Customer Reviews

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Essential for any lover of great poetry, and certainly for any fan of Oscar Wilde is his great poem, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." Scarcely the only thing he wrote after his return from his notorious 2-year prison term, The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a moving and tragic account of one man's suffering. One could go on and on - writing hundreds of pages in essay form - about the indignities and injustices of prison life, but this goes toward saying it much better than any ivory tower intellectual argument ever could. Wilde, winner of the infamous Newdigate Prize For Poetry at Oxford University, had long been an immaculate poet - an a born writer - but he practically anandoned the form after his marriage and the start of his career as a playwright in the early 1890's (aside from that strange amalgram of a poem, The Sphinx.) And yet, this is almost exclusively the only thing Wilde wrote after his release before his untimely death in 1900. Thankfully, the great artist went out with a bang. The Ballad fuses some of the best and clearest writing I have ever read in the English language with a poetic sensibility and a true and tragic sense of real suffering, thereby creating one of the great poems of all-time.

Many anthologies of Wilde's writings are available, and perhaps buying a book that simply includes this lone poem is questionable. I definitely suggest that you go for a Complete Works if you are new to the author; however, if you'd like a travel-worthy copy of certain smaller works - such as this poem - then editions such as this will serve you well. Besides, this edition has as well those beautiful paintings to go along with it - something I'm sure Oscar himself would've loved.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol is truly a fascinating poem. Wilde's valorization of the tragic murderer, "...each man kills the thing he loves... the kindest use a knife because the dead so soon grow cold", provides a poignant commentary on the transience of love. However, this book is marred by what seem to be terrible typos: "But their were those amongst us all..." "And knew that, had each go his due..." "Mad mourners of a corse!" I haven't read any of the other versions of this poem, and can't tell you if they're better, but for the extra money this costs, I expected more from the publisher. Five stars for the poem, but only one for the presentation because of its errors.

As a student of Wilde's life and works, I find this is essential reading. Who needs Shakespeare to outline tradgey? Wilde was imprisoned after a second trial (the first was a no decision). He was confined in the horrid English jails for two years. "The wretched prisoner is then left a prey to the most weakening, depressing and humiliating malady.... punished with the greatest severity and brutality. Each and all these things I had to transform into a spirtual experience." The ballad

outlines the horrors he and others endure who are prisoners of conscience. A terrible tragedy.

Heritage did a brilliant job creating this book for Wilde's poem.

A bright red slipcase, bright red page edges with slate gray hardback boards stamped in a wall and window motif.

The Zhenya Gray lithographs are stark and but feathery and delicate in their textures. The illustrations exist in a fancy/spare interior: lots of white space, heavy cream paper, red ink chapter headings.