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4.18 AVERAGE
4.18 AVERAGE
A wonderful biography – a little too steeped in classical culture and literature for me to understand all the allusions properly, unfortunately. Covers Wilde in his flawed outrageousness and folly, brilliance and conceit, extravagance and tragedy. A huge personality; indulgent, dissipated and suffering, and, in the end brave in his understanding the significance of his life and of his death, and making sure that they were fitting in scale. Wilde became the conscience, after his death, of Victorian society and his fate, and his eloquence on the topics of love and justice and revenge and imprisonment was vital in the reform of its moralizing prudishness, as he believed it would be.
Ellman’s biography captures a man who is incredibly complex, inconsistent and self contradictory, aware of his own duality in terms of his public and personal life, even before his personal life involved cause for scandal.
Ellman manages to contribute to our understanding (as few biographies do) of what part of Wilde’s mind and nature gave rise to the best, and the worst of his works. Ellman evokes admiration from the reader both for his own massively researched and insightful opus, and wrings compassion and a sense of tragedy and a deeper understanding of the manifestatios of hubris from his
sometimes insincere, bored and proud, but always huge and fascinating subject.
Ellman’s biography captures a man who is incredibly complex, inconsistent and self contradictory, aware of his own duality in terms of his public and personal life, even before his personal life involved cause for scandal.
Ellman manages to contribute to our understanding (as few biographies do) of what part of Wilde’s mind and nature gave rise to the best, and the worst of his works. Ellman evokes admiration from the reader both for his own massively researched and insightful opus, and wrings compassion and a sense of tragedy and a deeper understanding of the manifestatios of hubris from his
sometimes insincere, bored and proud, but always huge and fascinating subject.
I read and enjoyed this biography of Wilde the summer after graduating from high school. I did mention that it seemed to "go on forever," but it does clock in at over 700 pages. "I think he's fascinating," wrote 17-year-old me.
Just one word: Impeccable!
Ever since my brother first introduced me to Oscar Wilde while I was still in secondary school, I have been obsessed with everything written by the man. The Picture of Dorian Gray has been one of my favourite classics for years now and when my current pre-master programme requested me to conduct a literature review paper on a self-chosen topic, I could not put Wilde out of my head.
After having decided to conduct a research on Wilde's vision of the Aesthetic Movement, with a focus on Dorian Gray, my tutor introduced me to this biography and boy.. am I glad that I decided to read it.
I'm usually not a very big fan of non-fiction / biographies. They are truly interesting but as a reader, I prefer escaping to one of the many magical fictional worlds that have been provided to us by so many talented authors. Yet this biography by Richard Ellmann immediately pulled me into the world of Wilde and I loved every second of it. The tale of Wilde's life, and the most important events in it, is told in such a detailed and attention-grabbing manner. The story is written with so much grace and it clearly shows the immense respect the author must have had for (let's be honest) everyone's most beloved Aesthete.
However, the book is written from a rather subjective point of view which I personally did not mind that much, but I can imagine that some might prefer reading a biography written in more objective manner.
Besides providing me with lots of new knowledge, Ellmann also allowed me to change my views of Wilde, especially when it came to his artistic (mainly aesthetic) principles. At first, I was scared to dive into this book, considering that it's quite a BIG book but also because I was afraid that it would provide me with an image of Wilde that I would end up not liking so much after all, but to be honest; Ellmann achieved the complete opposite. It made me realise that Oscar Wilde went way beyond his art, he truly was (and still is, in my humble opinion) larger than life and I cannot help myself but to consider Wilde as a piece of art himself.
The book made me feel all kinds of emotions, regarding the man's life, his many wonderous achievements and the various ways he was regarded and treated by many, and this made me love it even more.
Ellmann truly provided me with more reasons to greatly admire the witty genius that is Oscar Wilde and I highly recommend this book to everyone who has an interest in Wilde, 19th-century cultures and aesthetics, or literary art in general.
Ever since my brother first introduced me to Oscar Wilde while I was still in secondary school, I have been obsessed with everything written by the man. The Picture of Dorian Gray has been one of my favourite classics for years now and when my current pre-master programme requested me to conduct a literature review paper on a self-chosen topic, I could not put Wilde out of my head.
