All Those Beauties in Solid Motion. All Those Beauties, Gonna Swallow You Up: Oscar Wilde the Aesthete

The aesthete movement came at a time of great change in the world. The industrial revolution was going full force, and there were plenty of new and exciting ideas floating about. Cynicism and wit have been around for many ages, but no writer has used either to its full capacity like Oscar Wilde. Being an aesthete himself, Wilde could find anything in nature and see the beauty in it (except for humans, it would seem). In many of Wilde’s writing, he looked into the social lives of the people around him and used them to his satirical advantage. Many of his plays, which are some of his more important and well known writings, contain witty aphorisms and phrases that contain a whole depth of intelligent criticism. On the other side of Wilde, however, was his ability to write poetry. Like some of the writers in the early industrial age, Wilde transported the pastoral beauty of the Romantic Movement, and put it right in the middle of the Victorian era.

In Symphony in Yellow, Wilde finds beauty around the city in a series of yellow objects. The compelling aspects of this poem are the hints of cynicism that lurk below the initial reading. The first stanza turns Wilde’s scene into something that one might find in their garden:

An omnibus across the bridge

Crawls like a yellow butterfly

And, here and there, a passer-by

Shows like a little restless midge. (1-4)

The first lines bring together to opposites and make them one. Wilde compares the omnibus to a lazy butterfly. Upon first glance, this could merely be a joining of the pastoral and industrial, but then again it could also be a comment on state of man. The omnibus was getting more and more popular during Wilde’s time, and when we sees it he compares it to a flighty insect that would normally have no care in the world. A butterfly carelessly meanders from flower to flower eating all day, much like the bus that Wilde sees going from bus stop to bus stop. A powerful steam powered machine is minimized to that of a flower munching insect. The people walking around are then compared to a “little restless midge” (4). Wilde looks at these people and see the chaotic existence of little insects, scrambling about just to make ends meet. So while there is beauty in the joining of the natural insects and busy city life, there is another layer present that speaks to the restless lives that people live. Insects do not live very long lives, and to many people, they are just seen as pointless or at the very least as utilities to eat gnats and other bugs.

Symphony in Yellow is just a glimpse at some of Wilde’s satirical works. Even upon first look, this can be seen as something that is not satirical at all and more of an exercise in Wilde’s aestheticism. The beauty of the world can be seen in so many things. Wilde’s plays contain more of the wit and cynicism that he is famous for, but his poetry gives a special look into a more subtle attack at human nature.