Our Literary Heritage

Oscar Wilde's Literary Inheritance

An Ideal Husband opened in London’s Haymarket Theatre on 3 January 1895 and six weeks later on St Valentine’s Day the curtain went up on The Importance of Being Earnest at St James’ Theatre. With two successful plays running in the West End, Oscar had silenced his critics and fortune was sure to follow. His ageing mother, Lady Jane Wilde, was delighted. She wrote to Oscar saying, “You have been a splendid success and I am so glad ...”

How tragic then to consider that within a few short months all was lost when Oscar Wilde found himself in the dock at the Old Bailey being sentenced to two years’ hard labour for committing ‘indecent acts’. He would later record his emotions on that terrible first night as a convict when he sat “amidst the ruins of my wonderful life, crushed by anguish, bewildered with terror, dazed through pain”.

Towards the end of his sentence the newly appointed warden at Reading, Major J. O. Nelson, allowed Oscar improved access to pen and ink. From January to March 1897 Oscar wrote a long autobiographical reflection on the events leading to his ruinous trials and the resulting anguish of his incarceration. The text, which was eventually published as De Profundis, was written in the form of a letter to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. Later, writing to his loyal friend Robbie Ross, Oscar revealed one of his motives for composing such an emotionally charged work: “I am not prepared to sit in the grotesque gallery they put me into for all time; for the simple reason that I inherited from my father and mother a name of high distinction in literature and art, and I cannot for eternity allow that name to be degraded. I do not defend my conduct, I explain it.”

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Oscar Wilde and the Dawn of the Rest of the World

 “Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world” - Oscar Wilde The Critic as Artist

We’ve all passed him, reclined on his rock in Merrion Square, looking relaxed but

pensive. Perhaps it is the fact that his statue, unlike like those of James Joyce or Patrick Kavanagh, is colorful that makes Oscar Wilde seem so at home in the Square, so life-like to passers by. Yet as familiar as most of us are with Oscar Wilde’s image—glimpsed on the walls of pubs or plastered onto posters and banners for events such as the Dublin Gay Theater festival— how is his writing relevant now? Why has he been embraced as an icon?

Oscar Wilde, Victorian dramatist, poet and playwright is perhaps more known to contemporary society for his flamboyant lifestyle and pithy quips than for his literary prowess. This is not necessarily a bad thing as the story of his love affair with the Marquis of Queensbury’s son and subsequent trial and imprisonment is a fascinating one. But leaving his personal life aside for a moment, how does his work live on? Again, much like his image itself, many lines from his poems and witticisms line the walls of pubs, are even featured on the fronts of greeting cards and journals. Perhaps the appeal of Wilde’s prose is its sharp aphorisms that are easily quotable. Beyond style, Wilde’s words appeal to the dreamer, the outcast and anyone who thinks differently.

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Joyce: His Life & Times

When I began researching for my book, A Little Circle of Kindred Minds: Joyce in Paris, it became clear that the Joyce I would be writing about – a man in his forties and fifties – would be quite different from the man who had left Dublin at the age of 22. Gone was the arrogance of youth. The vitriolic attacks on the Catholic Church and the National Theatre were left behind. The older Joyce had become relatively conservative – though not in his writing – and many of his former classmates who saw him in Paris were surprised to see that Stephen Dedalus had become more like Leopold Bloom.

In some ways, though, he never changed at all. He still borrowed money from friends – despite royalties from his books and thousands of pounds in patronage. He moved home 19 times during the 20 years he spent in Paris, echoing the moves his family made as he was growing up in Dublin. In a sense he never really left his native city, for Dublin was what he was always writing about. As he was writing Ulysses he told a friend that he wanted to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of his book.

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From the Bathtub to the Bar Room: Reading Ulysses on Bloomsday

To many it may seem strange: the costumed people wandering the streets speaking a seemingly foreign language, drinking burgundy wine and eating gorgonzola sandwiches or breakfasting on organ meats, the image of James Joyce everywhere. But to many more the 16^th of June has come to be a day they look forward to for its celebration of Joyce’s famous modernist epic Ulysses. These people—not only academics or intellectuals but an increasing number of ordinary folk—know the story well. They will tell you how Ulysses takes place in the whole of one day, June 16^th, 1904, and that this day is referred to as Bloomsday after the name of one of the novel’s primary and most memorable characters, Leopold Bloom. They will also tell you that the date had great personal significance to Joyce, as it was the date of his first outing with Nora Barnacle, the woman who was to become his wife.

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