Teleny

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Teleny is a novel that appeared anonymously in London in 1893 with an edition of only 200 copies. A second, also anonymous, edition followed in 1895. The novel is attributed to Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), but his authorship is not certain. The book was also published under the title: Teleny, or: The Reverse of the Medal, A Physiological Romance (German for example: Teleny or the flip side of the medal, a physiological romance). It tells the homoerotic love story between the French dandy Camille and the Hungarian pianist René (Teleny), whose love is broken by social reprisals.

Authorship

The presumed authorship of Wildes goes back to the bookseller Charles Hirsch. Hirsch worked in the Librairie Parisienne after coming to London from Paris in 1889. He became aware of the Teleny manuscript after several friends received Wilde's copies which he was responsible for dispatching. Upon reviewing the manuscript, Hirsch noticed several different manuscripts, additions and corrections. One of the manuscripts resembled Oscar Wilde's handwriting. Hirsch put forward the assumption that Wilde either wrote the manuscript together with friends or at least created the final print version.

Publication history

In a French edition of the novel published in 1934, the bookseller Charles Hirsch reported in his foreword that Oscar Wilde had ordered works "which he euphemistically described as Socratic " in addition to "novels by good authors" like Zola .

In 1966 the novel appeared for the first time in Great Britain under the author's name Oscar Wilde, but in a censored version from which most of the potentially obscene scenes had been cut out. In 1986 the full text was published for the first time in the Gay Modern Classics book series. In 1995 the Wordsworth Classics series took over the novel.

In addition to the novel, the German edition also contains the short story “The Priest and the Acolyte”, which is not by Oscar Wilde, but by John Francis Bloxam (1873–1928). Wilde rejected the presumption of authorship of the story in his trial against Queensberry and described the text as "tasteless".

Rating

Today, literary scholarship sees Teleny as a counterpart to the anti-pleasure idealism of Victorian society and the neo-romantic love poetry of the fin de siècle .

For the Victorian era it was a provocative work, due to the numerous homoerotic and pornographic scenes. The topic dealt with is still topical: same-sex love that meets with incomprehension and is therefore despised.

expenditure

Selection:

  • Teleny or the Reverse of the Medal, 1895
  • Teleny. Also bound: the priest and the sacristan boy. Translated by Wulf Teichmann. Follow-up by Horst Albert Glaser. Rogner & Bernhard, Hamburg. ISBN 3-8077-0332-2
  • Teleny and The Priest and the Messner Boy. Rowohlt, Hamburg, 1984. ISBN 3-499-15376-9

radio play