Oscar Wilde
(1854-1900)
The brilliant artist and the dandy
Oscar Wilde, the son of a surgeon and of an ambitious literary woman, was born in Dublin in 1854. After attending Trinity College in Dublin, he was sent to Oxford where he gained a first class degree in Classics and distinguished himself for his eccentricity. He became a disciple of Walter Pater, the theorist of aestheticism in England () T120), accepting the theory of 'Art for Art's Sake'; he defined himself as "a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture" of his time. After graduating, he left Oxford and settled in London where he soon became a fashionable dandy for his extraordinary wit and his foppish way of dressing.
In 1881 Wilde edited, at his own expense, Poems, and was engaged for a tour in the United States where he held some lectures about the Pre-Raphaelites and the Aesthetes. On his arrival in New York he told reporters that aestheticism was a search for the beautiful, a science through which men looked for the relationship existing between painting, sculpture and poetry, which were simply different forms of the same truth. The tour was a remarkable personal success for Wilde. On his return to Europe in 1883, he married Constance Lloyd who bore him two children, but he soon became tired of his marriage. At this point of his career he was most noted as a great talker: his presence became a social event and his remarks appeared in the most fashionable London magazines. As a tribute to his dandified aestheticism, women wore sprays of lilies and many young men wore lilies in the buttonholes of their coats.
In the late 1880s Wilde's literary talent was revealed by a series of short stories, The Canterville Ghost, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, The Happy Prince and Other Tales written for his children and the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray(1891). After his firsst and only novel he developed an interest in drama and revived the comedy of manners () T118). In the 1890s he produced a series of plays which were successful on the London stage: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No lmportance (1893), An ldeal Husband' (1895), The lmportance of Being Earnest (1895), his masterpiece, and the tragedy in French Salomé (1893). However, both the novel and the tragedy damaged the writer's reputation, since the former was considered immoral, and the latter was prevented from appearing on the London stage owing to its presumed obscenity.
In 1891 he met the young and handsome Lord Alfred Douglas with whom Wilde dared to have a homosexual affair. The boy's father, the Marquess of Queensbury, forced a public trial and Wilde was convicted of homosexual practices and subsequently sentenced to two-year hard labour. While in prison he wrote De Profundis, a long letter to explain his life and to condemn Lord Alfred Douglas for abandoning him; this work was published posthumously in 1905. He also wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol in 1898. Wilde's trial brought out all the homophobia that had long been building up in England and America. Even the aesthetic movement in art suffered a setback as a result of the revolt against Oscar Wilde. When Wilde was released from prison, he lived in France under an assumed name as an outcast in poverty. He died of meningitis in Paris in 1900.
A professor of aesthetic
Wilde totally adopted "the aesthetic ideal", as he affirmed in one of his famous conversations: "My life ¬like a work of art". He lived in the double role of rebel and dandy. The dandy must be distinguished from the bohemian: while the bohemian allies himself to the masses, the urban proletariat, the dandy is a bourgeois artist, who, in spite of his uneasiness, remains a member of his class.
The Wildean dandy is an aristocrat whose elegance is a symbol of the superiority of his spirit; he uses his wit to shock, and is an individualist who demands absolute freedom. Since life was meant for pleasure, and pleasure was an indulgence in the beautiful, beautiful clothes, beautiful talks, delicious food, and handsome boys were Wilde's main interests. He affirmed in the Preface of his novel "There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all". In this way he rejected the didacticism that had characterised the Victorian novel in the first half of the century.
Art for Art's Sake
The concept of 'Art for Art's Sake' was to him a moral imperative and not merely an aesthetic one. He believed that' only "Art as the cult of Beauty" could prevent the murder of the soul. Wilde perceived the artist as an alien in a materialistic world, he wrote only to please himself and was not concerned with communicating his theories to his fellow-beings. His pursuit of beauty and fulfilment was the tragic act of a superior being inevitably turned into an outcast.
Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
The Plot
The novel is set in London at the end of the 19th century. The protagonist is Dorian Gray, a young man whose beauty fascinates a painter, Basil Hallward, who decides to portray him. While the young man's desires are satisfied, including that of eternal youth, the signs of age, experience and vice appear on the portrait. Dorian lives only for pleasure, making use of everybody and letting people die because of his insensitivity. When the painter sees the corrupted image of the portrait, Dorian kills him. Later Dorian wants to free himself of the portrait, witness to his spiritual corruption, and stabs it, but he mysteriously kills himself. In the very moment of death the picture returns to its original purity, and Dorian's face becomes "withered, wrinkled, and loathsome".
Narrative technique
This story is told by an unobtrusive third-person narrator; the perspective adopted is internal since Dorian's apparition in the second chapter and this allows a process of identification between the reader and the character. The settings are vividly described with words appealing to the senses, the characters reveal themselves through what they say or what other people say of them, according to a technique which is typical of drama.
