The True Mask: Intentions and Other Essays

Nature is an image of art.' These and similar winged words by the Irish playwright, poet and dandy Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) characterise him as a contrary art critic, who turned against the established British art historians of his time such as Ruskin, Whistler, Arnold and Pater. He was praised and reviled at the same time for his nonconformism and aphoristic style.

In The True Mask Wilde examines the contrast between nature and art, between reality and imagination as an artist. In the aesthetic reflections and essays that are included in this collection with a few shorter texts, 'The Decline of Lying', 'Pen, Poison and Brush', 'The Critic as Artist' and 'The True Mask' he balances brilliantly and inimitably between seriousness and irony.

Most of these articles appear for the first time in Dutch translation, and it is the considerable achievement of translator Ronald Kuil that one is able to follow Wilde in the literary shaping of his aesthetic and artistic views.