a dream, was herself dreaming



        The Picture of Dorian Gray

        by

        Oscar Wilde




        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 ever 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 virture 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 herself.  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