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Essays and Lectures-Part11_OSCAR WILDE (1854-1900)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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whole new science of prehistoricarchaeology and to bring us back



to a time when man was coeval with the stone age, the mammoth and

the woolly rhinoceros. But, except these, we have added no new



canon or method to the science of historicalcriticism" target="_blank" title="n.批评；评论(文)">criticism. Across the

drear waste of a thousand years the Greek and the modern spirit



join hands.

In the torch race which the Greek boys ran from the Cerameician



field of death to the home of the goddess of Wisdom, not merely he

who first reached the goal but he also who first started with the



torch aflame received a prize. In the Lampadephoria of

civilisation and free thought let us not forget to render due meed



of honour to those who first lit that sacred flame, the increasing

splendour of which lights our footsteps to the far-offdivine event



of the attainment of perfect truth.

THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE OF ART



AMONG the many debts which we owe to the supreme aesthetic faculty

of Goethe is that he was the first to teach us to define beauty in



terms the most concrete possible, to realise it, I mean, always in

its special manifestations. So, in the lecture which I have the



honour to deliver before you, I will not try to give you any

abstract definition of beauty - any such universalformula for it



as was sought for by the philosophy of the eighteenth century -

still less to communicate to you that which in its essence is



incommunicable, the virtue by which a particular picture or poem

affects us with a unique and special joy; but rather to point out



to you the general ideas which characterise the great English

Renaissance of Art in this century, to discover their source, as



far as that is possible, and to estimate their future as far as

that is possible.



I call it our English Renaissance because it is indeed a sort of

new birth of the spirit of man, like the great Italian Renaissance



of the fifteenth century, in its desire for a more gracious and

comely way of life, its passion for physical beauty, its exclusive



attention to form, its seeking for new subjects for poetry, new

forms of art, new intellectual and imaginative enjoyments: and I



call it our romanticmovement because it is our most recent

expression of beauty.



It has been described as a mere revival of Greek modes of thought,

and again as a mere revival of mediaeval feeling. Rather I would



say that to these forms of the human spirit it has added whatever

of artistic value the intricacy and complexity and experience of



modern life can give: taking from the one its clearness of vision

and its sustained calm, from the other its variety of expression



and the mystery of its vision. For what, as Goethe said, is the

study of the ancients but a return to the real world (for that is



what they did); and what, said Mazzini, is mediaevalism but

individuality?



It is really from the union of Hellenism, in its breadth, its

sanity of purpose, its calm possession of beauty, with the



adventive, the intensified individualism, the passionate colour of

the romantic spirit, that springs the art of the nineteenth century



in England, as from the marriage of Faust and Helen of Troy sprang

the beautiful boy Euphorion.



Such expressions as 'classical' and 'romantic' are, it is true,

often apt to become the mere catchwords of schools. We must always



remember that art has only one sentence to utter: there is for her

only one high law, the law of form or harmony - yet between the






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