Wilde : Oscar Fingal O’Flaherty Wills (1854-1900), Irish-born British wit, poet, & dramatist, best known for his The Importance of Being Earnest; he was a spokesman of the aesthetic movement in England which advocated art for art’s sake.
... Madame — in the whole world!" Wilde kept his wit even when he himself was in an unfortunate position. He had the ill-luck of being sent to jail for a social offence. A friend visited him there and found him stitching gunny-bags. He hailed Wilde with the words: "Oscar, sewing?" Wilde at once replied: "No, reaping." I don't know whether Mallarme was as much of a wit as Wilde, but his talk was said to... conversationalist playboy that Wilde had in plenty. Many of Wilde's witticisms have become famous. Some of them must have been mighty disconcerting. When he was introduced in Paris to the Comtesse de Noailles who had a charming mind but a very far from charming face, the Comtesse remarked: "Monsieur Wilde, I have the reputation of being the ugliest woman in Paris." Wilde immediately bowed and with a... set his mind at ease, turned him round to face the opposite direction and ran off to his lunch. The next talker in history is Oscar Wilde. It is strange that England should have supplied three of the greatest conversationalists of modern times. Of course Wilde was by nationality an Irishman, though domiciled in England; but Johnson and Coleridge were pukka English. The English people are rather ...
... he had charged double the amount for our suits. The Baroda Maharaja said I had better pay." Oscar Wilde had taken quite a fancy to the young Indian poet, Manmohan. "Mano used to visit him every evening and Wilde described him in his Wildish way, 'A young Indian panther in evening brown.' Wilde was as brilliant in conversation as in writing," continued Sri Aurobindo. "Once some of his friends came... morning. He said he had been to the zoo and gave a wonderful description of it, making a striking word-picture of every animal. Mrs. Wilde who was all the time sitting in a corner put in a small voice, 'But Oscar, how could you say that? You were with me all morning.' Wilde replied, 'But my dear, one has to be imaginative sometimes.'" Sri Aurobindo's narration sent the others into gales of laughter. ... for me on credit. When I returned to London, he traced me there and got introduced to Manmohan also. Manmohan got a red velvet suit made —not staring red, but aesthetic. He used to go to see Oscar Wilde in that suit." What a dogged tailor that was, my friends! "When we came back to India, that tailor wrote to Page 180 India Government about the arrears that Manmohan had not paid and ...
... epigrammatic, paradoxical, often flavoured with burlesque seriousness and urbane hyperbole, good-humoured and cutting at once, is not English in origin; it was brought in by two Irishmen, Shaw and Wilde. Harris' Page 534 stroke about the Rodin bust and Wells' sally are entirely in the Shavian turn and manner; they are showing their cleverness by spiking their guru in swordsmanship with... was Irish through and through; there was nothing English about him except the language he wrote and even that he changed into the Irish ease, flow, edge and clarity—though not bringing into it, as Wilde did, Irish poetry and colour. Shaw's seriousness and his humour, real seriousness and mock seriousness, run into each other in a baffling inextricable mélange , thoroughly Irish in its character—for... share of the future. I suppose some of his plays will survive for their wit and humour and cleverness more than for any higher dramatic quality, like those of three other Irishmen, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Wilde. His prefaces may be saved by their style and force, but it is not sure. At any rate, as a personality he is not likely to be forgotten, even if his writings fade. To compare him with [Anatole] France ...
... But I dare say my brother stimulated me to write poetry. Disciple : Was not Oscar Wilde his friend? Sri Aurobindo : Yes, he was. Mono Mohan used to visit him very often in the evenings and he used to describe Mano Mohan in his childish way : "a young Indian panther in Evening brown”! Wilde was as brilliant in conversation as he was in writing. Once some of his friends came to see... a graphic description of what he had seen, the animals and other things. Then at the end Mrs. Wilde put in in a small voice – "But how could you say that, Oscar, when you have been with me all the morning ?" He replied : "Darling one must be imaginative sometimes." There is another story of Wilde. Once a proof was sent to him for correction. He wrote to the press, "I have put in a comma." Then ...
