Posted by Sigismund on July 7, 2007, at 21:12:28
In reply to Re: Did Oscar Wilde give decadence a good name? » Sigismund, posted by zeugma on July 3, 2007, at 11:17:15
When we were kids we had a grampophone/phonogram thingo. It was quite big and just had a radio and a record player for 33s, 45s and 78s (if I remember correctly) and lots of levers and dials, so it seemed like the controls for something quite important .
We had a boxed set of Bing Crosby reading "The Happy Prince" which was my favourite record as a kid, and it came with lovely pictures.
Much later I tried to read it to my kids, but it was hopeless as I was in tears well before the end of page 1, and the kids were looking nervous and surprised.
I suppose it is really just straight Christian (not restricted to that) ethics about others before self and the importance of love and sacrifice. He's an interesting moralist with quite scathing things to say about other moralists. (I forget where the quote I'm looking for is, possibly somewhere in De Profundis.)
Certainly in that there is his account of Robert Ross's raising his hat to him at a public station while he was being transferred as a prisoner and after Ross had bought as many of Wilde's books as he could at the bankruptcy auction.
That was Wilde's idea of virtue ('men have gone to heaven for less than that'), and mine too.
poster:Sigismund
thread:766777
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20070312/msgs/768346.html