the ballad of reading gaol by oscar wilde

Let’s say we’re watching TV, late at night, when the others in your life are safely tucked in. Let’s put it THIS way: IS Wilde right here? Do we REALLY kill the one we love, and if so.

Wilde says we always kill the one we LOVE. Better yet, read the whole brief work in the public domain, everywhere left on the planet where Good Books are still Free.) (See O.W.’s attached reiteration of his - Oscar Wilde’s - guilt in his grand finale. “Dash it all, Holmes! I take your assessment quite deucedly to heart! Forsooth, you would cut us ALL to the very quick. Q: Is being condemned of a once-upon-a-time-felony at the merely SUBJECTIVE imputation of guilt therefore itself a CRIME?Ī: “Elementary, my dear Watson (mumbles in Watson’s ear).” The absolutist stupidity always wins over the complicated life story, and he should have known that: IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. He killed the lifestyle he loved by trying to protect it from attacks. Oscar Wilde was certainly wrong in trying to fend off Queensberry by suing him for libel, but it is understandable why he did so, and his time in prison for homosexuality is no less brutal for being caused by his miscalculation. The only question left to answer seems to be who is wrong in which way, and for what reason. There is no longer any validity to the question 'right or wrong'. I found myself telling my students the story of fake news and real truth and broken spirits that was the result of Wilde's duel with Bosie's father, and I thought of modern politics and our current mess. And I heard myself tell the complicated story of Wilde and his miscalculations and his failure to silence a bully by shooting back at him. I seemed to have completely forgotten the love story between Winston and Julia, and the way it was impossible not to kill each other in the process of getting entangled in the political dystopia of thoughtcrime and doublethink. Today I found myself comparing Wilde with Orwell, in a rather heated discussion with students who are reading 1984 as a class novel. We may be guilty of one thing, and punished for another. It strikes me as wise in the absurd way life plays a crooked game of cards with us. I annoyingly often quote the catch line 'yet each man kills the things he loves', and it strikes me as true both in the deeper sense of family dysfunction and in the more shallow waters of breaking your favourite coffee mug by accident. I don't know how many times I have read the Ballad of Reading Gaol, but it is often enough for me to feel shame I don't know it by heart yet. Favourite poetry has a tendency to make sudden appearances in my head when I least expect it.

The ballad of reading gaol by oscar wilde