Today's issue: lots of lovely Oscar Wilde stuff, then much quoteology
This poem was written by one of Oscar Wilde's friends to celebrate the publishing of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Sorry, I can't remember which, and I don't have an Ellerman to hand - Lionel Johnson, the internet tells me.
It wouldn't quite be understood by Romans - typically, Latin poetry does not rhyme - but it's still a cool and decadent piece of work, with deliberate elements of a hymn. It gives me joy how quickly and simply I can translate it:
In Honorem Doriani Creatiorisque Eius
Benedictus sis, Oscare!
Qui me libro hoc dignare
Propter amicitas:
Modo modulans Romano
laudes dignas Doriano,
Ago tibi gratias!
Juventutis hic formosa
Floret inter rosas rosa,
Subito dum venit mors:
Ecce homo! Ecce deus!
Si sic modo esset meus
Genius misericors!
Amat avidus amores
Miros, miros carpit flores
Saevus pulchritudine:
Quanto anima nigrescuit,
Tanto facies spelendiescit,
Mendax, sed quam splendide!
Hic sunt poma Sodomorum;
Hic sunt corda vitiorum;
Et peccata dulcia.
In excelsis et infernis,
Tibi sit, qui tanta cernis,
Gloriarum gloria
In honour of Dorian and his Creator
Blessings be to Oscar!
Who has honoured me with a copy of this book
on account of our friendship
Adopting the manner of the Romans,
(fitting praise for Dorian)
I thank you!
This most splendid of youths
flourishes as a rose among roses,
until death comes suddenly:
See, man! See, god!
If only thus could be my
Talent for sympathy!
[OK, my translation is a little dodgy for those two lines]
Eager, he loves strange loves,
He plucks out curious bouqets,
cruel beauty!
However much his soul is blackened,
so much his face is radiant -
Crime, but how glorious!
Here are the apples of Sodom!
Here are the hearts of corruption
And sweet sins!
In heaven and hell
May there be to you, who understands so much,
Glories of glories!
Fantastic, eh?
Another poem about Oscar Wilde is "Sebastian Melmoth" by Patrick Lloyd-Bedford. I have never read it, but came across it in Oxfam once. Alas, the only copy in published form is collectable, and I didn't feel like spending £20 for it. Regret that decision now, but it can't be helped.
I've always wanted to write a poem about him. He wrote poems on the graves of Keats and Shelley, so I know it's a gesture he would have appreciated. Rather scuppered by the fact I don't write brilliant poetry, and yet he never let that stand in his way. Oscar Wilde has yet to be rehabilitated as a great poet, and though I don't really get poetry much of the time, I've a sneaking suspicion it's because his poetry isn't that great as I've discussed before. Bizzare, considering how wonderfully poetic his prose is. It always reminds me of his own quote about bad poetry:
"[the bad poet] lives the poetry he cannot write. The others [good poets] write the poetry that they dare not realise"
It's a project I still rumble over from time to time, and I've got the odd line jotted down in various notebooks, but probably something which will never be completed, and never shown to the public even if it is.
All this was inspired by rediscovering my commonplace book, which had been lost among heaps of other journals and doodlepads. It's given over soley to quotes, mostly from books or poems, sometimes from telly - first comment I ever wrote about Doctor Who is recorded there - sometimes from real people, and some of them are even my own. It's also packed with ellipses... I've been looking for it for a while to transcribe a great piece of song lyric which struck me:
"The game of life is hard to play - you're gonna lose it anyway" from "Suicide is Painless"
It's a record of five years of my life in other people's words - mostly Oscar Wilde's. It was my companion when I read the epic Ellerman biography I mentioned earlier. Rereading it, I'd love to transcribe it all for you, but I'll make do with one or two of the very best:
"Where there is a will to condemn, there is evidence" ~ Wild Swans
[I think I was thinking about slash fiction at the time...]
"When I make a movie, I want it to be everything to me; like I would die for it" ~ QT
[People always talk about Tarantino's quoteable movies, but it's the man himself I'm fondest of. His films are idiosyncratic and indulgent - he makes them for himself and no one else. I find this enormously inspiring. Another one I like:]
"When I'm getting serious with a girl, I show her Rio Bravo, and she'd better fucking like it"
[Because it's not like I'd ever do something like that. Rumours that I semi-dumped the one guy I semi-dated last year purely because his favourite film was "A Beautiful Mind" have been exaggerated. But the first guy who invites me on a cinema date had better understand that we are watching that movie!]
"If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed" ~ Kubrick
"The end of a picture is always the end of a life" ~ Peckinpah
[Brilliant quote - the end of a life for the creators who have been so involved, the end of the vicarious life the audience have partaken of. And frequently, the end of life for one or more characters, literally or otherwise.]
"Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Sometimes even I want to be Cary Grant" ~ Cary Grant
[About his screen persona]
"Very sweet but a bit stupid" ~ my sister on the sons of Feanor
"I would like to protest against the statement that I have ever called a spade a spade. The man who did so should be compelled to use one" ~ Oscar Wilde, or OW as he is usually abbreviated to
"One should be different because one is human, not because one is a monster" ~ Miss Geach, my heroic Latin teacher.
"Just because there is twilight, does not mean there is not night and day" was one of hers also I think.
"Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won" ~ Wellington
"My next Shakespeare book will be a discussion on whether the commentators on Hamlet are mad or only pretending to be" ~ OW, after The Portrait of Mr W.H. clunked
"If we lived long enough to see the results of our actions it may be that those who call themselves good would be sickened with a dull remorse, and those whom the world calls evil stirred by a noble joy" ~ one of the many unattributed quotes, but we can safely guess it's OW again. "Dull remorse" is very him.
"You're a clever man, Unferth,
But you'll endure Hell's damnation for that" ~ Beowulf. Just liked the rhythm.
"When in doubt, draw a sunflower" ~ one of my quotes which pepper the book. It's sound advice.
"If God was clothing he'd be a bra cos he suppors us
If god was an organ he'd be a bladder cos he relieves us
If god was a person he'd be a pop star cos he turns us on
If God was a thing he'd be a G-string
If God was a plant he'd be marujana, cos he gets us so hi-i-igh!"
~ the collective wisdom of Lower Four Z, presumably after a misguided PSHE lesson.
"My heart was turned to one doomed man, but if he reads Heir of Redclyffe it's perhaps as well to let the law take its course" ~ OW on the literary habits of a prisoner awaiting execution
"All archaeological pictures that make you say "how curious", all sentimental pictures that make you say "how sad", all historical pictures that make you say "how interesting", all pictures that do not immediately give you such artistic joy as to make you sat "how beautiful", are bad pictures" ~ guess who.
"I deplore being told I'm not a musician by a man who couldn't hold a tune in a bucket with both hands" ~ Billy Connolly
"You been mudwrestloig?"
"Only with my conscience."
"Really? Who won?"
"Well it was one of those rare scenarios where violence really doesn't solve anything."
"I know the scenario well. usually crops up when one is trying to decide whether to open the next bottle or not"
~ Use of Weapons
"I love drugs, drugs love me
crack cocaine and ecstasy.
With a sniff sniff here and a sniff sniff there
I'll end up in intensive care"
~ more wit and wisdom from Lower 4 Z...
"Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them so much" ~ OW
"Beware the fury of a patient man" ~ John Dryden and "Ira brevis furor est - anger is brief insanity" ~ Horace. Wrote them down for M.
"Either I made a good album, or people just have bad taste" ~ Enrique Inglesias
"On the subject of Wilde's homosexuality Ellmann seems to me eminently sane. Perhaps a little too sane, since it was a subject on which Wilde himself was prepared to be a little crazy" ~ a review of Ellman's book. It's a fair observation, though, because all the earlier biographies are trammelled by the conventions of the time it was written. My 1920s Dorian Gray employs some fantastic science in explaining "the homosexual character".
Then PAGES of OW, some of the best (i.e. shorter...)
"The only possible exercise is to talk, not to walk" ~ you may have heard me use this on several occasions...
"History never repeats itself. The historians repeat each other. There is a wide difference"
"There goes that bloody fool Oscar Wilde"
"It's extraordinary how soon one gets known in London"
"Where will it all end? Half the world does not believe in God, and the other half does not believe in me."
Wilde ~ "Punch too ridicuylous. When you and I are together we never talk about anything except ourselves"
Whistler ~ "No, no, Oscar, you forget. When you and I are together we never talk about anything except me."
Wilde ~ "It is true, Jimmy, we were talking about you, but I was thinking of myself"
BEST. PUTDOWN. EVER.
"There are two ways of disliking my plays. One is to dislike them, the other is to like Earnest"
Horribly correct. Earnest is the least personal, least interesting of his works by some way. Easily the greatest, undeniably hilarious, but it's been remembered precicelt because it is like nothing else he has ever written. Some of the other plays are funny, but none so farcical or whimsical.
"I want to show you Dorian Gray's photograph. that's the way I imagine Dorian. I didn't find or see him until after I described him in my book. You see, my idea is right, that art inspires and directs nature. This young man would never have existed if I had not described Dorian"
I believe this to be true with every fibre of my being. And it's torture knowing that this photo once existed, and may still exist, and that no one knows where it is.
This poem was written by one of Oscar Wilde's friends to celebrate the publishing of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Sorry, I can't remember which, and I don't have an Ellerman to hand - Lionel Johnson, the internet tells me.