After having decided to conduct a research on Wilde's vision of the Aesthetic Movement, with a focus on Dorian Gray, my tutor introduced me to this biography and boy.. am I glad that I decided to read it.
I'm usually not a very big fan of non-fiction / biographies. They are truly interesting but as a reader, I prefer escaping to one of the many magical fictional worlds that have been provided to us by so many talented authors. Yet this biography by Richard Ellmann immediately pulled me into the world of Wilde and I loved every second of it. The tale of Wilde's life, and the most important events in it, is told in such a detailed and attention-grabbing manner. The story is written with so much grace and it clearly shows the immense respect the author must have had for (let's be honest) everyone's most beloved Aesthete.
However, the book is written from a rather subjective point of view which I personally did not mind that much, but I can imagine that some might prefer reading a biography written in more objective manner.
Besides providing me with lots of new knowledge, Ellmann also allowed me to change my views of Wilde, especially when it came to his artistic (mainly aesthetic) principles. At first, I was scared to dive into this book, considering that it's quite a BIG book but also because I was afraid that it would provide me with an image of Wilde that I would end up not liking so much after all, but to be honest; Ellmann achieved the complete opposite. It made me realise that Oscar Wilde went way beyond his art, he truly was (and still is, in my humble opinion) larger than life and I cannot help myself but to consider Wilde as a piece of art himself.
The book made me feel all kinds of emotions, regarding the man's life, his many wonderous achievements and the various ways he was regarded and treated by many, and this made me love it even more.
Ellmann truly provided me with more reasons to greatly admire the witty genius that is Oscar Wilde and I highly recommend this book to everyone who has an interest in Wilde, 19th-century cultures and aesthetics, or literary art in general.
This took my breath away. So many different emotions and feelings while exploring the life of Oscar Wilde. I had no idea of his brilliance and Victorian academic prowess. A trenchant observer of the human condition, he was by means incisive, pithy, seductive, loyal, overbearing, generous, egocentric, extravagant, profligate, loving and small-mindedly unkind.
He was charmingly eccentric, gracious while devastating and an agent provocateur.
By midway through this biography I was persuaded he was a repellant human. His arrogance, verbal cruelty and provocative exhibitionism in the name of a solipsistic claim to "art" pushed me away. Enamored so of the aesthetic he nonetheless turned it and himself into caricatures of beauty rendered perverse. He was wildly extravagant and subsumed by his own superior sense of entitlement. His unquestioning self-belief rendered him above prosaic morals and allowed an exploration of evil as a rhetorical exercise. In many ways Dorian Gray was the picture book of Oscar Wilde. Living art and the art of living became one and the pursuit of pleasure, distinct from happiness, became the goal and morality an artless and disposable convention.
In his own words, "I have a duty to myself to amuse myself frightfully...Not happiness. Above all not happiness. Pleasure! You must always aim at the most tragic."
As he fell hopelessly under the spell of Alfred Douglas, Dorian Gray in the flesh, Wilde was lost. Lost to his family, his friends, his art, his reason. As he became totally subsumed by his affair his oft-predicted doom was writ and he was never to recover. As if a bad horror movie, one watched the unfolding libel trial while pleading with him to stop. To no avail. Wilde was his own speeding train plummeting into the abyss. Had he been just a bit less, he would have had so much more.
He was a man totally undone by the self-sabotage of dreadful judgement. He had so many loyal and loving friends but was drawn moth-like to the immolating flame of Douglas who would decimate him to ashes. He would end up eviscerating himself in the pursuit of fleeting ecstasy, "...nothing is good in moderation. You cannot know the good in anything till you have torn the heart of it by excess." And pursue excess they did.
The prison years were heartbreaking. Yet as he claimed after, he did find his soul. All the repellency I felt fell away as I sorrowed for the inhumanity he suffered. And of course the aftermath was nothing more than a drawn out death waltz.
The master of the epigram could never be so neatly summed up. Such a complex and over-large man both literally and in his heart and soul.
