Oscar Wilde biography

He is a poet and dramatist of a rare wit whose sayings were more often quoted than those of politicians and scholars.Also an outstanding representative of the Aesthetic Movement in England proclaiming „ Art for Art´s Sake“.


HIS LIFE


His full name is Oscar Fingal O´Flahertie Wills Wilde. He Was born on 16th October 1854 in Dublin as the second child of Sir William Wilde. His father was a distinguished ear and eye surgeon and a great seducer of women. His father was a successful writer who wrote using the name „Speranza“. He himself was a brilliant student both at Trinity College Dublin (he left with Berkley Gold Medal for Greek) and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was awarded a digree with honours.

In 1884 Wilde married Constance Lloyd from a family of prominent Dublin lawyers. They had two sons – Cyril and Vyvyan. One side of his charakter is often overlooked – his devotion to his wife and sons. Constance was extremely important to Oscar. Their relationship was considered too black-and-white, but we can not forget that they lived in a time of a very male society. Oscar used to tell Constance what she should wear. He sort of invented her – he got her involved in dress reform and in various women´s organisations. Constance was very sympathetic and strong as a person. She refused to run for cover when things got rough and she showed great patience, forbearence and loyality during the times when Oscar started to spend more and more time away. She had great belief in him and she believed him to be a genius. They lived quite happily until Oscar met Lord Alfred Douglas called Bosie. Oscar was mesmerised by the cocky, dashing and intelligent young man and began the passionate and stormy relationship which consumed and ultimately destroyed him. Oscar neglected his wife and children, and suffered great guilt. Alfred´s father, the powerfull, eccentric and cantanterous, Marquess of Queensberry, became aware that Bosie´s „unmanly“ and careless behaviour he despired, could destroy his goodwill in London. He began telling people in public that Wilde was homosexual. Wilde sued Marquess for libel, but lost the trial, because homosexuality was itself illegal at that time. He was convinced and sentenced to two years hard labour in 1895.

The day he left prison he went directly to France. He never returned to England.

He was benkrupt, his wife had taken their children and left because Oscar wasn´t able to forget Alfred and none of his friend would speak to him. One of his only friends, Robert Ross, net him in France and Wilde fave Ross an eighty-page letter to Lord Douglas where his explained why he could never see him again. Wilde moved to Paris and changed his name to „Sebastian melmoth“. He died of alcohol-poisoning, drugs and meningitis in November 1900. His final consolation was that on his deathbed he was received into the Roman catholic church.







HIS CHARACTER


He is often quoted and copied, but there can only be one man with the wit, charm and fashion-sense of Oscar Wilde.
Oscar Wilde was a writer who set out to be controversial. He deliberately chose a flamboyant style of dress, including velvet knee-britches, silk stockings and a flowing
bow-tie, in order to set himself apart from the dark suits of his late Victorian contemporaries. Such extravagance made him the centre of attention in fashionable London society where he became particularly famous for his brilliant conversation.
He liked to show off his wit by expressing ideas in amusing, clever and original ways. His opinions were often otrageous, flaunting contemporary social attitudes and norms.
He had a phenomenal mind. One of the things he could do was read a novel very, very fast – unbelievably fast. He used to be able to read a book in 20 minutes and tell you the plot and then he could recite huge passages from a novel the size of Middlemarch. He read in German, Italian, French and Russian. He really had a quite extraordinary mind, he had read more than anybody else. He was an extraordinary critic because nothing passed him by. He knew popular culture as well as anybody. At the time he ws taken for a poseur but he was a great literary mind, a philosopher and a wonderful political essayist.
Oscar was a great listener, not somebody who dominated. He made everybody around the room feel more intelligent for being there and he didn´t weigh them down with the speed of his mind. He opened his mind to things around him. He had the very rare blend of a faultless verbal, ear and a beautiful colour sense – they don´t usually go together. When he toured America he gave lectures on interior decoration.
Wilde himself was a man determined to follow his nature despite the almost universal opposition of Victorian society. Oscar´s work thrived on the realisation that he was gay, but his private life flew of the decidedly anti-homosexual conventions of late Victorian society.

As his literary career flourished, the risk of a huge scandal grew ever larger. Given the chance to run away and avoid arrest after he lost the trial, he stayed, spoke up and was imprisoned and ruined for the ‘crime’ of being himself –homosexual.
Wilde was an outsider. Being Irish, being homosexual, at that period meant being an outsider, an observer of society – and, of course, he was a parvenu. One of the cruellest things Lord Alfred used to say about him was that he´s always writing about the upper classes, but doesn´t really know what they´re like.
Despite this everything we can´t forget that Wilde´s love to his children and wife was absolute.


His statements

• There is no sin except stupidity.
• Ideals are dangerous things.realities are Berger
• One should always be in love.This is the reason one should never marry.
• We are all in the gutter,but some of us are looping at the stars
• I have nothing to declare but my genius
• One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing
• In this world there are onlz two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the othes is getting it.
• I treated art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction

HIS WORKS


Plays: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) – masterpiece
One of tne most popular works. It is a classic comedy of English social manners. It is a light hearted play that is carried along by the brilliance of its wit rather than by an intricate plot. Wilde´s aim in it was “that we should treat all the trivial things of life seriously and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality“ and the other aim – not to consider moral problems or critisize social convention, but rather to create comedy by reversing completely the normal expestations of his audience.

Lady Windermere´s Fan (1892) – masterpiece

Salomé
The British government said it was indecent and would not publish it. The composer Richard Strauss made it into opera.

Poem: The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Was written when Wilde was in prison, it is protes against the ingumanity of the justice

Prose: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) – masterpiece
Critics accused the bollk of immorality. In reply, Wilde said “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.
„Dorian Gray“ was based on Wilde‘s own vanity, and tells the story of a man who loves himself so much that he doesn´t grow old. He is very beatiful young man, who becomes vain, cruel and ever more decacent in the life he leads.

However, the sins he indulgs in are reflected in a portrait, which becomes more and more hideous (and which Dorian hides from view) and not Dorian, who remains forever young and beautiful. His portrait grows old instead, and it shows all of his sins.

De Profundis (1905)
An eighty-page letter he wrote to Alfred Douglas where he explained why he could never see him again.

Stories for children: The Happy Prince
The Canterville Ghost
Both of them he wrote for his sons.