THE DEEP ONES: "The Birthday of the Infanta" by Oscar Wilde

"The Birthday of the Infanta" by Oscar Wilde

Discussion begins April 13.

First published in A House of Pomegranates (1891).



ONLINE VERSIONS

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/873/873-h/873-h.htm#page31
http://amzn.com/B0082ZJF1K (free eBook)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?929595

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

A House of Pomegranates
Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde
The Canterville Ghost, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

MISCELLANY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/08/08/deceptive-picture
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/16/jeanette-winterson-fairytales-oscar...
http://tinyurl.com/zkbhzct

I'll read this in a book entitled The Complete Oscar Wilde (according to the title page) or Oscar Wilde: Complete Illustrated Works - (on the cover): Collector's Library Omnibus Editions (CRW Publishing Limited )(2010).

It doesn't really bear comparison with that original edition...

eBook posted above for me.

Also reading it in the eBook version of A House of Pomegranates (Amazon eBook linked to in >1 gwendetenebre:).

I'll probably do the free Amazon ebook.

I found this in our Juvenile section in The Happy Prince, The Selfish Giant and Other Stories

I've just read this at the gutenberg.org link, but this evening I'll see if I can dig up my copy of the P. Craig Russell sequential art version for good measure:

So, the P. Craig Russell graphic novel is conspicuously faithful to the Wilde text, adding no verbiage and omitting little. It's not really my favorite Russell art, but as I expected, he has a lot of fun with the flowers and the lizards.

These were a highlight of the story for me, along with the digressions on court intrigue. There's nothing supernatural or "weird" here; the sole relevance seems to be the story's precedent relative to HPL's "The Outsider."

The ending was good, though. It makes the Infanta's innocence into something pernicious.

>8 paradoxosalpha: There's nothing supernatural or "weird" here; the sole relevance seems to be the story's precedent relative to HPL's "The Outsider."

I was about to post something much along the same lines, though with one caveat and one further observation: the plants' and lizards' sentience and insight are if not exactly supernatural then at least nonrealist, and it's interesting that HPL's protagonist handles the revelation of the mirror rather better than Wilde's dwarf - perhaps not the way round one might've expected it.

The story would appear to be set in the 17th century, given that Philip II (d. 1598) is apparently a former king but the current one still seems to be of the House of Hapsburg (Spanish branch extinct 1700). The King portrayed doesn't seem to be identifiable with any actual Spanish ruler of that century* however, and Wilde clearly isn't aiming high wrt historical accuracy. He's rather providing a Hollywood History version of early modern Spain, or whatever you call the pre-cinematic equivalent.

* There were only three:
Philip III, r. 1598-1621
Philip IV, r. 1621-1665
Charles II, r. 1665-1700

>8 paradoxosalpha:

Wilde seems to have been quite the botanist!

Besides the literary pre-echo of HPL's tale, the Weird-oriented reader can also find a hint of Poe in the King's morbid obsession:

...sometimes breaking through the formal etiquette that in Spain governs every separate action of life, and sets limits even to the sorrow of a King, he would clutch at the pale jewelled hands in a wild agony of grief, and try to wake by his mad kisses the cold painted face.

And even a dash of Machen in the dwarf's sylvan surroundings:

He could make little cages out of rushes for the grasshoppers to sing in, and fashion the long jointed bamboo into the pipe that Pan loves to hear.

No doubt Pan is physically present in those woods!

You hand in your ticket
And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you
When he hears you speak
And says, “How does it feel
To be such a freak?”
And you say, “Impossible”
As he hands you a bone

"Ballad of a Thin Man", Bob Dylan, 1965 (https://youtu.be/yDC0b7rfK5U)

In other words, I believe the Dwarf is supposed to be us.

***

>9 AndreasJ:

Thanks for that. I was unsure what era it was supposed to be set in.

Although as we've noted above, there are hints and suggestions of things central to THE DEEP ONES concerns - Poe's morbidity and necrophilia, Machen's (actually, the fin de siecle's) concept of Pan - it strikes me that Angela Carter, for one, included fairy tales within the definition of "Weird" (that said, I imagine she preferred the (supposedly) originals collected from oral traditions, to the more self-conscious products of the Victorian era (Hans Anderson, George Macdonald, and Wilde).

It can't be denied that the real point of interest is the dwarf's foreshadowing of HPL's "The Outsider", but other than noting the fact, I can't really think of anything to say about it - apart from noting that I found Wilde's faux-naif style a bit trying here, and had to resist the unconscious tendency to visualise the sentient plants and animals in the classic Walt Disney style.

As far as the historical setting goes, I suspect (based on all of 10 minutes on Wikipedia!) that this is supposed to be a fictionalised (indeed, fairytale) version of Philip II's Court - which doesn't at all contradict AndreasJ's wider point, of course.

I don't think the dwarf is necessarily meant to be the reader. There is, I'm sure, a political purpose behind the stories in A House of Pomegranates. Wilde was, remember, among other things the writer of essays such as "The Soul of Man under Socialism". Each story in the book has a rich female dedicatee - this story's is "Mrs William H Grenfell of Tallow Court (Lady Desborough)". Maybe Wilde's saying that she is the Infanta - or perhaps, admonishing her not to be the Infanta?

