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News about Wilde; Relais de la Mémoire at Norden

Dear readers of my blog,

again it is after a period of prolonged silence in these digitized columns that I resume my communications, while October and November have been extremely eventful months both in terms of Oscar Wilde and my other favourite subject, the study of the Shoah.

On 11th October 2019, the Italian translation of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was presented by Sara Pini, a Ph. D. student at Bologna University in the most prestigious hall of that well-renowned alma mater. Though the book entitled Il ritratto di Dorian Gray. Stesura del 1890 and published by Elsinor Verlag, followed my edition, I was unable to attend this occasion. Unfortunately, life makes you very often take hard decisions. In most cases, it is impossible to please everyone, including all facets of one's own personality. So I was extremely relieved when learning two days before the event that the books had arrived safe and sound in Italy.

 

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A Birthday Party without Guests

 

Dear readers of my blog,

perhaps you all know the saying that who defends him- or herself accuses him- or herself. So I am not going to explain away my silence in these parts. Soon the Wildean reasons will be given in terms of a report on what is going on at Bologna University at the moment. Since I regret not to be able to be there on the occasion of the foundation of the new Italian Society of Oscar Wilde and all that that entails, including the presentation of a new translation of The Picture of Dorian Gray by the translator, Sara Pini, I limit myself to introducing a piece of prose to you that I needed to write following the great non-event in Germany last Monday.



A Birthday Party without Guests

Reading Harold Pinters play The Birthday Party when a young man of twenty-two, I noticed an acerbity of tone and bitterness of language as a whole that rang familiar, while I felt unable to say why it had such a family touch or even sting.

 

 

 

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Blog Artikel deutsch (1)

Liebe Leser meines Blogs,

erstmals schreibe ich nun auch einmal in deutscher Sprache, nicht ganz uneigennützig, denn Übersetzungen  von Oscar Wilde, noch dazu ihre Rezeption auf Englisch anzuzeigen, scheint mir müßig. Es ist vielleicht nicht unwichtig zu zeigen, daß die Übersetzungsgeschichte des berühmten Sozialismus-Essays keineswegs lang ist. Deshalb nutze ich die Gelegenheit der Veröffentlichung meiner eigenen deutschen Version zur Präsentation der jüngeren deutschen Texte in Form einer Bibliographie, wie sie auch im Internet zu finden ist.

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Current Brexit Crisis - the Irish Question revisited

Dear readers of my blog,

while all sorts of personal and professional obligations have kept me from having my say in the current crisis evolving around Brexit, it is clear that there was another reason for silence: like most Europeans with friends and acquaintances in Britain, I do not want to interfere in what seems a monumental conflict both within the Tory Party and across all sections of society in the United Kingdom. What has changed, however, since the arrival of the present resident at 10 Downing Street is that both the opposition parties in Westminster, prominently led by the SNP and the Liberal Democrats and the Tory rebels have had occasion to meet regularly to start “grown-up” talks “across the house”, so that another sign of the dilapidation of the current government was its loss of the majority of one seat on Tuesday when a former Government minister changed sides.

 

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Toni Morrison, Race, review

Dear readers of my blog,

little did I imagine when first thinking of presenting this book of excerpts to you that this post would become a belated obituary of a writer I only really started to appreciate during our summer holiday.

Toni Morrison, born in Ohio on 18th February 1931, died in New York City on 5th August 2019. In a way I try to pay homage today to a brave woman whose writings when I finally turned to them convinced me at once of a quality I am now sorry not to have tasted of before 15th and 16th July last when I read Race, a short book of essays and extracts from novels I had never even heard talk about.

 

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Julian Barnes: The only story, review

Dear readers of my blog,

when on holiday for most of last month I had leisure to read and write on books I had received as gift, some of which I am going to keep, while there are others that do not fit into any of my collections. All the same, I want to place on record my view of them, perhaps recommend them to you as worth your while.

Julian Barnes is an English writer many people have continued to praise to me. A friend of mine has also written several essays on him which I was privy to peruse before publication, so he was a familiar name when his novel The only story arrived in a birthday parcel.

Here are the publication details:

Julian Barnes, The only story, London: Vintage, 2019 (2018). 216 pp.

ISBN 987-1-52911-066-1

Youll find out about the price yourself. Allow me to recommend your local bookseller!

 

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Wildes Hauptwerk

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"Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray"

Über mich

Jörg W. Rademacher (*1962), born and bred in Westphalia. Attended university at Münster, Dundee and Lille. State exam in 1988. Ph.D. In 1993. Scholar, language teacher as well as writer and translator at Münster until 2002. Since 2002 secondary school teacher, writer and translator in East Frisia. Working on Wilde since 1988. Publishing on Wilde since 2000 as biographer and editor and translator, on a regular basis with Elsinor Verlag since 2012, since 2015 also editor and translator of Oscar Wilde calendars.

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