The Picture of Oscar Wilde
His Life
Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright, poet, and author of works ranging from fiction to essays on art and art criticism to social commentaries. He was born on 16 October 1854 in Dublin as the second of three children to William, a surgeon and folklorist, and Jane, a writer and Irish nationalist. In 1867, Wilde’s younger sister died. This event went on to affect his works for years to come, the theme of extreme innocence recurring throughout his works. Wilde went on to study classics at Trinity College in Dublin, where he met “"the scholar who showed me how to love Greek things", and Magdalen College in Oxford, where he also studied classics. While at Magdalen College, Wilde became well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. He grew out his hair and openly rejected “manly” sports and decorated his rooms with peacock feathers, lilies, sunflowers, and blue china.
When he was 24, Wilde moved to London and became prominent in the social scene, becoming known for his wit and foppish dress. He first made his name as touring the United States in the early 1880s and lecturing. In 1884, Wilde married and had two children. Soon afterwards, he began to explore his homosexuality, and in the early 1890s fell in love with Lord Alfred Douglas. This relationship led to Wilde’s trial and conviction for sodomy, for which he served two years of hard labor. He was released in 1897 and spent the rest of his life in France as an outcast. Poor and ill, Oscar Wilde died on 30 November, 1900 in Paris at the age of 46.
His Works
After leaving university, Wilde published a book of poems and also lectured in Canada and the United States on the “English Renaissance in Art”. Beginning in 1888, Oscar Wilde entered a period in which almost all of his great works were produced. After he published The Happy Prince and Other Tales, a collection of children's stories, Oscar Wilde’s first literary success was the Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which means that it was written around an atmosphere of mystery and terror. After his play, Lady Windermere's Fan, became popular, Oscar Wilde adopted playwriting as his main form. Many consider his masterpiece, his magnum opus, to be The Importance of Being Earnest, a comedy satirizing Victorian customs, it was part of a series of comedies written for Victorian society. Wilde gave an outsider's view of the workings of the Victorian aristocracy. Oscar Wilde was also involved in the rise of the philosophy of aestheticism, or “Art for Art’s Sake”, which featured prominently in many of his poems. Oscar Wilde’s last work was a poem entitled “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, which recounted his experiences in prison.
His Legacy
Today, Oscar Wilde is remembered for his one-liners, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his works in the theater. More than that, he is remembered for his personal life, including his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas as well as the circumstances surrounding his trial, imprisonment, incarceration, and death.
REQUIESCAT
Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.
Peace, peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.
Works Cited
"Oscar Wilde." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 07 Apr. 2015.
"Oscar Wilde Sarony" by Napoleon Sarony - Metropolitan Museum of Art. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
"Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), by Hills & Saunders, Rugby & Oxford 3 april 1876" by Hills & Saunders, Rugby & Oxford, Oxford - Hills & Saunders, Rugby & Oxford, Oxford. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
Ridley, Aaron. "Oscar Wilde." Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Gale, 2006. Biography in Context. Web. 7 Apr. 2015.
Sammells, Neil. "Oscar Wilde." Encyclopedia of Irish History and Culture. Ed. James S. Donnelly, Jr. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. Biography in Context. Web. 7 Apr. 2015.
“Requiescat” is Oscar Wilde’s response to the death of his sister Isola, seven years after her death. The title of the poem translates from Latin as “may she rest” and is often used in the epitaph “requiescat in pace”, or “rest in peace”. This poem is written in five quatrains, each in the rhythm of 6-4-6-4 and with an ABAB rhyming pattern. Wilde writes in a mournful tone his reaction and recollection of his sister’s life and death to the reader. The first stanza reflects Isola’s life. Wilde uses snow and daisy’s to demonstrate her fragility and the purity and fleeting nature of life. If the first stanza is Isola’s life, the second is her death. Rust destroys metal like death destroys life, and dust makes dirty that which was new and clean. In the third stanza Wilde indicates his sister’s innocence with snow, comparing her to a lily, and how she did not know fully that she was a woman along with the bright golden hair, the young and fair, and the daisies in the previous stanzas. In the fourth quatrain, he comforts himself in that only he must face the inconsolable grief over her death, as she is already gone. And in the final stanza Wilde regrets, or maybe is relieved that Isola cannot hear his mourning sonnets or grieving song because his beloved sister, his “life”, is buried under earth. This lyric poem shows Oscar Wilde’s love for his sister and the pain one goes through at the loss of a loved one. He repeats the words “peace, peace” as well as his comparison of Isola to snow and flowers, using the color white as a symbol for innocence and life. Wilde starts the poem under the snow and ends it off under the earth heaped on Isola’s grave, creating an everlasting cycle for his misery.
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