An Electronic Journal for the Exchange of Information
on Current Research, Publications and Productions
concerning
Oscar Wilde and His Circles
Vol. I No. 1
June 2001
Welcome to the very first and very tentative issue of THE OSCHOLARS. I will not be much given to writing editorials: the Journal is intended to be for its contributors to exchange information. It is for all who want to know more about Oscar Wilde, and although with luck it will be of interest to those who love Oscar, its primary function is to aid and support the study of Wilde. That said, I hope it will not be dry as dust, and the slightly jocose title should suggest that. Robert Graves once referred to Oscar the Wiley Man, a sobriquet usually conferred upon Odysseus, so I hope that THE OSCHOLARS falls within the acceptable stretching of language licensed by Joyce. Otherwise we can simply regard it as a portmanteau word, and hope that it will be worth unpacking. Readers can remove their name from the subscription list at any time, but with luck they will be more inclined to recruit other readers. I am very pleased with the level of enthusiasm shown so far from scholars internationally. Nothing in THE OSCHOLARS is copyright to the Journal unless indicated by ©, and the usual etiquette of attribution will doubtless be observed. Please feel free to print it, store it electronically, copy and paste parts of it and (best of all) forward it to colleagues.
We are very pleased to associate THE OSCHOLARS with the Oscar Wilde Society and its journal The Wildean, and are grateful to the welcome afforded to this venture by both the Secretary to the Society and the Editor of the journal. Fulfilling different purposes, the aims of the two are complementary. Contacts for both are elsewhere in this Newsletter.
Emboldened names are those of subscribers to THE OSCHOLARS who may be contacted viâ Melmoth@aliceadsl.fr.
Nothing about format or content is as yet fixed, and doubtless at some point I shall announce that THE OSCHOLARS of the first period is dead. But I will not be changing its name to Woman's World, or arranging my rather scanty locks in a Neronian style.
D.C. Rose
I. Guidance for Submissions
Please add your e-mail address if you are willing to correspond with other readers.
Work in Progress: Please give the provisional title, status (e.g. article, book, M.A. Dissertation, Ph.D. thesis etc.)and where appropriate your college affiliation.
Publications: Full title, publisher, place and date of publication as usual.
Notices: If you are kindly submitting notices of events, such as productions, broadcasts or lectures, please include as many details as you can: venue, date, time, contact address if possible or relevant.
Notes & Queries: These can include points that you might like to see discussed in a 'Letters to the Editor' column, while remembering we are not a critics' circle or a reading group or a fan club.
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II. NEWS FROM SUBSCRIBERS
1. Publications and Papers
David Gill (University of Wales at Swansea) has a slide show devoted to Ricketts and Shannon at http://www.swan.ac.uk/classics/staff/dg/lectures/rs.
David Rose (Goldsmiths College, London) writes 'I shall be giving a paper at the Kipling Conference at Magdalene College, Cambridge, 5th-7th September, called "Blue Roses and Green. Carnations: Oscar Wilde and Rudyard Kipling"'. Further information at www.magd.cam.ac.uk/Kipling/programme.html
Piotr Sadowski (American College, Dublin) writes 'I have a chapter on "The Importance of Being Earnest" in my forthcoming book Gender and Literature: A Systems Study, to be published by The University Press of America'.
Neil Sammells (Bath Spa University) writes 'My Wilde Style was published in London last year by Longmans'.
Joan Schenkar writes of her biography of Dolly Wilde (Truly Wilde, The Unsettling Story of Dolly Wilde, Oscar's Unusual Niece . London: Virago 2000),'The paperback will be published in London in September and in New York in November, and Grijalbo - Mondadori will be publishing the Spanish translation in Barcelona'.
