The rage of Caliban ...

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.

The critic is he who can translate into another

manner or a new material his impression of

beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form

of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those

who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are

corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful

things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean

only beauty. There is no such thing as a moral

or an immoral book. Books are well written, or

badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the

rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism

is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face

in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of

the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality

of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect

medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even

things that are true can be proved. No artist has

ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an

artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express

everything. Thought and language are to the artist

instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the

artist materials for an art. From the point of view of

form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician.

From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is

the type. All art is at once surface and symbol.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their

peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that

the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics

disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We

can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long

as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making

 a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.
OSCAR WILDE