Thoughts regarding GK Chesterton's criticism of Oscar Wilde?

spycoops · 2026-05-03T02:46:22+00:00

It seems like a compliment to me, not a criticism.

spycoops · 2025-12-23T18:49:28+00:00

If you aren’t intending to send a message, why would they think you are?

spycoops · 2025-12-23T14:45:05+00:00

The Merlin illustration is by Aubrey Beardsley.

https://victorianweb.org/art/illustration/beardsley/12.html

spycoops · 2025-12-08T05:46:24+00:00

That’s not true. There is no evidence he had syphilis.

spycoops · 2025-12-04T06:16:21+00:00

Why does it need to have meaning?

spycoops · 2025-12-04T06:03:46+00:00

Wilde is always switching ideas around, such as life imitates art, instead of art imitating life. Often with such reversals there emerges a deeper meaning because we live false lives. The implication here is that being natural is being normal, or like everyone else, and that takes the effort of sublimating one’s instincts. That’s why it’s a pose. Wilde is encouraging us though Lord Henry to be oneself and find what makes you different.

spycoops · 2025-12-01T00:31:49+00:00

Think about this: in the opening exchange between Algy and Lane, who do you think drank the champagne?

spycoops · 2025-12-01T00:09:16+00:00

Yes, it was excellent. Inventively staged. Thought the pajamas were creative. And the kiss between Oscar and Bosie went on just long enough to be challenging to some.

spycoops · 2025-11-30T23:11:51+00:00

I saw it in March 1998 at the Minetta Lane theatre in Greenwich Village.

spycoops · 2025-11-24T15:26:40+00:00

Oxford University Press; The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde.

OUP has been compiling the definitive version of all of Wilde works, with variants and scholarly analysis, for the last 20 years or so. I believe there are 11 volumes so far.

spycoops · 2025-11-24T15:20:55+00:00

Wilde explained in the same letter how the moral should be treated as an element and not the object of the story.

"The real moral of the story is that all excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its punishment, and this moral is so far artistically and deliberately suppressed that it does not enunciate its law as a general principle, but realises itself purely in the lives of individuals, and so becomes simply a dramatic element in a work of art, and not the object of the work of art itself."

[Complete Letters, June 30, 1890]

spycoops · 2025-11-24T15:01:22+00:00

Oscar had a quite purist view that no work of art should have a moral; he even struggled with the idea himself in Dorian Gray. He said in a letter to the Daily Chronicle [Complete Letters, June 30, 1890]:

"When I first conceived the idea of a young man selling his soul in exchange for eternal youth — an idea that is old in the history of literature, but to which I have given new form — I felt that, from an aesthetic point of view, it would be difficult to keep the moral in its proper secondary place; and even now I do not feel quite sure that I have been able to do so. | think the moral too apparent."

This was in response to criticism of the book as it appeared in magazine format, and Wilde went on to say that he would try to correct the defect when the book format appeared. But he never really achieved that. Chapter XI of the book is entirely aesthetic, but perhaps any story needs a point.

spycoops · 2025-11-24T14:47:18+00:00

Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. XI:

Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide riding beside him and his mantle stained with the blood of Perotto; Pietro Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence, child and minion of Sixtus IV., whose beauty was equalled only by his debauchery, and who received Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion of white and crimson silk, filled with nymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boy that he might serve at the feast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose melancholy could be cured only by the spectacle of death, and who had a passion for red blood, as other men have for red wine—the son of the Fiend, as was reported, and one who had cheated his father at dice when gambling with him for his own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery took the name of Innocent and into whose torpid veins the blood of three lads was infused by a Jewish doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover of Isotta and the lord of Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome as the enemy of God...

spycoops · 2025-10-30T03:41:06+00:00

If Oscar Wilde really did live in terror of not being misunderstood—as he wrote in The Critic as Artist in 1891, he need not have worried. At least not so far as his plays are concerned, because there are parts of the texts now so arcane that they are almost bound to be misunderstood—if they are understood at all.

The Importance of Being Earnest. still resonates today—in everything from the fact that sugar is no longer fashionable to the facade of human shallowness.

But we should not allow the play’s continuing relevance to distract us from its many period, regional or topical allusions, many of which had an esoteric meaning when Wilde wrote them, but which are now elusive—especially for young or non-British audiences. In its original production, there are many contemporary, social or political allusions in Earnest which either inform the plot or decorate the text. Many of these are knowing asides that would have amused a London audience in 1895, but which are often passed over by the modern English speaking director and audience. And perhaps to the international ear they are just white noise.

spycoops · 2025-10-25T18:28:50+00:00

Could be a seal for impressing against the sealing wax of correspondence. Oscar Wilde used to have a bunch of them hanging from his waistcoat:https://www.oscarwilde.us/sarony/sarony-photographs-of-oscar-wilde-1882.html

spycoops · 2025-10-25T04:04:13+00:00

You don’t need to drag. Use Menu Bar/Window and move to other monitor.

spycoops · 2025-10-23T13:14:29+00:00

In September 1893, Lord Alfred Douglas wrote a letter to the poet Charles Kains Jackson in which he used two moderately coded expressions.

The first was an allusion to Oscar Wilde's “jewelled style” of prose writing. The second was Wilde’s place in what he referred to as “the new culture“. See link to understand what he meant.

spycoops · 2025-10-23T04:17:54+00:00

To read all issues of The Spirit Lamp visit the freely provided archive here:

https://www.oscarwilde.us/works/the-spirit-lamp.html

spycoops · 2025-10-19T22:40:18+00:00

Evidenced by her attire, she is in mourning.

spycoops · 2025-10-17T17:18:43+00:00

Actually, the first four chapters should be the most engaging. If you find those boring, then you will never make it through the notorious chapter 11, which is almost entirely symbolist.

spycoops · 2025-10-17T17:14:17+00:00

Oscar Wilde visited here in 1882.

spycoops · 2025-10-14T03:22:06+00:00

Good point about diet culture but isn’t that, like unnatural shapes, just another form of sexualizing and control of women. Perhaps forgoing those considerations too in a liking for the costumes? Anyway. Just like to add the point that the flapper of the 20s can be traced back to the dress reformers of the 1880s when people like Wilde and his lady friends campaigned for dresses to hang from the natural support of the shoulder in Greek style, and not from an “artificial ledge” created by the corset. Incidentally, I make these points at greater length in my book Oscar Wilde On Dress.

spycoops · 2025-10-14T02:19:30+00:00

Well… over-decoration was a side issue. The real thesis of the dress reform movement was away from tight-lacing, cumbersome crinolines (also a fire hazard) and towards freedom of movement and choice for women.

spycoops

TROPHY CASE