Quote:
Cyril: My dear Vivian, don’t coop yourself up all day in the library. It is a perfectly lovely afternoon. The air is exquisite. There is a mist upon the woods like the purple bloom upon a plum. Let us go and lie on the grass and smoke cigarettes and enjoy nature.
Vivian: Enjoy nature! I am glad to say that I have entirely lost that faculty. People tell us that art makes us love nature more than we loved her before; that it reveals her secrets to us; and that after a careful study of Corot and Constable we see things in her that had escaped our observation. My own experience is that the more we study art, the less we care for nature. What art really reveals to us is nature's lack of design, her curious cruditites, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition. Nature has good intentions, of course, but, as Aristotle said, she cannot carry them out. When I look at a landscape I cannot help seeing all its defects. It is fortunate for us, however, that nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we should have no art at all. Art is our spirited protest, our gallant attempt to teach nature her proper place. As for the infinite variety of nature, that is a pure myth. It is not to be found in nature herself. It resides in the imagination, or fancy, or cultivated blindness of the man who looks at her.
Cyril: Well, you need not look at the landscape. You can lie on the grass and smoke and talk.
Vivian: But nature is so uncomfortable. Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects...
This is Wilde's opinion that art is superior to nature, which like I said is found heavily in many aspects of his thinking, but quite amusing here especially since it also mentions the insects - and it is true laying on the grass can be lumpy. Of course whenever most of us take a photograph we do so with the art of it in mind, cutting out any unwanted or ugly bits from the frame without thinking, so in effect, just by the mere fact of taking photos in this manner we are trying to "improve" nature or the representation of it as Wilde suggests here. His thinking goes a lot further, but I'm not going to derail yet another thread by talking about Oscar Wilde! :D
