This is my 4th time to read Oscar Wilde and the more I read his works, the more he becomes one of my favorite writers.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was a married man and he had two children. Yet, he had homosexual affairs. His sexual preference, considered lewd and taboo during the Victorian era, led him to his incarceration in a town prison or gaol in Reading, England. That explains the title. In the prison, he witnessed the execution of a man who killed his wife while drunk. A year later, when he was out of his cell, he wrote this sad and haunting poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol and it was so famous, his friends put some passages from it on his epitaph (tombstone).

The effect of this poem to me was that for almost a week, I stopped reading. I could not stop the scenes in the poem that kept playing in my head: a dead wife whose throat is slit by a knife. The drunk husband standing in the corner of the room shocked amidst the eerie silence regretting what he did. The same man being led to his execution while Wilde looking at murderer's "bitter" eyes. That adjective in quotation comes from the famous passage from the poem:

n  "Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard.
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!n

We all do this right? Not killing our love ones with a sword of course but hurting the people we love. Sometimes we want to test how they would react because we know they will not stop loving us. Sometimes, it is our sheer foolishness. Or maybe, just like the man who actually killed his wife, he was just drunk.

Prior to joining Goodreads in 2009, I did not know anything about Oscar Wilde but when I read his heartbreaking memoir De Profundis (4 stars), I immediately read The Happy Prince and Other Tales (3 stars) followed right away by his most famous work, The Picture of Dorian Gray (3 stars). I liked them all but I am always curious about the "dark" side (not that homosexuality is dark but it is normally not put in the open so there goes my interest) of an author's mind. So with the previous knowledge of Oscar Wilde's life story (his downfall because of his incarceration) I read this poem slowly and so those scenes got imprinted in my mind and stayed there for almost a week that I could not understand what was going on while trying to read the other books in my currently-reading shelf.

That's how powerful this poem is. It is haunting. The vivid description of the gaol. The cries of a man thrown into the jail waiting for his death. The pleas of Wilde and his surrender to God. Wilde used to be flamboyant, happy, famous and rich suffering from hunger and spite of the town's people. The brilliant author not being allowed even a pen and paper to write his thoughts. Only because he committed homosexual affairs.

Oscar Wilde, your fault was this: you were born at the wrong time.

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
"The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.”

Page: 9

This is a beautiful and moving poem by Oscar Wild. Based on personal observation and experience of his time in Reading jail, Wild wrote this sad and haunting poem while living in exile. I have not read any poems by Wild, so this is my first experience. I have known him as an excellent playwright and recently discovered him as a great essayist. Now I'm discovering a great poet in him too.

This poem is mainly based on an execution that took place while he was in the prison. Making it the center of theme, Wild goes on to expose the dire conditions of prison life, the despair of its inmates, the degradation, and the shame that he personally felt at being imprisoned. The sincere and passionate expression with which he says it all is heartbreaking. I read the whole poem with blurry eyes and a quivering voice (I do recite them when I read poems).

This work showed me an entirely different literary side of Oscar Wild. I have for the most part associated him with wit, sarcasm, and his thoughtful and philosophical insights. But what I saw in this work is the raw display of emotion and absolute sincerity. His personal experience has poured so much feeling into this poem and it is no exaggeration when I say it is one of the most emotional poems that I have read.

Ballad of Reading Gaol was his last work and there was no more writing before his death. Being impoverished, degraded, and utterly shamed, he produced no more after this poem stating that "something killed in me". It is regrettable, for Wild is one of the best literary products of the 19th century. And it is very sad to think that a brilliant mind and a wonderfully gifted artist had to come to such a pathetic end.

Éramos como hombres que por un pantano
de inmunda oscuridad avanzan tanteando;
no nos atrevíamos a susurrar una oración
ni a dar suelta a nuestra angustia;
algo había muerto en cada uno de nosotros
y lo que había muerto era la esperanza.

Oscar Wilde fue sentenciado a dos años en la cárcel de Reading por sus relaciones y enfrentamientos a los convencionalismos victorianos. Wilde se enfrentó sin más armas que su ingenio y, como era de esperar, le trituraron. Perdió a su mujer, a sus hijos, sus derechos y sus propiedades tras conocerse que se movía en ambientes homosexuales.

