The Ballad of Reading Gaol
The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde . It was published in 1898 and is Wild's last work to be published during his lifetime. Wilde processed his time in Reading Prison , where he had spent two years after being sentenced to hard labor in 1895 for his homosexuality. Numerous translations and revisions appeared in German, mostly under the title Die Ballade vom Zuchthaus zu Reading .
Content and form
The occasion for the poem was the execution of the 30-year-old cavalry soldier Charles Thomas Wooldridge, who was also a prisoner in Reading Prison during Wilde's time. Wooldridge had murdered his wife out of jealousy and had been sentenced to death for it. After his pardon was rejected, he submitted to his fate without complaint, which impressed Wilde. The Ballad of Reading Gaol is dedicated to Wooldridge and describes the last days of his life from the perspective of the other prisoners. Wilde draws a parallel between Wooldridge's situation and his own, particularly the inevitability with which his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas (which gave rise to his conviction) ended in catastrophe. In this context the particularly well-known stanza stands:
"Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!"
The first line of this stanza relates to Bassanio 's question in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (Act 4, Scene 1): "Do all men kill the things they do not love?"
The Ballad of Reading Gaol deals with the everyday life and feelings of a prisoner. Wilde reflects on guilt and remorse and advocates forgiveness and against inhuman punishments.
Autobiographical traits are particularly evident in those passages in which Wilde expressly reports on his own experiences and the double life he had led and which was his undoing:
"And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die."
The poem is divided into six parts with a total of 109 six-line stanzas. With a few exceptions, the second, fourth and sixth lines rhyme. Repetitions of individual lines throughout the poem are characteristic.
Creation and publication
Oscar Wilde wrote the poem in July 1897, six months after his release from prison. He then revised his manuscript together with his friend and editor Robert Ross . Wilde later added a few stanzas.
The first edition, which appeared in February 1898, was not published under his name but under the pseudonym "C.3.3.", The number of his prison cell. Even so, most contemporaries should have known who the author was, as Wilde's imprisonment had caused a sensation. The book sold extremely well and had to be reprinted in larger numbers after just a few weeks. Wilde's name was not mentioned until the seventh edition in July 1899.
Robert Ross, who managed his literary estate after Wilde's death, published The Ballad of Reading Gaol again in 1911 in a collection of poems in its original, shorter form, which he preferred. As a rule, the expanded version appears in today's editions.
Wild tombstone
A quote from The Ballad of Reading Gaol can be read on Oscar Wilde's tomb designed by Jacob Epstein on the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris :
"And alien tears will fill for him,
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn."
reception
music
- Jacques Ibert composed the ballet La ballade de la geôle de Reading .
- Gavin Friday released the song Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves on the album of the same name in 1989 . The text consists of passages from Wilde's poem.
- Arthur Wills used parts of the text in his choral work The Sacrifice of God .
- Donald Swann set the poem to music in his music cycle The Poetic Image: A Victorian Song Cycle .
- Giovanna Marini set The Ballad of Reading Gaol to music in 2004 together with Oscar Wilde's Letter De Profundis .
- Pete Doherty quotes a few lines from the poem in his Broken Love Song .
Movie
- In David Wark Griffith's film Intolerance , a verse from The Ballad of Reading Gaol is used as an intertitle .
- The film The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Richard Kwietniowski with Quentin Crisp staged Oscar Wilde's defense speech at his trial of the 1895th
- In the biography films The Man with the Green Carnation and Oscar Wilde , the famous stanza “Yet each man kills the thing he loves…” is quoted towards the end of the film .
- In Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film Querelle , Jeanne Moreau sings the song Each man kills the thing he loves, composed by Peer Raben .
expenditure
Original editions (selection)
- The Ballad Of Reading Gaol. Leonard Smithers, London 1898. (first edition)
- Selected Poems. Including the Ballad of Reading Gaol. Selected by Robert Ross. Methuen & Co., London 1911.
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol and other poems. Penguin Classics, London 2010, ISBN 978-0141192673 .
German translations (selection)
- The Ballad of Reading Penitentiary. Based on the English by Wilhelm Schölermann. Insel, Leipzig 1903. 200 copies, first German edition.
- The Ballad of Reading Penitentiary. Translated from the English by Walther Unus. Reclam, Leipzig 1907.
- The Ballad of Reading Penitentiary. Translated from the English by Otto Hauser . In: From foreign gardens . No. 15. Duncker, Weimar 1913.
- The Ballad of Reading Penitentiary. Translated from the English by Albrecht Schaeffer . Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1917.
- Seals. Translated from the English by Frederick Philip Grove and Eduard Thorn. Bruns, Minden (Westphalia) 1920.
- The Ballad of Reading Penitentiary. Translated into German by Wilhelm Schölermann. 6th edition. Magical leaves, Leipzig 1921.
- The Ballad of Reading Penitentiary. Free rewrite by Horst Schade. Oprecht, Zurich 1948.
- The Ballad of Reading Penitentiary. Translated from the English by Elfriede Mund. Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1970.
- De profundis. Epistola in carcere et vinculis. And The Ballad of Reading Penitentiary. Translated from the English by Hedda Soellner. Diogenes, Zurich 1987, ISBN 3-257-21499-5 .
- Salome. Dramas, writings, aphorisms and "The Ballad of Reading Prison". Translated from the English by Christine Hoeppener. 9th edition. Insel-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-458-31807-0 .
literature
- Peter Raby (Ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde. Cambridge University Press 1997, ISBN 0521479878 , p. 67.
- Ian Ousby (Ed.): The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge University Press 1993, ISBN 0521440866 , p. 54.
- Richard Ellmann: Oscar Wilde. From the American by Hans Wolf. Piper, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-492-03174-9 , pp. 676-677. 709-716. 737, 747-751.
