Persuasion through Dorian Gray
4th March 2011
Please consider Wilde’s Preface to the Picture of Dorian Gray with translation to persuasion. I’ve edited the published text to sharpen conceptual focus, deleting some sentences and repunctuating others. When you see the ellipses, you see the edit. My interpretation of Oscar’s observation appears in parenthetical italics.
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. (The persuasion maven is the creator of persuasive plays. To make the play and hide the player is the maven’s aim.)
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest and the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. (The practical persuader can translate theory into practice. Persuasion plays that express the true personality of the persuader can be the best and the worst persuasion. At the best, the play is Sincere, but the player is hidden. At the worst, the play is Sincere and the player is visible. Thus, an exception to my Rule that All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere; if you keep your Heart Hidden, then Sincere Persuasion may be Good Persuasion. But only you know this.)
. . .
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. (Persuasion has no values; it either succeeds or fails.)
. . .
No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. (You Cannot Persuade a Falling Apple, therefore, You Shouldn’t Try to Persuade a Falling Apple.)
. . .
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. (The persuasion maven can persuade anyone at anytime for any reason.)
. . .
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. (It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.)
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. (When other practical persuasion mavens disagree among themselves with your plays, you should feel good. When your peers all agree or all disagree, you’re probably either just wrong or just normative.)
All art is quite useless. (All persuasion is most useful.)
P.S. The story Dorian Gray itself is peppered with fabulous persuasion observations. Some require that metaphoric translation from Art back to Persuasion. Others just shout Persuasion. For example . . .
“Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid.”
“All forehead” contains exactly the corrugator muscles which wrinkle the forehead with the unmistakeable marker of evaluative processing so characteristic of the “intellectual mode.” The valence of your mind shows in the furrow of your brow. Oscar and ELM!