Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

by Oscar Wilde

1 Leader of fashion.

  1(In palmistry) part of the hand with lines running crosswise.

  1To become wise through love.

  1Through the cross to the light.

  2Through blood to liberty.

  1Woe to tyrants.

  2Woe to the conquered.

  1This play is only a fragment and was never completed. The poet, T. Sturge Moore, wrote an opening scene for the purpose of presentation, but only Oscar Wilde’s work is given here.

  1Strophe.

  1Antistrophe. The strophe was chanted as the chorus proceeded in one direction. As they returned they chanted its exact counterpart, the antistrophe, in reply.

  1From the Clouds of Aristophanes.

  2Strophe.

  3Antistrophe. (See footnote on page 746).

  1Lovely lady of my memory.

  1Cry woe, woe and let the good prevail.

  1It is inevitable that life should be harvested like a crop that is ripe, and one man should die while another lives. (Euripides, Hypsipiie.)

  2Love of the impossible.

  1A Song of Lamentation

  2Euripides, Hecuba, 444-83

  3Strophe.

  1Antistrophe. (See footnote on page 746.

  1For my part I am not in the least ashamed to weep for any man who has died and met his fate. Indeed to cut our hair and let a tear fall from our cheeks is the only tribute we can pay to unlucky mortals. (Homer, Odyssey, IV 195-198.)

  1Sacred and Eternal City.

  1Out of darkness.

  2How much changed.

  1Hail Mary, full of grace.

  1The first seven lines were re-written and used in ‘Madonna Mia’ for Poems 1881.

  2Violet Troubridge.

  1The contemplative.

  1The love of minds.

  1Farewell.

  1Lillie Langtry.

  1Because I have loved much.

  1The silence of love.

  1Bittersweet love.

  1Sacred hunger for liberty.

  1Weariness of life.

  1‘Violet Fane’, the pen-name of Mary Singleton.

  1Margaret Burne-Jones.

  1An Unequal Match, by Tom Taylor, at Wallack’s Theatre, New York, 6 November 1882

  1Shining soul.

  1Lightweight journalist.

  1Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass on.

  1We were sullen in the sweet air which rejoiceth in the sunlight.

  2Sloth (one of the seven deadly sins).

  1O Lord give me the strength and the courage to look at my body and my heart without disgust.

  1Very words.

  1I am the good shepherd.

  2Consider the lilies of the field how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin.

  3It is finished.

  4Lord. I am unworthy.

  1Like a little girl who lies around weeping and laughing.

  1That’s where evil ways lead.

  1It is in limitation that the master first reveals himself.

  1Beautiful.

  1Softness.

  1Treading delicately through the most brilliant air.

  1Noble Alcibiades.

  2Noble Charmides.

  1Cleansing.

  1Momentary pleasure.

  1Wine-dark sea.

  1Triumphant beast.

  1Love of the impossible.

  1What do I care that you are wise! Be beautiful and be melancholy.

  1Heavenly city.

  1Enjoyment of God.

  1Life of contemplation.

  1Racine hates reality. He cannot be bothered with costume. If one went by the poet’s own directions, Agamemnon would have nothing but a sceptre and Achilles a sword.

  2The world of women.

  1Tunic with padded sleeves, men with halberds, pen-box stained with ink, sailors of carracks.

  1She stayed at home and spun.

  1The little details of history and of domestic life must be scrupulously studied and reproduced by the poet, but solely as a means of adding to the reality of the whole and of instilling into the darkest corners of the work this general and powerful life, in the midst of which the characters are more real and the catastrophies, as a result, more poignant. Everything must be subordinated to this end. Man in the foreground – the rest in the background.

  1I offer here all my apologies to intelligent spectators; let us hope that one day a Venetian nobleman will be able to mention quite simply and fearlessly his coat of arms on the stage. That improvement will come.

  1We are all dressed for a funeral.

  1The task is all the more glorious for being more difficult.

  1The spirit of an age is not born and does not die on a definite day.

  1Lord of men.

  1A noble and fine nature.

  1The intuitive sense of discrimination.

  2By art.

  3By instruction.

  4I don’t believe a word of it.

  1To be a prostitute.

  2A furious fight with staves.

  3While still a mortal man.

  1A God artificially introduced into the stage.

  2Having courted the favour of the people.

  1Only art must be asked of art, only the past of the past.

  1Lovely golden age.

  2Plato’s Lams; Æschylus’ Prometheus Bound.

  1Prosperous.

  2Somewhat in the same spirit Plato in his Laws, appeals to the local position of Ilion among the rivers of the plain, as a proof that it was not built till long after the Deluge.

  1Plutarch remarks that the only evidence Greece possesses of the truth that the legendary power of Athens is no ‘romance or idle story,’ is the public and sacred buildings. This is an instance of the exaggerated importance given to ruins against which Thucydides is warning us.

  2Town.

  1Private nest.

  2Thigh.

  3Homer.

  1The fictitious sale in the Roman marriage per coemptionem (by purchase) was originally, of course, a real sale.

  2The good and beautiful.

  1By nature adapted to living man and orderly community.

  2The equality of the governor and the governed.

  3City-state.

  4Concerning forms of government.

  1No big fish is bad.

  2Let us go to Athens.

  3Notably, of course, in the case of heat and its laws.

  1A man belongs to his age even when he struggles against it.

  1Clean sheet.

  1The master of those who know.

  2End or aim.

  1Reasoning from the multiplicity of experience.

  1Cousin errs a good deal in this respect. To say, as he did, ‘Give me the latitude and the longitude of a country, its rivers and its mountains, and I will deduce the race,’ is surely a glaring exaggeration.

  1The monarchical, aristocratical, and democratic elements of the Roman constitution are referred to.

  2That at the sons of good men should always be better than their fathers, and the sons of useful citizens more useful than their fathers.

  1Despot of aristocratic origin.

  2Polybius, vi. 9.

  3Lasting possession.

  4Prize of the immediate present.

  1Base superstitious fears and that interest in the marvellous which is characteristic in women (Polybius, xii. 24).

  1Polybius, I. 4, viii. 4, specially; and really passim

  2He makes one exception.

  3Polybius, viii. 4.

  4Chance.

  1Polybius, xvi. 12.

  2Polybius, viii. 4.

  3The unique nature of their form of government.

  4Polybius resembled Gibbon in many respects. Like him he held that all religions were to the philosopher equally false, to the vulgar equally true, to the statesman equally useful.

  1Cf. Polybius, xii. 25.

  2The why, and how and wherefore.

  3A discourse.

  4A significant piece of learning.

&n
bsp; 1Polybius, xxii. 22.

  2Not about trivial issues but arising from trivial causes.

  3Cause.

  4Origin.

  5Pretext.

  1I mean particularly as regards his sweeping denunciation of the complete moral decadence of Greek society during the Peloponnesian War which, from what remains to us of Athenian literature, we know must have been completely exaggerated. Or, rather, he is looking at men merely in their political dealings: and in politics the man who is personally honourable and refined will not scruple to do anything for his party.

  2Uniformity of structure.

  1Example.

  1The bard and the hero.

  1The divided road.

  1Middle way.

  1Aldo Menuzio, a Roman and a lover of Greece.