The Collected Oscar Wilde

Well, I decided I wouldn't do this because I try to shy away from writing about collections of shorts stories and poetry and stuff because it's mainly summary, it's really disjointed, it usually has about .0001% of the original work imbued into it, and really would only mean the most to someone who's read the stuff for sure instead of just a casual observer. (This is not meant as a shot against you, Emma.) But, then my brain said OSCAR WILDE. And I was all, yeah, I AM going to talk about him for forty megabytes. I am.


Anyway, this is a Barnes & Noble collection of his randomly selected works, possibly all of his short stories, possibly all of his poetry, and all of his essays/lectures (maybe), and the three-act version of The Importance of Being Earnest. It also has a brief history of his life, as these books are wont to do, and a brief history of the note-taker of the volume, which no one reads.


I have a pretty clear idea idea of Oscar Wilde's life, though not an intimate idea, as I have never read this introduction, nor a biography of any sort on the man (which may seem kind of surprising). I skimmed the introduction included with the Barnes & Noble edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and that was enough. His history is not a pleasant one, at the end, and it does quite well to upset me, right down to my marrow. For those of you who don't know, Oscar Wilde was put on trial for homosexuality charges, and supposedly they couldn't reach a clear verdict (depending on the source, some say it was very cut-and-dry for guilty)--so they sent him to two years in jail with hard labor anyway. Actually, I lie when I say I never read the introduction in this book; I have skimmed the very end. I got so upset--so stomach sick, I get stomach sick just thinking about it here--I had to put the book down. The jail was a grimy place, naturally, dank and damp, the only toilet a bucket, and Wilde's health suffered greatly because of that, he was constantly ill, he had to perform hard labor that tore up his hands and fingernails (I have a thing about fingernails). And more, and more. You can see the difference in 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' in him from his other works, and then compare it to his earlier works (I'll touch upon this later)... it's wrenching, for me at least. You remember how when I write about the Russian Revolution, specifically about the Romanovs, I get upset? This is one of those. It's just... so twisted, so wrong, and it strikes a painful note in me that there's no avoidance of at all or possibility of being fixed because it has passed, it has passed.




Well, on that depressing note, let's get started. My first note regards 'The Portrait of Mr WH', a story which seems to be more of an intention to get Wilde's theory of Shankspeare's sonnets being written for a male lover, or just a male in general, across. I don't think it's entirely Wilde's theory alone--he was just one of the first. (When I happened to bring this up to Heidi, she asked me, "Now what would Mr Wilde know about that sort of thing, hm?") I believe his theory was that they written for a handsome young actor, though in reality no historical basis exists for the boy. Anyway... the quote, very eloquent indeed: "To him... [the sonnets] were poems of serious and tragic import, wrung out of the bitterness of Shakespeare's heart, and made sweet by the honey of his lips" (13).

"'You forget that a thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it'" (20). "'After all, what do [the sonnets] tell us about Shakespeare? Simply that he was the slave of beauty.' 'Well, that is the condition of being an artist!'" (21). (These aren't related; this simply saves room.)


Another example of Wilde's brilliant eloquence: "Later on there came to Sidney's house in London, one--some day to be burned at Rome, for the sin of seeing God in all things--Giordana Bruno" (42).

"What does it matter? It is only acting, only a comedy in real life" (57). "Consciousness, indeed, is quite inadequate to explain the contents of personality. It is Art, and Art only, that reveals us to ourselves" (68). (This he fervently believes in and it will come up more frequently later on.)

"How curiously it had all been revealed to me! A book of Sonnets, published nearly three hundred years ago, written by a dead hand and in honour of a dead youth, had suddenly explained to me the whole story of my soul's romance... Strange, that we knew so little about ourselves, and that our most intimate personality was concealed from us!'" (70). This is beautiful, I love that phrase, "the whole story of my soul's romance". It's just... so lovely. This a fantastic passage, including that what the ellipses have hidden. But it was very touching, something about it touches me, it breaks my heart and makes me love it all the more fervently at the same time.

"Martyrdom was to me merely a tragic form of scepticism, an attempt to realise by fire what one had failed to do by faith. No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their heart tells them is not true" (77).

The next story is 'Lord Arthur Savile's Crime', a sort of comedy about murder, with an ending that always sort of surprises me and I understand, but kind of dislike because it is not where I would have taken it at all. (Though, with its humorous roots, my ending would have made it very awkward and much like Castor oil.) It's about Lord Arthur, a few months before his marriage, who gets his palm read at Lady Windmere's (I see what you did there!) home. The palm reader is quite frightened, and eventually tells Arthur he is destined to murder someone, so Arthur steels himself to kill before he gets married for his wife's sake. It's a comedy, because he just can't get it down--his attempt at exploding a relation falls flat, his attempt at poisoning an old family acquaintance falls flat... well, in humorous ways, I guess you kind of have to read it to see the humor really well.

"Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But real life is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications... the world is a stage, but the play is badly cast" (88). "Life to him meant action, rather than thought. He had that rarest of all things, common sense" (94).

From 'The Model Millionaire': "Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed" (113).

One of my favorite stories if 'The Canterville Ghost', the story of a ghost who attempts to terrify an American family who has recently moved into his domain. It is, for the most part, a comedy (the end is not, and whether I enjoy the end when I read it depends on my mood) that mocks Americans. For example, there is a bloodstain on the floor--the father is not disturbed, he simply takes special cleaning fluid and blots it out. When the ghost rattles his chains, the father offers him oil for the chains. It is meant to be (in its more comedic portion) a "satire upon American materialism" (Fletcher's note, 119). What I have marked is in its more serious ending, however, mostly of the ghost's interaction with the American family's daughter Virginia.

"'Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace'" (138).

"'You can have your secret as long as I have your heart'" (147). So, Oscar, let me turn that one right back on you. Because I'm pretty sure this is the sweetest thing I've ever read.

'The Young King' is a very clear Jesus metaphor through and through. A young king, before his coronation, has several nightmares, all of them about the works who suffered to find him jewels and gold and to weave his glorious robes and all, and becomes quite disturbed. He decides to go to the coronation wearing a sheepskin coat and held his crook as a scepter and used a crown of briars. Oh, did I mention that he was, at one point, a shepherd? I believe a big point is to be made that he is accused of doing himself up like a beggar and said that he will shame them all, but in reality he is more kingly and unable to shame, since he is following the example of, well, Jesus. It's a pretty cool little package, a pretty concept to write about. I've never seen something quite in this exact vein before.

My other favorite story is 'The Remarkable Rocket'. It's a story about rockets to be set off for the wedding of the king's son. All the rockets are personified, and there is one dreadful rocket who won't shut up about himself and how--well--remarkable he is.

"'Any place you love is the world to you'" (216).

"'...Love is not fashionable any more, the poets have killed it. They wrote so much about it that nobody believed them, and I am not surprised. True love suffers, and is silent'" (216). This kind of reminds me of the scene in Pride and Prejudice where Mr Darcy and Elizabeth are talking about poetry--Elizabeth says something like, how many loves have been destroyed poetry, Mr Darcy appears surprised, saying he always thought it to be the "food of love" (CH 9), but she responds with that it helps nourish a strong love, but will kill a fragile love (sonnets in particular).

"'Why, anybody can have common sense, provided that they have no imagination'" (218). "'It is a very dangerous thing to know one's friends'" (219).

There is a 'poem in prose' entitled 'The Master'. It is hardly half a page, it is about a beautiful young man who is starved and distraught and had wounded his body with thorns. He is weeping, presumably after Christ's death, and when comfort is attempted to be given to him, he says he is not crying for Christ, but for himself, because he has committed miracles the same as Jesus, but he was not crucified. I think it's interesting because of the quote I put up earlier, about martyrs, the one from page 77 (ctrl+f it.) He desperately wanted to believe, and wanted to die for it, but he wasn't tortured and so had to live with his disbelief? Or, from Bob Dylan's Tarantula: "you have no answers! you have just found a way to pass your time! without this thing, you would shrivel up & be nothing--you are afraid of being nothing--you are caught up in it--it's got you!' i am so Sick of Biblical people--they are like castor oil--like rabies & now i wish for Your eyes..." (84).

All of his poems are fairly interesting and very pleasant, but my favorite is the most disheartening, 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol', his poem written while imprisoned. (Reading is a place, and Gaol is another name for jail.) The poem is interesting, as much as it is depressing. I can't help but wonder--and most likely guess correctly--that it's sort of a slash at Lord Alfred Douglas as well, his alleged lover. I believe this for many reasons, the first being the fact that the refrain of the poem is "Each man kills the thing he loves" (249) and later he adds, "Yet each man does not die" (249). Perhaps a direct jab at Alfred? Obviously, Wilde was not hung, but many of the observations are directed at other inmates who were hung. And he could mean, die as in suffer in a way that is like death, or you deserve death because this is what you have brought upon me... And in the refrain, Wilde has "The coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword!" (249). Of course, the kiss could be a reference to Judas's kiss, but again, it works for Lord Alfred Douglas as well. And then the sword--perhaps saying, it would have been better if you had just flat out killed me than to leave me to suffer this fate? And later, he cries out: "Alas! It is a fearful thing to feel another's guilt!" (257). Who knows, this speculation could be as foundless as the Willie Hughes theory ('The Portrait of Mr WH'.)