... epigrammatic, paradoxical, often flavoured with burlesque seriousness and urbane hyperbole, good-humoured and cutting at once, is not English in origin; it was brought in by two Irishmen, Shaw and Wilde. Harris' stroke about the Rodin bust and Wells' sally are entirely in the Shavian turn and manner, they are showing their cleverness by spiking their Guru in swordsmanship with his own rapier. Harris'... common people. Page 165 nothing English about him except the language he writes and even that he has changed into the Irish ease, flow, edge and clarity—though not bringing into it, as Wilde did, Irish poetry and colour. Shaw's seriousness and his humour, real seriousness and mock seriousness, run into each other in a baffling inextricable m é lange, thoroughly Irish in its character... share of the future. I suppose some of his plays will survive for their wit and humour and cleverness more than for any higher dramatic quality, like those of three other Irishmen: Goldsmith, Sheridan, Wilde. His prefaces may be saved by their style and force, but it is not sure. At any rate, as a personality he is not likely to be forgotten, even if his writings fade. To compare him with Anatole France ...
... a world of eternity from this limited, finite world of ours; and you'll hope and pray that from time to time I may do that duty again. Now perhaps some of you have heard the name of Oscar Wilde. At least, you have read his beautiful story "The Happy Prince" 147 , haven't you ? One day when he was sitting in his drawing room doing hard and heavy work, some friends came to visit him. They... descendant (Laughter), open their mouths, stretch their hands for some peanuts to swallow. I have seen a kingfisher dive into a pool..." - so on and so forth. As he was going on in this strain, Mrs. Wilde, who'd been listening quietly, knitting at the same time, pulled him up, "What is this ? What is all this nonsense 144 The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, by William Shakespeare, Act... followed Him to Pondicherry to take up His yoga. I followed Him into poetry too, but now I am stuck (Laughter) on the waiting list! (Laughter) That's what it is ... I am trying to be a bit 'Wilde-ish' as you see, particularly in your sweet and happy company. But by now you have learnt to discriminate when I am serious, and when I am playful, when I am teasing, when I cover truth with truth ...
... Irish genius Oscar Wilde who became the leader of the "aesthetic craze" during his years at Oxford. Gilbert delightfully ridiculed him by calling Wilde and his followers the "intense", "utterly too too" folk who "lived up" to a blue vase or a sunflower. This is how young Aurobindo is speaking through his created character Keshav Ganesh about the aesthetic achievements of Oscar Wilde: Ke. ... Another ...
... him stitching gunny-bags. He hailed Wilde with the words: "Oscar, sewing?" Wilde at once replied: "No, reaping." 18 (iv)When Oscar Wilde was introduced in Paris to the Comtesse de Noailles who had a charming mind but a very far from charming face, the Comtesse remarked: "Monsieur Wilde, I have the reputation of being the ugliest woman in Paris." Wilde immediately bowed and with a most ... complete conspiracy of silence against me - a conspiracy of silence! What ought I to do, Oscar?" "Join it," replied Wilde, with happy readiness. 16 (ii)In a discussion on George Meredith, Oscar Wilde commented: "Meredith is a prose Browning - and so is Browning." 17 (iii)Oscar Wilde possessed the power of spontaneous wit which he kept even when he was in an unfortunate position. He had the... the luminous author of the 'Decline and Fall'." "Luminous!" repeated Sheridan, "Oh! of course I meant voluminous." 15 (10) From Oscar Wilde (1856-1900): (i) Sir Lewis Morris, the author of "The Epic of Hades", was complaining to Oscar Wilde of what he regarded as studied neglect of his claims when possible successors to the Laureateship were being discussed after Tennyson's death. ...
