[ilds] Oscar Wilde's Salome

[Odos]

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for filling in the reference.  There's an article from around 2006 that adds more detail.  I'll try to hunt it down.

Ellmann's biography is both outstanding and troubled. He was later in his career and relying on his research assistants a bit too much. Perhaps the most telling instance is the photograph of Wilde playing Salome, but it isn't Wilde and it isn't a male in drag.  It's still an excellent biography, but with some warts.

As for Wilde in Durrell's lectures, they're in Elephant's Back.  Durrell does refer to Wilde explicitly for the theme (p. 164), though I suppose he treated lectures differently from fiction...

Best,
James

Sent from my iPad

> On Jun 3, 2015, at 9:31 AM, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> James,
> 
> Richard Ellmann in his Oscar Wilde (1988) agrees with you:  “The commission [Douglas’s translation] was a mistake.  Wilde had not reckoned with his beloved’s inadequate French.  When Douglas proudly brought the translation to him at the end of August, Wilde found it unacceptable” (p. 402).  And “Beardsley declared that it would be dishonest to put Douglas’s name on the title page when the translation had been so much altered by Wilde” (p. 404).
> 
> Does Durrell credit Wilde in the UNESCO lectures?  Wilde did not approve of plagiarism (unless he himself did it, naturally).
> 
> Bruce
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jun 3, 2015, at 8:52 AM, Odos <odos.fanourios at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Bruce,
>> 
>> I'd need to go back to my notes for the reference, but I think the consensus now is that Wilde did the translation himself and simply had Bosie credited,
>> 
>> Durrell's UNESCO lectures on Shakespeare draw fairly heavily on Wilde's "The Portrait of Mr. W.H."
>> 
>> All best,
>> James
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>>> On Jun 3, 2015, at 8:30 AM, Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I stand corrected.  Wilde originally wrote Salome in French (1892).  The book, however, was a collaboration, as the title page indicates:  Salome:  A Tragedy in One Act:  Translated from the French of Oscar Wilde by Lord Alfred Douglas:  Pictured by Aubrey Beardsley (1894; New York:  Dover, 1967).  Douglas (“Bosie”) and Wilde were lovers.  According to the blurb, “Beardsley liked neither the play nor its author.”
>>> 
>>> Bruce
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Jun 3, 2015, at 12:39 AM, mail at durrelllibrarycorfu.org wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I don'y think it's accurate to say that Wilde and Beardsley "collaborated" on the play Salome - B was certainly involved, as a potential translator from W's French original, but he didn't actually collaborate. The illustrations for the book edition are, of course, another matter.
>>>> RP 
>>> 
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