Marie-Noelle Zeender (Université de Nice) has recently published Le Triptyque de DorianGray: Essai sur l'art dans le récit d'Oscar Wilde. Paris: L'Harmattan. 2000
2. Work in Progress
Angie Kingston (University of Adelaide) writes of her Ph.D. thesis that it is 'A survey and analysis of representations of Oscar Wilde in fiction (focusing on novels and short stories) from 1877 to 2000. Central to this project are the questions "how do such works reflect the authors' relation to Wilde?" and "how has fiction influenced public perceptions of Wilde over the years?".'
Irene Lukasch writes from Argentina 'I am working on my final thesis to get my degree as a Licenciate in Modern Languages and Literature. I am a teacher in English, working especially on The Picture of Dorian Gray, but undoubtedly I cannot neglect other aspects of its author. Let me tell you that I have been working in Spanish (that's how the University requires it) but my idea is to have it in English as well. In the first part of my thesis, I am working on the possibility of reading a text from a new perspective, and create one's own sight (as Benjamin says). I have been working with authors such as Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Walter Benjamin, Bajtin, Gadamer and so on. Then, I will proceed by explaining in what ways I have created my own sight so as to find new things in Wilde's work. What do you think about it? I have got the idea and a kind of backbone. Meanwhile I am trying to collect as much relevant information as possible to back up my views.'
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of this issue
III. Other News.
John Stokes (King's College, London) will be giving a paper on Oscar Wilde and Sarah Bernhardt at the Conference 'The 1890s: An Interdisciplinary Conference' at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. For further details contact Mrs Rowena Bryson, rowena.bryson@ncl.ac.uk
v A new website devoted to Marcel Schwob is under construction. For details contact Bernard Gauthier <avadoro@freesurf.fr>
The Christie's sale of Oscar Wilde material (Lot 42) takes place on 6th June in their auction rooms in King Street, London. The material is fully described on their website at www.Christies.com. For those who do not know London, King Street is in the same few square yards as the old St James's Theatre, and Robert Ross's Carfax Gallery in Ryder Street, but as far as I am aware the 6th June has no significance as an anniversary in Wilde studies - unless one wishes to acknowledge it as the birthday in 1853 of Wilde's Oxford friend J.E.C. Bodley.
v Notes towards an Iconography, or Wilde pictured in unexpected places ... On the front of the 2000/1 prospectus of the English Department at Goldsmiths College ... On the Home Page of the English Department at Swarthmore http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/english/
IV. NOTES & QUERIES
1. Wilde emerges into fiction.
Angie Kingston adds that she would
like to be notified of any lesser-known appearances by Wilde in fiction: 'I'm still on the look-out for these –
the odd one still pops up now and then.' Contact in the first instance Melmoth@aliceadsl.fr.
2. A problem in translation.
Malcolm Reid writes
I was an occasional contributor to the Yahoo! Internet Discussion List, in which, towards the end of last year, there were a few jokey items about the Altavista translation service, which is electronic, instant and free, and rejoices in the name of Babelfish – a happy coinage by the late, much missed Douglas Adams. As a little New Year piece, I wrote:
Babelfish (or Herr Durcheinander Fisch if you prefer) has some distinguished Wildean predecessors. For reasons which now seem impenetrably obscure, and should perhaps remain so, a certain Herr Doktor Henry Zick, Ph.D. translated Doktor Max Meyerfeld’s German translation of De Profundis back into English, with wayward results which have a certain whimsical charm.
Oscar's:
For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight in one's cell, as it is always twilight in one's heart.
becomes:
For us there is but one season, the season of grief and sorrow. Even of sun and moon they have robbed us. In the outer world the light of day may shine in blue or golden hues, but the light which steals its way to us through the opaque, barred window, under which we sit, is grey and dim. Twilight reigns forever in our cells, midnight in our hearts.
Actually, for something that has been put into horrid, horrid German, and then brought back again, it's not at all bad!
Two writers on Wilde responded to this. Both with 'off list' e-mails. The first recognised my source as being the Keller 1907 unauthorised edition of Wilde's Complete Works and commented that another item translated back from the German was The Duchess of Padua where the results of putting Wilde’s words into horrid, horrid German and bringing them back again were far less agreeable.