... It was well spoken of. I dare say my brother stimulated me greatly to write poetry. NIRODBARAN: Was Oscar Wilde a friend of your brother? SRI AUROBINDO: Yes. He used to visit him every evening and Wilde described him in his Wildish way as "a young Indian panther in evening brown". Wilde was as brilliant in conversation as in writing. Once some of his friends came to see him and asked how he had... wonderful description of it, making a striking word picture of every animal. Mrs. Wilde, who was all the time sitting in a corner, put in a small voice, "But, Oscar, how could you say that! You were with me all morning." Wilde replied, "But, my dear one has to be imaginative sometimes." (Laughter) NIRODBARAN: I have heard a Wilde story. Once when he correcting the proofs of a book of his, some friends... "I have put a comma in, but now I don't know whether it should be there. I have to decide." The friends went away and came back a little later. Wilde said, "I have decided to take the comma out." SRI AUROBINDO: The story is very characteristic of Wilde. Here Purani brought in the subject of Epic and the experiments that were being made in Gujarat to search for a proper medium for it. He regretted ...
... January 1935 Tennyson and Wilde I could never swallow In Memoriam even in the days when I admired him—very early days! It has been well described as "sorrow in kid gloves". I suppose he was sincere, but he failed to make his expression sincere. The thought is perfectly shallow and conventional for the most part and there is no depth or strength of feeling. As for Wilde, there was always a strain ...
... GREAT SILENCE—Father Theophane 9.HEAVEN AND HELL—Zen 10.WAY TO NIRVANA—Early Buddhist 11.ENJOY NO LIFE—Contemporary wisdom 12.ALL ARE RIGHT—Chassid 13.THE HAPPY PRINCE—Oscar Wilde LETTING GO INTO OUR FREEDOM 1. ANIMALS AND GIVING—Sufi 2: MONKS AND THE WOMAN—Zen 3.I'M ONLY A VISITOR—Chassid 4.I AM AWAKE—Buddhist COMPASSION AND THE NEED TO HELP ONE... BROTHER—PremChand 8.COROMANDEL FISHERS—Sarojini Naidu 9.CASABLANCA—Felicia Hemans 10.SOCRATES 11.REMINISCENCES—Rabindra Nath Tagore 12.ALFRED NOBEL 13.THE HAPPY PRINCE—Oscar Wilde 14.SCIENTIFIC GENIUS OF THE ATOMIC AGE—ALBERT EINSTEIN: Bella Koral 15.KING SOLOMON 16.THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW 17.YUDHISHTHIRA 18.I'M GOING TO DANCE AGAIN 19 ...
... Phillips that the latter's mother visited him when she was on her death-bed at a distant place. But my brother was a poet, you must remember —very imaginative. And, moreover, he was a friend of Oscar Wilde. (Laughter) People say that one telepathises a mental idea and this makes the person appear. It can't be a mere projection of form by the mind only. There is also the vital-physical part that ... well together. SATYENDRA: Perhaps he would have written some new about jail afterwards. SRI AUROBINDO: Many things don't go well together and yet they do happen. One could hardly think of Oscar Wilde in jail and yet he went there. The only thing such people do is to write immortal books in jail. There is Wilde's De Profundis , for instance When the French heard of Wilde's imprisonment, they said ...
... Valmiki, Vyasa and Homer rightly deserve to fall into that category. But the ancient Latin Catullus, the French poet Villon of the medieval age, most of the 'Satanic' poets of the Romantic age, and Oscar Wilde and Rimbaud of the present age – none of them are great souls or possess anything remarkably spiritual in their nature. But on that score can we ever deny or belittle their poetic genius? True, ethics... artistic creation, then despite many minor flaws it will look beautiful, great and precious. In fact, we never find vulgarity in the artistic creation of any true artist. Baudelaire, Verlaine, Oscar Wilde – these creators who dived deep into the very core of natural experiences never for once lost the decorum of their inner Being. Vulgarity has no place in their language, in the expression of their ...
