By Meghan Lord
“It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” – Oscar Wilde
Or in other words that you may be more familiar with, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. This sentiment has been expressed in art since the beginning of the written word, in ancient Grecian texts, Shakespearian plays, 18th-century political essays, and 19th-century novels (site). Many have also often claimed that art mirrors life, which Wilde denies in this aphorism. I must agree, that when we look into art we most often try to see ourselves. Humans are egoistic creatures, and we tend to place ourselves at the center of whatever we’re observing in order to make sense of it. A key aspect of artistic expression is that it’s a shared experience in which every person who observes it adds their perspective. When reading poetry, listening to music, or looking at a painting, we’re viewing it from a point of view colored by our personal history, values, and thoughts. I find it incredible that dozens of people could observe one piece of art, but depending on what matters to the individual they could all see something different in it. What a person sees in a piece of art mirrors some aspect of themselves.
For example, one of my favorite poems is T.S Elliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. The poem is about the woes of life at the beginning of the 20th century and the anxieties of adulthood. Despite how different life is today from the early 1900s, the poem still strikes a chord with readers because it continues to mirror independent experiences. Reading the poem as a high school student over a century after it was written, I applied my own perspective to it and my response mirrored my personal experience more than anything else. The line “Do I dare – Disturb the universe?” (Elliot 45-46) always stood out in my mind. My emphasis on that aspect of the poem reflected my point of view centered around a desire to affect the world around me, balanced with the anxiety of affecting change. It may not have been the intention of the poet and everyone who reads the same line may take away a different meaning. There are many themes touched on in the poem, but in my reading, the anxiety around wanting to make a change in life felt more relevant than anything else. This doesn’t mean that it was the most relevant to society as a whole but shows that disturbing the universe is a value particularly important to me as the reader. Life has changed a lot since that poem was written, but it remains relatable to people because of how they apply their own experiences. I believe that meaning lies in the beholder, and that meaning reflects deeper desires and values within the individual.