As for the rest of the poem, it is obviously very dark and depressing. Bitter, sad, fearful--it's upsetting--"Something was dead in each of us, and what was dead was Hope" (260), "What word of grace in such a place could help a brother's soul?" (255), "It eats the flesh and bone by turns, But it eats the heart away" (264), and yet--somewhat sort of optimistic towards the end, on the very last stanza on 268 that carries over to 269, it reads as follows: "Ah! happy they whose hearts can break And peace of pardon win! How else may man make straight his plan And cleanse his soul from Sin? How else but through a broken heart May Lord Christ enter in?"


"...Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for eternity" (279). (From 'Where Morality is not in Question', a lecture.)

From his lecture, 'Decorative Art in America: "When I was at Leadville and reflected that all the shining silver I saw coming from the mines would be made into ugly dollars, it made me sad" (287). First of all, this sounded really cute. Very personal, but in a cute way.* If that makes sense? Second of all, the case he is making is that beautiful resources are being wasted on ugly things: he complains about gaudy golden jewelry earlier, and right after his statement about the silver being turned to dollars, he says it "should be made into something more permanent" (287), like a monument, say (his example), the golden gates at Florence, which have been around since Michael Angelo's time and are just as beautiful as they were then.

*He also complains a little while later of the cups he was served drinks in in a hotel. He complains that they are plain and non-delicate, an "inch and a quarter thick" (288), and that he cannot fathom that because the hotels spend so much on gaudy and ugly fixtures and details, why not spend some of that on a nice teacup? His final comment on that is, "I think I have deserved something nicer" (288). Very cute, again, in a pouty little boy way.

"Beauty is justified by all her children, and cares nothing for explanations" (318). "Where there is loveliness in dress, there is no dressing up" (319). (These both, and those following until I say so, come from 'The Relations of Dress to Art'.)

"For Art is not to be taught in Academies. It is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist. The real schools should be the streets" (319). THIS IS WHY I'M NOT GOING TO ART SCHOOL! Thank you, Oscar, and remind me to quote this next time someone asks me that damned question.

From 'The Decay of Lying', an essay in the form of a dialogue that advocates lies, or, fiction. (In its very basest explanation. It's rather long, and you would do better just to read it yourself, as with any other thing quoted here.) "The only real people are the people who never existed" (367). Because they are more interesting, deeper, more has been put into them, they are certainly subjected to more curious, interesting, and exciting events. About facts, which he so hates, and our love and need for them in our more modern times (even then!): "Certainly we are a degraded race, and have sold our birthright for a mess of facts" (371).

"But you don't seriously believe that Life imitates Art, that Life in fact is the mirror, and Art the reality?" (378). I'm not so sure if Wilde seriously believed this (though considering how often and passionately he wrote about it, I think I'd have trouble believing he didn't) or just enjoyed thinking about it and toying with it; either way, he writes about it quite often.

"One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it come into existence" (383). "When people talk to us about others they are usually dull. When they talk about themselves they are nearly always interesting, and if one could shut them up, when they become wearisome, as easily as one can shut up a book... they would be perfect absolutely" (395).

"...We used to canonize our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarize them" (395). Of course, this remains true today. One only has to look at a magazine rack... well, anywhere. And then, this line turns out to be eerily prophetic for Wilde himself, of course--as it was at the height of his popularity and his most productive stage (or damned near close) that he was accused and put through his trials. (Kind of along with this, from 'The Critic as an Artist': "By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are" [449]. Again, prophetic in that sense that people today don't care for Wilde's trial and would not be alarmed--that the trial is even called the Most Useless Trial of the Century--though the author of that book apparently was never told that the 1800's and 1900's are two different centuries...)

"I can fancy a man who had led a perfectly commonplace life, hearing by some chance some curious piece of music, and suddenly discovering that his soul, without his being conscious of it, had passed through terrible experiences, and known fearful joys, or wild romantic loves, or great renunciations" (396). This reminds me of page 68 and 70, from 'The Portrait of Mr WH'. Shortly before this statement, Gilbert (one half of the dialogue) talks about how certain music makes him feel a certain way; Chopin makes him feel as if he is "weeping over sins I have never committed" (396). Well, of course, it's simple enough to imagine, it's harder to imagine a man that has never been struck in the same way by a piece of music or a section of written word or a piece of art. The way I think of it is--well--the way I feel it is an ache in my heart, painful and sweeter than a ripe peach, and I imagine something is pulling at it, maybe pulling the ghost of it from my body in a way that hurts, but with calming lavender-scented hands, or cool hands, soft as velvet. And your head and chest suddenly become full. You know?