... began to write more English poetry. This activity continued when he went to Cambridge, and indeed throughout his life. His brother Manmohan was a classmate of Laurence Binyon and a friend of Oscar Wilde. He was also very intimate with Stephen Phillips, and was himself a promising poet, having written verses which were published from Oxford in a collection entitled Primavera . It is likely that, apart... The tailor somehow traced me there and found Manmohan also. Then he canvassed orders from him. Manmohan went in for a velvet suit, not staring red but aesthetic brown. He used to visit Oscar Wilde in that suit. Then he came away to India. But the tailor was not to be deprived of his dues. He wrote to the Government of Bengal and to the Baroda government for recovering the sum from Manmohan ...
... I knew very little of his later work. As for his earlier work Page 448 it had qualities which evoked the praise of Wilde. I do not know what Binyon has written, but he is a fine poet and an admirable critic, not likely to praise work that has not quality. (Wilde and Binyon were both intimate friends of my brother,—at a time Manmohan was almost Wilde's disciple. If I were inclined to be Wildely... good in form, but it seemed to me to lack the inner force and elemental drive which makes for successful creation. I don't know whether his later work had it. My brother was very intimate with Oscar Wilde, but, if I remember right, none of the singing birds except Phillips and Binyon went very far. But I think Manmohan published very little in his lifetime—nothing ever came my way. 25 January 1935... and original. I can understand your forgetting your own work, but how is it that you have omitted Harin himself? Surely he has published things that are bound to remain? Also, how was it that Oscar Wilde and Laurence Binyon could give praise to Manmohan Ghose? Has he done nothing that could touch Sarojini's level, though in another way? I did not speak of Harin because that was a separate question ...
... remembered Oscar Wilde. He does not exactly appear to be a writer coming naturally to the mind of an aspirant to spirituality. But, in the first place, we are in old French India, and in the French language the word "spiritual" — which is "spirituel" on French lips — most often means "intellectually sparkling". Oscar Wilde was surely that. And, in the second place, the memory of Wilde came to me in the ...
... But he holds, I suppose, that the writer is still a small poet? NIRODBARAN: No. What he wants to ascertain is whether by writing a single great poem one becomes a great poet. In that case Oscar Wilde and Chesterton are also great because they have each written a great poem. SRI AUROBINDO: Thompson's poem is great in a peculiar way. Of course, if you take the mass of his work into account you... one complete poem: the rest of her is in mere snatches. Still, she is hailed as a great poet. So there can be no fixed standard by which one can judge the greatness of a poet. As to Thompson and Wilde and Chesterton, I believe "The Hound of Heaven" is greater than any poem by the last two. ...
... on very well with my eldest brother." Manmohan was of a different type. He was anything but practical. He was a dreamer and a visionary. A classmate of Laurence Binyon and a friend of Oscar Wilde, he was himself a poet of considerable merit. He, Binyon, Phillips (Stephen Phillips) and Cripps... brought out a book (of poetry) 6 in conjunction, which was well spoken of. "I dare say, my brother ...
... Truth of form? If art is a falsehood, then it is difficult to understand how it can give us Truth (as Picasso says.) It seems only a way of saying, perhaps, a way of being clever like Oscar Wilde who made a similar statement about art in the eighties of the last Century. Picasso says that the attempt to paint the Invisible is bound to fail. The question is: Has not the "invisible" been ...
... Raghuvamsa was an earlier work and the more brilliant, Kumarasambhava was more deep and mature. Or the conversation skirted casually around Laurence Binyon, Stephen Phillips, Robert Bridges, Oscar Wilde, Manomohan Ghose, Bharati Sarabhai, the Hexameter, and the clue to it that a Cambridge friend, Ferrar, gave. Was Blake greater than Shakespeare? After Milton, what was the scope for the epic as a ...
... afterwards, brought out a book in conjunction. It was well spoken of," recalled Page 192 Sri Aurobindo. This was Primavera (May 1890), and it was reviewed by none other than Oscar Wilde. "A young Indian of brilliant scholarship and high literary attainments who gives some culture to Christ Church," he wrote of Manmohan in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1890. "His verses show how quick and ...