Allegorical meaning
The story is profoundly allegorical; it is a 19th-century version of the myth of Faust, the story of a man who sells his soul to the devil so that all his desires might be satisfied. This soul becomes the picture, which records the signs of time, the corruption, the horror and the sins concealed under the mask of Dorian’s timeless beauty. WiIde plays on the Renaissance idea of the correspondence existing between the physical and spiritual realms: beautiful people are moral people; ugly people are immoral people. His variation on this theme is in his use of the magical portrait. The picture is not an autonomous self: it stands for the dark side of Dorian's personality, his double, which he tries to forget by locking it in a room.
The moral of this novel is that every excess must be punished and reality cannot be escaped; when Dorian destroys the picture, he cannot avoid the punishment for all his sins, that is, death. The horrible, corrupting picture could be seen as a symbol of the immorality and bad conscience of Victorian middle class, while Dorian and his pure, innocent appearance are symbols of bourgeois hypocrisy. Finally the picture, restored to its original beauty, illustrates WiIde's theories of art: art survives people, art is eternal.
T E S T YOURSELF
1. Test your knowledge about the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by answering the following questions.
• Where and when does the novel take place?
• Who is Dorian Gray?
• What does the picture symbolise?
• What narrative technique is
• What is the moral of the novel?
• What narrative technique is employed?
2. This is a self-portrait of A. Beardsley (1872-1898), the art editor of The Yellow Book. The portrait
seems to be divided into halves by a vertical line. What does this make you think of? This picture is
also characterised by the lack of colour. Do you think the artist's use of black and white may symbolise the double nature of man? Look at the hairstyle of the man: what does it suggest as regards his customs and the social class he belongs to?
3. Do you think that the exaggerated cult of beauty of contemporary men in show business is indebted to the ideas of the 19th-century Aesthetic movement?
“I would give my soul”
In the following passage Lord Henry Wotton meets Dorian Gray and he finds him to be totally un-self¬-conscious about his beauty. They are both enthralled by the beauty that the painter Basil has captured in the finished portrait of Dorian.
Work on the text – CONTENTS
1. Read the text from line 1 to line 40 and answer the following questions.
1. What does Lord Henry tell Dorian about beauty?
2. What is youth according to him?
3. What does he implore Dorian to do?
4. What advice does he give Dorian?
5. What does their age require?
6. What could Dorian be the symbol of?
2. Read the rest of the passage and say:
1. what Dorian realises looking at his portrait;
2. what feelings the picture has created in his soul;
3. what will happen to the portrait and to Dorian himself in the future;
4. what Dorian wishes.
STRUCTURE AND STYLE
3. State which kind of narrator tells this story, and if he openly intervenes in the narration. Whose point of view is adopted throughout?
4. Focus on the characters presented in this passage, Lord Henry, Basil Hallward, and Dorian Gray.
1. What social class do they belong to?
2. What kind of man is Lord Henry? He speaks through paradox; find some examples in the first part of the text.
3. Say how Lord Henry exerts his influence on Dorian Gray.
4. Lord Henry's speech contains words and phrases conveying the ideas of youth, beauty and old age.
Underline them in the text and collect your data in a table.
YOUTH
BEAUTY OLD AGE
5. What image of youth. beauty and old age are depicted by Lord Henry?.
DORIAN’S DEATH
The following passage is from the final chapter of the novel when the story reaches its climax in an unexpected and
dramatic way with Dorian's dreadful metamorphosis.
Work on the text
CONTENTS
1. As you read find out:
1. what references Dorian Gray makes to his past;
2. how he tries to justify himself;
3. what he thinks about his beauty;
4. what the portrait makes him understand about his recent actions;
5. what he decides to do;
6. why he does this;
7. what happens as a result.
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Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Irish poet and dramatist whose reputation rests on his comic masterpieces Lady Windermere's Fan(1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Among Wilde's other best-known works are his only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray(1891) and his fairy tales especially "The Happy Prince."
Wilde was born on October 16, 1854 in Dublin to unconventional parents. In 1878 Wilde received his B.A. and in the same year he moved to London. His lifestyle and humorous wit soon made him the spokesman for Aestheticism, the late 19th century movement in England that advocated art for art's sake. Between the years 1883 and 1884 he lectured in Britain. From the mid-1880s he was a regular contributor for Pall Mall Gazette and Dramatic View. In 1884 Wilde married Constance Lloyd. Wilde's marriage ended in 1893. He had met an few years earlier Lord Alfred Douglas, an athlete and a poet, who became both the love of the author's life and his downfall.
Although married and the father of two children, Wilde's personal life was open to rumors. His years of triumph ended dramatically, when his intimate association with Alfred Douglas led to his trial on charges of homosexuality (then illegal in Britain). He was sentenced to two years hard labor for the crime of sodomy. Wilde was first in Wandsworth prison, London, and then in Reading Gaol. During this time he wrote De Profundis (1905), a dramatic monologue and autobiography, which was addressed to Alfred Douglas.
