The Artist
Oscar Wilde
Original title: The Artist
Original English · 1913 Methuen edition (Project Gutenberg #774)
Edition: wilde-artist-en-methuen-1913
Canonical URL: https://streamentry.github.io/LitMundi/en/read/wilde-the-artist/wilde-artist-en-methuen-1913/
Publication: published; source_checked
Translator: not applicable
Editors: none recorded
Reviewers: no independent literary certification
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Review evidence: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/774/pg774-images.html
Source edition: wilde-artist-en-methuen-1913
Source edition URL: https://streamentry.github.io/LitMundi/en/read/wilde-the-artist/wilde-artist-en-methuen-1913/
Source: Oscar Wilde, “The Artist,” Poems in Prose (Fortnightly Review, July 1894); in Essays and Lectures, 4th ed., Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1913, pp. 227–228. Digital transcription: David Price, Project Gutenberg #774.
Source witness URL: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/774/pg774-images.html
Source catalog URL: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/774
Source witness description: 1913 Methuen fourth edition; electronic transcription, not a facsimile of the 1894 printing.
License: Public Domain (underlying Oscar Wilde text)
Rights: Oscar Wilde died in 1900; 'The Artist' appeared in 1894 and the selected print witness is from 1913. Assessed public domain: USA (pre-1931), EU (usually life plus 70) and Vietnam (ordinary literary works, life plus 50 under Article 27). Moral rights and variant editions must still be respected. Not a global legal guarantee.
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[wilde-the-artist:1.1]
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.

[wilde-the-artist:1.2]
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.

[wilde-the-artist:1.3]
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.

[wilde-the-artist:1.4]
And he took the image he had fashioned, and set it in a great furnace, and gave it to the fire.

[wilde-the-artist:1.5]
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.