The second response showed me that the Keller Edition may not be as well-known as I had thought, and made me feel that I had been unnecessarily obscure:
I noticed on the Wilde digest a piece by you about De Profundis being retranslated back into English from Max Meyerfeld's German. I wanted to know whether your story is a spoof or whether it is genuine and if so could you give me chapter and verse of where it comes from or the translation is to be found. Dr Flick (was it?) cannot be tracked down in any on-line bibliography or National Library Catalogue.
I replied:
My little New Year offering to the Digest about translations into and from horrid, horrid German was definitely not a spoof! At the dinner to celebrate the 1908 Collected Edition, Robbie Ross complained that Richard Le Gallienne had traduced literary criteria of integrity (or words to that effect) by editing an edition of Wilde’s works which included books not by him (e.g. What Never Dies) and translations back from the German - specifically, De Profundis and The Duchess of Padua.
It wasn't Henry Flick who did the translation (although that would be quite a good spoof name) but Henry Zick Ph D (which would be even better). Perhaps Herr Doktor Zick is in your reference books, or perhaps it is a Schriftstellername for something even more horrid.
I'm afraid that my rather inexplicit reference to 'reasons that now seem impenetrably obscure' was no more than a way of saying that I have no idea why Le Gallienne didn't get the English text from Max Meyerfeld. Maybe paying for a translation was cheaper than paying copyright dues, or maybe Meyerfeld actually refused to part with the text because he was working with Robert Ross.
The Henry Zick text is, I believe, in several American editions of the Le Gallienne 'Collected Works': The Pearson Publishing Co 'Library Edition'; The Wyman-Fogg Company of Boston edition; and the A. R. Keller of New York 'University Edition.' It is I am sure in the Keller edition, but I have to say that I'm not certain about the other two. And there may well be others. I referred to the National Union Catalogue and the librarians who contributed lists of their holdings are a bit erratic.
Since this exchange of correspondence I have been trying to find out more about Le Gallienne and his part in the Keller edition. I believe that the manuscript letters reproduced in facsimile there are all genuine - certainly they are now all in the Holland - Hart-Davis Complete Letters - and the contributions by Colonel Morse to the biographical volume are often quoted e.g. in "Oscar Wilde in America". But the usual sources - at least, the ones I know about - seem to be almost silent about Le Gallienne's involvement in the edition. There is nothing much in Mason or Mikolzyk, and The Quest of the Golden Boy is almost as reticent.
Can any of your readers help by pointing me in the right directions for more information about this odd backwater in the scholarly study of Wilde editions?
3. Another Mr W.H.?
David Rose wonders if anybody has made a link between Wilde and Marcel Proust's friend Willie Heath, a beautiful young Englishman whose mix of 'spirituality, mystery and sexual ambiguity' attracted Proust. This Mr W.H., said to resemble Leonardo's portrait of John the Baptist, died in October 1893. (George D. Painter: Marcel Proust, A Biography. Volume I. London: Chatto & Windus 1959 pp.123-4)
V. PRODUCTIONS DURING JUNE 2001
Austria
The Importance of Being Earnest. A student production at the Pfarrsaal der Kalvarienbergkirche, Geblergasse 45, Vienna, 20th May to 4th June. Details from http://www.jugendhernals.at/kalvarienbergensemble/index.html (this is in German).
England
An Ideal Husband (the Peter Hall Company, directed by Peter Hall), Theatre Royal, Windsor, 28th May to 2nd June www.theatreroyalwindsor.co.uk/
An Ideal Husband (the Peter Hall Company, directed by Peter Hall),Theatre Royal, Nottingham, 4th June to 9th June www.royalcentre-nottingham.co.uk
An Ideal Husband (the Peter Hall Company, directed by Peter Hall), The Orchard, Dartford, 19th June to 23rd June
An Ideal Husband (the Peter Hall Company, directed by Peter Hall), New Victoria Theatre, Woking, 25th June to 30th June www.theambassadors.com/woking/newvic.html
The Importance of Being Earnest (directed by Matthew Smith), The Watermill Theatre, Newbury 30th May to 21st July www.watermill.org.uk.
