8 – Forger la figure d’Oscar Wilde
Par David Charles Rose
(traduction de l’anglais: Danielle Guérin-Rose)
J’aimerais ici récapituler, et peut-être réviser, notre appréhension de
l'impact et de l'image d’un Wilde de vingt-quatre ans, récemment sorti
de Magdalen. La description qui suit est tirée de « The Victorians and
their Books » d'Amy Cruse (1935), choisie non pas parce qu'elle est ou
n'est pas exacte, mais pour démontrer la persistance de la vision de
Wilde laissée par les caricatures de George du Maurier.
Oscar Wilde came down from Oxford in 1878, and settled in
London. He became known as a writer of poems and articles
in various magazines, but these, although they were clever
and witty, would not of themselves have given him notoriety.
That came from his personal eccentricities.
He went about
London dressed in a velvet coat, knee-breeches, a loose shirt
with a turned-down collar, and a long-floating tie of some
unusual shade. He wore his hair long, and often carried a lily
or a sunflower in his hand. He loved to pose, and at evening
parties would sometimes stand in a rapt attitude as if
absorbed in the contemplation of a beautiful vision unseen by
the grosser eyes of those around him. He affected a scorn of
all that was homely and commonplace, and a high-souled
devotion to Art, spelt always with a capital A.
Beauty he
proclaimed to be his watchword, as it was the watchword of
all æsthetes, but his was a special and limited form of beauty
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