Mario Praz (1896-1982) was a historian of art and literature. Among literary scholars and art historians, he is best known for a book translated into English as “The Romantic Agony.” It is an erudite and sensible study of themes of death, sexual idiosyncrasy, Satanism, sadism and other horrors in romantic literature. In one passage Praz discusses “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” claiming that Oscar Wilde failed to construct an atmosphere of anguish in that novel. This is because in the middle of the book’s most horrifying passages, Wilde suddenly forgot about the plot and started to describe nearby objects — a pair of lemon-yellow gloves, for example, or a gold-latten matchbox. Praz sees this approach as decadent and superficial, and points out that the author’s main interest is “decorative.” Ironically, Praz’s other well-known work is titled “An Illustrated History of Interior Decoration.” This book is one of the best examples of the kinds of books that address the need to discover the ties that bind artists and thinkers to the places in which they live. Praz takes great pleasure in guiding us on an illustrated tour of the inner worlds of artists and writers, exploring the rooms and objects that surround them, and never failing to entertain us, to educate us and to arouse our curiosity.
From the entry on the Mario Praz museum in “Small Museums” by Orhan Pamuk, tr. Ekin Oklap, NY Times T Magazine, 23 March 2014 (via hangingfire)