Francesco Floritto VB

The Preface

The Preface of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” was a sort of defence Wilde made of his opera that had been accused to be immoral. At the same time, this preface represented a sort of manifesto of the Aestheticism. He was deeply influenced by Walter Pater and in this preface; he strongly expressed the theory of “Art for Art’s Sake”, an art that must be beautiful and not useful or practice.

This preface is like a collection of quotations in which Wilde expresses his position in front of determinate arguments.

He sustains the “the artist is the creator of beautiful things”, once again he underlines that art must be beautiful not useful. Then he goes on “those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt”.

Wilde tells the reader that only who does have culture has hope and they are able to understand that beautiful things mean only “Beauty”. He speaks about beauty, as it was a person, so there is a personification of beauty.

In consequence Wilde highlights that there must be an absence of any didactic aim and it’s very interesting to quote his own sentence” there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all”. This is another defence of his art, indeed he says that a book cannot be criticized to be immoral, but only if it is badly written. Then he expresses all the disenchantment of his contemporary society, which dislikes both Realism than Romanticism.

Another fundamental element of art is that “its morality consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium”: the perfect use of art, which is an imperfect medium.

In Wilde’s point of view, art does not have the role to prove anything or to teach something on a moral or ethical point of view. In addition, he reinforces this thesis affirming that “vice and virtue” are used only as materials of art.

After all this reflection, Wilde provides two examples of art, the first one for what regards the form, the second one for feelings. The first example is the art of the musician, while the second one is the art of the actor.

The message of Wilde’s reflection is well underlined in the sentence “all art is at once surface and symbol”. An art in which the spectator is the real protagonist, the narrator writes basing on his own experiences. Then he adds, “diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital”.

The last important concept that Wilde provides is that a useful thing can be forgiven if the man, who has done it, does not admire it. On the contrary is more appreciable a useless thing if it is strongly admired by someone. In conclusion, to seal the whole speech he says,” All art is quite useless”.