"At this point I should like to pause a moment and to ask the reader to consider more particularly Wilde's method of building a piece of writing. Absolute originality in art is of course a delusion. Not only are we all the sons of somebody in whatever art we attempt, but the "higher" our aims the greater the number of predecessors to whom we are indebted. Willed originality is unconscious or at least unplotted --a fresh way of looking at the world, a new personality. All writers borrow from others, consciously or unconsciously. The succesful --I mean artistically succesful-- do it consciously, and justify themselves by claiming that they improve their thefts. Writers who try to avoid these obligations and labour to appear wholly original are inevitably either dull or preposterous."
--"The Portable Oscar Wilde"
Selected and Edited by Richard Aldington
0 comments:
Post a Comment