Oscar Wilde – The Decay of Lying
A somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at art and nature, this witty dialogue serves to challenge common views on two seemingly straight forward topics.
If there is one thing that constantly strikes me about Oscar Wilde, it’s his sense of humour. There’s a sort of dry sarcasm within this dialogue that I couldn’t help but to chuckle at, despite his numerous digs at the English way of thought. That is, that it ‘isn’t catching’, and ‘everyone incapable of learning has taken to teaching’. Wilde almost reminds me of a mischievous schoolboy, saying such impertinent things before darting away onto another topic so that no-one can really concentrate and take proper offense to what he’s said. This dialogue is full of his natural humour, which makes it a pleasure to read.
Written as an article-within-a-dialogue, Wilde cleverly disguises his rant and uses a dialogue style in order to break up what would otherwise be a large block of text. Apart from being quick-witted, we don’t get to find out much about the two characters, but that doesn’t particularly matter. The flow of the piece is easy, and during the segments that may be considered ‘lengthy’, the character of Cyril breaks up the verbosity of Vivian with a few choice interjections and questions. Whilst this does work to an extent, it’s only a thinly veiled feature so it does seem a little contrived. Of course, with Oscar Wilde you can never be sure what he means to do, but for me, it would have worked just as well as an actual dialogue instead of taking a ‘cheats’ way out.
Despite the humour inherent throughout the piece, The Decay of Lying is nevertheless thought provoking on a number of levels. It serves to question widely held assumptions about the very nature of…well…nature, and the relationship of that to art and vice versa. I have to say, the piece makes a very good point for the banality and unoriginality of nature, even though I myself am rather fond of countryside walks and admiring the view.
It challenges, argues with, mocks and downright sneers at both nature and art, and mankind’s attitude towards them. With it being an ‘essay’ instead of anything of a longer nature, it’s easily read in one sitting…and then read again a few days later just to make sure that nothing was missed the first time. I wouldn’t recommend reading it in small bursts however. Once you move away from it – even for just one day – it takes a short while to get back into the swing of things, and the pace is so fluid that one generally has to go back a paragraph or two just to find one’s footing anyway. Although a general background reading from the time period would enhance the work, it’s able to stand alone if Victorian literature isn’t to your liking. (I can say this from experience).
If you have a spare hour or two (depending of course on your reading speed), then I’d certainly recommend this, if only for its humour value. Searching for it online will yield quite a few free copies of the essay, so there isn’t even any need to pay for it.
