Wilde - on his work

Question 1

Wilde on work of art putting forward a view

Answer 1

No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.
There are no views in a work of art.

Question 2

Wilde on what concerns him in his art

Answer 2

What concerns me in my art is my view and my feeling and why I made it; I don’t care twopence what other people think about it.

Question 3

Wilde on truth

Answer 3

-I rarely think that anything I write is true.
-Not true in the sense of correspondence to fact; to represent wilful moods of paradox, of fun, nonsense, of anything at all – but not true in the actual sense of correspondence to actual facts
of life, certainly not; I should be very sorry to think it.

Question 4

Wilde on good and evil in his work

Answer 4

The aim is not to do good or to do evil, but to try and make a thing that will have some quality of beauty that is to be attained or in the form of beauty and of wit of and of
emotion

Question 5

Wilde on morality in his art

Answer 5

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

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

Question 6

Whats does art mirror?

Answer 6

“It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”