After his release in 1897 Wilde in Berneval, near Dieppe. He wrote "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", revealing his concern for inhumane prison conditions. Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900, penniless, in a cheap Paris hotel at the age of 46.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
A plot began with meeting of Lord Henry and young, handsome Dorian Gray. Their common friend was Basil Hallward, who loved Dorian’s portrait and who had found a long searched muse in him. For Basil it was the best work he had ever done. Basil was shocked when Dorian said to him that he could never look at this picture again. It had a reason, Dorian is jealous of this picture. He knew that the picture would be always same, but he would be older and older, meanwhile the body would have the laugh of him. At that time he wanted for the first time to be just like that stature in a picture. He wished to be young forever.
Dorian and Lord Henry became very good friends. But Lord Henry was very depraved. Dorian’s a little bit naive, unstained and young view at the life was rapidly changed. They say the life is only about a beauty, which is most important, and that is why Henry advised him to be young the longest time possible. Dorian’s soul was struggling with weird and scary inside disputes about what is and what is not right. Dorian found a solace and an innocent in beautiful and young actress, Sibyl vane, who he fall in love with and he depended entirely on her. But she was wholly elated by their one another’s love, so that she didn’t want to live her characters in drama, but her own life. Dorian was disappointed by her change and he left her with a scorn. Next day Dorian got to know that she had committed a suicide. He was overwhelmed, but Henry was the reason, why he fastly forgot.
He was becoming cruel, impassive and scary. It was also for the first time he found out that there was something bad going on with his own portrait. The portrait was becoming a view on his awesome soul and it was just like the reflection in the mirror, but there was one y big difference. It was showing his scary inside, not just the body’s reflection. All bad what he had done was written (noticed) in his face. Dorian decided to hide his portrait, so that nobody could see it. Dorian was having the laugh of his portrait which was continually becoming older and older. There was something weird because he was still as handsome and old as when the portrait had been made. His life was becoming more and more cruel, carefree, unprincipled, impassive and groundless. Dorian was using his beauty to make people trust him. They believed that somebody, whose face was so beautiful, couldn’t be as cruel, bottomless and disgraceful. The years went by but he was still young.
After 18 years Basil visited Dorian in his seat for a chat. He wanted to tell Dorian which bad things he had heard about him. They say Dorian had been meeting with bad people, or good people were changed after some time they had spent with him. Dorian had always longed for telling him the truth, so, he showed him his portrait. Basil was scared. Dorian had been firstly ashamed and had cried, but then he began to suspect Basil for all what had happened. In the end of their fight he killed him. He took advantage of his former friend and disposed of the Basil’s dead body.
At that time Dorian was struggling with his own remorse and with first symptoms of sorrow. He was trying to forget and that was why he was trying to hide his fear in opium. In one of the opium houses he was recognized by Mister Vane, who was Sibyl’s brother and he had promised himself to revenge her. Vane was pursuing Dorian, but he was by mistake killed. Dorian relieved himself, but simultaneously he felt the desire to change himself. In order that he didn’t take advantage of one girl, so that he thought the picture could be nicer, but he had been wrong. The picture was even more repellent and scarier. How Henry had said, Dorian could not change himself and all he would do would be even more selfish and bad. The figure at the portrait was stained with blood, because of a murder of Basil and that is why he decided to destroy a portrait, which was his last link with a past. He stabbed the portrait and at that time the servants heard a loud scream. When they entered never used door, they found a portrait in original state, how Basil had drawn him, and next to the stand was an old man with a dagger in his heart and with a frightening face. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.
I like Oscar Wilde very much. All his work makes me think about his life and what kind of person he was. I don’t read very often and I know it is my shortcoming, but if I find some time, I always read some kind of the stories which are similar with work of Oscar Wilde. I like scary, weird, mysterious and smart works. That is why I read also Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. If I should think about who Dorian Gray was, it would take a long time and I would never find the answer. It was a person, who didn’t know what is good and what is bad. Is it his fault or fatal mistake of our society? I don’t know indeed, but I know that it is good that it is just character of the book, because I would like not meet that kind of a man.
Short illustration:
… The thing was still loathsome--more loathsome, if possible, than before--and the scarlet dew that spotted the hand seemed brighter, and more like blood newly spilled. Then he trembled. Had it been merely vanity that had made him do his one good deed? Or the desire for a new sensation, as Lord Henry had hinted, with his mocking laugh?
Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than we are ourselves? Or, perhaps, all these? And why was the red stain larger than it had been? It seemed to have crept like a horrible disease over the wrinkled fingers. There was blood on the painted feet, as though the thing had dripped--blood even on the hand that had not held the knife. Confess? Did it mean that he was to confess?