>12 housefulofpaper:

I don't think the dwarf is necessarily meant to be the reader. There is, I'm sure, a political purpose behind the stories in A House of Pomegranates. Wilde was, remember, among other things the writer of essays such as "The Soul of Man under Socialism". Each story in the book has a rich female dedicatee - this story's is "Mrs William H Grenfell of Tallow Court (Lady Desborough)". Maybe Wilde's saying that she is the Infanta - or perhaps, admonishing her not to be the Infanta?

Excellent points. To clarify what I was getting at in >11 artturnerjr:, I read this tale as a sort of allegory. The Infanta represents the elite, and the Dwarf is the rest of us; in 21st-century-speak, she's the 1% and he's the 99%. We do everything in our power to please the elite and the celebrated and end up getting our hearts broken by them, and they could basically care less; to them, we are nothing but grotesque freaks. That's what I think Wilde was trying to say. He knew all about it, too - the elite had no problem throwing him under the bus, as it were, when he deviated from social norms.

>12 housefulofpaper:

I first thought the King might be intended as a fictionalized Philip II - partly because of the line about the revolt of the Netherlands, which indeed started during his reign (though not in the circumstances described) - but if so it's mighty odd that his picture is simply described as that of "Philip II" when he's everywhere else simply "the King".

I rather enjoyed the faux-naïf tone.

>8 paradoxosalpha:

Agreed the ending is good. Obliviousness can be at least as chilling as malice.

>13 artturnerjr:

A possible problem with that reading is that when Wilde wrote this, he was himself pretty high up on the social pecking scale, easily within the 1%. Not that one cannot criticize one's own class - and Wilde was surely the sort of man to do it - but portraying the 99% as a mishappen dwarf looks rather different when the portrait is done by a 1%er.

>14 AndreasJ:

Oh yes, I'd forgotten those pictures.

>15 AndreasJ:

Good point. My reading might have a bit more validity to it if this story had been written after the Wilde v. Queensbury suit.* But who knows? Wilde was a really smart guy. Perhaps he saw the writing on the wall before that.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde#Wilde_v._Queensberry

>8 paradoxosalpha:
>9 AndreasJ:

Yeah, something like The Picture of Dorian Gray would probably have been more appropriate for our group. Unfortunately, it's far too long for us.

>12 housefulofpaper:

...I imagine she preferred the (supposedly) originals collected from oral traditions, to the more self-conscious products of the Victorian era (Hans Anderson, George Macdonald, and Wilde)

I do, too, as a general rule. They're much more grisly, for one thing. >:>

"The Soul of Man under Socialism"

Thanks for reminding me of that one. Snagged the free eBook from Amazon (http://amzn.com/B0082RXQ5O) and started reading it last night.

>15 AndreasJ:
>17 artturnerjr:

FWIW, I think my reading of the story was influenced by this line early in the tale, which I took to be rather sarcastic:

Although she was a real Princess and the Infanta of Spain, she had only one birthday every year, just like the children of quite poor people, so it was naturally a matter of great importance to the whole country that she should have a really fine day for the occasion. (emphasis mine)

I echo thanks for >9 AndreasJ: >12 housefulofpaper: and >14 AndreasJ:, I have no European history to speak of in that era, excepting the Disney versions already alluded to, and the correction is welcome.

I found the tale charming, and somewhat shamefacedly admit I didn't recall "The Outsider" as I read. Though this doesn't come as all that much a surprise, I have an amazing facility for forgetting almost immediately upon finishing a read. It's obvious, of course, now everyone mentions it.

Two further observations: first, the dry humour was quite cutting, I thought. It moves from the mild to the more serious, and finally almost lurid. Wilde gives us the "birthdays of quite poor people" just noted above, moves on to the "more than usually solemn auto-da-fé" in which 300 people are murdered in twisted celebration, then more bluntly to a description of Don Pedro, "whose cruelty, even in Spain, was notorious", and finally to "even at the Spanish Court, always noted for its cultivated passion for the horrible, so fantastic a little monster had never been seen". Wilde seems almost to be working himself into a lather as he contemplates the pernicious superficiality and evil of the court.

The second observation: Wilde nicely flips the fairy tale script. As the Dwarf explores the palace, and Wilde inventories each room more richly than the previous one, the imaginative descriptions reminded of Dunsany or Mirrlees. But then I noticed, typically the scene would be of horror, not for fear the Dwarf would be found and his innocence exploded, as I expected here, but because a monster was creeping through the palace in search of the innocent Infanta.

The ending was even more satisfying, cementing as it did the inverted horror of the court.

A quote from the New Yorker piece linked above:

{Wilde biographer} Ellmann performs the supreme service of taking Wilde seriously, as a writer first and a personality second. He catches Wilde’s lawless moralism, his outcast-preacher tone. “His creative works almost always end in unmasking,” Ellmann writes. “The hand that adjusts the green carnation suddenly shakes an admonitory finger.”