August 2nd, 2011, 22:47
http://blig.ig.com.br/juhnath/files/2009/07/contan-188x300.jpg
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/ju ... yle-review (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/24/constance-mrs-wilde-franny-moyle-review)
Alex Ross / Deceptive Picture / How Oscar Wilde painted over тАЬDorian Gray.тАЭ / The New Yorker, August 8, 2011
тАж
The gay strain in WildeтАЩs work is part of a larger war on convention. In the 1889 story тАЬThe Portrait of Mr. W. H.,тАЭ a pseudo-scholarly, metafictional investigation of ShakespeareтАЩs sonnets to a boy, Wilde slyly suggests that the pillar of British literature was something other than an ordinary family man. In the 1891 play тАЬSalom├й,тАЭ Wilde expands a Biblical anecdote into a sumptuous panorama of decadence. Anarchists of the fin de si├иcle, especially in Germany, considered Wilde one of their own: Gustav Landauer hailed Wilde as the English Nietzsche. Thomas Mann expanded on the analogy, observing that various lines of Wilde might have come from Nietzsche (тАЬThere is no reality in things apart from their experiencesтАЭ) and that various lines of Nietzsche might have come from Wilde (тАЬWe are basically inclined to maintain that the falsest judgments are the most indispensable to usтАЭ). Nietzsche and Wilde were, in MannтАЩs view, тАЬrebels in the name of beauty.тАЭ
...
Private detectives hired by Queensberry had rounded up rent boys and starstruck youths who had served WildeтАЩs needs, and there were no clever answers to the next round of questions: тАЬDid you become intimate with a young man named Conway? . . . He sold newspapers on the pier at Worthing? . . . Did you put your hands inside his trousers? . . . Did you give him sums from time to time amounting to fifteen pounds?тАЭ The roll call of WildeтАЩs associates hauntingly echoes the list of young men whom Dorian is said to have ruined.
...
Wilde foresaw his posthumous triumph. тАЬI have no doubt we shall win, but the road is long, and red with monstrous martyrdoms,тАЭ he wrote to the early gay-rights campaigner George Ives. Even so, the clean-cut categories of contemporary sexuality might have puzzled him. He was attracted to women as well as to men, if not nearly as strongly, and the collapse of his marriage may have had as much to do with temperamental differences as with sexual ones. (You could see him as one more self-entitled Victorian male exercising his right to extramarital recreation.) Furthermore, he might have resisted the tendency toward normalization in gay circlesтАФthe drive of an oppositional culture to abolish itself. When he spoke of winning the battle, he probably did not have in mind gaining the right to join the military and marry in church.
тАЬThe world spins only forward,тАЭ Prior Walter says at the end of Tony KushnerтАЩs тАЬAngels in America,тАЭ a тАЬgay fantasiaтАЭ that opened in 1991, a century after the publication of тАЬDorian Gray.тАЭ Prior goes on to say, тАЬWe will be citizens. The time has come.тАЭ Seeing the Signature Theatre production of KushnerтАЩs masterpiece last spring, I thought of how much had changed in twenty years, never mind a hundred. When I was in college, AIDS cast a pall of fear over gay life, and I struggled to summon the courage to tell my closest friends who I was. I couldnтАЩt have imagined that gay marriage would become legal in half a dozen states, or that I would be married myself.
The transformation is almost dreamlike. Yet I doubt that Wilde would recognize in our world the utopia that he dreamed aloud in тАЬThe Soul of Man Under Socialism.тАЭ A man who steeped himself in the literature of the ancient Greeks, who modelled his being on the writing of Balzac and Stendhal and Pater, who read Dante every day in prison, might have seen a new kind of hell in the global triumph of American-style pop culture. Medicine prolongs life and slows aging, but personal satisfaction is as elusive a commodity as it was for Dorian Gray. Prejudice wanes, ignorance grows, the world spins forward and backward. Few of us would wish for the return of WildeтАЩs London, with its opulent surfaces and savage heart. But Wilde might have been content to stay there, savoring his joys and sorrows. No one lives happily ever after.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/a ... ntPage=all (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/08/08/110808crat_atlarge_ross?currentPage=all)
http://oddbooks.co.uk/files/images/harris/wilde.gif
тАЬI would not say that [Oscar Wilde was a snob]. England is a strange country to the Irish.
To Wilde the aristocrats of England were like the nobles of Baghdad.тАЭ
- Yeats, quoted by Richard Ellman, Eminent Domain: Yeats Among Wilde, Joyce, Pound, Eliot & Auden.
