Intentions

Oscar Wilde, one of the brightest representatives of English decadence, promoted the philosophy of “art for art’s sake,” and first laid out the main points of his aesthetic program in the lecture “The Renaissance of English Art.” Later, he developed these ideas in essays such as “The Decline of Lying,” “Pen, Painting, Poison,” “The Critic as Artist,” and “The Truth of Masks,” which were gathered in 1891 into the cycle “Intentions.” In his brilliant texts on literature, painting, and society, Wilde praises Art—the greatest sanctuary, the supreme deity—whose fanatical priest was the writer himself. This edition also includes the treatise “The Human Soul under Socialism.”