To give himself up and be put to death? He laughed. He felt that the idea was monstrous. Besides, even if he did confess, who would believe him? There was no trace of the murdered man anywhere. Everything belonging to him had been destroyed. He himself had burned what had been below-stairs. The world would simply say that he was mad.
They would shut him up if he persisted in his story. . . . Yet it was his duty to confess, to suffer public shame, and to make public atonement. There was a God who called upon men to tell their sins to earth as well as to heaven. Nothing that he could do would cleanse him till he had told his own sin. His sin? He shrugged his shoulders. The death of Basil Hallward seemed very little to him.
He was thinking of Hetty Merton. For it was an unjust mirror, this mirror of his soul that he was looking at. Vanity? Curiosity? Hypocrisy? Had there been nothing more in his renunciation than that? There had been something more. At least he thought so. But who could tell? . . . No. There had been nothing more. Through vanity he had spared her. In hypocrisy he had worn the mask of goodness. For curiosity's sake he had tried the denial of self. He recognized that now.
But this murder--was it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be burdened by his past? Was he really to confess? Never. There was only one bit of evidence left against him. The picture itself-- that was evidence. He would destroy it. Why had he kept it so long? Once it had given him pleasure to watch it changing and growing old. Of late he had felt no such pleasure. It had kept him awake at night.
When he had been away, he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon it. It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it.
He looked round and saw the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward. He had cleaned it many times, till there was no stain left upon it. It was bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painter's work, and all that that meant.
It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free. It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and without its hideous warnings, he would be at peace. He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it.
There was a cry heard, and a crash. The cry was so horrible in its agony that the frightened servants woke and crept out of their rooms. Two gentlemen, who were passing in the square below, stopped and looked up at the great house.
Source: http://www.kampomaturite.cz/%5Cdata%5CUSR_039_AMOS%5COscar_wilde.doc
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In June 1875 Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), at the time a twenty year old student at Oxford University, undertook his first trip to Italy, in the company of his ex-professor of Greek at Dublin’s Trinity College, the protestant minister, John Pentland Mahaffy and a friend called William Goulding. Italy attracted him for cultural as well as religious reasons because in that very year his close friend, Hunter Blair, had become a Roman Catholic convert and Wilde himself was tempted to follow in his steps, but his conversion would take place only at the time of his death, in the great Jubilee year of 1900.
In Italy Wilde could visit all those cities and sights which had been artistically described and transfigured by John Ruskin, whose books Wilde appreciated and avidly read.
Before the middle of June 1875, Oscar Wilde and his companions started off from
Oxford and presumably reached London where they boarded a ship that took them to Leghorn in Italy. From Leghorn the tourists travelled to Florence where they stayed from June 15th to the 19th.
With much regret, on the 19th the small company took a train from Florence to Venice. They stopped in Bologna, just for a quick supper, and continued their rail trip to Venice, where they arrived the following day. In the city of the laguna, they strolled in Piazza San Marco, along the narrow alleys and then they went to the Lido and to the island of Saint Lazarus, to visit the Armenian monastery where Byron had stayed. In Venice Wilde also dedicated some of his time to the circus and to the theatre.
In the afternoon of the 22nd of June the trio had reached Padua and Wilde busied himself in exalted admiration in front of the frescoes of Giotto in the Scrovegni chapel. A bit later he dined in what he described as the best restaurant in Italy.
On June 23rd Oscar Wilde and his friends were in Verona. In a letter to his mother he writes: “we went to Verona at six o’clock, and in the old Roman amphitheatre (as perfect inside as it was in the old Roman times) saw the play of Hamlet performed – and certainly indifferently – but you can imagine how romantic it was to sit in the old amphitheatre on a lovely moonlight night. In the morning went to see the tombs of the Scaligeri – good examples of rich florid Gothic work and ironwork; a good market-place filled with the most gigantic umbrellas I ever saw – like young palm trees – under which sat the fruit-sellers.” He also remembers Dante “who, weary of trudging up the steep stairs, as he says, of the Scaligeri when in exile in Verona, came to stay at Padua with Giotto in a house still to be seen there.”
It was probably during this brief stay in Verona that Wilde was inspired to write the sonnet At Verona, published in the 1881 edition of his Poems.
After Verona Wilde goes to Milan with his friends, but, having spent almost all his money, he must return home. Before leaving, on June 25th, he visits Arona, the town of St. Charles Borromeo, on Lake Maggiore, and from there he goes, by coach, via the Simplon Pass, to Lausanne. On the 28th he arrives in Paris and continues his voyage back to his home in Ireland.
OSCAR WILDE’S OTHER ITALIAN JOURNEYS
March 1877: Wilde, Mahaffy, Goulding and another student called George Macmillan travel from London to Genoa, passing through Paris and Turin. From Genoa they reach Ravenna and then Brindisi where they board a ship for Greece. During their return trip, they arrive in Naples and from there they take the train to Rome, where they remain a few days. On the 28th or 29th Oscar Wilde is back in Oxford.
