Pluma, lápiz y veneno (Biblioteca Oscar Wilde)

by Oscar Wilde

A menudo, la gente reprocha a los escritores y artistas que solo sean hombres de accion de un modo imperfecto e incompleto. Y sin embargo, es muy normal que asi sea. Esa concentracion del pensamiento, ese ardor vehemente que caracterizan el temperamento del artista, excluyen a la fuerza las otras cualidades. Para aquellos a quienes viven preocupados por la belleza de la forma no existe ya nada mas en el mundo que tenga verdadera importancia."

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Classics, Short Stories, 19th Century, Philosophy, Literature

38 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1885

About the author

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.
Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on "The English Renaissance" in art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote reviews for various periodicals. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Wilde returned to drama, writing Salome (1891) in French while in Paris, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Undiscouraged, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success, while An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) were still being performed in London, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with other males. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and so a retrial was ordered. In the second trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in abridged form in 1905), a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.

Reviews

[leynes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pen, Pencil and Poison is a portrait of the artist and serial killer Thomas Griffith Wainewright (yes, you read that right) and it took me a long time to figure that out. The first half of this essay is such a drag and so boring, I could slap Oscar for only serving the tea in the second half. I mean, in 1830, Thomas insured the life of his sister-in-law Helen with various companies for a sum of £16,000 (some £1,650,000 in 2016) and then poisoned her ass to ransom the money. This is the most interesting part of Wainewright's entire biography, so why are you selling it so short, darling?

When the insurance companies sued, Wainewright fled to Calais to avoid investigation of his uncovered bank frauds. Unproven tales by Victorian authors claimed that he was seized by the authorities as a suspected person and imprisoned for six months. He had in his possession a quantity of strychnine, and was widely suspected to have poisoned not only his sister-in-law and his uncle, but also his mother-in-law and a Norfolk friend, although this was never proven. I mean, what the fuck? Why have I never heard of good ole Thomas before?

Sin should be solitary, and have no accomplices.

I know in this day and age we have this morbid obsession and fascination with serial killers and it's really quite ridiculous but it was kind of entertaining to read of Wainewright's desperate attempts at getting money to clear his debts. Yes, you're allowed to judge me for being a bad person.

Additionally, I always find it interesting to see Oscar's take on prison before his own infamous scandal and imprisonment. He talks about the fact that Wainewright's cell, for some time, served as a kind of fashionable lounge as so many artists of his day came to visit him. He says that crime in England is rarely the result of sin. It is nearly always the result of starvation. Oh, honey, you got a big storm comin'.

[Saman · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Sin should be solitary, and have no accomplices."

This is a biographical essay about an art critic who was also a murderer. I often agree with Wilde but this was by far my least favourite Wilde's read. It was hard to get into and I failed to understand the point of it.

"We cannot re-write the whole of history for the purpose of gratifying our moral sense of what should be."

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose.”

A light but fascinating biographical essay about Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, an artist and author convicted in 1837 of being a serial killer. Wilde muses on his life, and on the intersection of art and morality.

Fans of The Picture of Dorian Gray—check this out:
I found a special bonus at the end. Wilde is talking about how Wainewright’s crimes had an effect on his art. Note that this essay was published in 1885, five years before that novel:

He writes of Wainewright, “… it is said that ‘he contrived to put the expression of his own wickedness into the portrait of a nice, kind-hearted girl.’” Then he adds, “M. Zola, in one of his novels, tells us of a young man who, having committed a murder, takes to art, and paints greenish impressionist portraits of perfectly respectable people, all of which bear a curious resemblance to his victim. The development of Mr. Wainewright’s style seems to me far more subtle and suggestive. One can fancy an intense personality being created out of sin.”

[Ioulia Ilvanidou · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

[Will Mayo]

And, so, this remarkable account Oscar Wilde tells the account of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, a friend to William Blake and Charles Dickens and others in the early 1800s. A man too who was a connoisseur of all the fine arts. A man who was more at home in the paintings and the history of ancient times than of the present. A gentleman, for want of a better word. And, yet, too, a murderer through and through.

Yes, a murderer. This Wainewright, so Wilde tells us, poisoned his uncle, his mother-in-law, his sister-in-law and others in and out of his native England before being discovered by the insurers he sought to defraud with his murders. All in all, these were, of course, capital offenses at that time of Wainewright's murders.

But we should not be so quick to judge a man's art by his crime, so Oscar Wilde reminds us. This Wainewright had, after all, raised himself up to be a gentleman. And it seems that the court in Wainewright's time agreed with this assessment. They sent him off into exile in the far off South Seas where Wainewright, after a few halfhearted poisonings, spent his final years painting beautiful yet tragic paintings tinged with the color green. Yes, green, the color of rot, the color, so, Wilde says, of decadence. Until at last the murderer died there in exile in 1852 in the company of his sole companion, his cat. As near and dear a companion as my own cat is to me.

I enjoyed this story by Mr. Wilde immensely. Most especially because every word he writes is true. Yes, every single one. Hey, would I lie to you? Trust me. This is one good tale.

[Sebsus · Rating 3 out of 5]

They have passed into the sphere of art and science, and neither art nor science knows anything of moral approval or disapproval.

To be suggestive in fiction is to be of more importance than a fact.

With Pen, Pencil And Poison Oscar Wilde wrote a perceptive memoir about Thomas Griffiths Wainewright. In it, he deals with Griffiths' views as an artist and as a person. Wilde mentions his opinions on the separation between the artist and their work and how no one cares about the dark and criminal pasts of established artists. The essay is informative but also thoughtful, with superb quotability.

[Otto René · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aunque no muy atrapante al inicio siendo un ensayo biográfico de alguien tan interesante. Logra dar un final potente que si logra ser memorable y dejarte cierta reflexión sobre la conexión entre el arte y el artista, y el como la visión moral sobre el individuo se doblega ante el paso de la historia. 6/10

[Kayleigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

The start was a little boring but set up the type of character, Thomas Griffith Wainewright, Wilde wanted to portray.

Wilde is a brilliant and thoughtful writer, and the arguments he presents here about human morals in relation to art is provoking.

[Colten Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

“In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.”

[Mary Pagones · Rating 4 out of 5]

More like 3.5 stars, but the subject clearly functions as a prototype of Dorian Gray, and the essay contains some amusing Wilde witticisms.

[Tommie Haag · Rating 2 out of 5]

Retelling history is not so entertaining to read.

[Julia Deptuła]

*wilde times*

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating description of the actions and alleged actions of an artist.

[Nik ☽ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 estrellas.

[Laura Fiorella · Rating 3 out of 5]

8 e mezzo/10.

[amirah :) · Rating 2 out of 5]

slightly confusing short biography

[Louis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty average, but still some interesting views in here.

[Patrik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty average for Wilde. But even an average Wilde is a good read.