"Why cannot the artist be left alone, to create a new world if he wishes it" (396).

"It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest" (414). This is an interesting concept too, I think. I mean, the first martyr that comes to mind is Jesus, and his doctrine has raised wars, racial troubles, religious scuffles--certainly what he was trying to avoid. And martyrs hung caused revolution, more deaths piled up, an explosion of violence and rage (the French revolution is at the forefront here). And, even though V for Vendetta isn't real, after he upends society (in the movie), how much do you want to bet that people will crawl around filthy like rodents and fight and burn and destroy until reverting to a government similar to before?

"[The record of one's soul] is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy... It is the only civilized form of autobiography, as it deals with not the events, but with the thoughts of one's life; not with life's physical accidents of deeds or circumstance, but with the spiritual moods and imaginative passions of the mind" (419). "Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob" (441). "Our of ourselves we can never pass, nor can there be in creation what in the creator was not" (444).

"...The more objective a creation appears to be, the more subjective it really is" (444). This just reminds of a theory Marky Mark told us about, that history is really actually subjective completely even though it's meant to be objective--sounds strange, but here's my support for that: If you're American, of course you know about the American revolution. It's the most important war in our history! It made us who we are. However, British text books hardly dedicate more than a few paragraphs to it, and in one of his Horrible History books, Teary Deary refers to the revolution as a "little problem" with the colonies.

"What other people call one's past has... everything to do with them, but has absolutely nothing to do with oneself" (445). That is, people change, grow, the kid who pulled your hair and bullied you at age five won't do so at age fifteen, and probably doesn't even remember doing so, for example. The victim of the hair-pulling still remembers and remains weary, but the ex-bully is thinking, no, I'm different, that was me, but now I'm a new me, pay attention to this me, the real me. Oscar Wilde, stop describing my thoughts and issues that bother me now to the T. It's starting to weird me out.

"Fine expression for a joy, and you intensify its ecstacy. Do you wish to love? Use Love's Litany, and the words will create the yearning from which the world fancies that they spring" (454). This is another intriguing concept, and another one which makes Wilde to be uncomfortably in my brain. He's arguing that reading about or being told about certain emotions makes you feel them--or, yearn for them, that perhaps in this case the yearning is not for your own personal Juliet, but a yearning for that boundless insane love is what causes those intense words, that you're trying to pull them out of yourself and plaster them onto other people, trying to match it--whatever you think 'it' may be.

"People cry out against the sinner, yet it is not the sinful, but the stupid, who are our shame. There is no sin except stupidity" (461). Again, mildly prophetic. Also, got your back, W.

From 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism', in which Wilde advocates a form of it... "...The best among the poor are never grateful... Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table?" (494).

"The true perfection lies, not in what a man has, but in what man is" (496). "What is outside of [man] should be a matter of no importance" (497). And, with socialism: "Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all" (497). While most people see socialism as a surrendering of freedom, Wilde clearly sees it the other way--without the burden and desire of garnering things, you know, they can live, as I've quoted. They are actually set free to develop spiritually and mentally seems to be his argument.

Wilde also works into socialism as being what Jesus advocated for--which doesn't really interest me, not his argument at least, but the fact that CS Lewis may be calling out Wilde for this in The Screwtape Letters. At one point a letter is sent that the people's new interpretations of Christ help drive people away from Christianity, because those interpretations are influenced by current events instead of the historical landscape of the ancient times and thus are wrong. The example of this is saying that Jesus's words were forms of socialism or communism. Wilde's take on it is that Jesus wanted people to be completely self-realized because that's the most important thing in life, in existence, and when one has possessions they are too distracted by those to gain self-realization, and so on--"Your perfection is inside of you" (499).


A section I thought interesting: "After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace" (500). What I believe is worth noting is the fact that this was written in 1891--before Wilde was imprisoned. This, compared to the harsh conditions described in 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol'... The conditions which essentially ruined him, stuck him with depression and destroyed his health completely... Well, I guess that this would show the difference between his--naivete, perhaps?--and what it really was like. If I may, I'd daresay that these words most likely haunted him in jail and he cursed them and himself.