May-June 1894: Wilde, from Paris where he was staying, goes to Florence where, by chance he meets Andrè Gide, whose acquaintance he had made in Paris, and he visits the Anglo-Florentine writer, Vernon Lee (Violet Paget).
September 1897-February 1898: After leaving Reading Gaol in May, Wilde goes to Dieppe, France, but, in a few month’s time, he reaches Lord Alfred Douglas in Naples. They first go to live at the Hôtel Royal des Etrangers, then they rent Villa Giudice, in Posillipo. Wilde and Douglas visit Capri together. Douglas leaves and Wilde, who by now lives alone at the Palazzo Bambino, 31 Santa Lucia, goes to Taormina.
February 1899: From Nice where he was staying, Wilde goes to Genoa to pray on the tomb of his wife, Constance, who has died the year before. He goes to Switzerland and the, in April he is in Santa Margherita Ligure.
April 1900: Wilde is in Palermo where he spends eight unforgettable days. He then goes to Naples for a short stay and moves on to Rome. On the 15th of April, Easter Sunday of that Jubilee year, Wilde receives the benediction from Pope Leo XIII.
On November 30th 1900 Oscar Wilde dies in Paris at the Hôtel d’Alsace in rue des Beaux-Arts.
Verona for Wilde is the town of Dante’s exile, an exile of hardships and sufferings that must be remembered by echoing the Biblical imprecation of Job. But Wilde is certainly exaggerating when he evokes the image of Dante in jail. This never happened and only poetical license can justify such a false representation of the real events. Probably the idea of the jailed poet was suggested to him by the romantic picture of Tasso in the prison of Ferrara, of which there’s a hint in The Soul of Man under Socialism. Perhaps when he was in prison, from 1895 to 1897, Wilde thought about this early prophetic poem and the meaning of being an imprisoned poet. Then he was fully conscious, as he says in his long letter, De Profundis (1897), addressed to Lord Alfred Douglas, that “At all costs I must keep Love in my heart. If I go into prison without Love what will become of my Soul?” “ I must keep Love in my heart today, else how shall I live through the day?” And throughout the epistle he repeats like a refrain: “Shallowness is the supreme vice.”
The sonnet At Verona is directly linked to the long poem Ravenna (1878), through the inspiring influence of Dante, and also to The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), in which the poet invokes forgiveness for the prisoners by refusing the hellish conditions of the prison itself and the very idea of revenge exercised by society when it decrees the death penalty for criminals.
BEFORE WILDE
Although Verona was not always included in the classical itinerary of the Grand Tour, it soon became the chosen destination for all those travellers who were keen on a place full of cultural allure. For English speaking travellers the city was identified with the Shakespearean settings: it’s the scene of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, of the two world-renowned lovers, Romeo and Juliet, it’s always “fair Verona”, where young, infinite love never dies. It’s also the city that welcomed Dante Alighieri who dedicated his Divine Comedy to Cangrande della Scala; a place where every enthusiastic scholar of Dante of the nineteenth century wanted to be.
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), was in Verona in 1816 when he appreciated the medieval town which saw Dante in exile, but he also stopped at Juliet’s tomb and greatly admired the Arena. Whoever has eyes trained to see the marvels of the past can only rejoice at the wealth of architectural stratifications – Roman, Medieval, Renaissance – openly displayed by Verona in all its panoramic glory and rarely experienced by the tourist, even in other Italian cities.
Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) was in Italy in 1833 and under the Neapolitan sun he exclaimed: “Italy, Italy, while I write, your skies are over me – your seas flow beneath my feet.” The acclaimed author of The Last Days of Pompeii dedicated an essay to Juliet’s tomb in 1840, which he had visited in Verona.
John Ruskin (1819-1900) used his immense talent to praise Verona with his pencil and his pen. He first visited the city in 1835 and then he returned many times, in 1841, in 1846, in 1849, in 1869, and every visit was for him an occasion to study with painstaking accuracy and loving dedication a particular monument or palazzo, or church: Arche Scaligere, Piazza dei Signori, Piazza Erbe, Sant’Anastasia. For the artist who understood the greatness of the stones of Venice, Verona was nonetheless “exquisite”.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) went on his Grand Tour in 1844-45. He was afraid that the real Verona would disappoint him, instead everything reminded him of Romeo and Juliet. “Pleasant Verona!” For its old, noble palazzi and for its enviable position: the most beautiful city in Italy.
Robert Browning (1812-1889) and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), both visited Verona, but did not include remembrances in their poems. Elizabeth, though, compares the Italian nation of the Risorgimento, captive of the Austrian Empire, to the unfortunate Juliet: “Juliet of Nations”.