It wouldn't quite be understood by Romans - typically, Latin poetry does not rhyme - but it's still a cool and decadent piece of work, with deliberate elements of a hymn. It gives me joy how quickly and simply I can translate it:
In Honorem Doriani Creatiorisque Eius
Benedictus sis, Oscare!
Qui me libro hoc dignare
Propter amicitas:
Modo modulans Romano
laudes dignas Doriano,
Ago tibi gratias!
Juventutis hic formosa
Floret inter rosas rosa,
Subito dum venit mors:
Ecce homo! Ecce deus!
Si sic modo esset meus
Genius misericors!
Amat avidus amores
Miros, miros carpit flores
Saevus pulchritudine:
Quanto anima nigrescuit,
Tanto facies spelendiescit,
Mendax, sed quam splendide!
Hic sunt poma Sodomorum;
Hic sunt corda vitiorum;
Et peccata dulcia.
In excelsis et infernis,
Tibi sit, qui tanta cernis,
Gloriarum gloria
In honour of Dorian and his Creator
Blessings be to Oscar!
Who has honoured me with a copy of this book
on account of our friendship
Adopting the manner of the Romans,
(fitting praise for Dorian)
I thank you!
This most splendid of youths
flourishes as a rose among roses,
until death comes suddenly:
See, man! See, god!
If only thus could be my
Talent for sympathy!
[OK, my translation is a little dodgy for those two lines]
Eager, he loves strange loves,
He plucks out curious bouqets,
cruel beauty!
However much his soul is blackened,
so much his face is radiant -
Crime, but how glorious!
Here are the apples of Sodom!
Here are the hearts of corruption
And sweet sins!
In heaven and hell
May there be to you, who understands so much,
Glories of glories!
Fantastic, eh?
Another poem about Oscar Wilde is "Sebastian Melmoth" by Patrick Lloyd-Bedford. I have never read it, but came across it in Oxfam once. Alas, the only copy in published form is collectable, and I didn't feel like spending £20 for it. Regret that decision now, but it can't be helped.
I've always wanted to write a poem about him. He wrote poems on the graves of Keats and Shelley, so I know it's a gesture he would have appreciated. Rather scuppered by the fact I don't write brilliant poetry, and yet he never let that stand in his way. Oscar Wilde has yet to be rehabilitated as a great poet, and though I don't really get poetry much of the time, I've a sneaking suspicion it's because his poetry isn't that great as I've discussed before. Bizzare, considering how wonderfully poetic his prose is. It always reminds me of his own quote about bad poetry:
"[the bad poet] lives the poetry he cannot write. The others [good poets] write the poetry that they dare not realise"
It's a project I still rumble over from time to time, and I've got the odd line jotted down in various notebooks, but probably something which will never be completed, and never shown to the public even if it is.
All this was inspired by rediscovering my commonplace book, which had been lost among heaps of other journals and doodlepads. It's given over soley to quotes, mostly from books or poems, sometimes from telly - first comment I ever wrote about Doctor Who is recorded there - sometimes from real people, and some of them are even my own. It's also packed with ellipses... I've been looking for it for a while to transcribe a great piece of song lyric which struck me:
"The game of life is hard to play - you're gonna lose it anyway" from "Suicide is Painless"
It's a record of five years of my life in other people's words - mostly Oscar Wilde's. It was my companion when I read the epic Ellerman biography I mentioned earlier. Rereading it, I'd love to transcribe it all for you, but I'll make do with one or two of the very best:
"Where there is a will to condemn, there is evidence" ~ Wild Swans
[I think I was thinking about slash fiction at the time...]
"When I make a movie, I want it to be everything to me; like I would die for it" ~ QT
[People always talk about Tarantino's quoteable movies, but it's the man himself I'm fondest of. His films are idiosyncratic and indulgent - he makes them for himself and no one else. I find this enormously inspiring. Another one I like:]
"When I'm getting serious with a girl, I show her Rio Bravo, and she'd better fucking like it"
[Because it's not like I'd ever do something like that. Rumours that I semi-dumped the one guy I semi-dated last year purely because his favourite film was "A Beautiful Mind" have been exaggerated. But the first guy who invites me on a cinema date had better understand that we are watching that movie!]
"If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed" ~ Kubrick
"The end of a picture is always the end of a life" ~ Peckinpah
[Brilliant quote - the end of a life for the creators who have been so involved, the end of the vicarious life the audience have partaken of. And frequently, the end of life for one or more characters, literally or otherwise.]
"Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Sometimes even I want to be Cary Grant" ~ Cary Grant
[About his screen persona]
"Very sweet but a bit stupid" ~ my sister on the sons of Feanor
"I would like to protest against the statement that I have ever called a spade a spade. The man who did so should be compelled to use one" ~ Oscar Wilde, or OW as he is usually abbreviated to
"One should be different because one is human, not because one is a monster" ~ Miss Geach, my heroic Latin teacher.
