
Oscar Wilde’s Radical Wit - samclemens
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/oscar-wildes-radical-wit
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zwayhowder
One of the most enlightening books I read as a teenager was "The Wit of Oscar
Wilde" a gift from my father. It taught me the value of a well phrased insult
or what we refer to now as backhanded compliment. Things like "I always feel
smarter after listening to you". Stopped me getting in so many fights for
calling (much larger, stronger kids) morons.

I wish more theatre companies would perform his work.

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winchling
Listening to, watching and otherwise enjoying _The Importance of Being
Earnest_ has increased my understanding and love of the English language no
end:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V_7SoF1HLQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V_7SoF1HLQ)

It's one of a very small number of plays from Wilde's era that is still
performed despite Victorian London's having plenty of theatres:

[http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/mt/theaters/pva234.htm...](http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/mt/theaters/pva234.html)

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hirundo
> ... neither art nor science knows anything of moral approval or disapproval.

Science at least aspires to moral impartiality in some contexts but how on
earth can this be ascribed to art? Can you see Guernica morally impartial? Or
even American Gothic? Let alone art forms such as movies, music, video games,
comics, etc. Are any of these forms notably thin on moral approval or
disapproval? Morality seems to be common as dirt in art, if not actually
essential to it.

In what sense can this quote not be nonsense?

~~~
vertline3
You have to understand "art for art's sake". Read Whistler's "Ten o Clock"
lecture. Whistler was a friend of Oscar's and some say had a stronger wit.

Oscar Wilde: I wish I had said that.

James McNeill Whistler: You will, Oscar, you will.

Basically people want artists to make things that serve a narrative, or have a
utilitarian function, but art does not have to justify its existence.

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ArtWomb
"For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and unclean
no less than those that the priest or a vision has cleansed, and converts them
into swiftness or strength, into the play of beautiful muscles and the
moulding of fair flesh, into the curves and colours of the hair, the lips, the
eye; so the soul in its turn has its nutritive functions also, and can
transform into noble moods of thought and passions of high import what in
itself is base, cruel and degrading" - _De Profundis_

[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/De_Profundis_(Wilde)](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/De_Profundis_\(Wilde\))

Belongs to that most nakedly introspective catagory of writing. Like
Augustine, Montainge or Poe's _Eureka_

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claudiawerner
This was a nice article, especially since I'm a fan of his _The Soul of Man
Under Socialism_ , which I'm ashamed to say is the only work I've read by him.
In particular, he stands in an odd relation to the other socialist thinkers of
his era; Marx known as a thoroughly rational type who went to pains to avoid
moral arguments save for the rhetorical devices he was known for even in
personal correspondance and Kropotkin apparently seeing no issue with making
such moral arguments to argue for socialism. Wilde's stance on morality and
argumentation is thus different to both of them - eschewing the rigorous
systematic critique of the capitalist system (as the production process of
capital, Marx) while also departing from a familiar morality which, at least
in their day (and to me even today) moved anyone to the socialist cause
(Kropotkin).

