Oscar Wilde

Copertina rigida, 680 pagine

lingua English

Pubblicato il 1988 da Alfred A. Knopf.

ISBN:: 978-0-394-55484-6
Numero OCLC:: 16089096
ASIN:: 0394554841
Goodreads:: 1482688

(1 recensione)

'How ridiculous of you to suppose that anyone, least of all my dear mother, would christen me "plain Oscar:- he once replied to someone who so supposed. started as Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde.' Indeed nothing about Oscar Wilde was 'plain.' And in this most pyrotechnic, en-chanting, and extravagantly outrageous of nineteenth-century literary men, Richard Ellmann, one of the great biographers of our time, has found his most compelling protagonist.

Ellmann's Oscar Wilde has been almost twenty years in work, and it will stand, like his universally admired James Joyce, as the definitive life. The book's emotional resonance, its riches of authentic color and conversation, and the subtlety of its critical illuminations give darling life to this portrait of the complex man, the charmer, the great playwright, the daring champion of the primacy of art. And always we sense how he was doomed by the very nature of his powerful …

'How ridiculous of you to suppose that anyone, least of all my dear mother, would christen me "plain Oscar:- he once replied to someone who so supposed. started as Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde.' Indeed nothing about Oscar Wilde was 'plain.' And in this most pyrotechnic, en-chanting, and extravagantly outrageous of nineteenth-century literary men, Richard Ellmann, one of the great biographers of our time, has found his most compelling protagonist.

Ellmann's Oscar Wilde has been almost twenty years in work, and it will stand, like his universally admired James Joyce, as the definitive life. The book's emotional resonance, its riches of authentic color and conversation, and the subtlety of its critical illuminations give darling life to this portrait of the complex man, the charmer, the great playwright, the daring champion of the primacy of art. And always we sense how he was doomed by the very nature of his powerful intellect, and by that Wildean playfulness that so easily became teasing, to goad the forces of convention into a lethal attack on him at the very moment when he was most in command of his art and—with the triumph of The Importance of Being Earnest—of his audience.

3 edizioni

Baylee ha recensito Oscar Wilde di Richard Ellmann

Review of 'Oscar Wilde' on 'Goodreads'

5 stelle

‘I have lived. Yes, I have lived. I drank the sweet, I drank the bitter, and I found the bitterness in the sweetness and the sweetness in the bitterness.’

Se amate questo scrittore, non potete assolutissimamente perdervi questa biografia. Sappiate che quando avrete voltato l'ultima pagina, saprete quasi quante volte andava in bagno Mr. Wilde. Il lavoro svolto da Ellmann, infatti, è certosino e accurato, oltre ad aver coperto quasi un ventennio della sua vita.

Detto questo, sappiate che ho impiegato due settimane circa per costringermi a continuare la lettura dal momento che ho letto Lord Douglas. Voi vi chiederete che bisogno ne avessi mai, visto che anche le pietre conoscono per sommi capi le vicende della vita di Wilde. Be', credetemi, non sono mai stata tanto felice di essermi presa del tempo prima di proseguire una lettura. Il fatto è che passa un oceano tra “sapere la biografia …

‘I have lived. Yes, I have lived. I drank the sweet, I drank the bitter, and I found the bitterness in the sweetness and the sweetness in the bitterness.’

Se amate questo scrittore, non potete assolutissimamente perdervi questa biografia. Sappiate che quando avrete voltato l'ultima pagina, saprete quasi quante volte andava in bagno Mr. Wilde. Il lavoro svolto da Ellmann, infatti, è certosino e accurato, oltre ad aver coperto quasi un ventennio della sua vita.

Detto questo, sappiate che ho impiegato due settimane circa per costringermi a continuare la lettura dal momento che ho letto Lord Douglas. Voi vi chiederete che bisogno ne avessi mai, visto che anche le pietre conoscono per sommi capi le vicende della vita di Wilde. Be', credetemi, non sono mai stata tanto felice di essermi presa del tempo prima di proseguire una lettura. Il fatto è che passa un oceano tra “sapere la biografia per sommi capi” e “conoscere lo strazio che è stato inflitto a quest'uomo”. E dire che ho anche letto il De Profundis. Non si può dire che non fossi preparata (e, infatti, ho optato per prendere fiato prima di sapere).

Il punto è che è difficile oggi non percepire come orribilmente ingiusta la pena inflitta a Wilde, con tutto ciò che ne è seguito. Come per il massacro degli indios nelle Americhe o per la persecuzione dei cristiani nell'antica Roma, la nostra mente ha ben chiaro quanto sia stato sbagliato (o almeno lo è per quelle menti lontane da una particolare forma di stupidità). Questo, infatti, induce Ellmann a commentare, a chiusa della biografia, che Oscar Wilde è più un uomo del nostro tempo che dell'epoca vittoriana.

He belongs to our world more than to Victoria’s. Now, beyond the reach of scandal, his best writings validated by time, he comes before us still, a towering figure, laughing and weeping, with parables and paradoxes, so generous, so amusing, and so right.

Oggi non troveremmo niente di sbagliato nel pretendere che la società ci accetti per come siamo e si vergogni della propria ipocrisia, e anche Wilde era di questo avviso.

He asked it to tolerate aberrations from the norm, such as homosexuality, to give up its hypocrisy both by recognizing social facts and by acknowledging that its principles were based upon hatred rather than love, leading to privation of personality as of art.

Ma la società vittoriana inglese non aveva nessuna intenzione di cedere alla richiesta di Wilde, e sappiamo come è andata a finire. È davvero straziante leggerlo nero su bianco, sia i terribili anni della prigionia (quando malattia e malnutrizione erano scambiati per pigrizia e riluttanza al dovere), sia l'esilio (che a Wilde in alcuni momenti sembrò peggiore dello stesso carcere, quando molti che erano stati suoi amici si voltavano dall'altra parte se lo incrociavano per strada).

His stubbornness, his courage, and his gallantry also kept him there. He had always met adversity head on, to face hostile journalists, moralistic reviewers, and canting, ranting fathers. A man so concerned with his image disdained to think of himself as a fugitive, skulking in dark corners instead of lording it in the limelight. He preferred to be a great figure, doomed by fate and the unjust laws of a foreign country.

The move took place on 21 November, and proved to be the single most humiliating experience of Wilde’s prison life. Handcuffed and in prison clothing, he had to wait on the platform at Clapham Junction from two to half past two on a rainy afternoon. A crowd formed, first laughing and then jeering at him. One man recognized that this was Oscar Wilde, and spat at him. ‘For a year after that was done to me,’ Wilde wrote in De Profundis, ‘I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time.’

One warder was assigned to cut his hair, which at Wandsworth had been allowed to grow out a little. ‘Must it be cut?’ asked Wilde, with tears in his eyes; ‘you don’t know what it means to me.’ It was cut.

‘Why do you not write now?’ she asked. ‘Because I have written all there was to write. I wrote when I did not know life, now that I know the meaning of life, I have no more to write.’ Then, less penitently, he said, ‘I have found my soul. I was happy in prison because I found my soul.’ Anna de Brémont felt close to tears, but they had reached the pier, and he said, ‘Contessa, don’t sorrow for me,’ and left her.