79. Oscar Wilde gets justice

The man who said, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about,” is once again being remembered.

And the man is the famous novelist, poet, and playwright Oscar Wilde. 

Finally, after 130 years, justice is served to the renowned novelist, poet, and playwright Oscar Wilde as the British Library honors the late Irish writer by reissuing a reader's card bearing his name. The card's new expiry date is set for his date of death, November 1900.

His grandson, author Merlin Holland, will collect the new card on his grandfather’s 171st birthday. The library said that it intended to acknowledge the injustices and immense suffering Wilde faced.

The card was revoked after his conviction for gross indecency, and he was barred from the library's reading room in 1895 due to charges of having had homosexual relationships, which was a criminal offense at the time.

Dame Carol Black, chair of the British Library, said that by reissuing his library card, we hope to not only honour Wilde's memory but also acknowledge the injustices and immense suffering he faced as a result of his conviction.

The author was convicted in May 1895 after losing a libel trial against Lord Queensberry, who accused him of being gay after discovering that his son, Lord Alfred Douglas, also known as Bosie, was Wilde's lover.

The British Library possesses handwritten drafts of several of Wilde's most renowned plays, such as The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband, A Woman of No Importance, and Lady Windermere's Fan.

Its collection also includes De Profundis, the letter he wrote to Bosie, which people read in a moment of terrible depression.

Born on October 16, 1854, in Dublin, Ireland, Wilde is best known for his comedies, including The Importance of Being Earnest and his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which he wrote the lines mentioned above.

The Importance of Being Earnest, a trivial comedy for serious people, is a play and the final among his four drawing-room comedies - Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, and An Ideal Husband. 

The play is renowned for its sharp wit and clever exchanges, parodying and lightly satirizing current theatrical standards. 

The Importance of Being Earnest has been adapted for radio and for television since the 1930s. It has been filmed three times by Anthony Asquith in 1952, Kurt Baker in 1992, and Oliver Parker in 2002. 

It has also been turned into operas and musicals. 

However, I love reading Requiescat, one of his lesser-known poems.

Tread lightly, she is near    

Under the snow,

Speak gently, she can hear    

The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair    

Tarnished with rust,

She that was young and fair    

Fallen to dust.

Lily-like, white as snow,    

She hardly knew

She was a woman, so    

Sweetly she grew.

Coffin-board, heavy stone,    

Lie on her breast,

I vex my heart alone    

She is at rest.

Peace, Peace, she cannot hear    

Lyre or sonnet,

All my life’s buried here,    

Heap earth upon it.

The word “Requiescat” refers to something that is spoken for the dead to hear. 

This poem depicts the burial of a young, unnamed woman, beginning with a warning to watch where one walks, as she lies beneath them on the ground, and even footfalls will disturb her. 

The beautiful woman with her golden hair is rotting. She cannot feel the heavy stone that lies on her chest as she is at peace.

The closing lines are emotive as the poet declares, “she cannot hear anything from above the earth and she holds within her his entire life.” 

In 1881, Wilde published his first collection, Poems. In 1884, after a tour of America, he established an aesthetic movement — centered on the idea that one should live by a set of beliefs that value beauty for its own sake, rather than as a means to promote other viewpoints. 

The conviction affected the writer deeply, and after his release, he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol, his final work.