So i have to paste this link here. reminiscencing my days of books.
Andersen's tales
my personal favourites:
1 The Little Mermaid
2 The Brave Tin Soldier
3 The Snow Queen
et al
'the red shoes' is simply disturbing.
i realised that there are some stories here in the website that i've never read before. cos the collection i had at home was one that my mom had when she was a kid. so there were some books missing among the 10+ of them. what a pity. loved them.
which reminds me of another writer Oscar Wilde. he is the kind who could stir the most profound of emotions in you with the simplest of words. remembering how heart-broken i was when i read The Nightingale and The Rose and The Happy Prince. it is the most peculiar, almost sinister imagination, but really really beautiful. maybe this is just cos of my love for tragedies. recall aristotle's theory on tragedies. and Picture of Dorian Gray is brilliant in dealing with art and the general human morality and emotion capacity.
The Nigtingale and the Rose by Wlide
i was wondering why wilde is so bitter towards rationality--philosophy and science. well, he was active well in late 19th century, into the maturity of romanticism. it was consistent with the entire atmosphere then, to produce works full of scorn and distain towards rationality, and moaning the loss of touch with the profound emotions within our human nature and other human around us. yeah it makes sense.
i'm falling asleep.
and i found this trial of Wilde, on his homosexual relationship with this beautiful and intelligent young man Alfred Douglas. Trial of Wilde think about it, this kind of relationship precisely what he portrayed in the Picture of Dorian Gray. Dorian Gray is Alfred Douglas, young and inspiring, and the rich and aesthetic Lord Henry mirrors Wilde, then already a well-established writer and art-reviewer. he wrote the picture of dorian gray in 1891, the same year he met Douglas. well. that trial eventually became his downfall, and the ingenius writer died at a young age of 45 in 1900, 5 years after the trial. what can we say apart from words of pity and complaints about the unfairness? sigh.
there's a more detailed post in pigsty, cross-referencing here. zhu's post
and wilde himself is quite cute.
and the link to the song. 天下有情人
7 comments:
i never before knew this. sighs, i'm ignorant. What surprised me most was the utter detest for homosexuality in their century, how it was despised as gross criminal act. Pity them. Wilde might have been 'indecent', but who was to judge wat was pure joy and what not. And lots poets n artists r homosexuals, or hetero. It's a SAD case nonetheless.
oh btw, can i quote your entry on oscar wild's trial? Thanx!
feel free to quote. :D my pleasure that is.
but homosexuals are still suffering persecution and are still very much social outcasts aren't they? though, granted, their situation is much better than wilde's time, the societies becoming more tolerant (or indifferent), but somehow i feel that the attitudes towards them remain essentially unchanged...and it has something to do with christianity, if i recall correctly? some doctrine that condemned homosexuality? and to think of all those scandals of cardinals and priests harassing innocent children all the while....i digressed again. anyway, i think if wilde is born into any other era, say a completely enlightened and non-homophobic one, we'd probably not have wilde at all. not the exuberant extravagant being in any case, probably just another pretty, promiscuous and bored man somewhere in England...
Bravo!
i thought: what am i doing commenting on wilde in an ANDERSEN post?! then i realised wilde was the bulk of it...thought i made a blunder again hehe..
my fav andersen tale was Little Ida's Flowers..only read it in chinese, years and years ago. most beautiful. most gay and melancholic. were andersen's fairytales intended for children really? i wonder..
it's truth we can't assume for anyone. not Wilde.
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