Sir Frederick Leighton (1830-1896), painter, friend of the Brownings, he came to Verona in 1852. He describes it vividly in his diaries. In 1853 he painted “The reconciliation of the Montagues and Capulets after the death of Romeo and Juliet” and, with a clear allusion to the Italian situation, in 1864, he completed an imposing picture of “Dante in exile”.
AMERICAN TRAVELLERS
Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908), scholar, polymath, particularly interested in Italian culture, he completed a very successful prose translation of the Divine Comedy. He corresponded with John Ruskin with whom he exchanged views on the attractions of Verona.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), poet, deeply steeped in European culture, translator of Dante, sympathetic to the Italian cause, he was in Verona with his daughter on June 13, 1869. He saw John Ruskin who was sketching in Piazza dei Signori. He approached him and then they all went for a stroll.
William Dean Howells (1837-1920) American Consul in Venice, effective and talented writer of novels and of his Italian experience, in 1867 he published his Italian Journeys, where he narrates the wonderful discovery of the ruins of the Roman Theatre.
Henry James (1843-1916) was in Verona in 1870, coming from Munich which, compared to the Italian city, he found ugly. He walked all around the city and, at the end of his visit, he declared that it was enough to stay in Verona to acquire a classical education. “Nowhere else is such wealth of artistic achievement crowded in so narrow a space; nowhere else are the daily comings and goings of men blessed by the presence of manlier art.”
Edith Wharton (1862-1937) came to Italy almost every year after her marriage to Teddy in 1885. She was completely captivated by the landscape around Lake Garda. She actually used this setting for the very romantic escape of the lovers in her first novel, The Valley of Decision (1902), which deals with the situation of the Italian states just before the advent of Napoleon.
Ezra Pound (1885-1972) in 1910 wrote to his parents that Verona was probably the most beautiful city in Northern Italy, that the church of San Zeno represented architectural perfection and that, if there was a heaven on earth, that was to be found in Sirmione on Lake Garda.
OSCAR WILDE’S CONTEMPORARIES
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880), the genial novelist of Middlemarch and Romola, visited Verona with her husband John Cross, who was twenty years her junior, in 1880, just after their wedding. The couple, enjoying their honeymoon, found the city picturesque and endearing and they had some innocent fun imitating Dante and Beatrice and Romeo and Juliet.
John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) preferred to live in Italy for its mild climate and because everything reminded him of the historical period that he loved and studied, the Renaissance. With the vigil eye of the trained aesthete he visited many cities in the North of Italy, such as Venice, Verona, Milan, narrated their history and described their treasures in The Renaissance in Italy (7 vols. 1875-1886), which after Walter Pater’s epoch-making oeuvre, became a classic. Wilde, who had carefully read Symonds, found some descriptions invaluable for the composition of his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891).
Arthur Symons (1865-1945), writer, critic of the Decadent movement in England, knowledgeable about all things Italian, in accordance with his fin de siècle sensibility, he said that he preferred Mantua, in particular the ruins of the Gonzaga castle, to splendid Verona. When he arrived in Verona on May 6, 1894, he spent a lovely morning in a beautiful garden (Giardino Giusti?); but, just the same, he considered Verona too perfect, too smart, unreal.
Herbert Horne (1864-1916) was a poet, biographer and sharp critic of Sandro Botticelli and his philosophical paintings. In 1894, after a chance meeting with Henry James in Venice, he decided to accompany Arthur Symons to Mantua and Verona. Both would have liked to stay on in Italy and in Verona they started thinking of buying a palazzo, possibly in Venice. Horne actually realized his dream because he went to live in Florence in 1912. He became a very active collector of antiques and paintings and when he died he left his palazzo with all its precious collections to the city of Florence, the present Museo Horne.
AFTER WILDE
Israel Zangwill (1864-1926) was in Italy with his wife Edith. On February 21, 1909 they were both in Mantua and, shortly after, they arrived in Verona. In 1910 Zangwill published his travel narrative, Italian Fantasies, which reproduced on the book cover the “Madonna of the rosewood” , painted by Stefano da Zevio and on display at the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona. Walking around town he admired San Zeno with its bronze portals, the Museum of Natural Science, the great palaces, of which he particularly appreciated Palazzo Canossa, which he toured with its owner. Zangwill also reminds us that Dante mentions his exile in Canto XVII, v. 58 of Paradise in his Comedy, as if Verona could only be mentioned in heaven.
Alethea Wiel, aware of the continuous interest that the city held for the English traveller, published The Story of Verona, London, Dent, 1907.
Nora Duff, stayed in Mantua then in Verona where she was in touch with the Marquis Luigi Canossa for her scholarly work on the great Countess Matilda of Canossa, which she published with the title, Matilda of Tuscany, la gran donna d’Italia, London, Methuen, 1910.