"Just because there is twilight, does not mean there is not night and day" was one of hers also I think.
"Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won" ~ Wellington
"My next Shakespeare book will be a discussion on whether the commentators on Hamlet are mad or only pretending to be" ~ OW, after The Portrait of Mr W.H. clunked
"If we lived long enough to see the results of our actions it may be that those who call themselves good would be sickened with a dull remorse, and those whom the world calls evil stirred by a noble joy" ~ one of the many unattributed quotes, but we can safely guess it's OW again. "Dull remorse" is very him.
"You're a clever man, Unferth,
But you'll endure Hell's damnation for that" ~ Beowulf. Just liked the rhythm.
"When in doubt, draw a sunflower" ~ one of my quotes which pepper the book. It's sound advice.
"If God was clothing he'd be a bra cos he suppors us
If god was an organ he'd be a bladder cos he relieves us
If god was a person he'd be a pop star cos he turns us on
If God was a thing he'd be a G-string
If God was a plant he'd be marujana, cos he gets us so hi-i-igh!"
~ the collective wisdom of Lower Four Z, presumably after a misguided PSHE lesson.
"My heart was turned to one doomed man, but if he reads Heir of Redclyffe it's perhaps as well to let the law take its course" ~ OW on the literary habits of a prisoner awaiting execution
"All archaeological pictures that make you say "how curious", all sentimental pictures that make you say "how sad", all historical pictures that make you say "how interesting", all pictures that do not immediately give you such artistic joy as to make you sat "how beautiful", are bad pictures" ~ guess who.
"I deplore being told I'm not a musician by a man who couldn't hold a tune in a bucket with both hands" ~ Billy Connolly
"You been mudwrestloig?"
"Only with my conscience."
"Really? Who won?"
"Well it was one of those rare scenarios where violence really doesn't solve anything."
"I know the scenario well. usually crops up when one is trying to decide whether to open the next bottle or not"
~ Use of Weapons
"I love drugs, drugs love me
crack cocaine and ecstasy.
With a sniff sniff here and a sniff sniff there
I'll end up in intensive care"
~ more wit and wisdom from Lower 4 Z...
"Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them so much" ~ OW
"Beware the fury of a patient man" ~ John Dryden and "Ira brevis furor est - anger is brief insanity" ~ Horace. Wrote them down for M.
"Either I made a good album, or people just have bad taste" ~ Enrique Inglesias
"On the subject of Wilde's homosexuality Ellmann seems to me eminently sane. Perhaps a little too sane, since it was a subject on which Wilde himself was prepared to be a little crazy" ~ a review of Ellman's book. It's a fair observation, though, because all the earlier biographies are trammelled by the conventions of the time it was written. My 1920s Dorian Gray employs some fantastic science in explaining "the homosexual character".
Then PAGES of OW, some of the best (i.e. shorter...)
"The only possible exercise is to talk, not to walk" ~ you may have heard me use this on several occasions...
"History never repeats itself. The historians repeat each other. There is a wide difference"
"There goes that bloody fool Oscar Wilde"
"It's extraordinary how soon one gets known in London"
"Where will it all end? Half the world does not believe in God, and the other half does not believe in me."
Wilde ~ "Punch too ridicuylous. When you and I are together we never talk about anything except ourselves"
Whistler ~ "No, no, Oscar, you forget. When you and I are together we never talk about anything except me."
Wilde ~ "It is true, Jimmy, we were talking about you, but I was thinking of myself"
BEST. PUTDOWN. EVER.
"There are two ways of disliking my plays. One is to dislike them, the other is to like Earnest"
Horribly correct. Earnest is the least personal, least interesting of his works by some way. Easily the greatest, undeniably hilarious, but it's been remembered precicelt because it is like nothing else he has ever written. Some of the other plays are funny, but none so farcical or whimsical.
"I want to show you Dorian Gray's photograph. that's the way I imagine Dorian. I didn't find or see him until after I described him in my book. You see, my idea is right, that art inspires and directs nature. This young man would never have existed if I had not described Dorian"
I believe this to be true with every fibre of my being. And it's torture knowing that this photo once existed, and may still exist, and that no one knows where it is.
Comments (3)
Greetings from Berlin!
I rather like A Beautiful Mind. Sure it's a little sentimental, but Russell Crowe's performance is pretty good, and the story is compelling.
Oooh, Berlin - wonderful city! I hope you're having fun.
I didn't mind Beautiful Mind - elements of it are brilliant, and Russel Crowe is always good. It's just about 30 minutes too long - too many draggy endings (and I liked Return of the King...) - and yes, at times too sentimental. But as the greatest film ever?
[/ movie snobbishness ]
^____^