Beauty Never Fades

  According to the saying told by himself, he is “ an artist ,a creator of beautiful things .” Without doubts, he lived for beauty and also died for beauty.

  Oscar Wilde, one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London and one of the greatest "celebrities" of his day ,has caused a paradox of discussion lasting for times. Numerous people have a fancy on him due to the red lip prints on his tomb, whereas , Countless people hate this man and regard him as an immoral beast due to the constant criticism.

  After reading some books related to him , I got a general idea about Oscar Wilde. His bigoted aestheticism ,his unique philosophy ,his ironic marriage and his controversial sexuality, all of them made him irreplacable and mysterious.

  The Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray clearly presents the main ideas of Oscar Wilde’s works and it is a symbolic masterpiece of him. Because of it ,this essay and “Phrase and Philosophies for the Use of the Young” became two hot points to be discussed in the later life of Oscar Wilde, especially when he was judged by the court.

  In the Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, despite all the doubts, Oscar claimed that “ Art for Art’s Sake” and confirm his perspective for beauty. The definition of “Art” and “Artist” given by him brings an unprecedented shock to the society he lived and also to us now. He put “beauty” at the first place for art ,even for everything. As we all know, he spent his whole life pursuing a life style called “beauty”. He fought in a society where morality came first and paid a lot for his crazy pursuit. Fortunately or not ,he held his belief to the end and died for it.

  “Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful things are cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.”

This statement reminds me of anothe saying in The Analects written by Confucius “ The wise find joy in water, the benevolent find joy in mountains. The wise are active ;the benevolent are still .The wise are joyful; the benevolent are long-lived.” Comparing the two sentences at the first sight, I thought these two are expressing the same meaning, the different kind of people is supposed to find different understandings of beauty, it depended on the nature of the man. However, after a short time thinking, I realised that these two sentenses would be totally different and even they go against each other. In the saying of Confucious , the wise and the benevolent are all defined from the perspective of morality. They can see the beauty of water and mountains because of the moral character they owe. What’s more , the benefits from water and mountains which they enjoy are definitely classified into the moral group. Moral people are enjoying their moral beauty so that it seems necessary for every one to become moral. In Oscar Wilde’s version , the beauty founded by the people is natural ,and the persons should be judged for the beauty’s sake without moral benefits. Beautiful things have the relationship, the only relationship, with beauty. And people who are moral masters and people who are moral monsters would sincerely apperaciate the beautiful things for beauty hand in hand.

  “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written ,or badly written. That is all.”

Oscar Wilde had been discriminated by some other “figures” in his time. He had long held a morbid fascination with beauty and love. His books would be regared as some malignant tumors in the literary filed. Besides The Picture of Dorian Gray, another book of him named De Profundis, the love letter from Oscar to Bosie, was also taken a label “Immorality” on itself. But from my point of view, both of these books are fabulous and their language contains a kind of devestating beauty for all times . They are the wealth of human literature no matter it is moral or not. Maybe someone would say because books are kind of the guide of life , so it cannot contain the immoral stuff. But for a book, the best way to demonstrate its value is to comprehend it from different angles and give in-depth thinking. Maybe it doesn’t reach some moral criterion, it can still be read and judged by people according to the art criterion, not some so-called “Morality” given by some unkowns. Naturally, something comes to me at this moment that the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film and Television ordered some websites to stop offering video sharing services recently. This order seems to be a kind of ridiculous and may be effective in an opposite way. Some speakers of SARFT said it would be necessary to delete and forbid some immoral things in order to purify the enviroment of Internet . If they did it for the sake of protecting morality, then it obviously follows the “Books Theory” of Oscar Wilde. Immorality may be stopped from spreading in some degree, but it will lead to the reflourishing of piracy industry. That will be an another immorality ,waiting to be solved by some new restricted measure.

  “All art is quite useless.” “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.”

  The only excuse for us to be deeply fascinated to learn Oscar Wilde and his works is that we admire its beauty in spite of morality . I always wondering how courageous he would be to write such pieces and claim that “All art is quite useless.” For some people , useless means nothing. But for art, beauty is the only thing matters to it .It is human nature and nothing can deny it.

  From some other perspective , I don’t quite agree some points about beauty of apperance held by Oscar, like “It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man’s deeper nnature is soon found out”, “Looking good and dressing well is a necessity. Having a purpose in life is not ”,whereas , for art , we cannot find any other reasons than art itself.

  With times flow, art never be left out because it means beauty. Beauty is the beginging of a time-long art, and it never fades.