Alice Maude Allen published A History of Verona, London, Methuen, 1910.
David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1937) in 1912 he was in Verona with Frieda who, exhausted from a long walk through the city, went to sit at the base of Dante’s statue in the Piazza dei Signori. In 1929 the couple returned to Verona, but David, who was very ill, instead of enjoying the sights, dedicated himself to revising the poem, filled with forebodings of death, Bavarian Gentians. David and Frieda lived on the shores of Lake Garda from 1912 to 1913. In that period, at Gargnano, Lawrence wrote the preface to Sons and Lovers, and he also composed a series of seven literary sketches dedicated to the genius loci, the spirit of place. Like Wilde, he also attended a very lively performance of Hamlet, with Enrico Persevalli in the role of the protagonist.
James Joyce (1882-1941) was invited by Ezra Pound to visit him in Sirmione in 1920, when, undergoing a period of great economic difficulty, he was, besides his regular job as a teacher, dedicating himself to the writing of Ulysses (1922) He was at the time actually revising the episode of Nausicaa. Joyce met Pound on June 8th and the American poet, who also noticed that his friend was not in good health, tried to convince him to go and live near him in Sirmione.
GUIDES
Travellers in general relied on guides in order to visit the city according to their own pace. This meant that at times they could find an expert available who would show them all the main sights, a cicerone, or, as was more often the case in the nineteenth century, they could stroll through the centre of the city or take a carriage and admire the most important monuments by reading all the information packed in their very scholarly guides, books that specialized in detailed descriptions of everything that could be of any interest or use for the tourist. There was a rather varied choice of English and Italian guides.
For instance, John Ruskin’s tour of Verona in 1846 was clearly organized by consulting his Murray, a guidebook edited by Sir Francis Palgrave in 1842, whose authority the art critic directly quoted concerning the church of San Zeno. The Handbook for Travellers in Northern Italy: States of Sardinia, Lombardy and Venice, Parma and Piacenza, Modena, Lucca, Massa-Carrara, and Tuscany, as far as Val d’Arno became an indispensable travelling aid for the Victorian tourist in Northern Italy. Charles Dickens, during his Italian Grand Tour in 1844-45 was often bored by Palgrave’s pedantic style and often went off to visit a town without the assistance of his vade-mecum. When Dickens arrives in Verona he thinks that the best thing to do is to go directly to Juliet’s house and then to walk to Juliet’s tomb, which is simply an empty, marble trough, and to meditate on her unfortunate fate. Once back in his hotel room, Dickens in a facetious mood, tells his readers that he will read Shakespeare’s play like no one has ever done before in Verona.
There were other means that inspired travellers to travel abroad. Printed illustrations, in many cases, were largely responsible for enticing people to face the hardships of a long trip. Quite famous were the printed drawings of the main sights of Verona by Samuel Prout. And, of course, travel diaries, narratives, chronicles, memoirs and the many accounts of the Grand Tour that circulated from the eighteenth century onwards, offered a great deal of information and encouraged a trips abroad in order to broaden the mind and learn the principal rules of social living. Literature also dealt a great deal with travel. Ruskin’s generation was influenced in a very positive way by Byron’s poems, in particular by Childe Harold’s Pilgimage (1809-18, the fourth Canto is entirely dedicated to Italy) and by Samuel Rogers’ Italy (1822).
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Author of the text: indicated on the source document of the above text
Born
16 October 1854
Dublin/Ireland
Died
30 November1900
Paris/France
BIOGRAPHY
Oscar Wilde’s rich and dramatic portrayals of the human condition came during the height of the Victorian Era that swept through London in the late 19th century. At a time when all citizens of Britain were finally able to embrace literature the wealthy and educated could only once afford, Wilde wrote many short stories, plays and poems that continue to inspire millions around the world.
By the time William Wilde, Oscar’s father, was 28, he had graduated as a doctor, completed a voyage to Madeira, Teneriffe, North Africa and the Middle East, studied at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, written two books and been appointed medical advisor to the Irish Census of 1841. When the medical statistics were published two years later they contained data which had not been collected in any other country at the time, and as a result, William became the Assistant Commissioner to the 1851 Census. He held the same position for the two succeeding Censuses and, in 1864, he was knighted for his work on them. When William opened a Dublin practice specializing in ear and eye diseases, he felt he should make some provision for the free treatment of the city's poor population. In 1844, he founded St. Mark's Ophthalmic Hospital, built entirely at his own expense.
Before he married, William fathered three children. Henry Wilson was born in 1838, Emily in 1847 and Mary in 1849. To William's credit, he provided financial support for all of them. He paid for Henry's education and medical studies, eventually hiring him into St. Mark's Hospital as an assistant. Sadly, Mary and Emily, who were raised by William's brother, both died in a fire at the ages of 22 and 24.