The Importance of Being Earnest (the Lipservice Theatre Company, directed by Lawrence Till) Library Theatre, Manchester, 29th May to 9th June www.libtheatreco.org.uk.
The Importance of Being Earnest (the Lipservice Theatre Company, directed by Lawrence Till) Palace Theatre, Watford 12th to 16th June.
France
The Importance of Being Earnest (as 'Il est important d'être Aimable' directed by Astrid de Couvois and Ivola Pounembetti) at the Comédie de Paris, rue Fontaine, Paris 9. http://www.comediedeparis.fr/comedie.htm
Scotland
An Ideal Husband (the Peter Hall Company, directed by Peter Hall), His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen, 11th to 16th June www.operabase.com/level1/wuab.html
The current cast of the Peter Hall Ideal Husband is
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Caroline Langrishe (Mrs Cheveley some dates) |
Lisa Goddard (Mrs Cheveley some dates) |
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Barbara Murray (Lady Markby) |
Bryan Murray (Sir Robert Chiltern) |
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Patrick Ryecart (Lord Goring) |
Richard Todd (Earl of Caversham) |
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Julia Watson(Lady Chiltern) |
Katy Odey (Mabel Chiltern) |
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Graham Ingle (Vicomte de Nanjac) |
Maev Alexander( Lady Basildon) |
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Tabitha Fielding(Mrs Marchmont) |
Robin Browne Mr Montford) |
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Walter Hall (Mason) |
Robin Browne (Phipps) |
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Leigh Jones (James) |
Leigh Jones (Mr Barford) |
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Laura Taylor (Lady Jane Barford) |
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Contributions to this section of THE OSCHOLARS from anywhere in the world will be
most welcome.
VI.
Web Foot Notes
A monthly selection of websites (contributions welcome). This month I will start with the Newsgroups on the Yahoo site as engagement with these provided the impetus for THE OSCHOLARS . There are four of them.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Oscar_Wilde_1800s began in March 2000 and has 23 members, of whom two or three seem to supply most of the messages. Its latest message was posted on 16th May, apparently part of a correspondence concerned with erotic fantasies about the waxwork of Wilde at Madame Tussaud's.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wilde-ones began in June 1999 and has 26 members, with some overlap with the above. Only three messages have been posted this year, the last on 20th February.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/oscarwilde began in July 1998 and has 218 members. This a very personal, often amusing, often eccentric site, with a good record in posting reviews and articles from newspapers, and a considerable record of trivial and even crude messages that have little or nothing to do with Wilde. It also contains valuable records of the Wilde commemoration events of last year.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/merici_teatro began in March 2001, has seven members and is in Spanish. Unfortunately I have been unable to gain access to this.
It does occur to me that a study of these sites would make an interesting article or even M.A. dissertation. They play a significant part in the definition of the Wilde Industry, as well as clearly providing a lot of entertainment for the regular correspondents.
There is also the Bunbury Circle at http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/bunburycircle which was founded last January, appears to have two members and five messages(all in January). It is in Dutch, and I think I have enough understanding of that language to suppose that this has nothing whatever to do with Algernon's friend: a Bunbury, in fact. Perhaps a reader with a proper knowledge of Nederlandse taal / Vlaams might report?
One message posted on the third of these sites on 4th February announces a second Oxford Symposium for next year, and offers two sites for further information: www.wildesymposium.org.uk and www.wildeliterarytrust.org.uk. The first of these is the site for last autumn's Symposium at Magdalen but has not yet been revised (since 10th September). When I looked at the second of these on 31st May, it was dated 3rd January, site under construction, and gives the e-mail address wildeana@hotmail.com for further information.
