Tags
Big Think, comedy, Falstaff, Fiction, Inspiration, Inspriation, language, literature, Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Stephen Fry, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray, wit
“It was really Oscar Wilde who awoke language in my head in a way like nobody else, and I think also discovering the kind of man Oscar Wilde was, was an enormous influence as well. The fact that you could be such a towering intellect, such a lord of language and be charming and graceful, kind, good natured, but also unhappy and unlucky was a great discovery for an adolescent — because one of the traps of adolescence is the sort of paranoid resentment that somehow you’re never going to match up and that everybody else’s life is going to be better and finer and fuller. That everyone else attended some secret lesson in which how to live was taught and you had a dental appointment that day or you were somehow not invited.
And the point of great writers like Wilde is that they make that invitation to you. They welcome it. Perhaps the greatest definition I think of character and quality is people who when they’re truly great rather than making you feel they’re tall, they make you feel you’re tall, that they’re greatness as it were improves you. They used to say of Oscar Wilde that when you got done from a dinner table you felt funnier and wittier and cleverer. Now a lot of brilliant people make you feel less funny, less clever, less witty because they’re so clever, witty and funny, but he had the opposite effect. A bit like what Shakespeare said about Falstaff, not just a wit, but a cause of wit in others.”
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Stephen Fry, speaking with Big Think about the influence of Oscar Wilde.
As with Fry, Oscar Wilde — specifically in his lone novel The Picture of Dorian Gray — was for me among the first writers who stirred that epiphany, “This is someone whose voice I understand.” Reading that book as a teenager, I found an author who simultaneously connected with, and transcended, my conception of the world.
Wilde’s seminal comedy The Importance of Being Earnest was first performed this week in 1895 at St James’s Theatre in London.
tedrey said:
It just now strikes me (over a hundred years late) what gay marriage would have meant to Wilde’s life. How slow society is to wise up to what is important.
Feather Schwartz Foster said:
He’s one of my favorites!
johnrsermon said:
I’ve been uming and arring about what book to read next. The picture of dorian gray is one of my options. After reading this post, I know which book to read. Thank you
johnrsermon said:
I’ve been uming and arring about what book to read next. The picture of dorian gray is one of my options. After reading this post, I know which book to read. Thank you
albert kaplan@cox.net said:
To see a recently discovered ambrotype of Oscar Wilde which was made in the United States in 1882, visit http://www.kaplancollection.com, then click on his name.
tedrey said:
Thank you, sir. You have assembled a very impressive collection, and there are certainly surprises.
John said:
Please be alerted that the referenced picture proffered by the Kaplan Collection is decidedly NOT of Oscar Wilde. This claim has been debunked by reputable Wilde experts, auction houses, and societies. Apart from the fact it does not even look like Wilde, there is clear evidence that it could not be.
jrbenjamin said:
Doesn’t look like Wilde to me, either, but I’m not an expert in the subject.
John, what experts are you referring to exactly?
tedrey said:
The purported picture of Wilde in the above referenced Kaplan Collection (http://www.kaplancollection.com/) is followed by further Wilde pictures, forensic comments by Kaplan, and the beginning of the controversy, for those who are interested I am intrigued.
John said:
JR: The experts are those listed in a mildly threatening way at the bottom of Kaplan’s page about the image. They are Michael Seeney, who is Secretary of the Oscar Wilde Society in London (lifelong Wilde scholar) and none other than Merlin Holland, Wilde’s own grandson, and probably the world’s leading authority.
Those two, and possibly others, had been consulted about its veracity by various auction houses where Kaplan had placed the ambrotype for sale. Based at least partly on their opinions the item was removed from sale, much to the chagrin of Kaplan.
Incidentally, Kaplan also contacted me as I am author of the Oscar Wilde In America web site—and also Wilde author, tour guide, speaker, and scholar of some 25 years including an in-depth study of the American photos of Wilde. I too had separately and independently informed Mr. Kaplan that the person depicted in the image was NOT Oscar Wilde, indeed could not be, given the length of his hair, never mind that it doesn’t even look like him, philtral columns and unique sideburns notwithstanding.
Mike said:
Greatly enjoyed thank you.