WeтАЩve all heard that the past is another country. That fact is sadly never more apparent than on this, the day after Oscar WildeтАЩs 156th birthday. Raise your glassesтАж!
http://baroqueinhackney.wordpress.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/ju ... yle-review (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/24/constance-mrs-wilde-franny-moyle-review)
Alex Ross / Deceptive Picture / How Oscar Wilde painted over тАЬDorian Gray.тАЭ / The New Yorker, August 8, 2011
тАж
The gay strain in WildeтАЩs work is part of a larger war on convention. In the 1889 story тАЬThe Portrait of Mr. W. H.,тАЭ a pseudo-scholarly, metafictional investigation of ShakespeareтАЩs sonnets to a boy, Wilde slyly suggests that the pillar of British literature was something other than an ordinary family man. In the 1891 play тАЬSalom├й,тАЭ Wilde expands a Biblical anecdote into a sumptuous panorama of decadence. Anarchists of the fin de si├иcle, especially in Germany, considered Wilde one of their own: Gustav Landauer hailed Wilde as the English Nietzsche. Thomas Mann expanded on the analogy, observing that various lines of Wilde might have come from Nietzsche (тАЬThere is no reality in things apart from their experiencesтАЭ) and that various lines of Nietzsche might have come from Wilde (тАЬWe are basically inclined to maintain that the falsest judgments are the most indispensable to usтАЭ). Nietzsche and Wilde were, in MannтАЩs view, тАЬrebels in the name of beauty.тАЭ
...
Private detectives hired by Queensberry had rounded up rent boys and starstruck youths who had served WildeтАЩs needs, and there were no clever answers to the next round of questions: тАЬDid you become intimate with a young man named Conway? . . . He sold newspapers on the pier at Worthing? . . . Did you put your hands inside his trousers? . . . Did you give him sums from time to time amounting to fifteen pounds?тАЭ The roll call of WildeтАЩs associates hauntingly echoes the list of young men whom Dorian is said to have ruined.
...
Wilde foresaw his posthumous triumph. тАЬI have no doubt we shall win, but the road is long, and red with monstrous martyrdoms,тАЭ he wrote to the early gay-rights campaigner George Ives. Even so, the clean-cut categories of contemporary sexuality might have puzzled him. He was attracted to women as well as to men, if not nearly as strongly, and the collapse of his marriage may have had as much to do with temperamental differences as with sexual ones. (You could see him as one more self-entitled Victorian male exercising his right to extramarital recreation.) Furthermore, he might have resisted the tendency toward normalization in gay circlesтАФthe drive of an oppositional culture to abolish itself. When he spoke of winning the battle, he probably did not have in mind gaining the right to join the military and marry in church.
тАЬThe world spins only forward,тАЭ Prior Walter says at the end of Tony KushnerтАЩs тАЬAngels in America,тАЭ a тАЬgay fantasiaтАЭ that opened in 1991, a century after the publication of тАЬDorian Gray.тАЭ Prior goes on to say, тАЬWe will be citizens. The time has come.тАЭ Seeing the Signature Theatre production of KushnerтАЩs masterpiece last spring, I thought of how much had changed in twenty years, never mind a hundred. When I was in college, AIDS cast a pall of fear over gay life, and I struggled to summon the courage to tell my closest friends who I was. I couldnтАЩt have imagined that gay marriage would become legal in half a dozen states, or that I would be married myself.
The transformation is almost dreamlike. Yet I doubt that Wilde would recognize in our world the utopia that he dreamed aloud in тАЬThe Soul of Man Under Socialism.тАЭ A man who steeped himself in the literature of the ancient Greeks, who modelled his being on the writing of Balzac and Stendhal and Pater, who read Dante every day in prison, might have seen a new kind of hell in the global triumph of American-style pop culture. Medicine prolongs life and slows aging, but personal satisfaction is as elusive a commodity as it was for Dorian Gray. Prejudice wanes, ignorance grows, the world spins forward and backward. Few of us would wish for the return of WildeтАЩs London, with its opulent surfaces and savage heart. But Wilde might have been content to stay there, savoring his joys and sorrows. No one lives happily ever after.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/a ... ntPage=all (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/08/08/110808crat_atlarge_ross?currentPage=all)
http://oddbooks.co.uk/files/images/harris/wilde.gif
тАЬI would not say that [Oscar Wilde was a snob]. England is a strange country to the Irish.
To Wilde the aristocrats of England were like the nobles of Baghdad.тАЭ
- Yeats, quoted by Richard Ellman, Eminent Domain: Yeats Among Wilde, Joyce, Pound, Eliot & Auden.
WeтАЩve all heard that the past is another country. That fact is sadly never more apparent than on this, the day after Oscar WildeтАЩs 156th birthday. Raise your glassesтАж!
http://baroqueinhackney.wordpress.com