Oscar Wilde Blog

by Jörg W. Rademacher

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Summer Blog Post Seventeen

 

Summer Blog Post Seventeen

Dear readers of my blog,

this being the last instalment of my World Cup Diary for 2014, I don't want to delay your reading of the final chapter by any current remarks other than that referring to the elimination of the German Women's Football Team from this year's World Cup in France at the hands of a strong Swedish side. The latter broke the deadlock after a series of defeats lasting more than twenty years. So it was their turn today, and from what I watched and read they well deserved it. The semifinals have now four physically strong sides facing each other: England vs. USA; Sweden vs. the Netherlands. Perhaps the US can be prevented from winning yet again or even reaching the final.

Leer, 29th June 2019

45

With just over two minutes’ delay we succeeded in leaving the apartment to find us half an hour later at the latter end of a not interminable queue of basically young and youngish people waiting for the “petit guichet” to open at 7.30 p.m. Only when we did arrive at the end of the queue and I discerned the figure of 95 seats with limited visibility was it clear after all that we would enter the Comédie française 1680 on the night. With tickets priced at 5 € per person you cannot complain if you have a wooden seat, half a seat or nothing at all to sit on while you try to bow across the railing to discover what is going on below. We are early, so that we can look leisurely at the gallery of busts of famous French dramatists which includes, of course, Molière and Voltaire.

The former’s last “comédie-ballet”, Le malade imaginaire, is on the play-bill tonight but I must admit that I have never read that play before, nor have I so much as attended the performance of a classical French play at such a prestigious venue. It is what the French call a “spectacle”, spectacular in the sense that everything seems calculated at achieving some effect but I’m not convinced of every single spectacular moment as a part and parcel of an organic whole.

 

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Summer Blog Post Sixteen

Summer Blog Post Sixteen

Dear readers of my blog,

“writing to the moment” is a sentence made famous by the essayist of partly Irish descent William Hazlitt, and it still makes sense – either for a diarist or a blogger. I have been keeping diaries since 1987, most of which lying in drawers or kept in chests and hardly ever looked at, let alone exploited systematically. At the moment, they are still only an arm's length away and could help solve some questions where memories either fail to exist or keep cropping up in an inconclusive manner. For the year 1994, however, the calendar I used only allowed for noting appointments and perhaps some cryptic remarks. So I rely on other sources. And memories of all shades start to accumulate once they had been triggered by one or two key-words.

Having browsed for the first time and for some minutes in the review copy of Aldous Huxley, a biography by Uwe Rasch and Gerhard Wagner (Theiss, 2019), the first comprehensive book of its kind to appear in German, I was immediately struck by the remark that – as opposed to most of his contemporaries – Huxley lost the largest part of his personal library as well as the MSS and TS of his works in a fire in California in 1961. This certainly is a serious impediment for any literary biographer. When working for the centenary Symposium held at Münster in 1994, I was of course aware of this but having moved on I must admit that I had completely forgotten about this tragic event in Huxley's life, though I later recalled that I also studied the typescript of Island a lot, the only novel that was still unpublished in 1961.

 

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Summer Blog Post Fifteen

 

Summer Blog Post 15

Dear readers of my blog,

Wilde's four years at Oxford ended in a “Double First”, and it is said everyone was surprised by this success. If today the last six months before the finals at Oxford are still without any tutorials and lectures, it is highly probable that this was already the case in his time. So nobody knew what he did when not socialising. Working seriously, as the authors of Bluffocracy (2018) is not encouraged in certain courses, least in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, PPE in short, which since 1920 has “created” quite a lot of Prime Ministers, not least David Cameron, the architect of the current catastrophe of Britain, while Theresa May had studied geography, also at Oxford University. The current favourite in the leadership contest, however, like Wilde read Greats but his degree was only an upper second class one.

 

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Wildes Hauptwerk

Alles über
"Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray"

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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.

Der neue Kalender

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A calendar in progress 2023

Composing these reflections when offering, selling, and sending out the current calendar is still only a matter of weeks away, I do feel that this project has made another step: at long last, a balance has been found between word and image, with Günter Plessow the author of the verse translations into German, while I translated two of Egon Günther’s poems into English besides choosing, arranging, and, sparsely this time, commenting the poems. If you like, you can see the history of the Oscar Wilde calendars represented by their respective covers on my website: oscar-wilde-blog.de
In fact, it is only owing to Günter Plessow’s industry in translating what he calls “Lyrical Notes” into German in the year 2021 that a substantial selection of Wilde poems ranging from the 1870s through the 1890s, including “The Sphinx” and “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, are now available for re-publication as part of this calendar project. This is also why, compared to previous calendars, this Oscar Wilde Calendar concentrates on poetry on the one hand and focuses on verse in English and German on the other hand. Taking the poems chosen this time in turn, I also include miniatures of the collage work, so that it is possible to survey the complete calendar here.

