Prefacio de Oscar Wilde a "The pictura of Dorian Gray"

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THE PREFACE

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and

conceal the artist is art's aim. The 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.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without

being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the

cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom

beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well

written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing

his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban

not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part

of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists

in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove

anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has

ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an

unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist

can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist

instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for

an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is

the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the

actor's craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read

the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life,

that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art

shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree,

the artist is in accord with himself. 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.

All art is quite useless.

OSCAR WILDE

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