Life as the greatest of the arts

Oscar Wilde - exercises

Comprehension:

What are you told of Dorian's lifestyle?

>> He likes parties, he likes to be referred as a man on fashion. He likes beauty in itself. He underlines the importance of experience as itself and he concentrates upon the moments themselves.

What is for him the greatest of arts?

>> For him the greatest of art is life itself .

Why is Dorian Gray an ideal for educated young men? Why is being consulted on matters of fashion not enough for Dorian?

>> Because he represents the mixtion between the real culture of the scholar and the perfect manner of a citizen of a world. Because he had sought to elaborate some new scheme of life which is based on the spiritualizing of the senses .

What isthe common attitude to "workship of the senses" and what has this attitude caused?

>> The common attitude to the "worship of senses" is the terror men feel about pations and sensations they share with the less highly organized forms of life. It causes the submission of this sensations, and the negation of making them elements of new spirituality.

What are the principles of Dorian's "new Hedonism"?

>> The principles of Dorian's "new Hedonism" are to re-create life, to save it from Puritanism, not to accept any sacrifices of any passionate experience. It aims to teach man to concentrate itself upon the moments of life itself. Interpretation:

What kind of narrator does Wilde use in his novel? Do you feel his presence?

>> Wild uses a third person narrator. Yes I feel his presence, because he is omniscient narrator.

What idea of life is expressed in the final sentence of the passage?

>> It expresses the idea to live life moment by moment: carpe diem.

Walter Pater (1839-1894), the forerunner of the aesthetic movement, expressed the same concept of life in his collection of essays, Studies in  the History of Renaissance (1873) which he concluded with the following words:" Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life" Where in the last paragraph does Wilde quote Pater?

>> At line 65 and 66.