L’art pour l’art og Oscar Wilde

*(Bilde fra The Guardian)

L’ART POUR L’ART

Oscar Wilde 1854-1900
irsk

  • Mor var aktivist og poet Jane Wilde
  • Skrev romaner og teaterstykker
  • Salome, A Woman of No Importance, og The Importance of Being Earnest er tre av de viktigste teaterstykker
  • Tok inspirasjon fra det fransk bevegelsene L’art pour l’art: kunst for kunsten skyld
  • Meinte at ikke alle hadde evne til å kjenne igjen eller bedømme kunst
  • Estetiker, gikk med en solstikke blomst i lommen som en symbol av estet identiten
  • Livet bør være et kunstverk heller enn hermer livet

Wilde sin tragisk biografi ofte overskygger hans rolle i teaterhistorien, men hans teaterstykker var sentrale i det fin de siècle kunstmiljøet. Han utfordret og parodierte samfunns regler og normer.

[T]he great actress Sarah Bernhardt always denied that she had known what an uproar would result when she announced her plan to open her 1892 London season with Oscar Wilde’s new play, Salomé, which he had written, in French, especially for her. Bernhardt wasn’t prepared for the shock that followed her announcement, just as the first audiences to encounter Salome‚ largely in Richard Strauss’ operatic version, weren’t ready for the work itself.

England, where Bernhardt had always been warmly received, turned temporarily cold. Editorials inveighed against «French immorality.» Pious theatergoers announced their intention to boycott her season.

Worst of all, when she was two weeks into rehearsal, a stiff note from the Lord Chamberlain’s Examiner of Plays informed her curtly that the representation of Biblical characters was forbidden on the English stage. Permission to perform Wilde’s one-act play was denied.

Bernhardt, outraged, felt that Wilde had knowingly trapped her in a false position by not warning her that his play was certain to be banned. Sloughing off his pleas to premiere the work in Paris instead, she refused to have anything further to do with him.
Feingold, Michael «Salome, Scandal and Censorship». Playbill. 2004.

Muligheter til fordypning:

Howlround Theatre Commons podcast: Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, and the Troubled History of Salamé.