thesongremainsthesame:“My Mother who’s an assistant Librarian introduced me to his writing when i wa
thesongremainsthesame:“My Mother who’s an assistant Librarian introduced me to his writing when i was eight. She insisted i read him and i immediately became obsessed. Every single line affected me in some way. I liked the simplicity of the way he wrote. There was a piece called ‘The Nightingale And The Rose’ that appealed to me immensly then. It was about a Nightingale who sacrificed herself for these two star-crossed lovers . It ends when the Nightingale presses her against this rose because in a strange, mystical way it means that if she dies, the two lovers can be together. This sense of a truly high drama zipped through everthing he wrote. He had a life that was really tragic and it’s curious that he was so witty. Here we have a creature persistently ceased in pain whose life was a total travesty. He married, rashly had two children and almost immediately embarked on a love affair with a man. He was sent to prison for this. It’s a total disavantage tro care about Oscar Wilde, certainly when you come from a working class background. It’s total self-destruction almost. My personal saving grace at school was that i was something of a medal athlete. I’m sure if i hadn’t been, i’d have sacrificed in the first year. I got streams and streams of medals for running. As i blundered throught my late teens, i was quite isolated and Oscar Wilde meant much more to me. In a way he became a companion. If that sounds pitiful, that was the way it was. I rarely left the house. I had no social life then, as i became a Smith, i used flowers because Oscar Wilde always used flowers. He once went to a Colorado Salt Mines and addressed a mass of miners there. He started his speech with, ‘Let me tell you why we worship the Daffodil’, of course, he was stoned to death. But i really admire his bravery and the idea of being constantly attached to some form of plant. As i get older, the adoration increases. I’m never without him. It’s almost biblical. It’s like carrying your rosary around with you.” - Morrissey (Smash Hits, 1984) -- source link
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