VII. The Oscar Wilde Society and The Wildean
Future issues of THE OSCHOLARS will publish the Table of Contents for each new issue of The Wildean. The current issue - No.18 – contains detailed accounts of Oscar Wilde centenary occasions, with illustrations, and a number of other articles, and reviews of recent publications ©.
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The Wilde Centenary Worldwide |
Donald Mead |
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The Centenary in London |
Donald Mead |
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Oscar Wilde & the Art of his Time |
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The Centenary Exhibition at the British Library |
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A Toast to Oscar: the BL Reception |
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A Conversation with Oscar Wilde |
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At the National Gallery |
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A Wilde Celebration in Westminster Abbey |
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Speranza Twice Remembered |
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The Centenary in Paris |
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Un Oscar pour Wilde |
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Paris at Dawn |
Sheila Colman |
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The Oscar Wilde Society Visit |
Michael Seeney |
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Le Portrait de Dorian Gray at Au Bec Fin |
Tamaki Horié |
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Wilde - the French perspective |
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The Truth of Masks: a symposium and conversation chaired by Merlin Holland |
Donald Mead |
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Railings, Readings and Recitals at Reading |
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Biography— Fact or Faction? |
Douglas Murray |
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Oscar and the Savilians |
Jonathan Fryer |
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Wilde and the Puppets |
T. F. Evans |
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Oscar Wilde & the Aesthetic Interior at the Geffrye Museum |
Michael Seeney |
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Letters, Biographies and Friends: Oscar Wilde in the Year 2000 |
Anya Clayworth |
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Oscar Wilde and his Circle by Simon Callow |
Jonathan Fryer |
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Truly Wilde by Joan Schenkar |
Joy Melville |
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Robbie Ross: Oscar Wilde’s True Love by Jonathan Fryer |
Donald Mead |
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Auberon Waugh: Obituary |
Donald Mead |
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The Oscar Wilde Society may be contacted by writing to Vanessa Harris Hon. Secretary, The Oscar Wilde Society at 100 Peacock Street, Gravesend, Kent DA12 1EQ, England e-mail: vanessaharris@members.v21.co.uk The Wildean and Intentions may be contacted by writing to Donald Mead Chairman, The Oscar Wilde Society Editor, The Wildean & Intentions at 63 Lambton Road, London, SW20 0LW, England e-mail: donmead@wildean.demon.co.uk |
|
VIII. Bloomsday Supplement.
As 16th June has nearly arrived, here is a somewhat defective list of
articles and papers where in different ways Wilde and Joyce are brought into
apposition. One must of course begin with Joyce's own Oscar Wilde: Il Poeta
di Salome, published by Il Piccolodella Sera in Trieste on 24th
March 1909. This was reprinted in E. Mason and R. Ellmann (edd.): Critical
Writings of James Joyce, New York: Viking 1959 and again in Richard Ellmann
(ed.): Oscar Wilde: A Collection of Critical Essays, Eaglewood Cliffs:
Prentice-Hall 1969. It is quite notable
how often Ellmann reprinted the same piece.
Again, corrections and additions will be welcome.
Bowen, Zack: Wilde about Joyce. In Joyce and Popular Culture. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida 1996.
Corballis, Richard: Wild essence of Joyce: Joyce and Oscar. Conference: The Importance of Reinventing Oscar: Versions of Wilde during the last 100 Years. Dresden: Technische Universität 2000.
Corballis, Richard: Wilde / Joyce /O'Brien / Stoppard: Modernism and Post-Modernism in Travesties. In Joycean Occasions: Essays from the Milwaukee James Joyce Conference. Newark: University of Delaware Press 1991.
Ellmann, Richard: Uses of Decadence: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce. In Ceri Crossley & Ian Small (edd.): Studies in Anglo-French Cultural Relations. London: Macmillan 1988.
