Oscar Wilde: Intentions

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), who gained fame as a brilliant stylist and inimitable wit, was not only an outstanding writer and playwright, but also a talented critic, a passionate researcher of the life around him and, above all, art, for which he himself became a shocking revelation and challenge.
The book "Intentions" is a cycle of author's essays devoted to various issues of literature, criticism and society. This is a collection of witty remarks and, at the same time, an expanded aesthetic program of the writer, capable of serving as a self-commentary on his own works. In an era of the widespread "decline of lies" under the guise of unnecessary salon chatter, Wilde speaks of the mystery of imagination, capable of subordinating life to the whimsical logic of "sinful and self-willed" art, and asserts the only possible truth for himself - the truth of beauty, standing above any rules and prejudices.
Unadapted edition in English.