Intentions

By Wilde, Oscar

Book Id: WPLBN0000626077
Format Type: PDF eBook
File Size: 212.78 KB
Reproduction Date: 2005

Title:	Intentions
Author:	Wilde, Oscar
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Literature, Literature & thought, Writing.
Collections:	Blackmask Online Collection
Historic Publication Date:
Publisher:	Blackmask Online


Citation APA MLA Chicago Wilde, O. (n.d.). Intentions. Retrieved from https://self.gutenberg.org/

Description
Excerpt: CYRIL (coming in through the open window from the terrace). My dear Vivian, don?t coop yourself up all day in the library. It is a perfectly lovely afternoon. The air is exquisite. There is a mist upon the woods, like the purple bloom upon a plum. Let us go and lie on the grass and smoke cigarettes and enjoy Nature. VIVIAN. Enjoy Nature! I am glad to say that I have entirely lost that faculty. People tell us that Art makes us love Nature more than we loved her before; that it reveals her secrets to us; and that after a careful study of Corot and Constable we see things in her that had escaped our observation. My own experience is that the more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature?s lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition. Nature has good intentions, of course, but, as Aristotle once said, she cannot carry them out. When I look at a landscape I cannot help seeing all its defects. It is fortunate for us, however, that Nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we should have no art at all. Art is our spirited protest, our gallant attempt to teach Nature her proper place. As for the infinite variety of Nature, that is a pure myth. It is not to be found in Nature herself. It resides in the imagination, or fancy, or cultivated blindness of the man who looks at her.

Table of Contents
Table of Contents: Intentions, 1 -- Oscar Wilde, 1 -- THE DECAY OF LYING, 1 -- PEN, PENCIL AND POISON ? A STUDY IN GREEN, 16 -- THE CRITIC AS ARTIST ? WITH SOME REMARKS UPON THE IMPORTANCE OF -- DOING NOTHING, 26 -- THE TRUTH OF MASKS ? A NOTE ON ILLUSION, 60