Oscar Wilde
1854–1900 · Ireland
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Peak-work percentile in the canon.
The lineage through Oscar Wilde
Drew From(2)
who shaped Oscar Wilde
via Dr. Faustus
- Dorian's last unheeded plea replays Faustus's death-bed scene — both men believe repentance has come too late, and Wilde borrows the very phrase: "It is too late" from Marlowe's "Is't not too late?"
- Lord Henry is a transplanted Mephistopheles, the tempter steering a man toward his own ruin
- Wilde called the soul-for-youth idea "old in the history of literature" — Marlowe's Dr. Faustus is where that bargain got its definitive English form
via The Symposium
- Basil's love of Dorian's beauty is a rewriting of The Symposium's ladder — the soul climbing from a beautiful body toward the highest form of love
- Wilde knew the dialogue in the original Greek from his Oxford classics training, and the mentor-and-youth eros at its heart shapes the Lord Henry–Dorian–Basil triangle
- Read Plato first and Dorian Gray reads as the ascent gone wrong — beauty pursued, never transcended
Portraits
The single most famous image of Wilde: a pose from Sarony's 1882 New York session (Met copy, No. 18) that was at the center of the landmark Burrow-Giles v. Sarony copyright case; the definitive Wilde likeness, endlessly reprinted.
Napoleon Sarony, 1882
The famous seated three-quarter pose from the 1882 Sarony series, Wilde in fur-trimmed coat with cane — a high-resolution restoration that is among the most widely used portraits of him.
Napoleon Sarony, 1882
Famous Quotes
“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
“All art is quite useless.”
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
About Oscar Wilde
Irish poet, playwright, and wit, the most quotable writer in English after Shakespeare. The Picture of Dorian Gray, his only novel, and plays like The Importance of Being Earnest sparkle with epigrams. Imprisoned for homosexuality at the height of his fame, he died in exile in Paris at 46. His flamboyant persona and tragic downfall made him an icon.