![]() There is no longer any validity to the question "right or wrong". I found myself telling my students the story of fake news and real truth and broken spirits that was the result of Wilde's duel with Bosie's father, and I thought of modern politics and our current mess. And I heard myself tell the complicated story of Wilde and his miscalculations and his failure to silence a bully by shooting back at him. I seemed to have completely forgotten the love story between Winston and Julia, and the way it was impossible not to kill each other in the process of getting entangled in the political dystopia of thoughtcrime and doublethink. Today I found myself comparing Wilde with Orwell, in a rather heated discussion with students who are reading 1984 as a class novel. We may be guilty of one thing, and punished for another. It strikes me as wise in the absurd way life plays a crooked game of cards with us. ![]() I annoyingly often quote the catch line "yet each man kills the things he loves", and it strikes me as true both in the deeper sense of family dysfunction and in the more shallow waters of breaking your favourite coffee mug by accident. ![]() ![]() I don't know how many times I have read the Ballad of Reading Gaol, but it is often enough for me to feel shame I don't know it by heart yet. Favourite poetry has a tendency to make sudden appearances in my head when I least expect it. ![]()
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