There are writers who are the conscience of a moment in history. Their presence and their books constitute the signs of literary identity of a stage and era. Then, with the passage of time and the constant change of things, that consciousness appears reconstructed by new generations that emerge in the literary panorama to renew the world with new ways of living reality, of presenting society or to simply build a new mentality, and those authors who were once the voice of a whole generation, those intellectuals of yesteryear, go to sleep the dream of the just and are forgotten by an inconstant world that no longer feels them as their own.
There are always some that remain, that continue to resonate from generation to generation without fear of being dethroned, refugees under the umbrella of a dominant ideology that coincides with their approaches, or that in the streets that saw them grow they remain anchored as legends in the manuals of Literature, classics admired and venerated as gods through crystal showcases.
It was Wilde himself who, perhaps unknowingly - or perhaps very intentionally - described himself perfectly in his essay “The Decay of Lying”, referring to those various young people who "start in life with a natural gift for exaggeration which, if nurtured in congenial and sympathetic surroundings, or by the imitation of the best models, might grow into something really great and wonderful”. Without any doubt, he was one of those boys who, with his natural talents, created magic of such magnitude that he managed to consolidate himself as one of the most notable and controversial figures in the history of English and universal literature.
Image by John Nolan
Wilde was a genius of literature, truth, but history likes to forget the details of his training, the background of his plots: Oscar Wilde lived for life, and from that life his lyrics were born.
Thus began his greatest theatrical work. He was cultivated as a character in society until he became recognized as a man endowed with a complex character and a strong personality, alternating between leading a life ruled by the moral (from the religious and social point of view) and an accomplished existence as a different human being, feeling that he was caught between the social interest and the individual, between his internal needs and desires. He is a literary man who, despite having been the object of study of the great authors of the 20th century, has suffered the curse of time and has seen his great reputation as an esthete and dandy eclipse the fame of his works, as if they were not intimately related. We like to appreciate him not with a critical eye but with a judgmental eye, and we forget that from his recognized personal spectacle were born his most valuable satires, his best expressions and his excellent theaters.
Image by R J Dent's Library
And yes, this current bizarre popularity is an irony that Wilde himself would enjoy, if that famous phrase enunciated in The Picture of Dorian Gray has something true, because according to him " There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." Truth is that the Irish was always a victim of the desire to succeed, not only in the literary field but also in the good society, that which the more aristocratic it was the better it tasted. This, however, does not detract his nature as an artist; it may be that, rather, adds a little depth to the art of his life.
The game was such that he could have written entire libraries with the praises he earned from those gentlemen and ladies who so despised those of his ilk; the great sin is that they were not directed to his work, which remained in the shadows of appreciation, but to his talent as a brilliant conversationalist and to his exquisite ways of living. He tricked them, those long suits Londoners with their natural propensity to flatter things and people in general, with the rare virtue of an ingenious spirit and never expressing a personal malevolence, thus winning the sympathy of the entire world. He frequented all the salons, kissed all gloved hands, amazed at all the receptions with his wit and good humor, until he became an essential guest. At that moment there was the strange phenomenon -now nothing strange, of course- to become a celebrity before contributing something concrete. Oscar Wilde's may be the only case in the history of literature in which fame precedes the work. And he did it like an Irishman in London.