"There is nothing necessarily dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading. It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does not find pleasure, and many forms of labour are quite pleasureless activities... To sweep a slushy crossing for eight hours on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation. To sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. To sweep it with joy would be appalling. Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt" (504).


Wilde goes on to talk about how machinery should be enlisted to do man's work, saying "on slavery of the machine, the world depends" (505), again, for self-actualization, because there will be nothing to worry about. And we wouldn't have to worry about the machinery stealing jobs, because drudging jobs wouldn't exist, money wouldn't exist, because it would all be simply communal. Because it's socialism!


"...The artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all" (506).


"In Art, the public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it. They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them. They endure them as the inevitable, and, as they cannot mar them, they mouth about them... this acceptance of classics does a great deal of harm" (508). Oh hey, sounds like my English classes every year. He goes onto say--not only again to parade his fervent love of Shankspeare by comparing his works to the Bible--but to say that in this way, because they just accept it, they can't truly understand its beauty and meaning because they could really care less (Oh hi, sophomore British lit class). However, they do use it as a judge, or, as Wilde puts it, a bludgeon, of other works, or to beat things back into the mold--say, to ask an author "Why don't you write more like X?" or why doesn't Y painter paint more like Z painter? And then criticize those, even though if they did, they would not only "cease to be an artist" (508) but also would be criticized for fraud. (This second bit he did not say, but you know it's the truth.) He goes on to add that when a fresh model of beauty comes into fruition it bewilders those stuck to their misinterprated classics and they harangue it and decide it to be unintelligable and, overall, immoral. I find this interesting, and especially poignant, because the next book I have begun is James Joyce's Ulysses, a new form of writing which would be a perfect example of all Wilde has spoken. Had this essay been written later--had Wilde lived that long, of course, and waited, if many things were different--one would almost certainly guess at that to be the example, I'm sure. Maybe.


"In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press" (512). "The private lives of men and women should not be told to the public" (513).


From 'A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated': "Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer" (529).
"To be really mediaeval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes" (530).
"Those whom the gods love grow young" (530).



From 'Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young': "The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible" (531). "What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered" (531).
"Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others" (531).
"Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions" (531).
"Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance" (531).
"If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out" (531).
"Time is a waste of money" (532).
"One should always be a little improbable" (532).
"Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obsure" (533). I concur!
"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance" (533).



And, from the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray--a book also available in Barnes and Noble's classics line but does not, in their edition, include the preface, nor the "artist's preface". Oh, okay. That makes sense.

"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault" (534). I was going to say which characters of the book this could be a direct stab at--namely, Dorian himself, but then I realized how stupid that sounded. Oh, the preface would be about the book it's prefacing? Really?

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all" (534). This quote appears in another work--perhaps 'The Decay of Lying'--only 'books' is replaced with 'poems'.

What else? In this edition, there is the three-act version of 'The Importance of Being Earnest', but I'm not going to touch that--I am in posession of the actual five-act play, so when I reread it, well, there you go. So... yeah. There's not much more to say, other than this is probably the longest post I've ever written, beacuse I am in love with Oscar Wilde and, quite frankly, could have written lots more. The one thing that bothers me about this is that this isn't a complete other than his plays and novel work. Yes, there is a book of his plays, but between the three Barnes & Noble Classics books, his works aren't complete. There are still a few stories unpublished, and I believe an essay or two, of course his letters, and then his first play--which okay, was a commercial failure, but actually that's probably what inspired all his rants on the critics and the foolishness of the public. Okay, so maybe it looks like I'm being a little nitpicky, but it's a little obnoxious--it's like having every single Pokemon card and just needing that one Charizard. Is it worth buying all those booster packs of Pokemon cards you already have for the chance of getting the Charizard? Well... yes, if it's a Charizard we're talking about, I mean... No! No, I mean. It's a pain in the neck. So, dear Barnes & Noble publishers, would you be willing to publish a book of all his other works you didn't deem fit to publish with the 'Classics' editions? (Actually, he'd probably be happier about not being in that lump... maybe. Or honoured. I'd get a huge ego, to hell with what a wrote about bludgeoning and such.) But seriously, Barnes & Noble. Get to it. Or not. Give me more reasons to type your name; I don't have nearly enough oppurtunities to include ampersands in my life, and I love ampersands. And I just had to use a semicolon, too! Ah, life is good.


So, yeah, read Oscar Wilde because HE'S AWESOME.


Cryptic song lyrics for Emma: Episodes and parallels, and don’t you want the invitation? Big bright accent, catty smile... (I can imagine anyone who recognizes these lyrics doing a great big face palm right now. LOOK. The rule is, it has to relate.)