Ellmann, Richard: Four Dubliners: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce and Beckett. Library of Congress; Washington DC 1986.
Ellmann, Richard: Four Dubliners: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce and Beckett. London: Hamish Hamilton 1987.
Ellmann, Richard: Four Dubliners: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce and Beckett. London: Sphere Books, Cardinal paperback 1988.
Ellmann, Richard: Four Dubliners: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce and Beckett. New York: George Braziller 1988.
Ellmann, Richard: Four Dubliners: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce and Beckett. London: Sphere Books, Cardinal paperback, 2nd impression of the 1988 edition 1991.
Ellmann, Richard: Uses of Decadence: Wilde, Yeats and Joyce. In a long the riverrun, Chapter I. New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1988.
Ellmann, Richard: Uses of Decadence. Wilde, Yeats and Joyce. Bennington, VT: Bennington Chapbooks 1984.
Ellmann, Richard: Uses of Decadence: Wilde, Yeats and Joyce. In Philip Lopate & Elizabeth Coleman: The Ordering Mirror: Readers & Contexts. Fordham University Press: New York 1993.
Ellmann, Richard: Uses of Decadence: Wilde, Yeats and Joyce. In Literary Interrelations. Tubingen: Narr 1987.
Erzgraber, Willi: Tanz und Tod bei Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats und James Joyce. In Tanz und Tod in Kunst und Literatur. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 1993.
Horan, Patrick M.: Wilde and Joyce: The Importance of Being Paradoxical. Mount Airy, MD: Wilde about Wilde Newsletter 13 1992.
Johnsen, William A.: Un capro espiatorio: Joyce's reading of Oscar. International James Joyce Symposium, Goldsmiths College London, 2000.
Mahaffey, Vicki: States of Desire: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce and the Irish Experiment. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998.
McGowan, John: From Pater to Wilde to Joyce: Modernist Epiphany and the Soulful Self. Texas Studies in Language & Literature 32 : 3 1990.
Peever, Adrian: Herculean Hyacinth: Wilde in the Joycean. International James Joyce Symposium, Goldsmiths College London, 2000.
Peever, Adrian: Love's Brand New Fired: Shakespeare's Sonnets, Oscar Wilde and the Structure of Joyce's 'Ulysses'. Ann Arbor: Dissertation Abstracts International 56 : 2 1995.
Pesch, Josef W.: Wilde, About Joyce. Zur Umsetzung ästhetischer Kunsttheorie in der literarischen Praxisder Moderne: Münsteraner Monographien zur englischen Literatur 8. Frankfurt/Main & New York: Peter Lang 1992.
Rabaté, Jean-Michel: On Joycean and Wildean Sodomy. James Joyce Quarterly 31 : 3 Tulsa, Oklahoma 1994.
Riquelme, John Paul: Joyce, Wilde, and Æsthetic Dialogue. International James Joyce Symposium, Goldsmiths College London, 2000.
Rohmann, Gerd: Re-Discovering Wilde in Travesties by Joyce and Stoppard. In Rediscovering Oscar Wilde. Princess Grace Irish Library vol. 8. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1994.
Rose, D.C.: Mr Wilde is Entering Paris: A Legacy for James Joyce. International James Joyce Symposium, Goldsmiths College London, 2000.
Rose, Danis: Shames on His Foulness: Wilde about Joyce. Days Profundis: The 4th Oscar Wilde Autumn School Bray 1997.
Siedenbiedel, Catrin: Oscar Wilde's 'Critic as Artist' and 'Artist as Critic' in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Conference: The Importance of Reinventing Oscar: Versions of Wilde during the last 100 Years. Dresden: Technische Universität 2000.
Stanley, Michael: Famous Dubliners: Wilde, Carson, Yeats, Joyce, Tone, Swift. Dublin: Wolfhound 1996.
White, Ian: Wilde Flowers at the Joyce Arcade. International James Joyce Symposium, Goldsmiths College London, 2000.
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