Oscar Wilde pursued a life -- an art -- of pure uselessness. This was not because he objected to pragmatic pursuits, if kept in their proper place: "We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely." For Wilde, the power and the beauty of art lay in its distinction from the necessities and vulgarities of utilitarian life. Indeed, art should never imitate life -- life, on the contrary, should aspire to the uselessness of art.
Wilde is best known for "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1891), a controversial book about the dissolution of identity. As the public image of the young Dorian glows with glamour and attractiveness, his inner soul deteriorates and decays as the result of his selfish actions. But this "inner" soul has been depicted, or captured, in art, and the "flesh" of his portrait peels, cracks, and creases, becoming increasingly hideous day by day. Wilde saw the insidious truth of the narcissist; he saw how the cultivation of an external image suffocates and eviscerates the innards of the soul. Perhaps, intent as he was on cultivating external appearances, he saw this process of decay working in himself.
His solution was to master his own personality through art. Critics have often noted that the characters in his work are repetitions and variations on himself -- doubles or doppelgangers that he separated and re-combined, manipulated and mutated. By dividing and distributing himself in this way, he managed to render the center of himself invisible, if not entirely absent. Thus he triumphed over personal depth through superficial distribution. "All art is surface and symbol," he said. "Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril." Writing, for Wilde, was a process of simulation and deceit: the power to construct a surface, or many surfaces, through the subtle orchestration of symbols.
Wilde's style was that of a dandy; he cultivated an image of flamboyance and eccentricity that the society around him did not exactly embrace. The resentment of his more sober peers came to a head in the charges brought against him for gross indecency in his affair with Lord Douglas. Wilde's defense relentlessly invoked the Platonic ideal of genuine and even passionate love for another man, thus, in euphemistic language, flaunting the homosexuality of the affair. The jury, unfortunately, did not appreciate his irony. They sentenced him to two years in jail. Bankrupt and humiliated, he was unable to return to his previous life, and died two years later in France.
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