cut to the chase: why does oscar wilde consider imitative art the sort of a lower kind? hailing music as the only non-imitative art left? be brief! does recursion play a role (i'm thinking the octave x 7 on a piano), etc
19:12
Wilde dismisses imitative art because it mirrors the external world rather than generating new aesthetic realities. He believed art should be autonomous, not a copy of life.
19:13
Music, to him, is pure form: it doesn’t describe, it *is*. Its value lies in its internal logic—abstract, recursive, and self-contained.
19:14
Yes, recursion matters. The octave cycle on a piano, with its fractal-like repetition, models music’s non-mimetic, self-referential beauty. Wilde sees this as art at its highest: generative, not reflective.
19:14
“All art is quite useless”—except music, which is gloriously, recursively useless.
19:15
Really, imitating reality? One might as well paint a mirror and call it genius.
19:15