I have nothing to declare except my genius!

Oscar Wilde

I’ve said on several occasions that if I ever formed a heavy metal band, that I would call it Faustian Pact.  The name suggests a deal with the Devil in exchange for your soul and if it is at all possible, it must cross the mind at least once in a lifetime.

In the novel A Picture of Dorian Gray, there is such a deal made, but indirectly.  Dorian Gray is the subject of a painting which he inadvertently wishes to age and bear the sins of his life and that’s exactly what happens. The author is none other than Oscar Wilde.

Wilde began his life in Dublin on the 16^th of October 1854. The second of three children, Oscar was educated at home until he was nine. He first attended Portora Royal School where he was eventually offered a scholarship to read classics at Trinity College.  He was encouraged to compete for a demyship (a form of a Magdalen scholarship) to Magdalen, Oxford which he won easily. Oscar Wilde was somewhat ‘different’ than the usual and Oxford was where he truly started to create himself. In 1878 he graduated with a rare double first in his chosen field which astonished the Dons as Wilde was known as a bad boy.

The plaque in Tite St Chelsea

Wilde set himself up as a bachelor in London and over the next six years he travelled the UK, France and USA where he lectured. Oscar married Constance Lloyd in 1884 and they had two sons together. During the marriage, he consorted on a regular basis with Lord Alfred Douglas who introduced Wilde to the Victorian underground of gay prostitution.  This in fact led to his arrest and conviction for gross indecency in 1895. Prison was Wilde’s downfall and his health declined. After his release in 1897, he spent the last three years of his life tragically in a penniless exile.

Monument reads, We are all in the gutter
but some of us are looking at the stars.

 

Dorian Gray locked his picture away so that nobody could see the evil transforming it over the years.  We all have skeletons in our closets and I suppose that as time goes by, they just stay locked away and are in the end, another part of the mystique of one’s persona. Oscar Wilde on the other hand paid for his shame publicly where his life was an open book which tells us that, Once upon a time in Dublin, a man with everything to live for told us to live the wonderful life within us. After all, he did.