... pious and society-preserving motives! Perhaps you will say I am choosing extreme instances. I have taken them to emphasise the fact that mere belief constitutes no guarantee of real good. Oscar Wilde has somewhere a prose-poem in which he describes how a man on being cured of blindness by a philanthropist ran immediately after a woman of the streets! One may act according to one's conscience ...
... Phillips having been at Cambridge with Sri Aurobindo. Phillips was in touch with the group at Cambridge and was a personal friend of Sri Aurobindo's elder brother, Manomohan Ghose, who knew also Oscar Wilde and had Laurence Binyon as a classmate. Page 407 O purblind race of miserable men, How many among us at this very hour Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves, By ...
... or a semicolon can be in poetry and when that was indistinct we tried our best to decipher it with the help of the magnifying glass and also consulted other versions. We know the story of Oscar Wilde who appeared to be rather fastidious over trifles and once spent a day inserting a comma and another day deciding to remove it! Sri Aurobindo was no less fastidious. At times the difficulty was ...
... repeating the follies of our youth! So are those weaknesses and shortcomings the sole means of saving myself from becoming a prize dotard? But we are not a prolongation of the Aesthetic Movement, in which Wilde participated, of the last century's closing quarter. We may be considered aspirants to what Sri Aurobindo has described to me as "the Overmind aesthesis" which sees and feels the world as the manifold ...
... coffee with one of the dons in whose room was waiting "the great O.B., otherwise Oscar Browning." Don't mix up Oscar Browning with either Robert Browning who often wrote poetry like prose or Oscar Wilde who often wrote prose like poetry. Oscar Browning was a super-don, nothing more, but he had a fine literary sense and could pick out good writing - poetry or prose - unerringly. The letter from King's ...
... at least of the earliest and I think too of the later writers. Lamb whom you mention is a signal example of a writer who erected his personality into a style and lives by that achievement—Pater and Wilde are other examples. As for Bengali, we have had Bankim and have still Tagore and Sarat Chatterji. That is achievement enough for a single century. I have not answered your question—but I have ...
... epigrammatic, paradoxical, often flavoured with burlesque seriousness and urbane hyperbole, good-humoured and cutting at once, is not English in origin; it was brought in by two Irishmen, Shaw and Wilde. Harris' stroke about the Rodin bust and Wells' sally are entirely in the Shavian turn and manner, they are showing their cleverness by spiking their Guru in swordsmanship with his own rapier.... ...
... credit. Then I went to London. He somehow traced me there and found Manmohan and canvassed orders from him. Manmohan went in for velvet suits, not staring red but aesthetic, and used to visit Oscar Wilde in them. Then we came away to India but the tailor was not to be deprived of his dues. He wrote to the Government of Bengal and to the Baroda State for recovering the sum from me and Manmohan. I had ...
... He was on friendly terms with his class-mate, Laurence Binyon, later to become a well-known literary figure, and with Stephen Phillips, the notable poet. He was also familiar with the famous Oscar Wilde. Sri Aurobindo when he was seventeen, translated from Greek a poem entitled 'Hecuba' and Binyon who happened to read it went out of his way to encourage him to write more poetry. It was a spartan ...
... foundation unshaken Page 381 was brought by the words of Vivekananda! They did in truth bring one near to the Self and impart strength, atmada, balada. Later, I read about Oscar Wilde and his experiences in jail, his De Profundis. Whenever I seemed to fall into some deep abyss, immediately there would surge up from the inner depths an aspiration for the heights. This for me was truly ...
... detachment as India. Europe has gone in for the cultivation of the senses, but that does not mean that she has been sticking to an excessive and disorderly play of the senses. Neither Byron nor Oscar Wilde is the ultimate ideal of Europe. When the famous novelist Balzac used to sit down to write he would do so in a lonely place in a monk's tunic in order to help his one-pointed concentration. Napoleon ...
