![]() ![]() Of course, he never did get round to writing anything else after this point despite the urgings of his friends, he had no temper for it at all. It seems alien to me now - real passions so soon become unreal - Still, it must be finished. ![]() He says in a letter dated 22 September "My poem I have not sent off, and I find it difficult to recapture the mood and manner of its inception. ![]() He did struggle with finishing off the poem and spent more time with the final details of it. The length of the poem was necessary, he said, to shake confidence in the penal system he knew it must fall between poetry and propaganda, but he prepared to face some artistic imperfection for the sake of changing what was intolerable. He was now free, but a broken man, and a broke one. He was to revise it with Ross's help in August, and to expand it later. The Ballad of Reading Gaol, this week's choice, is the fulfilment of that plan. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of gross indecency with other men in 1895 and sentenced to two years hard labour in prison. It says in Ellmann:īy 8 July Wilde had started on the Ballad and by 20 July it was, he thought, nearly finished. The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand, after his release from Reading Gaol (/ r. Yes I think he had the idea while in prison but it was composed about two months after his release. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |