Welcome to the life of Oscar Wilde

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A Birthday Party without Guests

Dear readers of my blog,

it is quite different not to “write to the moment” in the sense that I need to wait for the impulse to be able to make my fingers move on the keyboard towards composing another blog post. It is simply that concentrating on compiling materials – text and image wise – without the need to think of how to arrange them in the last resort has liberated the machinations of my mind. At the very least, this process resembles the preparations of a lesson where looking at certain materials in details such as that I may not have seen for ages but which have somehow remained locked in my mind for as long makes me think at once of how to...

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Reflections on Translations of Wilde and other writers

Dear readers of my blog,

this is what I recently received via e-mail:

“Am reading Goethe’s Maxims and Reflections and came across this quote—which you will like!”

This was my friend Danny Morrison getting in touch while reading a book I have kept on my shelves for upwards of twenty years now, having dated its acquisition in Oldenburg and also the day when I found and copied out a quotation for the Preface to my edition of the essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism.

“Translators are to be regarded as busy matchmakers who exalt the great loveliness of a half-veiled beauty: they kindle an irresistible longing for the original.”

In German, Goethe wrote in his maxim no. 299...

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Review articles on Wilde and others published on the Internet

Dear readers of my blog,

publishing in a foreign language means automatically that the market in your own country is limited and that your books are not necessarily considered worth reviewing – to say nothing about the status one does not have, nor has a chance to build in a foreign culture where at any moment – not only but even more so nowadays – you also need to be physically present. Unless you are part of a circle of academic or literary people, your work is not necessarily looked at – and the word about it is not spread, so that those interested might not be able to see and appreciate it. There would be quite a few stories – more or less...

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San Miniato

Dear readers of my blog,

work at school has resumed this week with many new students to meet as well as to learn their names and find out how they have developed their language skills when stuck in front of their screens at home. You may not believe it, but it is true, the return to school with the promise not to resort to another national or regional lock-down of the school system is certainly a reason for students of all ages to be motivated in class...

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The Soul of Man Under Socialism

Dear readers of my blog,

this is just a short return after many months of silence. In a pandemic like the current one with schools in Germany closed for upwards of three months in the spring, much of what is normally part of a teacher’s job was spent in front of a computer screen. If I read and wrote for myself at all I concentrated on working on books rather than composing another blog post.

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Walking the Street of Münster

Dear readers of my blog,

once again it is current events that perturb the "regular" issuing of my new project in the chronological order of the composition of its parts. Last week, walking up and down in the station hall of Leer, I recalled another occasion 25 years ago, and these memories triggered the following poem. I have since then asked it to be summed up, analyzed and commented on, and I upload it now for it to be heard as well since even with an automatic reading this will show what it is all about. Wish you a pleasant reading,

all best wishes,

Jörg W. Rademacher

 

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Wildes Hauptwerk

Alles über
"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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