Wilde

I am so reminded of Richard Wagner when I read Wilde’s preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray. The last paragraph speaks directly to the artistic mentalities of both of these men. Wilde comments, “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 useless” (847). Wilde is in accord with himself by being criticized because he sees critics as something less than himself, the artist. Wilde says “The artist is the creator of beautiful things,” (843) but a critic can only “translate into another manner…his impression of beautiful things” (843). This, in the mind of an artist, makes a critic less than an artist, because there is no new creation in what a critic does. The few lines of his closing paragraph also gives great insight into Wilde’s mentality. His excuse for creating something “useless,” as he calls art, is his own admiration for his work. Because he himself admires what he has created then nothing else is required. This was very much the mentality of Richard Wagner as well. He was greatly criticized for the way he stretched the boundaries of tonality, just as Wilde was criticized for writing a novel of supposed base morality, but the critics never mattered to either of these men, because of the way they felt about their own work. Their own egos were enough to sustain them. It is a good thing thought that their own egos sustained them and they did not succumb to criticism, because their work is greatly appreciated today, but it would not have survived without the inner strength of its creators.