London: Oxford University Press, 1974, p.107
W ilde, Oscar. T he Picture of Dorian Gray. E d. I
sobel Murray. L ondon: Oxford University Press, 1974, p. 159
W ilde, Oscar. T he Picture of Dorian Gray. E d. I sobel Murray.
L ondon: Oxford University Press, 1974, p. 142
W ilde, Oscar. T he Picture of Dorian Gray. E d.
I sobel Murray. L ondon: Oxford University Press, 1974, p. 100
W ilde, Oscar. T he Picture of Dorian Gray. E
d. I sobel Murray. L
ondon: Oxford University Press, 1974, p. 110
W ilde, Oscar. T he Picture of Dorian Gray. E d. I
sobel Murray. L ondon: Oxford University Press, 1974, p. 156
Wilde, Oscar. Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Glasgow, Scotland: HarperCollins, 2003, p. 23
W ilde, Oscar. T he Picture of Dorian Gray. E d. I
sobel Murray. L ondon: Oxford University Press, 1974, p. 174
Wilde, Oscar. Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Glasgow, Scotland: HarperCollins, 2003, p. 140
W ilde, Oscar. T he Letters of Oscar Wilde. E d. R. H
art-Davis. L ondon: Hart-Davis, 1962, p. 352
Mendelshon, Daniel; The Two Oscar Wildes, New York Review of Books, Volume 49, Number 15 Β· 10 October 2002, p. 175
Holland, Merlin. De Profundis. 2000, p. 737−738
Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. New York: Vintage Books. 1988, p. 132−133
Wilde, Oscar. The Soul of Man Under Socialism. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Collins. 1988, p. 265
