Random Angle - Oscar Wilde

My husband is opening a show about Oscar Wilde this weekend. I'm pretty excited, and have actually been excited for over a month now, I would say. I had definitely known of Wilde and read some of his more famous works in the past, but when Michael started reading the script, which is primarily of Wilde's trials, my interest was piqued.

I love when Michael is in a new show, becuase that's a great excuse for me to read up on the playwright or subject for at least a month to gain some insight for when I see the show. Since his foray into a play about Jazz musicians at the fall of Jazz and the rise of Elvis, both Michael and I have become avid Jazz lovers. His graduate thesis on George Bernard Shaw also inclined me to his other works and an admiration for his mind. No matter the topic: drugs, certain types of comedy, period pieces, etc, it's a great chance to take in culture and knowledge.

So, reading up on Oscar Wilde has been a treat. I have reviewed poems, listened to audiobooks, took in his De Profundis (his first work after his stint in jail near the end of his life) and watched Wilde - the biopic, masterfully portrayed by Stephen Fry (though a little shocking at points).

One poem that has been particularly striking to me has been a poem reflecting on his time in jail, "A Ballad of Reading Gaol"

Considering that this man was prosecuted for 'gross indecency' (what they described his primarily homosexual acts), and considering the lifestyle I grew up with (primarily conservative christian), he brings some interesting takes on life and sin and god.

Here are some excerpts I thought particularly interesting, though I would say that reading excerpts (especially of a poem) is never as good as the whole thing:

I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

And I and all the souls in pain,
Who tramped the other ring,
Forgot if we ourselves had done
A great or little thing,
And watched with gaze of dull amaze
The man who had to swing.

They think a murderer's heart would taint
Each simple seed they sow.
It is not true! God's kindly earth
Is kindlier than men know,
And the red rose would but blow more red,
The white rose whiter blow.

Out of his mouth a red, red rose!
Out of his heart a white!
For who can say by what strange way,
Christ brings his will to light,
Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore
Bloomed in the great Pope's sight?

But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
A common man's despair.

So never will wine-red rose or white,
Petal by petal, fall
On that stretch of mud and sand that lies
By the hideous prison-wall,
To tell the men who tramp the yard
That God's Son died for all.

The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
By his dishonored grave:
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
That Christ for sinners gave,
Because the man was one of those
Whom Christ came down to save.

This too I know—and wise it were
If each could know the same—
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim