Let’s first enjoy a wave of “famous aphorisms”

It’s not finished yet, welcome to add.

Noble? Straight A student? Bisexual? Adult fairy tale writer? Pioneer of aestheticism? These are all labels for Wilde, but they cannot fully represent him. In my opinion, he is the person in this world who vividly displays contradictions.

Despite this, I do not hate him. On the contrary, I like him precisely because of his contradictions. Through his contradictions, I seem to be able to live a more sober life.

In 1884, Wilde married and had two sons. In 1891, he published his first novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray", which attracted his admirers. The son of a marquis, he was so handsome that Wilde called him "Percy".

During this relationship, Wilde exhausted all his energy, went bankrupt, was sued in court, and was ultimately ruined. While Wilde was weeping in prison, Percy was out publishing a collection of poems.

In fact, when he was in love with Percy, Wilde said frankly: When I was with you, I didn't write a word, you exhausted my imagination.

Percy's mother also told Wilde that his shortcomings were vanity and a completely wrong view of money.

In this way, why did Wilde fall in love with Percy, a lover with many faults that made people complain?

Or did he ever love Percy? In my opinion, he doesn't.

The reasons are as follows:

First of all, their love motivation is full of utilitarianism. Percy approached Wilde to learn art. He felt that it was very honorable to have a best-selling author friend.

Wilde knew this, and my selfish guess is that Wilde and Percy were together because he only liked "beautiful" things. But whether this beauty is superficial beauty or "art for art's sake" depends on personal understanding.

The other is the explanation given by Wilde himself in prison:

Although I am far from perfect, you can still learn a lot from me.

You came to me with the purpose of learning from me the joy of life and the joy of art.

Perhaps somehow,

I Chosen by God to teach you a more glorious secret:

The meaning of pain and the beauty that lies within it.

As a master of aestheticism, Wilde’s pursuit of beauty was almost fanatical. He tried his best to show beauty from literary creation to dressing up in daily life. However, deep down in his heart, he did not have the beauty he admired. He did not have an optimistic attitude, so the beauty he created with his own hands in his literary creation was destroyed by him.

For example, in the fairy tale "The Fisherman and His Soul", Wilde created a beautiful love between the little mermaid and the fisherman, but sent the soul to seduce the fisherman, and finally the fisherman He failed to resist the temptation and followed the soul away. The fisherman's departure and the subsequent death of the little mermaid were the destruction of the beautiful love created by Wilde in the fairy tale.

The beautiful love between the fisherman and the little mermaid ended just because of a pair of daughter's feet. Does this represent the incompatibility between the beauty that Wilde pursues in his heart and the world? But Wilde did not give up. He made the barren land where the fisherman and the little mermaid were buried bloom with beautiful white flowers.

Wilde once again created beautiful things, and no one can resist its beauty, but after the priest blessed the fisherman and the little mermaid,

So far, Wilde once again destroyed The beauty you create.

Wilde’s ambivalent attitude towards beauty is fully revealed. Although he tried his best to defend beauty, deep down he realized that the beauty he defended was not tolerated by society.

Therefore, he began to be disappointed in his heart, and finally had to destroy the beauty he created with his own hands. The attitude of the entire fairy tale towards beauty is to create-destroy-re-create-re-destroy again, which reflects Wilde's inner pain and yet Confused, and in such an intolerant society, Wilde had no choice but to compromise.

In fact, Wilde’s fairy tales themselves contain contradictions, as well as the contradictions between his fairy tale creation and his aesthetic ideas. The existence of these contradictions is related to Wilde’s social conditions in the Victorian period, his own growth experience, and educational background. are inseparable.

Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. At that time, it was in the Victorian period. Britain had just successfully completed the Industrial Revolution, with industrial development and economic prosperity.

The development of the economy has made the bourgeoisie leap into the upper class of society. As an emerging social class, the bourgeoisie has been deeply influenced by industrial society. They have the ability and brains, but at the same time they are also profit-seeking and deeply obsessed with society. Pragmatism leads to greed.

At the same time, due to the prevalence of science and pragmatism, religion has gradually lost its previous status. Whenever social turmoil occurs and people have no refuge in their hearts, aestheticism and romanticism will emerge.

Faced with the Victorian era when materialism was paramount and hypocritical morality prevailed, artists hid in the ivory tower of art.

Under the influence of positivism and the omnipotence of science, religion and books promoting religion were not taken seriously. However, the decline of religion did not cause a sudden decline in social morality. At least on the surface, the Victorian period Interests and social morals are good, gentlemanly demeanor prevails, and the relationship between people appears to be harmonious and harmonious on the surface. People's enthusiasm for morality even reaches the point of paranoia.

In the Victorian era, sexual intercourse was especially taboo. In order to avoid referring to chicken breasts as white meat, piano legs were wrapped in covers to avoid bad associations. Just because piano legs are similar to human feet, and human feet are Above are the human legs, and the area above the human legs is considered unclean. People are convinced that as long as a person is sexually pure, he must be beautiful and great.

On the contrary, if a person is not sexually restrained, he will be considered bad. In fact, the real situation is that the upper class people in the Victorian period had extremely chaotic relationships between men and women. People were well aware of this and believed that as long as the relationship was not discovered, they were pure, as shown in Oscar Wilde's social comedies. hypocritical morals of upper class people.

It is precisely rooted in such a social environment that various contradictions appear in Wilde's literary creation. This is a reflection of the current social situation and an expression of his inner emotions.

Finally:

Whether in creation or in life, Wilde showed many contradictions. Wilde’s biographer Hux Pearson said of him: