Beautiful and Impossible Things: Selected Essays of Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde, Introduced by Gyles Brandreth
Notting Hill Editions
Fans of Wildean wordplay will find great pleasure in Beautiful and Impossible Things, a new collection of essays illustrating the cult favourite’s views on subjects ranging from Shakespeare to the proper way to store one’s cloaks (in an oak chest, naturally). Widely recognised for his wit, Wilde once confessed that ‘the chance of an epigram makes me desert truth’: accordingly, even the collection’s most serious pieces abound with succinct and often hilarious one-liners that rival those gathered in ‘Maxims’ and ‘Phrases and Philosophies’. Although Wilde’s views are sometimes inconsistent – ‘Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative’, he rails – certain themes shine through, notably his devotion to creative freedom and to art for art’s sake.
However, this collection goes beyond art criticism to bring us closer to Wilde as a human. It showcases the breadth of his knowledge and interests, but also his empathy, as in ‘The Case of Warder Martin’, and his hopes for his fellow man, as in ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’. As well as the ‘beautiful and impossible things’ art should aspire to, Wilde affirms that in the realm of the real, ‘A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at’. At times utopian, at times delightfully shallow, this brief tome offers personal new perspectives on a long-lionised, near-mythical figure.
Words: Mònica Tomàs
Image: The Telegraph
