|
|
Nineteenth-century Irish-born writer and intellectual Oscar Wilde led an
eccentric life that fueled his witty satires and epigrams on Victorian society.
A member of the aesthetic movement in literature, Wilde advocated the idea of
art for art’s sake. Wilde was a novelist, playwright, poet, and critic. He was
born Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde on October 16, 1854, in
Dublin, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. As a youngster he was exposed
to the brilliant literary talk of the day at his mother’s Dublin salon. Later,
as a student at the University of Oxford, he excelled in classics, wrote
poetry, and incorporated the Bohemian life-style of his youth into a unique way
of life. At Oxford Wilde came under the influence of aesthetic innovators such
as English writers Walter Pater and John Ruskin. As an
aesthete, the eccentric young Wilde wore long hair and velvet knee breeches.
His rooms were filled with various objets d’art such as sunflowers, peacock
feathers, and blue china; Wilde claimed to aspire to the perfection of the
china. His attitudes and manners were ridiculed in the comic periodical Punch
and satirized in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera Patience (1881).
Nonetheless, his wit, brilliance, and flair won him many devotees.
This selection comes from “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” (1898), a
poem inspired by the 18-month period Wilde spent in jail.