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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: course, we have to a very great extent got rid of any attempt on
the part of the community, or the Church, or the Government, to
interfere with the individualism of speculative thought, but the
attempt to interfere with the individualism of imaginative art
still lingers. In fact, it does more than linger; it is
aggressive, offensive, and brutalising.
In England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which
the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean.
We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public
do not read it, and consequently do not influence it. The public
like to insult poets because they are individual, but once they
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