<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; <\/p>\n\n\n\n
the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Oscar Wilde, \"The Decay of Lying\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n In \"The Decay of Lying\"\u2014an essay in the form of a Socratic dialogue between Vivian, a romantic, and Cyril, a realist\u2014Oscar Wilde develops the idea that modernism in the arts involves \u201ca huge price to pay for a very poor result\u201d and sees the novels that emerge from this movement not only as the decadence of imagination and lying but of the highest aspirations of literature. L\u2019art pour l\u2019art<\/em> at its peak. For Wilde, literary realism is equivalent to having \u201cmistaken the common livery of the age for the vesture of the Muses, and spend our days in the sordid streets and hideous suburbs of our vile cities when we should be out on the hillside with Apollo. Certainly we are a degraded race, and have sold our birthright for a mess of facts.\u201d1<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through this radical and romantic stance\u2014a aesthetic Manichaeism of sorts in which one must decide between Art or Life\u2014Wilde arrives at a similar conclusion to Ballard\u2019s (4.7<\/a>, 9.2<\/a>, 9.4<\/a>), but approaches it from the opposite side:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Schopenhauer has analysed the pessimism that characterises modern thought, but Hamlet invented it. The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The Nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Tourg\u00e9niev, and completed by Dostoievski. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People\u2019s Palace rose out of the d\u00e9bris of a novel. Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac. Our Luciens de Rubempre, our Rastignacs, and De Marsays made their first appearance on the stage of the Com\u00e9die Humaine<\/em>. We are merely carrying out, with footnotes and unnecessary additions, the whim or fancy or creative vision of a great novelist.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Seen in this light, in Wilde\u2019s time literary imagination moulded reality. In ours, however, reality and fiction have become indistinguishable. And curiously enough it was not imagination and its fictions that brought us here, it was the realism that Wilde\u2019s character was so suspicious of. In a matter of a century we sank into a form of media realism that derived its impetus from its literary predecessor. A form of realism that, as it covered more and more territory, ended up hyper-realized (9.4<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n An analysis of the phenomenon of reality TV will allow us to appreciate that we have indeed sold our birthright\u2014the right to a consensual reality clearly delimited from fiction\u2014for a \u201cmess of facts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Los antiguos historiadores nos presentaban ficciones deliciosas en formas de hechos; el novelista moderno nos presenta hechos est\u00fapidos a guisa de ficciones. Oscar wilde, La decadencia de la mentira En La decadencia de la mentira \u2014un ensayo en forma de di\u00e1logo socr\u00e1tico entre Vivian, un rom\u00e1ntico, y Cyril, un realista\u2014, Oscar Wilde desarrolla la idea […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":274836558,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"Oscar Wilde, \u201cLa decadencia de la mentira\u201d en Obras Completas<\/em>, 975.\",\"id\":\"399dd402-4317-4bff-bf91-1d0ed4f518f8\"},{\"content\":\"Ib\u00edd., 982.\",\"id\":\"61857d29-0466-4032-809d-878929e26a32\"}]","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[786109670],"tags":[786109667,786109668,786109672,786109166,786109673],"class_list":["post-1744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitulo-9","tag-hiperrealidad","tag-hyperreality","tag-la-decadencia-de-la-mentira","tag-oscar-wilde","tag-the-decay-of-lying"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgYHfz-s8","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/274836558"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1744"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1791,"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1744\/revisions\/1791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/locusterribilis.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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