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Today, it is cool and raining in London. The Grandma is resting at the Cumberland Hotel reading about the life of Oscar Wilde, the greatest Irish novelist and creator of The Picture of Dorian Gray, a masterpiece that shows us that the reckless pursuit of beauty and pleasure without moral responsibility leads to corruption and self-destruction. It highlights the danger of valuing appearance over the integrity of the soul. It is one of The Grandma's favourite novels of all time.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854-30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright.
After
writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, the early 1890s saw
him become one of the most popular playwrights in London. He is best
remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray,
and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for gross indecency
for consensual homosexual acts, imprisonment, and early death at age 46.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. A young Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, Wilde read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.
As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new English Renaissance in Art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day.
At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).
The opportunity to
construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger
social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in
French while in Paris but it was refused a licence for England due to an
absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the
English stage. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the
early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of
late-Victorian London.
More information: The Paris Review
At the height of his fame and success, while The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) was still being performed in London, Wilde
prosecuted the Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess
was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel trial
unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men.
After two more trials he was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897.
During his last year in prison, he wrote De Profundis, published posthumously in 1905, a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure.
On his release, he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.
Wilde died of meningitis on 30 November 1900. Wilde was initially buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris; in 1909 his remains were disinterred and transferred to Père Lachaise Cemetery, inside the city. His tomb there was designed by Sir Jacob Epstein. It was commissioned by Robert Ross, who asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes, which were duly transferred in 1950.
In 2017, Wilde was among an estimated 50,000 men who were pardoned for homosexual acts that were no longer considered offences under the Policing and Crime Act 2017, homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967. The 2017 Act implements what is known informally as the Alan Turing law.
No great artist ever sees things as they really are.
If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Oscar Wilde
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