The Happy Prince

Não é à toa que o jovem Jorge Luis Borges, de maneira precoce, com dez ou nove anos, tenha decidido se empenhar em traduzir do inglês este conto do Oscar Wilde.
É uma fábula lindíssima; e triste: do jeitinho que a gente gosta.

É coincidência, no entanto, que já na sua primeira publicação assinada contenha virtualmente um tema que Borges será obrigado a encarar quase toda a sua vida: a cegueira. A certo momento O príncipe feliz cede seus olhos esmeraldinos para os necessitados da cidade, assim o faz com todo o seu corpo dourado, o rubi de sua espada, tudo que fosse "útil" para ajudar os outros.

É estranho ler esse conto depois de ter lido o famoso prefácio de Dorian Gray e toda a questão da amoralidade da arte. "El show more príncipe feliz" — na tradução do Borges — está imerso em crítica social e, principalmente, moralidade (cristã). Wilde ainda por cima brinca com a ideia de utilidade da arte, colocando alguns personagens-tipo na narrativa que se saem com colocações do naipe: “[El principe feliz] Ya que habiendo dejado de ser hermoso, ya tampoco era útil”; dijo el Profesor de Estetica de la Universidad". O contraponto utilidade versus inutilidade aparece também num outro personagem-tipo que se refreia de elogiar o príncipe feliz porque "depois de ter se tornado estátua, apesar de bela, já não era mais tão útil quanto costumava ser quando vivo."

Aí é que, para mim, reside a ironia. O melancólico conto de fadas, além de bonito — toda a sequência de cenas com a pequena andorinha que se apaixona por uma árvore dita egoísta, deseja superar o relacionamento voando pro Egito, e acaba magnetizada pela benevolência do Príncipe Feliz, é muito gostosa de se ler —, tem uma moral e um fim "útil". No fim, a conclusão da narrativa me parece a de que o povão não percebeu a "utilidade" ou o "bem" que fizeram a Andorinha e o Príncipe.

Isso de alguma forma anula a narrativa como peça artística? De jeito nenhum. Mas é interessante de se olhar para essas duas facetas do mesmo autor: isto aqui foi publicado apenas dois anos antes do Dorian Gray. E ambas as obras me parecem estranhamente díspares, apesar de ambas serem iguais no quesito de serem factualmente boas. Talvez caiamos aqui justamente no que Wilde aponta no prefácio de Dorian Gray: não há livros morais ou imorais, e sim boa literatura ou má literatura.

É um dos contos que vou levar comigo até a paternidade. É daquele tipo que tem de ser lido para outra pessoa, sobretudo para uma criança. Da turma do "Presente dos Reis Magos" do O. Henry, "As Nuvens" do Tabucchi e outras narrativas seletas. show less

Somehow, I never came across this one when I was a child though I remember coming across Dorian Gray and The Canterville Ghost. Later when I read it as a young adult, I was stuck up on the first page and kept thinking why the mathematical master disapproved of children dreaming? Realized what the insinuation was all about quite later when I read Robert Musil and got exposed to the epistemic tension between abstract and concrete, and how it is translated into imaginative disciplines and hard sciences in architectonics of knowledge.

Our reading lives are equally amazing stories in their own right. Now when one listens to the Swallow saying 'Death is the brother of Sleep', one quickly picks the reference to Thanatos being a brother of show more Hypnos but when one is young, these second-order mythological transformations are supplied as first-order facts, and creative minds like Oscar Wilde are master of this reductive, yet constructive, transformation.

My boys have grown old, except the younger one, and they have put this gem in a box as all of us have done at least once in our life when we think we are old enough to never get back to the stories we loved as children. Today, the book somehow popped up in the feed, and I asked my elder son where is that box? Then I thought to write a few lines as well. In the end, it's a terribly sad story. If I ever teach translation, I would use it as a project to see whether we can transport and amplify this sadness in Urdu which is a suitable language to make ostensibly simpler construction poetic. show less

Absolutely loved this book! It is the story of a golden statue of a prince who didn't see the poor conditions of his city while he was alive. As a statue, he finally sees these hardships and when a swallow lands on him he gives the bird a mission. Since the prince is so beautiful and covered in gold and gems, he tells the bird to take the gold and gems and give them to people in need. After the bird takes the sapphires out of the princes eyes, the bird decides to stay with the prince because he is now blind. I love this change because at first the bird wanted to leave because he wanted to go to Egypt. He stayed with him even in the winter and became too cold to survive and he died. As soon as the bird died, there was a cracking sound in show more the statue, a broken heart. I love that there was gold trimming all over the pages. It really caught my eye. I also love the theme of selflessness. The prince gave up pieces of himself to help his people. Also, the selflessness of the bird. Even though he was supposed to go to Egypt, he cared so much for the prince that he stayed. show less

I first came across The Happy Prince as a kid. We had this monthly newsletter in Chinese, specially for children, that my mum made me read (because my grasp of the Chinese language was horrendously absmal. It still is to this day.)