January

Willie Wilde
Salome

The sight of me was as a devouring flame
Burning their hearts with fire, so wantonly
That night I danced for all his men to see !
Fearless and reckless; for all maiden shame
Strange passion-poisons throbbing overcame
As every eye was riveted on me,
And every soul was mine, mine utterly, –
And thrice each throat cried out aloud my name !

“Ask what thou wilt,” black-bearded Herod said,
God wot a weird thing do I crave for prize :
“Give me, I pray thee, presently the head
Of John the Baptist.” ’Twixt my hand it lies.
“Ah mother ! see ! the lips, the half-closed eyes –
Dost think he hates us still now he is dead ?”

Once more, William Wilde’s sonnet “Salome” is there to start the New Year. The image of the head is shocking, it is true, but then facing the reality of a New Year may be shocking again and again.

February

Egon Günther
white morning

(erich mühsam in memoriam)

early on madness wakes from his dream
and shaking stretches long
his limbs when outside wildly rages the stream
drowning out the birds’ songs

close-by stands the fiend
high rises the flood
the guard presses on
roughly into the latrines
far from any friend
depressed is his mood
prepared for war
are only the machines

the white murder undermines
the crumbling dam
that hardly holds in check the hateful pack
many a one in his heart
now feels cold & clammy
deeming himself already the scum’s rich picking
just under the veneer of civilization
wrongfulness – vulgar & naked beast that be –
brashly baring his teeth & also showing his face
the drummer of the nation
conjuring baneful times to be
the press spitting slander across time & space

the murdered’s regards from the grave
are not for you – the murderers
you who with barbarous affectation gave
more support to the law of might
that you ruled to be right:

the tradition of master & slaves
withal the arbitrariness of ancient privilege
you are no adversaries earning his respect
all but despicable torturer knaves
even though arrogantly to subject
you strove the world to your tyranny

in his grave he can but scoff at you
and should you win the world even
with fraud & might & steel
your dream of the master race ne’er comes true
as will prove future’s reel

 

The poem “white morning” by the German poet, painter, writer, and translator Egon Günther had to be omitted from last year’s edition for lack of space. Like Oscar Wilde, the German Jewish socialist Erich Mühsam (1878-1934) endured much before he was even killed in prison for his convictions.

March

Oscar Wilde
By the Arno

The oleander on the wall
Grows crimson in the dawning light,
Though the grey shadows of the night
Lie yet on Florence like a pall.

The dew is bright upon the hill,
And bright the blossoms overhead,
But oh ! the grasshoppers have fled,
The little Attic song is still.

Only the leaves are gently stirred.
By the soft breathing of the gale
And in the almond-scented vale
The lonely nightingale is heard.

The day will make thee silent soon,
O nightingale sing on for love !
While yet upon the shadowy grove
Splinter the arrows of the moon.

Before across the silent lawn
In sea-green vest the morning steals,
And to love’s frightened eyes reveals
The long white fingers of the dawn

Fast climbing up the eastern sky
To grasp and slay the shuddering night,
All careless of my heart’s delight,
Or if the nightingale should die.

 

Poems by Wilde such as “By the Arno.” (March), “From Spring Days to Winter (for Music.)” (April), “San Miniato.” (May), “At Verona.” (June), and “Italia.” (July) record each specific moments in more or less clearly defined places. “By the Arno” has an explicitly Florence setting, breathing a romantic atmosphere redolent not only of Tuscany but of an Oxford college lawn at the dawn of day, also alluding to John Keats.

April

Oscar Wilde
From Spring Days to Winter

(for Music.)

In the glad spring when leaves are green,
O merrily the throstle sings !
I sought, amid the tangled sheen,
Love whom mine eyes had never seen,
O the glad dove has golden wings !

Between the blossoms red and white,
O merrily the throstle sings !
My love first came into my sight,
O perfect vision of delight,
O the glad dove has golden wings !

The yellow apples glowed like fire.
O merrily the throstle sings !
O Love too great for lip or lyre,
Blown rose of love and of desire,
O the glad dove has golden wings !

But now with snow the tree is grey
Ah, sadly now the throstle sings !
My love is dead ; ah ! well-a-day,
See at her silent feet I lay
A dove with broken wings !

Ah, Love ! ah, Love ! that thou wert slain –
Fond Dove, fond Dove return again.

 

“From Spring Days to Winter (for Music.)” contains the elements of the Italian tricolour, so that it might also be set in Italy whereas the poem in general still reflects a romantic view of the seasons.

May

Oscar Wilde
San Miniato

See, I have climbed the mountain side
Up to this holy house of God,
Where once that Angel-Painter trod
Who saw the heavens opened wide,

And throned upon the crescent moon
The Virginal white Queen of Grace, –
Mary ! could I but see thy face
Death could not come at all too soon.

O crowned by God with thorns and pain !
Mother of Christ ! O mystic wife !
My heart is weary of this life
And over-sad to sing again.

O crowned by God with love and flame !
O crowned by Christ the Holy One !
O listen ere the searching sun
Show to the world my sin and shame !

 

Likewise “San Miniato” (al Monte) takes you on an imagined or real tour to a church located on the hills beyond the Arno while also referring to the history of art and religion.