Oscar's mother, Jane Francesca Elgee, first gained attention in 1846 when she began writing revolutionary poems under the pseudonym "Speranza" for a weekly Irish newspaper, The Nation. In 1848, as the country's famine worsened and the Year of Revolution took hold of Europe, the newspaper offices were raided and had to close. Jane, who was also a gifted linguist with working knowledge of the major European languages, went on to translate Wilhelm Meinhold's gothic horror novel “Sidonia the Sorceress.” Oscar would later read the translation with relish, and draw on it for the darker elements of his own work.
Jane's first child, William "Willie" Charles Kingsbury, was born on September 26, 1852 and her second, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie, on October 16, 1854. The daughter she had longed for, Isola Emily Francesca, was delivered on April 2, 1857. Ten years later, however, Emily died from a sudden fever. Oscar was profoundly affected by the loss of his sister, and for his lifetime he carried a lock of her hair sealed in a decorated envelope.
Willie and Oscar attended the Portora Royal School at Enniskillen, where Oscar excelled at studying the classics, taking top prize his last two years, and also earning a second prize in drawing. In 1871, Oscar was awarded the Royal School Scholarship to attend Trinity College in Dublin. Again, he did particularly well in his classics courses, placing first in his examinations in 1872 and earning the highest honor the college could bestow on an undergraduate, a Foundation Scholarship. In 1874, Oscar crowned his successes at Trinity with two final achievements. He won the college's Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek and was awarded a Demyship scholarship to Magdalen College in Oxford.
Oscar's father died on April 19, 1876, leaving the family financially strapped. Henry, William's eldest son, paid the mortgage on the family's house and supported them until his sudden death in 1877. Meanwhile, Oscar continued to do well at Oxford. He was awarded the Newdigate prize for his poem, “Ravenna,” and a First Class in both his "Mods" and "Greats" by his examiners. After graduation, Oscar moved to London to live with his friend Frank Miles, a popular high society portrait painter. In 1881, he published his first collection of poetry. “Poems” received mixed reviews by critics, but helped to move Oscar's writing career along.
In December 1881, Oscar sailed for New York to travel across the United States and deliver a series of lectures on aesthetics. The 50-lecture tour was originally scheduled to last four months, but stretched to nearly a year, with over 140 lectures given in 260 days. In between lectures he made time to meet with Henry Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Walt Whitman. He also arranged for his play, “Vera,” to be staged in New York the following year. When he returned from America, Oscar spent three months in Paris writing a blank-verse tragedy that had been commissioned by the actress Mary Anderson. When he sent it to her, however, she turned it down. He then set off on a lecture tour of Britain and Ireland.
On May 29, 1884, Oscar married Constance Lloyd. Constance was four years younger than Oscar and the daughter of a prominent barrister who died when she was 16. She was well-read, spoke several European languages and had an outspoken, independent mind. Oscar and Constance had two sons in quick succession, Cyril in 1885 and Vyvyan in 1886. With a family to support, Oscar accepted a job revitalizing the Woman's World magazine, where he worked from 1887-1889. The next six years were to become the most creative period of his life. He published two collections of children's stories, “The Happy Prince and Other Tales” (1888), and “The House of Pomegranates” (1892). His first and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was published in an American magazine in 1890 to a storm of critical protest. He expanded the story and had it published in book form the following year. Its implied homoerotic theme was considered very immoral by the Victorians and played a considerable part in his later legal trials. Oscar's first play, “Lady Windermere's Fan,” opened in February 1892. Its financial and critical success prompted him to continue to write for the theater. His subsequent plays included “A Woman of No Importance” (1893), “An Ideal Husband” (1895), and “The Importance of Being Earnest” (1895). These plays were all highly acclaimed and firmly established Oscar as a playwright.
In the summer of 1891, Oscar met Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas, the third son of the Marquis of Queensberry. Bosie was well acquainted with Oscar's novel “Dorian Gray” and was an undergraduate at Oxford. They soon became lovers and were inseparable until Wilde's arrest four years later. In April 1895, Oscar sued Bosie's father for libel as the Marquis had accused him of homosexuality. Oscar withdrew his case but was himself arrested and convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years hard labor. Constance took the children to Switzerland and reverted to an old family name, “Holland.”
Upon his release, Oscar wrote “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” a response to the agony he experienced in prison. It was published shortly before Constance's death in 1898. He and Bosie reunited briefly, but Oscar mostly spent the last three years of his life wandering Europe, staying with friends and living in cheap hotels. Sadly, he was unable to rekindle his creative fires. When a recurrent ear infection became serious several years later, meningitis set in, and Oscar Wilde died on November 30, 1900.
Numerous books and articles have been written on Oscar Wilde, reflecting on the life and contributions of this unconventional author since his death over a hundred years ago. A celebrity in his own time, Wilde’s indelible influence will remain as strong as ever and keep audiences captivated in perpetuity.
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