"The era of Oscar Wilde is that of Victorian England. A time when the nobility, the traditional holder of power, share it with a new social class: the Industrial Revolution, in fact, resulted in a bloated and self-satisfied bourgeoisie, the more entrenched this power gained as much as you can see endangered by socialist ideas. The ideology was born from the Industrial Revolution
want to put art in the great machine of production. art is required to "produce" ideas, feelings and concepts.
In England, around 1880, his love for art has now taken the folds of a real fashion (a trend, we would say today), it becomes "trendy" to collect works of art, care furnishings, meticulously treat your clothing. The atmosphere of languorous decadence
"fin-de-siècle", and spreads an undefined "aesthetic gospel" in one of the most ardent propagators is some Oscar Wilde. Irish by birth (born in Dublin in 1854), culturally forged by excellent classical education, in 1882, Wilde is a hugely popular figure in the salons of high society, and a real windfall for the columnists. But the young Oscar in 1883 marks a turning point in his career.
So far, his creativity has produced only a few poems, and not excellent quality. Now Oscar instead starts writing frantically, and writes about everything: essays, poems, plays, stories, fairy tales. Many of his plays are successful. His stories become very popular. But Wilde turns out to be essentially an essayist. And it is especially in the essays that Wilde fought the battle of the century, in defense of freedom of art against the Victorian philistinism.
pragmatic materialism of the bourgeoisie, all aimed at "doing" and "produce", Wilde's witty criticism opposes, shored up with lapidary sentences and only apparently paradoxical as Wilde writes, the more it sinks the knife into the soft underbelly of bourgeois convention.
In 1886 Wilde's rich and wealthy. He married the daughter of a Dublin lawyer, Constance Lloyd,
who gave him two sons and lives in luxury Chelsea in London. But it is not blind to the point that they see the wounds of the world in which he lives, and in the desperate conditions faced by thousands of people. He writes: "Those who today are considered criminals are not at all.
E 'hunger, not the sin, the father of modern crimes." It' a socialist
, Wilde? Of course not. It 's too educated, too disillusioned to let caged by dogma. And most importantly, puts the Individual before everything else. The day will come, prophesy, in which "the State will do what is useful. The individual will do what is good." The mass society, as we understand it, is yet to come. But Wilde-looking farther than his contemporaries-he sees on the horizon, he sees
approval of thinking, numbness of conscience, vulgarity elected system. Salvation of 'individual, he says, is in his statement, and
the statement is made in the Art of the Individual, not in the market . "A person compelled to produce items for the use of others, and taking into account needs and desires of others, does not work with interest, and therefore can not put in his work the best that is in him. On the other hand, when
a community or a powerful sector of a community, or a government of a
any attempt to dictate to the artist what he must do, the Craft disappears altogether or becomes stereotype, or degenerates into a low and ignoble form of craft . The work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. His
beauty comes from the fact that the author is what it is. It has nothing to do with the fact that others want what they want.
When an artist takes notice of what others want, and try to meet the demand, cease to be an artist and becomes a dull or amusing craftsman, an honest or dishonest trader. "
Of course, these words do not are those that a middle class of merchants and craftsmen wants to hear. Those who believe this to be dandy soggy, pretentious and perilous-say-even
fag? The industrial revolution brought the printing press and the spread of popular literacy in increasingly large segments of the population. It is not necessarily a bad thing, indeed. Yet Wilde writes sarcastically: "What is the difference between journalism and literature?
journalism is unreadable and literature is not read ." And since
Wilde look much farther than others, he sees a ghost for hours without name, and that only a century later would be called "kitsch," the tasteless mass. It notes: "The public keeps asking Art to be popular, to please his lack of taste of flatter his absurd vanity,
tell what has been said, to show him what I should be sick of seeing, to amuse when it is weighed down after eating too much, and to distract his thoughts when he is tired of her own stupidity. Art should never try to be popular. And 'the public should seek to become an artist. "Wilde paddling upstream. Proclaims the superiority of art over nature, says the critic
must be more educated artist, that the sinner teaches us many things of the Holy . The paradoxical theories stir the waters of the literary world. But the clash between Wilde and the society of his time becomes a real battle at the release of his novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray." Many critics attack the novel, accusing him of obscenity. The critic of "St James Gazette writes that the book should be" thrown into the fire. Wilde does not hold back. Defends himself by proclaiming the independence of art from morality, and refusing to deny in any way novel. Rather, it argues passionately to critics writing and newspapers. The Director of the St James Gazette writes: <<(...) il direttore
a newspaper as his monstrous seems to support the theory for which the government of a country should pursue a complaint on the narrative. This is a theory against which I and every letter I know we protest with all our strength, and any reasonable critic monsters to find such a theory, it proves unable to comprehend the literature, and to understand what the rights of the literature. Might as well that a government would try to teach painters or sculptors to paint a model, if it attempts to interfere in style, in the treatment of the artist and the material of literature, and no writer, influential or obscure it is, would never approve a theory that degrade the literature much more than could ever degrade any book or educational book "immoral.">> And again: "Puritanism is never so offensive and destructive as when dealing with matters of art. "Wilde is even more caustic to the director of" Scots Observer "according to the critic of this newspaper, in fact," Dorian Gray "was written especially for the illiterate and criminal classes." Wilde replied mockingly: "
I think the criminal and illiterate classes do not read anything but newspapers. "
In 1891, less than a year after publishing" Dorian Gray, "Wilde knows Lord Alfred Douglas, a young student at Oxford, and interwoven with a report that he does not care too much to hide. The success of his plays and the esteem in which literary circles in the protect him from scandal. But not for long. Alfred's father haunts him, and in 1895 Wilde Douglas senior hauled into court. The accusation is calumny. But the story turns into a boomerang for the author, who ends
trial for sodomy. At first, the prosecutor attacked the writer Carson in terms of his artistic beliefs rather than on his sexual habits. But Wilde, iron, not moving an inch from its position. "A work of genius it is never moral or immoral, but only good or bad." It 's a strong and explicit declaration of liberty, how strong is the implicit assertion in this sentence, you can appreciate or despise a work for its artistic quality, but never thought that the work behind, and then for opinions that the author expresses.
The freedom of art and freedom of thought are something unique and inviolable.
Wilde will pay dearly for his consistency, that pushed him to stand trial against the advice of friends. Maybe if you declare repentance, if you plead guilty to a general "immorality" in his works, it could get by with less. But do not take a step back. Failing to catch him on this plane,
Carson brings some young people who testified in court that he had sex with the writer. Wilde was sentenced to two years hard labor for sodomy. For him it is the social and economic ruin. The children are removed. Its assets are seized and auctioned to pay for processuali.Internato Hollway first in prison, then in Wandsworth, Wilde is finally transferred to the penal colony of Reading, which was released in 1897. Minato in body and spirit from the harsh detention, died in Paris in 1900, at the dawn of the new secolo.Qualche year before had written:
"Society often forgives the criminal. But it never forgives the dreamer."
I wrote this song for you (io questa canzone per te scrissi) 
Heul doch - Heul doch (PIANGI, PIANGI) 
My heart burns like fire (il mio cuore Brucia come fuoco) 
