Читать книгу Oscar Wilde’s Stories for All Ages - Оскар Уайльд, Stephen Fry, F. H. Cornish - Страница 4

by Stephen Fry

Eighteen eighty-eight was a happy period in Oscar Wilde’s life that saw him comfortably established in Tite Street, Chelsea with Constance, his young, beautiful, clever and loving wife. He enjoyed a reputation as a literary cub who had realised his early Oxford promise and was rapidly growing into a fully maned literary lion. The couple’s two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, were only three and two years old respectively at this time, so unless they were even more prodigiously gifted than their father it seems unlikely that they had yet read or had read to them the tales collected in The Happy Prince and Other Stories, which came out that very year.

In these stories, and in The House of Pomegranates, which was published three years later, Wilde’s gifts as story-teller, prose poet, wit and moralist came fully to the fore. For some readers, myself included, he never quite matched that particular combination so well in any other genre.

To the fairytales drawn from those two books have been added The Model Millionaire and The Canterville Ghost, which were originally published in Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories but which we felt would augment this edition well.

Wilde’s children’s stories are simple enough to be understood and enjoyed by even the oldest adults. I have provided small separate introductions for each, but first a word about the author.

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854—1900) continues to be a figure for all ages. Indeed, the more time that passes, the more he seems new and fit for us, or at least for some amongst us. Now that they no longer believe in the power of popular music or revolutionary politics to change the world it is to artists and intellectuals that idealistic and imaginative students will turn. Posters of Wilde and Einstein are more likely to be found on the bedroom walls of the young these days than images of Jim Morrison or Che Guevara, who offered so reliable a decorative imperative for my generation.

Wilde comes down to us, clad in velvet and silk, the Duke of Dandies, the Prince of Bohemia, the Patron Saint of sexual outcasts and radical outsiders everywhere. His good nature as much as his good wit retain the power to scorch the bourgeois, the philistine and the unfriendly in our world. That his life ended with such bitter suffering, betrayal and pain, followed by so complete a resurrection in reputation and influence serves to reinforce that messianic image he retains. It is interesting to me that so many of the early stories presented here, created at a time of riches, renown and contentment, seem so strongly to prefigure the themes of sacrifice, injustice, cruelty and suffering with which we associate the final chapter of his extraordinary life. None of which ought to lead you to believe that the fairytales are gloomy affairs. Far from it. Nor should one believe that a dandy is, of necessity, a person of no importance, no gravitas, no high purpose. We have more to learn from dandies and dandyism than from most scholars and moral scientists. Sadly, they are a species in decline today. I wish I had been cut out to be one myself, but I don’t have the courage, the instinct, the seriousness of mind, elegance of leg or cut of shoulder. Fortunately there are figures like the artist Sebastian Horsley who continue to fly the silken flag, but it seems to me an indication of our age that Wilde is still radically misunderstood by the middle-brow, the middle-class and the middle-aged who are so apt to think being funny betokens a lack of seriousness, whereas of course only humourlessness betokens that.

But enough. There are plenty of biographies of Wilde. There was even a most excellent film made of his life in 1997, which I could not recommend more highly if I were involved in it myself. There are plenty of editions of Wilde’s work too, you might think, including every story collected here. What can justify yet another? The answer to that is Nicole Stewart. Nicole is an Australian artist I have come to know over the years since she nobly consented to design my website www.stephenfry.com way back in July 1999. She has continued to work on it, investing it with a quality, colour and glory way beyond its merits. She and Andrew Sampson, the website’s producer and my partner in all things online and digital, came up with this idea after I had recorded some of these stories in audiobook form, and what you now hold in your hands is the result.

I can think of no higher praise for Nicole’s illustrations here than to say (fully aware that it is the height of impudence) that Oscar would have adored them.

Stephen Fry

www.stephenfry.com/wilde