The Ballad of Reading Gaol

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Link here and join me in a Wilde lovefest:

http://www.gutenberg.net/etext95/rgaol10.txt

Good lord. I hadn't read this in years, since before the first time I made the pilgrimage to Wilde's grave; I decided to read it again for a piece I'm doing on Space March and oh, god, maybe I'm just hung over but while I was drinking wine last night I was reading some of Wilde's lovely short stories and the juxtapostion just... just... oh, what a gentle generous soul; it's the light, funny, dedicated-to-entertaining natures that really get me when they go for the dark things, they seem to make the darkness shine... I can't think, I can't write, I can't stop crying, I can't stop reading the passage that's carved into Wilde's tomb...

"Yet all is well; he has but passed
To Life's appointed bourne:
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men
And outcasts always mourn."

What always destroys me when I go there is the fact that the "lady" admirer who paid for the current tomb couldn't/wouldn't be identified by name on the monument... Ha ha, another Moment With German Tourists in Paris: once I was trying to have a quiet moment in front of his grave and a bunch of big, loud German teenagers came over and started pointing and laughing at me, no kidding. Ha. Ha. They're so lucky to be alive. Oh god, do you REALIZE how much we owe to Oscar? I can't look at this poem without thinking THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU, WE DO REMEMBER! over and over again. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants and screw off, Mr. Stipe, it does not leave me cold in the slightest. What a beautiful man. (Wilde, not Stipe)

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Sunday, 14 March 2004 03:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I think Mike and Oscar'll get along quite well in the great beyond.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

― otto, Sunday, 14 March 2004 05:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Lovely idea, a lovefest for Wilde. Purportedly, Wilde, on the way to prison, standing in the rain, said, "If this is the way Her Majesty treats her prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any." in the midst of any downtown I look up to "the little tent of blue..." and thank my luck.

― Michael White (Hereward), Monday, 15 March 2004 06:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Ohhhh... he just never quit, did he?

Would it be possible to list a literary movement after him that didn't bear his lovely stain?

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Monday, 15 March 2004 20:28 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the 'BoRG' is self-pitying, self-denying nonsense!

The best Wilde is 'The Decay of Lying', 'The Truth of Masks', etc etc etc!

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 15 March 2004 21:47 (twenty-two years ago)

I won't respond to self-pitying, but why self-denying? BTW, it's ok if you don't like his plays, short stories or poetry, but to compare 'The Decay of Lying'to 'Ballad of Reading Gaol' seems a little specious. Maybe I'm just a wee bit defensive about my Oscar.

― Michael White (Hereward), Monday, 15 March 2004 22:40 (twenty-two years ago)

It's as if Nietzsche converted to Catholicism on his deathbed!

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 15 March 2004 22:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Hey Nipper -- you forget to finesse the concept of individualism. How can you know you're an original if you haven't bothered to find out what anyone else is like? See The Birthday of the Infata. Sheesh, see that one story where the guy finds out he's the king, and then he has these three dreams where he sees the suffering toilers from whom all his riches come, so he decides to go to his coronation in crummy pants.

And yeah: self-denying is what I LIKE in an individualist! If you're an individualist with no capacity to see the other side then you should run for U.S. president. or rather, you shouldn't, but you already have. Be a CEO, you'll be a hit, but don't be a writer. If Updike could be self-denying once in a blue moon maybe I could stomach him. The BoRG (just because it forms a Star Trek episode only means something if you don't like it) is a realization of a side of Wilde that was latent all along.

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Monday, 15 March 2004 23:05 (twenty-two years ago)

d'oh, "latent all along," I've been redundant again, time for that cup of coffee...

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Monday, 15 March 2004 23:06 (twenty-two years ago)

I can join in this too now! just picked up a copy of his 'collected works'.

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 01:46 (twenty-two years ago)

three weeks pass...

Well, Cozen, are you enjoying it?

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Saturday, 10 April 2004 22:22 (twenty-one years ago)

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