Los versos nos demuestran cómo su paso por la prisión acabaron con él y, a pesar de que escribió en la cárcel La balada de la cárcel de Reading y De Profundis (una extensa carta para su ex-amante), quedaron plasmadas un absoluto desgarro y el más profundo dolor, dejando a un lado la habitualidad de expresar el sufrimiento y la angustia de otres.

در هیچ قتلگاه هنگام روز
کسی را به دار نمی آویزند:
زیرا یا قلب کشیش خیلی ضعیف است
یا صورت او خیلی رنگ پریده می باشد
و یا چیزی در چشمان او نوشته شده است
که هنگام روز هیچ کس نمی تواند به آن بنگرد.

من هرگز مردان غمگینی را ندیده بودم
که با چنان چشمان خیره
به آن خیمه آبی رنگ که
زندانیان آسمانش می خوانند
و به هر قطعه ابر بی خیالی که
با آزادی از صحنه آسمان گذر می کند بنگرند.

و نیز می دانم ( و چه خوب بود
اگر هر کسی آن را می دانست)
هر زندانی که به دست مردم بنا می گردد
با آجرهای ریا و تزویر ساخته می‌شود
و آن را با میله های آهنی محصور می نمایند
تا خدا نبیند که بنی نوع بشر چطور یکدیگر را شکنجه می کنند.

یا میله های آهنی آن ها، ماه با وقار را
از نظرها پوشاندند و خورشید زیبا را کور کردند
و البته لازم بود جهنم خودشان را مخفی کنند
زیرا در آن کارهایی می کردند
که نه خدا و نه فرزند آدمی
می توانست به آن بنگرد.

And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Oscar Wilde will never cease to impress me. This poem in one word is a masterpiece. Oscar was a genius.

There is such a Nightmarish Depth to Oscar Wilde!

Q: Is being condemned of a once-upon-a-time-felony at the merely SUBJECTIVE imputation of guilt therefore itself a CRIME?

A: “Elementary, my dear Watson (mumbles in Watson’s ear)...”

- “Dash it all, Holmes! I take your assessment quite deucedly to heart! Forsooth, you would cut us ALL to the very quick... have you no COUTH?!”

(See O.W.’s attached reiteration of his - Oscar Wilde’s - guilt in his grand finale. Better yet, read the whole brief work in the public domain, everywhere left on the planet where Good Books are still Free.)

Well then. OK. Enough half-hearted attempts at humour... for this ballad is ANYTHING BUT DROLL.

No wonder - Wilde was serving the Prison sentence that would KILL him. His Crime?

LOVE.

Wilde says we always kill the one we LOVE. Any liaison is as hellish as it is heavenly. Due to a variety of reasons.

Let’s put it THIS way: IS Wilde right here? Do we REALLY kill the one we love, and if so... HOW?

Well, if we have a dearth of love in our life we're probably faking that life.

Let’s say we’re watching TV, late at night, when the others in your life are safely tucked in. Just reruns. Dumb, stupid reruns, which we’ve maybe seen a zillion times. But you’ve GOT to get your mind off your looney-tunes job!

Then your sleepy daughter appears, distraught. “Daddy, I had an ac-... er, ac-ci-dent!”

You hardly bat an eye. “Later, honey. Just go back to sleep. OK? You’ll probably feel better in the morning...”

“But, Daddy...”

Too late, kid. Now you’re chuckling over Hawkeye and Radar’s dumb antics.

You hardly bat an eye when she disappears upstairs.

Before you call it a night, you FINALLY go to tuck her in.

Her bed’s rumpled and empty. And it’s SOAKED. She’s curled up in a corner, shivering and shaking.

You let her down badly.

And you KILLED a part of her fragile soul tonight.
***

And now for my main point. Something that's not so obvious:

Wilde's famous law can KILL US ALL.

I'll start with myself. I was known, at home, at school and at work in previous years, as a guy who accepted discipline. For me then, no one got outta line without paying for it. A cradle Christian.

But I cracked under extreme duress when I was 20.

I became contrarious, and acted right outta line. Subconconsciously, I blamed myself, and woulda accepted the doctors' stern discipline, but then I changed.

I blamed the doctors for it. I said to myself, THEY had ulterior motives.

For I HID the truth from myself. That reversal by manufacturing a scapegoat in them may have been in the superficial interests of self-preservation, but it only prolonged my pain for 60 years.

