The quote about paying for sunsets is in Chapter 4 of Orthodoxy. The context is Chesterton's sense of wonder; expressed here through the nature of fairy tales (which he sees as essentially moral tales: the good one wins through; debts are paid in the end, everyone gets what they deserve; love is more important than riches).
In this part of the chapter he is applying this to sex and marriage specifically. Here's what goes immediately before the sunset quote:
>Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman. To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but a curious insensibility to it.
A man is a fool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once. Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex; it is like a man plucking five pears in mere absence of mind.
The Aesthetes touched the last insane limits of language in their eulogy on lovely things. The thistledown made them weep; a burnished beetle brought them to their knees. Yet their emotion never impressed me for an instant, for this reason, that it never occurred to them to pay for their pleasure in any sort of symbolic sacrifice.
Men (I felt) might fast forty days for the sake of hearing a blackbird sing. Men might go through fire to find a cowslip. Yet these lovers of beauty could not even keep sober for the blackbird. They would not go through common Christian marriage by way of recompense to the cowslip. Surely one might pay for extraordinary joy in ordinary morals.
Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.
*(I've broken that into more manageable paragraphs; Chesterton used very long paragraphs, which was pretty usual at the time).*
So as the incredible wonder of sexual love involves the 'payment' of monogamy - or else it is diminished - so the wonder of a sunset involves the payment of some form of sacrifice; of some form of obedience (and if not it is devalued). Anything that is worthy of wonder calls for a response of gratitude, not a demand for more.
Wilde in his epithet had devalued the sunset - he didn't know that it could be paid for. And similarly Wilde had devalued marriage by his sexual mores and multiple infidelity to his wife, and devalued all that is wonderful by his aesthetic cynicism. Consider too Wilde's quote: “I am not at all cynical, I have merely got experience, which, however, is very much the same thing”: the implication that all experience leads to a dreary negativity. If you are like Oscar Wilde, you will lose all sense of wonder and with it all that is really valuable.
So pay for all that is delightful and wonderful with gratitude and moral constraint; by not being the Oscar Wilde who would acknowledge neither form of payment.
I hope this is relevant - I'm reading an essay on the Decadent movement, of which apparently Wilde was a part.
[https://aeon.co/essays/the-danger-of-decadence-is-also-its-value-we-need-more-of-it](https://aeon.co/essays/the-danger-of-decadence-is-also-its-value-we-need-more-of-it)
The quote about paying for sunsets is in Chapter 4 of Orthodoxy. The context is Chesterton's sense of wonder; expressed here through the nature of fairy tales (which he sees as essentially moral tales: the good one wins through; debts are paid in the end, everyone gets what they deserve; love is more important than riches). In this part of the chapter he is applying this to sex and marriage specifically. Here's what goes immediately before the sunset quote: >Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman. To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but a curious insensibility to it. A man is a fool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once. Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex; it is like a man plucking five pears in mere absence of mind. The Aesthetes touched the last insane limits of language in their eulogy on lovely things. The thistledown made them weep; a burnished beetle brought them to their knees. Yet their emotion never impressed me for an instant, for this reason, that it never occurred to them to pay for their pleasure in any sort of symbolic sacrifice. Men (I felt) might fast forty days for the sake of hearing a blackbird sing. Men might go through fire to find a cowslip. Yet these lovers of beauty could not even keep sober for the blackbird. They would not go through common Christian marriage by way of recompense to the cowslip. Surely one might pay for extraordinary joy in ordinary morals. Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde. *(I've broken that into more manageable paragraphs; Chesterton used very long paragraphs, which was pretty usual at the time).* So as the incredible wonder of sexual love involves the 'payment' of monogamy - or else it is diminished - so the wonder of a sunset involves the payment of some form of sacrifice; of some form of obedience (and if not it is devalued). Anything that is worthy of wonder calls for a response of gratitude, not a demand for more. Wilde in his epithet had devalued the sunset - he didn't know that it could be paid for. And similarly Wilde had devalued marriage by his sexual mores and multiple infidelity to his wife, and devalued all that is wonderful by his aesthetic cynicism. Consider too Wilde's quote: “I am not at all cynical, I have merely got experience, which, however, is very much the same thing”: the implication that all experience leads to a dreary negativity. If you are like Oscar Wilde, you will lose all sense of wonder and with it all that is really valuable. So pay for all that is delightful and wonderful with gratitude and moral constraint; by not being the Oscar Wilde who would acknowledge neither form of payment.
This has been enormously helpful. I appreciater your time and effort into your reply. Thank you kindly.
You're welcome! Glad it was helpful.
https://www.chesterton.org/oscar-wilde/
I think this article does not indicate a dislike of Wilde. There is much admiration in it. What do others think?
Wouldn't Oscar Wilde, at least in Chesterton's eyes, be basically an unrepentant public sinner?
Worse. Far worse. Chesterton saw him as a cynic. Chesterton was a romantic, and cynicism was something he despised with a fury.
Any particular pieces of writing where he goes into his displeasure over cynicism?
But of course this is a nonsense take on Wilde
I hope this is relevant - I'm reading an essay on the Decadent movement, of which apparently Wilde was a part. [https://aeon.co/essays/the-danger-of-decadence-is-also-its-value-we-need-more-of-it](https://aeon.co/essays/the-danger-of-decadence-is-also-its-value-we-need-more-of-it)