I didn't think much about it, but I happened to read it again in one of Mr Wilde's collection of short stories in English a few months ago, and it stuck itself persistently in my mind.

People these days unfortunately care about and value the superficial, and The Happy Prince is a bittersweet celebration of the little things in life that seem unimportant at first glance, but are of utmost significance in one's life.

Seldom does a children’s tale capture the depth and beauty of the human spirit, nor does it so vividly expose its cruelty and indifference, as masterfully as Oscar Wilde’s tale The Happy Prince. Remarkably simple and utterly moving. A must read for those wishing to teach children, of all ages, the meaning of true happiness.

Totally rewritten and expanded from the original short and succinct review in the light of some personally derogatory comments concerning my even daring to mention Wilde's anti-semitism. Nov. 18th, 2011

I've always liked Oscar Wilde's prose, if not his drama, but I thought this was an exercise in hypocrisy, or perhaps it was just Oscar Wilde, locked out of the gates of the wealthy aristocracy, just venting his spleen on them. You would think a man who lost everything because of the prejudice against his homosexuality might just not drop casual anti-semitism into what purports to be a children's story, wouldn't you? But perhaps he was so angry and bitter against Society that he could only see things from that viewpoint. That, like all show more underdogs, he was always looking for an even lower cur to kick.

As it turns out, despite being able to recite that old chestnut, "some of my best friends are Jewish", Wilde was deeply anti-semitic, a couple of quotes:

'It's unnecessary to debate with Jews. When you overrun them today, they come tomorrow with the same arguments. When you overrun those arguments, they come the day after with the same arguments as the day before.' [De Profundis].

This is just one from the many in the (wonderful) Picture of Dorian Grey,

'A hideous Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life, was smoking a vile cigar. He had greasy ringlets, and an enormous diamond blazed in the center of a soiled shirt. Have a box, my Lord?' he said, when he saw me, and he took off his hat with an air of gorgeous servility. There was something about him that amused me. He was such a monster.'

At the same time he was being persecuted for his homosexuality and writing his Ballad of Reading Gaol detailing the terrible conditions and cruelty he suffered by imprisonment, he betrayed his best friend's plan for a small group of people to free Dreyfuss from his wrongful imprisonment and clear his name, and went further, befriending Dreyfus's persecutor, Esterhazy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair). Wilde lost his best friend, Blacker, over this and seemed never to truly understand why. http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-53449043/oscar-wilde-and-dreyfus.html

The troll (is there another word for one who writes negative and rude personal comments about a reviewer?) seeks to justify his remarks by saying he is a Christian which really hasn't got anything to do with it, as apart from anything else, many anti-semites and their sympathisers have identified as Christians, but also by saying that it was part of the times.

There is some truth in that statement. Racism in all its forms seems to be part of every time. And it was part of that time especially in those who considered themselves wealthy aristocrats, but it wasn't a majority feeling. Disraeli, who was a Christian convert (he considered Christianity 'completed Judaism') had been elected Prime Minister by a majority vote. The Dreyfus Affair was a major topic in Britain and sympathisers with Esterhazy, Wilde included, were not on the winning side. Emile Zola's [b:The Dreyfus Affair: "J`accuse" and Other Writings|115060|The Dreyfus Affair "J`accuse" and Other Writings|Émile Zola|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171698371s/115060.jpg|110798] was massively popular both in France and, in translation, the UK. Wilde was out there in a minority, characterising Jews as 'hideous', 'horrid' 'greasy' and 'vile', seeing Jews as a race (as do all anti-semites) rather than a religion, so that conversion would make no difference to him. So the casual anti-semitism of The Happy Prince is maybe just a little jibe, a little way perhaps of influencing the childen to whom the book was addressed to his own way of thinking.

Originally this review, a short one-paragraph review, had just one sentence directed at the casual anti-semitic remark made by Wilde, but in the light of the derogatory comments left on the review, I decided to expand it. However, knowing all of Wilde's history, my appreciation, or otherwise, of Wilde's work hasn't changed, I still love his prose, don't like his plays all that much, think his witty epithets among the best of quotes and one of them has always been a favourite of mine, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." show less

Much as I love Wilde; this is not one of my favorite fairy tales. Its moralizing tone and theme of self-sacrifice/martyrdom may seem surprising to anyone familiar with Wilde's character. Overall, it just feels a bit saccharin and flat. It's OK, but it has none of the incisive wit that Wilde's better writing displays.