I like Oscar Wilde a lot. He does not seem to be a Victorian, instead a Romantic, with his description of detail and painting a picture with words, in his poem, Symphony in Yellow.
His poem describes the butterfly that "crawls" and "Te yellow leaves begin to fade" this descriptive imagery is more than the poem itself. It describes the yellow in synergy, or as he puts it synergy. Wilde sees the aesthetic imagery in poetry and uses it to hid advantage. "And at my feet the pale green Thames, Lies like a rod of rippled jade." The only thing I can think of with a "rippled jade" is an oil painting, I do not actually see these things in real life, I am too busy living my life "too intensely." Oscar Wilde saw things differently, he wanted us to stare at paintings and analyze their symmetry and find "symphony in yellow" instead of trying to make money and live a rat race of a life, he wanted us to find the beauty in art.
I can relate to this poem by looking at a painting of the time period and seeing what he sees in these poems (read Impression du Matin), the imagery he gives is very realistic to the actual painting.
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Jack,
ReplyDeleteIt appears your posts are getting shorter as the deadline gets closer! You do make some good comments on Wilde's brief poem here, although Wilde is not looking at a painting, but at life on a London street. He just describes it as a picture.
I liked this poem as well and the poem does seem to have great illustrative powers. One can clearly see what is being written after reading the poem.
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