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| The Artist |
One evening there came into his soul the desire to fashion an image of The Pleasure that abideth for a Moment. And he went forth into the world to look for bronze. For he could think only in bronze.
But all the bronze of the whole world had disappeared, nor anywhere in the whole world was there any bronze to be found, save only the bronze of the image of The Sorrow that endureth for Ever.
Now this image he had himself, and with his own hands, fashioned, and had set it on the tomb of the one thing he had loved in life. On the tomb of the dead thing he had most loved had he set this image of his own fashioning, that it might serve as a sign of the love of man that dieth not, and a symbol of the sorrow of man that endureth for ever. And in the whole world there was no other bronze save the bronze of this image.
And he took the image he had fashioned, and set it in a great furnace, and gave it to the fire.
And out of the bronze of the image of The Sorrow that endureth for Ever he fashioned an image of The Pleasure that abideth for a Moment.
Oscar Wilde’s The Artist is a short prose poem first published in 1894 as part of his Poems in Prose, a small cycle of six symbolic and haunting pieces.
In this brief but powerful text, an artist wishes to create an image of The Pleasure that abideth for a Moment. Yet all the bronze in the world has disappeared, except for the bronze of another image he had once made: The Sorrow that endureth for Ever. To create pleasure, he must melt down sorrow.
Written in a style that feels almost like a dark biblical parable, The Artist turns creation into an act of transformation. Grief becomes material. Memory becomes fire. And out of what was meant to last forever, something fragile and beautiful is made for a single moment.
A late night reading with dark jazz atmosphere, for the hours when beauty, sorrow, and silence seem to belong to the same room.
Bibliography
Wilde, Oscar. “The Artist.” In Poems in Prose. First published in The Fortnightly Review, July 1894.
Wilde, Oscar. Essays and Lectures. Edited by Robert Ross. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd. First published in book form in 1908; fourth edition, 1913. Text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Wilde, Oscar. Poems in Prose. Wikisource public domain text.Britannica. “Oscar Wilde.” For author death date and biographical reference.