Today marks a new anniversary of the birth of Oscar Wilde, one of the most famous writers, playwrights and poets in the history of literature. His works, full of sarcasm, irony and wit, have remained for posterity as a distorted reflection of society of his time. My favorites, and I imagine that shared with common mortals, are The Portrait of Dorian Grey y The importance of being called Ernesto. But the one that holds a special place in my heart and memory is The Canterville Ghost. Rescue 3 fragments of them in memory of the great Irish writer.
Oscar Wilde
Born 1854 in Dublin, was from an aristocratic family and the second of three siblings. He began his studies at the Trinity College where he was a brilliant student, and finished them in Oxford. He became an expert in classics of greek literature and won several poetry awards. At the same time he was also traveling in Europe.
After he settled in London, where he married and had two children. It is when he begins to produce his first successful works, such as The Picture of Dorian Gray, or, for tables, Lady Windermer's fan, Salomé o The importance of being called Ernesto.
However at the end of 1895 his life and career take a radical turn when he is accused of sodomy by the father of a close friend of yours. Sentenced to two years of forced labor, he was in prison where he wrote the long letter that constitutes De Profundis. When he got out of jail he suffered all social rejection and goes to France. He kept traveling through Europe until he ended in Paris, where he died when he was only 46 years old.
More works
- An ideal husband
- The Duchess of Padua
- The Crime of Lord Arthur Saville
- The happy Prince
- Complete stories
- In prison
Fragments of his works
The Portrait of Dorian Grey
Because to influence a person is to give him our own soul. It will not have its own thoughts, and it will catch fire with its own passions. His virtues will not be real, his sins, if there are sins, will be borrowed. He becomes the echo of the music of another, the actor of a part that has not been written for him. The goal of life is the development of your own self. Finding your proper nature, this is why each of us is here. The world is afraid of itself, they have forgotten the greatest of all obligations, their own. Of course they are charitable, they feed the hungry, and they dress the beggars. But his own being is starving and naked. Courage fled from our race. Maybe we never had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morality, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion, these are the two things that govern us. And yet ... However, I believe that if a man lived his life completely and to the limit, if he gave shape to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream. The world would reach such a fresh surge of joy that we would forget the evil of mediocrity, and we would return to the ideal Hellenic age, to something sweeter, richer, than the Hellenic ideal. But even the bravest man is afraid of himself… It has been said that the greatest events in the world happen in our brains. It is in the brain, and only in it, where the great sins of the world happen. You, Mr. Gray, yourself, with your rosy youth and white adolescence, have had passions that frightened you, thoughts that filled you with terror, dreams of being awake and asleep whose memories could stain your cheeks with shame.
The importance of being called Ernesto
CECILIA. -Miss Prism, says that physical charms are a bond.
ALGERNON. -A tie in which every sensible man would want to be caught.
CECILIA. -Oh! I don't think I would like to fuck a sensible man. I wouldn't know what to talk to him about. (They go into the house. MISS PRISM and DR. CHASUBLE return.)
MISS PRISM. "You are very lonely, my dear Dr. Chasuble. You should marry." I can understand a misanthrope, but a woman anthropo never!
CHASUBLE. (With a shiver of a learned man.) Believe me, I do not deserve a word with such a marked neologism. The precept, as well as the practice of the early Church, were clearly opposed to marriage.
MISS PRISM. (Sentently.) - That is undoubtedly the reason that the early Church has not lasted to this day. And you do not seem to realize, my dear doctor, that a man who insists on remaining single becomes a perpetual public temptation. Men should be more cautious; it is their very celibacy that loses fragile natures.
CHASUBLE. "But is it that a man does not have the same attractiveness when he is married?"
MISS PRISM. -A married man is never attractive except for his wife.
CHASUBLE. "And often, I'm told, not even for her."
The Canterville Ghost
The next day the ghost felt very weak, very tired. The terrible emotions of the past four weeks were beginning to take their toll. His nervous system was completely altered, and he trembled at the slightest noise. He did not leave his room for five days, and concluded by making a concession regarding the bloodstain on the library floor. Since the Otis family did not want to see her, they certainly did not deserve her. These people were visibly placed on a lower plane of material life and were unable to appreciate the symbolic value of sensible phenomena. The question of phantom appearances and the development of astral bodies was really unknown to them and indisputably beyond their reach. But at least it was an inescapable duty for him to show up in the corridor once a week and splutter through the great pointed window on the first and third Wednesday of each month. He saw no means worthy of submitting to that obligation. It is true that his life was very criminal; But after that, he was a very conscientious man in all things supernatural. Thus, on the following three Saturdays, he crossed the corridor, as usual, between midnight and three in the morning, taking all possible precautions not to be seen or heard. He took off his boots, stepped as lightly as he could on the decayed old timbers, wrapped himself in a great cloak of black velvet, and kept using the Sol-Levante greaser to grease his chains. I am compelled to admit that only after much hesitation did he decide to adopt this last means of protection. But at last one night, while the family was dining, he slipped into Mistress Otis's bedroom and took the vial with him.