“ The only real people are the people who never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages he should at least pretend that they are creations, and not boast of them as copies. ”
Oscar Wilde, Intentions (1891). copy citation
| Author | Oscar Wilde |
|---|---|
| Source | Intentions |
| Topic | creation copy |
| Date | 1891 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/887/887-h/887-h.htm |
Context
“now that we have learned from Vingt Ans de ma Vie littéraire that these characters were taken directly from life. To us they seem to have suddenly lost all their vitality, all the few qualities they ever possessed. The only real people are the people who never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages he should at least pretend that they are creations, and not boast of them as copies. The justification of a character in a novel is not that other persons are what they are, but that the author is what he is. Otherwise the novel is not a work of art. As for M. Paul Bourget, the master of the roman psychologique, he commits the error of imagining that the men and women of modern life are capable of being infinitely analysed for an innumerable series of chapters.”
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