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The Truth Of Masks

by Oscar Wilde

Not that I agree with everything that I have said in this essay. There is much with which I entirely disagree. The essay simply represents an artistic standpoint, and in aesthetic criticism attitude is everything. For in art there is no such thing as a universal truth. A Truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true. And just as it is only in art-criticism, and through it, that we can apprehend the Platonic theory of ideas, so it is only in art-criticism, and through it, that we can realise Hegel’s system of contraries. The truths of metaphysics are the truths of masks.

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  • Biography
  • Plays:
    • A Woman of No Importance (39 pages)
    • An Ideal Husband (54 pages)
    • Lady Windermere's Fan (38 pages)
    • The Importance of Being Earnest (38 pages)
    • Salomé (21 pages)
    • The Duchess of Padua (39 pages)
    • Vera, or the Nihilists (34 pages)
    • A Florentine Tragedy (7 pages)
    • La Sainte Courtisane (4 pages)
  • Prose  »
    • The Picture of Dorian Gray (90 pages)
    • Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (21 pages)
    • The Canterville Ghost (19 pages)
    • The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (19 pages)
  • Short Stories  »
  • Poetry  »
  • Essays, Lectures, Reviews  »
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