... suits for me on credit. When I returned to London, he traced me there and got introduced to Manmohan also. Manmohan got a red velvet suit made—not staring red, but aesthetic. He used to go see Oscar Wilde in that suit. When we came back to India, that tailor wrote to the Indian Government about the arrears that Manmohan had not paid and to the Baroda Maharaja for my arrears. I paid everything except ...
... persuaded by his friends to stop its circulation. Otherwise he would have lost his name. His motto was, like Oscar Wilde's, to write on anything he liked. SRI AUROBINDO: It depends on how you write. Wilde would have been the last man to approve of writing anything in any way. PURANI: I mean writing about erotic things. SATYENDRA: In English books whenever they have to say anything erotic they put ...
... Cambridge to see me. He somehow traced me there and found Manomohan also. Then he canvassed orders from him. Manomohan went in for a velvet suit, not staring red but aesthetic brown. He used to visit Oscar Wilde in that suit. Then we came away to India. But the tailor was not to be deprived of his dues. He wrote to the government of Bengal and to the Baroda government for recovering the sum from Manomohan and ...
... in the original – peopled a solitude of which he has said nothing. He never sought to form relationships, while Manmohan, the second brother, roamed through London in the company of his friend Oscar Wilde and would make a name for himself in English poetry. Each of the three brothers led his separate life. However, there was nothing austere about Sri Aurobindo, and certainly nothing of the puritan ( ...
... Book II, 11. 55765 2. Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 22, p. 159 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. M. Heidegger, What is Philosophy? Translated by W. Kluback and J. T. Wilde (1955) 6. Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 5, p. 582 7. Ibid., Vol. 17, pp. 399-400 8. Aldous Huxley, Text and Pretext (Phoenix edn.), p. 75 9. Elizabeth Barren Browning ...
... Towards a New Society (1947) Gupta, Rameshwar. Eternity in Words: Sri Aurobindo's 'Savitri' (1969) Heidegger, Martin. What is Philosophy? (1955); translated by William Kluback and Jean T. Wilde. Huta. Meditations on Savitri, Volume I (1962); Meditations on Savitri, Volume II (1963); Meditations on Savitri, Volume III (1965), Meditations on Savitri, Volume IV (1966) Iyengar ...
... Then I went to London. He somehow traced me there and found Mono Mohan and canvassed orders from him (!) Mono Mohan went in for velvet suits, not staring red but aesthetic and used to visit Oscar Wilde in that suit. Page 111 Then we came away to India but the tailor was not to be deprived of his dues! He wrote to the Government of Bengal and to the Baroda State for recovering the ...
... "His Judgements are not always sound and his quotations though they seem striking at first they don't stand a second reading. So that they can't be taken as the best. For example, he speaks of Oscar Wilde – but he has not referred to the "Ballad of the Reading Goal" which is one of the best things written in English. Also his estimate of Blunden's descriptions of nature-photographic and true to Nature ...
... André said, "If he is dead, I will resuscitate him," and by giving him injections he brought him back to life. This was related to Sri Aurobindo. SRI AUROBINDO: This attitude reminds one of Oscar Wilde's definition of life—happy anticipation of the future. NIRODBARAN (after some time): There have been fifteen election suits in the Calcutta corporation election: three by the Bose party, one by the ...
... we long and pray always." (April 1989) Your wise as well as witty remarks about "thrice-blessed stumbles" and about "rogues and scoundrels" fathering saints in themselves remind me of Oscar Wilde's epigram: "Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future." There is also the great Christian theme of "Felix Culpa" - "the Happy Blunder", "the Fortunate Fall" of Adam without which there would ...
... Laughter) It was not he who was making the tea but somebody else was preparing it for him; all these are vivid details, mind you, my friends - you may call them imagination, maybe something like Wilde's ? - but it is not so. It is a dream, but a reality on another plane. So I saw actually the Page 106 water boiling furiously. I was wondering why Jayantilal's tea is being made in my ...
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