I had shifted the blame to others - but its intense guilt killed the one I loved - Myself. And guess what?

It was that way for Wilde too.

You see, by hiding the fact of his loathing of an obsolete Law from the ones he loved, he was killing those ones he loved!

For then, his subsequent sulking sentence to Reading Gaol -

Blighted his own forever happily-ever-after charm for himself -

And for the more privileged denizens of the Gilded Age, from that time on.

Oscar Wilde escribió "La Balada de la cárcel de Reading" precisamente cuando todavía estaba en prisión, luego de ser sentenciado a dos años de trabajos forzados por sodomía en 1895 y otros cargos que asumió a partir de hacer pública su condición de homosexual, perdiendo un juicio contra el padre de Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, su propio amante.
Tuvo que sufrir el oprobio, la injusticia y crueles ataques de parte de una pacata sociedad victoriana ya agonizante. Soportó estoicamente y con valor esos años de hondo sufrimiento de la misma manera que hace casi cincuenta años atrás había tenido que soportar también otro gran escritor, Fiódor Dostoievski, condenado a cuatro años de trabajos forzados en Siberia.
Reponiendo parcialmente su relación con Douglas, terminó escribiendo esta balada en la casa de éste, incluso luego de esa famosa carta que le enviara un año atrás y que todos conocemos como "De Profundis", que es un texto epistolar durísimo y desgarrador en donde realiza su catarsis y su mea culpa intentando reponer su orgullo de artista.
Escribió esta balada bajo el seudónimo de Sebastian Melmoth, durante su estancia en Bernebal, cuando ya la enfermedad y la muerte le acechaban y luego de la muerte de su ex esposa en 1898. Dos años más tarde, le tocaría a él morir sólo y abandonado en la habitación de un modesto hotel de París.
Esta balada es un homenaje a otro preso que él conoció, que se llamaba Charles T. Woolridge y que fue ejecutado en esa misma cárcel de Reading en 1896.
La balada es un largo y desolador poema del cual extraigo algunas líneas:
"¡Ah, Cristo! Los mismos muros de la cárcel parecieron temblar de repente y el ciclo sobre mi cabeza se convirtió en un casco de acero enrojecido; y aunque yo también era un alma en pena, mi pena casi no podía sentirla.
Supe entonces qué pensamiento opresor apresuraba su paso y por qué miraba la cegadora claridad del día con aquella mirada tan intensa; aquel hombre había matado lo que amaba, y por eso debía morir.
Y, sin embargo, cada hombre mata lo que ama, sépanlo todos; unos lo hacen con una mirada de odio; otros, con palabras acariciadoras; el cobarde, con un beso; ¡el valiente, con una espada!"

Ante tanta hermosura poética, sobran ya mis palabras.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky...

*

The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves

*

What word of grace in such a place
Could help a brother's soul?

*

And wondered why men knelt to pray
Who never prayed before.

*

For he who live more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.

To suffer while witnessing the prisoner's hell or the one who mourns the life the first one took away.
This must be one of the most haunting poems I've read this year. Deeply memorable lines, delicious musicality; highly charged, evocative images that repeat themselves in the land where each day is like a year - a gem born amidst tragedy.

Aug 7, 18
* Later on my blog.

"The Ballad of Reading Gaol" is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile, after his release from Reading Gaol on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted for gross indecency with other men in 1895 and sentenced to two years' hard labour in prison.

n  In Reading gaol by Reading town
There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,
In a burning winding-sheet he lies,
And his grave has got no name.n

About five months after Wilde arrived at Reading Gaol, Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, was brought to Reading to await his trial for murdering his common-law wife (and promptly presenting himself and confessing to a policeman) on 29 March 1896; on 17 June, Wooldridge was sentenced to death and returned to Reading for his execution, which took place on Tuesday, 7 July 1896—the first hanging at Reading in 18 years. The poem is dedicated to him as C. T. W..

Wilde wrote the poem in mid-1897 while staying with Robert Ross in Berneval-le-Grand. The poem narrates the execution of Wooldridge; it moves from an objective story-telling to symbolic identification with the prisoners as a whole. No attempt is made to assess the justice of the laws which convicted them, but rather the poem highlights the brutalisation of the punishment that all convicts share. Wilde clearly positions himself as being pro-reform, some may even claim pro-abolition.

