Fairy Tales by Oscar
Wilde:
An Introduction
Oscar
Fingal O'Flahertie
Wills Wilde
had quite a name to live up to, but if anyone came close living up to
his name, he did. His illustrious family of a
surgeon-philanthropist-author father and writer-author mother also set
a high standard, but again, Wilde was up to the challenge. You may have
heard of Oscar Wilde as the author of the comedy plays The Importance of Being Earnest
(1899) and An Ideal Husband
(1899), or his only novel, the aesthetic, artistic and literary
masterpiece The Picture of Dorian
Gray (1891). Maybe you know him for being at the forefront of
the gay rights movement of the late 19th century.
But
Oscar Wilde was more than that. His story is a mix of beauty,
inspiration, energy, and deep tragedy and lack of fulfillment,
and
these themes echo through his works. Born in Ireland in 1854, married
to Constance Floyd in 1884, father of two boys, an aspiring author with
increasingly popular plays, short stories, and poetry, Oscar Wilde
seemed to have everything going for
him. He was a leader of the
aesthetic movement, which promoted "art for art's sake," and a
lifestyle of artistic expression and decadence. He was highly sought
after in social and literary circles.
Then
he met and became intimate with Lord Alfred Douglas. Douglas's father
never approved of the relationship and eventually took
him to court,
where Wilde was covicted of "gross indecency," or homosexuality, and
sentenced to two years' hard labour. After his release from prison in
1897, Wilde was a broken man, poor, sickly and alone. No more of his
works were published until after his death in 1900 of cerebral
meningitis. His meteoric rise to the public scene in London came to an
abrupt halt and he withered away in tragedy.
Not long before
becoming involved with Douglas, Wilde published his second collection
of fairy tales, A House of
Pomegranates (1892). These fairy tales, Wilde
said, were
"intended neither for the British child nor the British public." The
stories, like their author, are not entirely happy. They seem to
reflect his unhappiness, featuring characters who are misunderstood,
alone, unfortunate, and cursed. Like their author, they do not have
happy endings. But these fairy tales, while
very different in style and content from Wilde's
other works, have a beautiful, haunting quality to them, and retain the
imprint of the literary genius that Wilde was.
This storybook is an
attempt to take the work of a genius, and modify it - always a
dangerous task. It begins with the story of Cyril, a young boy who
comes across a forgotten treasure in his dusty attic, and asks his
mother about it. Little does he know, his mother is descended from
royalty - and her gold-tissue-cloak, the only proof of it, lies
collecting dust in the attic, when not too many years ago it was worn
with pride by her great-grandmother, the Spanish Princess, on her
birthday. We begin our adventure on that promising day.
images:
Oscar Wilde. web source: Geocities.
Spanish
Princess. web source: Artsy
Craftsy.
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