Big Idea of the Day
Despite the funny Swede, (who reminds me of a character on the Muppets), this is one powerful display of how the last 200 years have changed the world. Most striking is how fast China roared to catch the United States in the last fifty years. Will that continue? Hard to argue against it.
Great Drama … Oscar Wilder on trial
Canadian historian Michael Marrus gives a first-rate lecture about great trials. His first choice? Oscar Wilde’s great trial for “gross indecency” in 1895.
As the trial goes on we see Oscar make several major strategic mistakes, dazzle the court-room with his articulate defense of the love “that dare not speak its name,” and ultimately fail to flee the country–after being urged to do so by his friends–when he loses the case.
Why would he fail to flee the country? Even the court seems to half expect him to do so. Well because of a very important woman in his life. Can you guess who this woman might be?
His wife? No, that’s not quite right and certainly not very psychologically astute of you.
Who else would have that much power over the great free-thinking Oscar Wilde?
I’ll give you a hint, it rhymes with the word “SMOTHER”…
If you love this writer, and what writer doesn’t, you must listen to this podcast.
You can listen here, download here, and watch a video of the performance here.
Excerpt from the trial…
Charles Gill (prosecuting attorney): What is “the love that dare not speak its name?”
Wilde: “The love that dare not speak its name” in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as “the love that dare not speak its name,” and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.”
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