The finished poem was published by Leonard Smithers on 13 February 1898 under the name "C.3.3.", which stood for cell block C, landing 3, cell 3. The first edition, of 800 copies, sold out within a week, and Smithers announced that a second edition would be ready within another week; that was printed on 24 February, in 1,000 copies, which also sold well, as did further reprints. "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" is the work that sold best during Wilde's lifetime, so much so that it brought him a small income for the rest of his life.

A quote from the poem now serves as an epitaph on Wilde's tomb in Père Lachaise cemetery:

n  And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.n

"The Ballad of Reading Gaol" is one of my favorite poems of all time – sharing the #1 spot with Poe's impeccable "The Raven". It is also one of my favorite works of Oscar's – sharing its place at the top with The Picture of Dorian Gray and An Ideal Husband. It's a poem that means so much to me. Not just because it's such a heartfelt and passionate cry for humanity and compassion, but also because it shows Wilde's own journey: from celebrated artist to outcast and ex-convict. Gone are the days of witty aphorisms, here emerges a more somber and serious Wilde. And I love him for it.

The poem always, always makes me cry. It made me cry when I first read it 6 years ago, and it made me cry now. It's interesting to see it through a lens of advocating for prison abolition (something I've become more passionate about in recent years); so much of what Wilde says in the poem is echoed by activists today: "And never a human voice comes near / To speak a gentle word: / And the eye that watches through the door / Is pitiless and hard: / And by all forgot, we rot and rot, / With soul and body marred."

I learned the first 10 stanzas by heart the first time I read the poem, and they are still ingrained in my brain. I'm sure I'll never forget them. I quote them to myself sometimes. It's a melancholy feeling. Oscar was able to evoke so much in these few rhymes. It's the purest, most fullest form of poetry. It is beauty and message, it is not art for art's sake, here, Oscar has a moral, he is political. And it's good and important that he is.

I'm currently reading Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years, a superbly researched analysis of Wilde's last five years (his two years of imprisonment and three years of exile), and Nicholas Frankel does an amazing job at contextualising how "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" came about, and how its positive reception in Victorian England actually helped the cause for prison reform at the end of the 1890s along. Oscar's time in prison itself was used by activists at the time to shed light on the horrible condition in British prisons, and his own activism after his release (his two letters to the Daily Chronicle on the horrendous condition prisoners have to toil and live under and this poem) contributed to the cause of prison reform.

This is an Oscar that the world rarely acknowledges. He's largely remembered for his wit and snark. But the man Oscar became in prison, the values and morals that he upheld in the last years of his life, are what I personally remember him most for. I am beyond proud of you, son. <3

Favourite poetry has a tendency to make sudden appearances in my head when I least expect it.

I don't know how many times I have read the Ballad of Reading Gaol, but it is often enough for me to feel shame I don't know it by heart yet. I annoyingly often quote the catch line "yet each man kills the things he loves", and it strikes me as true both in the deeper sense of family dysfunction and in the more shallow waters of breaking your favourite coffee mug by accident. It strikes me as wise in the absurd way life plays a crooked game of cards with us. We may be guilty of one thing, and punished for another...

Today I found myself comparing Wilde with Orwell, in a rather heated discussion with students who are reading 1984 as a class novel. I seemed to have completely forgotten the love story between Winston and Julia, and the way it was impossible not to kill each other in the process of getting entangled in the political dystopia of thoughtcrime and doublethink. And I heard myself tell the complicated story of Wilde and his miscalculations and his failure to silence a bully by shooting back at him. I found myself telling my students the story of fake news and real truth and broken spirits that was the result of Wilde's duel with Bosie's father, and I thought of modern politics and our current mess. There is no longer any validity to the question "right or wrong". The only question left to answer seems to be who is wrong in which way, and for what reason.

Oscar Wilde was certainly wrong in trying to fend off Queensberry by suing him for libel, but it is understandable why he did so, and his time in prison for homosexuality is no less brutal for being caused by his miscalculation. He killed the lifestyle he loved by trying to protect it from attacks.

The absolutist stupidity always wins over the complicated life story, and he should have known that: IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

"Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
nbsp; Yet each man does not die."

A tremendously sad and dark poem. I could definitely feel Wilde's pain and sorrow. Beautifully written. Five big stars!