Ellman, imbued with the spirit of his elusive and epigrammatic subject, is no mean phrase-turner. This is a tour de force biography only slightly brushed by the inevitable hagiography that is the biographer's curse.
"He was a man waiting for something, perhaps a miracle, only to find that it is death."
"What he regarded as his weaknesses were his inability to choose the greater pleasure over the lesser and to avoid
giving way to the most trifling of temptations. In him hubris had taken this seemingly innocuous form. He knew himself to be generous, sympathetic to the poor, the thwarted, the excluded and his self-esteem valorized his guilt."
In college I took a course on Tragedy in Literature. The premise was based upon the Greek concept of hamartia, "missing the mark", the fatal flaw in the tragic character. Most often in literature, as in life, it was hubris.
Wilde as tragedy is greater than any creation of literature.
He was charmingly eccentric, gracious while devastating and an agent provocateur.
By midway through this biography I was persuaded he was a repellant human. His arrogance, verbal cruelty and provocative exhibitionism in the name of a solipsistic claim to "art" pushed me away. Enamored so of the aesthetic he nonetheless turned it and himself into caricatures of beauty rendered perverse. He was wildly extravagant and subsumed by his own superior sense of entitlement. His unquestioning self-belief rendered him above prosaic morals and allowed an exploration of evil as a rhetorical exercise. In many ways Dorian Gray was the picture book of Oscar Wilde. Living art and the art of living became one and the pursuit of pleasure, distinct from happiness, became the goal and morality an artless and disposable convention.
In his own words, "I have a duty to myself to amuse myself frightfully...Not happiness. Above all not happiness. Pleasure! You must always aim at the most tragic."
As he fell hopelessly under the spell of Alfred Douglas, Dorian Gray in the flesh, Wilde was lost. Lost to his family, his friends, his art, his reason. As he became totally subsumed by his affair his oft-predicted doom was writ and he was never to recover. As if a bad horror movie, one watched the unfolding libel trial while pleading with him to stop. To no avail. Wilde was his own speeding train plummeting into the abyss. Had he been just a bit less, he would have had so much more.
He was a man totally undone by the self-sabotage of dreadful judgement. He had so many loyal and loving friends but was drawn moth-like to the immolating flame of Douglas who would decimate him to ashes. He would end up eviscerating himself in the pursuit of fleeting ecstasy, "...nothing is good in moderation. You cannot know the good in anything till you have torn the heart of it by excess." And pursue excess they did.
The prison years were heartbreaking. Yet as he claimed after, he did find his soul. All the repellency I felt fell away as I sorrowed for the inhumanity he suffered. And of course the aftermath was nothing more than a drawn out death waltz.
The master of the epigram could never be so neatly summed up. Such a complex and over-large man both literally and in his heart and soul.
Ellman, imbued with the spirit of his elusive and epigrammatic subject, is no mean phrase-turner. This is a tour de force biography only slightly brushed by the inevitable hagiography that is the biographer's curse.
"He was a man waiting for something, perhaps a miracle, only to find that it is death."
"What he regarded as his weaknesses were his inability to choose the greater pleasure over the lesser and to avoid
giving way to the most trifling of temptations. In him hubris had taken this seemingly innocuous form. He knew himself to be generous, sympathetic to the poor, the thwarted, the excluded and his self-esteem valorized his guilt."
In college I took a course on Tragedy in Literature. The premise was based upon the Greek concept of hamartia, "missing the mark", the fatal flaw in the tragic character. Most often in literature, as in life, it was hubris.
Wilde as tragedy is greater than any creation of literature.
challenging
informative
sad
slow-paced
A well written biography of Oscar wilde. It was interesting to learn a lot more about a person I only knew in passing. He had a lot of personality and he died tragically like so many others because of a world who was too closed minded.
slow-paced
This is the first biography on Oscar Wilde I ever read, circa 1990. It's brilliant.
I am glad I read this, but I do not think it is for everyone. If you have a specific interest in Oscar or art history/philosophy, read it. It is dense and full of academic details and footnotes. I don’t think the casual reader would enjoy it as much as a student of the subjects.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced