9.26.2005
Wilde and W: W's Renaissance (RawStory.com)
By D.A. Blyler | RAW STORY COLUMNIST
This weekend I took to reading a few pages of Oscar Wilde. It’s a habit to which more people should aspire, for Oscar helps keep a man focused. There’s nothing like a dose of “Dorian Gray” to put you in the mood for cocktail. Or a whiff of “The Importance of Being Earnest” to remind you that cigarette smoking is a serious vocation you’ve ignored for too long.
Broadening the reader’s perspective is Wilde’s great gift, and thanks to it I’ve come to realize just how shallowly I’ve judged George W. Bush over the past few months. On finishing the Irish rogue’s short treatise “The Decay of Lying” I quickly discerned that our President was hardly the sniggering and inept buffoon I had thought him to be, but was actually an artist of staggering proportions, who thankfully was granted another four years to complete his masterwork.
Before picking up Wilde, I had long forgotten Plato’s musings on the proximity of poetry and duplicity, about how the artist and the liar are inseparable lovers. It’s something that we’re all aware of when growing up and full of piss and vinegar, i.e. daring imagination, but then we get suckered in by the fact mongers, and before you know it, the world’s got posers like Damien Hirst passing off dismembered calves in formaldehyde as high art. Wilde presaged the crass inevitability this way:
“Many a young man starts in life with a natural gift for exaggeration which, if nurtured in congenial and sympathetic surroundings, or by the imitation of the best models, might grow into something great and wonderful. But as a rule, he comes to nothing. He either falls into careless habits of accuracy, or takes to frequenting the society of the aged and the well informed…if something cannot be done to check, or at least modify, our monstrous worship of facts, Art will become sterile, and Beauty will pass away from the land.”
(More ... The Raw Story | W's renaissance ¶ 19:51
This weekend I took to reading a few pages of Oscar Wilde. It’s a habit to which more people should aspire, for Oscar helps keep a man focused. There’s nothing like a dose of “Dorian Gray” to put you in the mood for cocktail. Or a whiff of “The Importance of Being Earnest” to remind you that cigarette smoking is a serious vocation you’ve ignored for too long.
Broadening the reader’s perspective is Wilde’s great gift, and thanks to it I’ve come to realize just how shallowly I’ve judged George W. Bush over the past few months. On finishing the Irish rogue’s short treatise “The Decay of Lying” I quickly discerned that our President was hardly the sniggering and inept buffoon I had thought him to be, but was actually an artist of staggering proportions, who thankfully was granted another four years to complete his masterwork.
Before picking up Wilde, I had long forgotten Plato’s musings on the proximity of poetry and duplicity, about how the artist and the liar are inseparable lovers. It’s something that we’re all aware of when growing up and full of piss and vinegar, i.e. daring imagination, but then we get suckered in by the fact mongers, and before you know it, the world’s got posers like Damien Hirst passing off dismembered calves in formaldehyde as high art. Wilde presaged the crass inevitability this way:
“Many a young man starts in life with a natural gift for exaggeration which, if nurtured in congenial and sympathetic surroundings, or by the imitation of the best models, might grow into something great and wonderful. But as a rule, he comes to nothing. He either falls into careless habits of accuracy, or takes to frequenting the society of the aged and the well informed…if something cannot be done to check, or at least modify, our monstrous worship of facts, Art will become sterile, and Beauty will pass away from the land.”
(More ... The Raw Story | W's renaissance ¶ 19:51
