OSCAR WILDE
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	Aestheticism in The picture of Dorian Gray The name of Oscar Wilde is associated with Aestheticism. The work that bests expression his aesthetic creed is The picture of Dorian Gray. This strange novel was greatly influenced by Huysmans’ A Rebours, the famous <<yellow book>> that Lord Henry gives Dorian. The effect of A Rebours on Dorian is extraordinary; when Lord Henry says: “I thought you would like it”, Dorian answers: “I didn’t say I like it, Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is great difference”. The Aesthetes reject the idea that art must be didactic, and advocated the principle of “art for art’s sake”. They were fascinated by the contrast art – life, asserting the superiority of art, and their supreme aim was the cult of beauty. Beauty, as pure form, is only reality that matters; the great abstractions, like truth, morality, etc…, are elusive and cannot be grasped. Formal, i.e. artistic values, are therefore the only “real” values. In this novel it is possible to recognise the motive of the Doppelganger. The final stabbing of the picture and subsequent inversion of the roles can be read in more than one way: the triumph of art over life, because in the end it is the picture that survives in the glory of its beauty, but it can also signify the impossibility of a life pursuing sensual and intellectual delight with no acceptance of moral responsibility.
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