Oscar Wilde

Intentions Annotated Oscar Wilde

In the opening essay, Wilde laments the decay of Lying as an art, a science, and a social pleasure. He takes to task modern literary realists like Henry James and Emile Zola for their "monstrous worship of facts" and stifling of the imagination. What makes art wonderful, he says, is that it is absolutely indifferent to fact, invents, imagines, dreams, and keeps between herself and reality the impenetrable barrier of beautiful style, of decorative or ideal treatment.