Best-Loved Oscar Wilde E-Book
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- Herausgeber: The O'Brien Press
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
Those whom the gods love grow young. Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900), one of Ireland's most beloved writers, was a playwright, poet, novelist and author of fairy stories and political essays. A complex man with many sides, he was both a revolutionary thinker and a flamboyant dandy and man about town. His wit and razor-sharp observation made him the toast of society on both sides of the Atlantic before scandal and notoriety stripped him of his position and his freedom. Best-Loved Oscar Wilde gathers a selection of Wilde's celebrated writing, chosen and introduced by John Wyse Jackson.
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In happy and loving memory of Ruth Ellen Moller
Contents
Introduction
‘The two great turning points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison.’
If your father is the country’s most famous medical man, an eminent natural historian, antiquarian and serial adulterer, and if your mother is a revolutionary poet, Irish folklorist and literary hostess of legendary eccentricity, and if they name you Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, you have a lot to live up to.
Oscar was born in Dublin, at 21 Westland Row, on 16 October 1854. After boarding school in Enniskillen, he studied classics at Trinity College, Dublin, and then went (with a scholarship) to Magdalen College, Oxford. There he allied himself with the ‘Aesthetes,’ imbibing the ‘gospel of beauty’ from Walter Pater and the great John Ruskin, and travelling in Greece and Italy during vacations.
He moved in 1879 to London, where his name was soon being heard in literary, artistic and theatrical circles – though less on account of his first book, Poems (1881), than for his flamboyant conversation. The year 1882 was spent in America and Canada, delivering provocative lectures about Aestheticism and the new British movement in art. (The following year was largely taken up with touring the British Isles, lecturing about the Americans and their lack of Aestheticism.) Wilde was now one of the most famous cultural figures in the world, even though, in truth, he had as yet published very little of real substance.
In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd, and they had two children, Cyril and Vyvyan. Still without regular means of support, he enjoyed himself for a time editing the Woman’s World magazine and writing reviews. Between 1888 and 1895 were his most productive and successful years: he wrote short stories, essays, poems long and short, fairy tales, a shocking novel and five plays, each more accomplished than the last. In these works, and in interviews, letters and talks, his detached, teasing opinions challenged the absurdities and injustices of life in England in the late Victorian period.
If the rise of Oscar’s star was rapid, its fall was meteoric. Acts of homosexuality were against not only the law of the land but the unwritten laws of society as well, and he showed exceptional courage in asserting publicly that same-sex love was a natural part of human life. His love for Lord Alfred (‘Bosie’) Douglas led to imprisonment with hard labour for two years. Released in 1897, he never recovered from the experience and died in Paris, three years later, aged forty-six.
Oscar once remarked: ‘I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.’ Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, the course of his life was a tragedy of Greek (or Shakespearian) proportions, a classic tale of success and failure, pride and prejudice. Following his death, this tale was told repeatedly, in books, in films and, naturally, in gossip. His literary achievement was underestimated, however, and his works were neglected by academic scholarship until the 1980s. Conversely, the popularity of his fiction, fairy tales and plays never waned.
Perhaps it was his Irishness that enabled Wilde to diagnose the hypocrisies of the English society in which he lived. He questioned everything, took nothing for granted. Once had found his voice, he found writing easy. The selection here is not limited to extracts from his most famous works; there are examples from many (though not all) of the literary forms he mastered. This book aims to show why Oscar Wilde is truly one of the ‘best loved’ writers, not just of Ireland, but of the world.
John Wyse Jackson
All Art is Quite Useless
YOUNG POET, AESTHETE AND LECTURER
From The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Picture of Dorian Gray is a moral tale, revealing the horrors of a life lived entirely for pleasure; and, since it describes these horrors in glorious detail, it not only scandalised reviewers but also sold in great numbers. The first version of Dorian Gray appeared in Lippincott’s Magazine in July 1890. For its publication in book form, a year later, Wilde added six new chapters and, to explain the philosophical underpinning of the book, a preface consisting entirely of paradoxes. Wilde’s aphorisms remain among his most famous accomplishments today. Originally bearing the draft title ‘Dogmas for the Use of the Aged’, they offer a witty summary of Aestheticism, the artistic creed that lies behind many of Wilde’s writings.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.
