Oscar Wilde was a declared aesthete (= someone who loves and
appreciates works of art and beautiful things) who
professed his views both in his works and way of life. His
extravagant look and public behaviour aimed at defying the self-satisfied respectability and cheap taste of the Victorian middle and upper classes,
their prudery (=moralism) regarding morals, sex, art and their obsession with status
and money. His views were strongly influenced by the art critic
William Pater, who asserted the priority of art and beauty in
individual and social life and the independence of art
from any moral, political or utilitarian purpose, that
is the aesthetic doctrine of "art for art's sake" (i.e.,
art has no aim but its own perfection).
Such devotion to the aesthetic-decadent creed was counterbalanced by
the moral concern, present in all his
works, exposing contemporary evils. In fact, his
comedies are only apparently superficial, as they make fun of Victorian
moralism (=strictness and austerity especially in matters of religion or conduct), hypocrisy and prejudices in a light, witty style. Oscar Wilde
possessed a deep sense of humanity and he developed great concern for the outcast, who were secluded from the safe and optimistic world of
rich Victorians; the terrible experience of imprisonment - he was arrested for “gross indecency with men,” a charge for which he was
convicted and sentenced to two years in prison - made his sympathy
more intense, as emerges from the long poem The
Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), which contains some very touching
lines. Between January and March 1897,
close to the end of his imprisonment, he wrote De Profundis, a long letter addressed
to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, published posthumously in 1905. Oscar Wilde
spent the last three years of his life in exile. He died at the age of 45 and
was buried in Paris.
A contradictory personality and versatile (=skillful) artist, Oscar
Wilde never enjoyed much favour among contemporary critics. Only in the
course of the 20th century he came to be considered an
outstanding man of letters for the sharp analysis of his time, the
skillful (= masterly) use of the most different genres and his brilliant
style.
