Contains my favorite Wilde short story!

More reviews can be found on my book blog.
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This is Oscar Wilde's second collection of fairy tales. The particular edition that I have is a 2011 recreation of the 1914 edition, which includes the original colourful illustrations by Scottish illustrator Jessie Marion King throughout the book. I bought this new and mine smells weirdly strong of glue, which is a odd note to start a review with, but seriously. It was distracting.

This contains four stories:

• The Young King


• The Birthday of the Infanta


• The Fisherman and his Soul


• The Star-Child

I really didn't like the first story, The Young King, and I was worried the rest of the book would be the same. It's about a soon-to-be crowned young man who, through his dreams, comes to the realization that the material goods in his life come with a cost, adding hardship to the already impoverished people of his kingdom. The morality in this one was so heavy-handed and trite that it made for a very dull story. This was compounded by the fact that dreams are so rarely interesting to read, particularly when dealing with an undeveloped character.

The second story, The Birthday of the Infanta, got a little better for me (if you ignore how horrible this is towards people with dwarfism, the way you have to do with some older literature I suppose). It's about a Spanish Princess' twelfth birthday, during which she's being entertained by a young disfigured dwarf dancer. He has no idea how ugly he is, and he is happy in his ignorance. When the people laugh, he doesn't understand that they're laughing at him for the wrong reasons. There's a bit I particularly enjoyed where even the plant-life was mocking him. He eventually sees his own reflection in a mirror, at first thinking it a monster copying his every move, and when he finally understands it leaves him heartbroken.

The third story was my favourite. The fisherman and his Soul is a creative tale of a fisherman who falls in love with a mermaid. He cannot live under the sea with his human soul, so he sees a witch about removing it. Once the soul has been removed, it wanders the world experiencing new things with the hopes of coercing the fisherman back from the sea with what its found. We eventually learn that a soul with no heart can be a dangerous thing.

The Star Child is about a beautiful child found in the woods who grows up to be rude and selfish to everyone around him. When his real mother, a filthy beggar, arrives, he wants nothing to do with her. He is then cursed to be hideously ugly and mistreated, which drives him to leave his home to try to make amends with his mother.

A lot of these were incredibly blunt in their message of morality, which is maybe just how it works with fairy tales. I don't know if I've actually read any other fairy tales as an adult. His prose is great, of course, but what I love most about Oscar Wilde is his dialogue. There wasn't much dialogue in this, and what there was tended to be fairly stilted and stylized for this specific genre.

This wasn't my favourite, but I'm still glad I read it. I actually really enjoyed The Fisherman and his Soul, but I could have left the other three. I'll probably pick up his other collection of fairy tales at some point, for completion sake, so I'm hoping I'll enjoy more of the stories in that one.

The Young King ★★★
The Birthday of the Infanta ★★★
The Fisherman and His Soul ★★★½
The Star-Child ★★★★

These are delightful fairy tales, but with a certain morality about them. While truth and beauty is important, sometimes reality can be very brutal. The Fisherman dies of love, the Infanta does not care that the dwarf has dies from a broken heart, and the Star Child while meeting his parents, reigns only 3 years and dies, succeeded by evil men.

i really, really, really liked "the fisherman and his soul".
overall, beautifully written, as with all of wilde's works.

Never having read Oscar Wilde before, this collection of short stories certainly proved to be a new kind of experience for me. Nevertheless, the fairytales did impress me with themes which remain current to this day and a much darker tone than the stories of my own childhood. The older, artistic form of English used remains easy to understand and read, especially when combined with the repetitive cycles used in the stories. Beautiful tales for the modern child and adult alike!

Rumah Delima terbitan Penerbit Kakatua dibuka dengan pengantar penerjemah yang memaparkan sekilas tentang hidup dan pribadi Oscar Wilde dan membawanya ke dalam konteks cerita-cerita yang disajikan dalam kumpulan cerpen ini. Aku agak penasaran dengan sisi Oscar Wilde yang kadang dirujuk sebagai seniman anarkis, sayangnya aku tidak menemukan referensi tentang sisi tersebuh dalam pengantar ini. Meskipun demikian, aku merasakan pesan sosial yang mengingatkanku pada ide-ide anarkisme dalam cerita-cerita dalam buku ini, terlepas dari nuansa Katolik yang menyelubunginya.

Buku ini terdiri dari empat cerita yang ditulis dengan narasi bernuansa dongeng abad pertengahan. Sang Raja Muda bercerita tentang raja muda pecinta keindahan menjelang penobatannya. Sang raja muda didatangi mimpi-mimpi yang membuka matanya terhadap kesengsaraan di balik segala keindahan yang diperintahkannya untuk diadakan dalam rangka penobatannya nanti. Ulang Tahun Sang Infanta menceritakan pertunjukan-pertunjukan yang disuguhkan dalam rangka perayaan yang menjadi judul cerita. Pertunjukan seorang cebol terutama membuat Sang Infanta terkesan hingga ia memberi sekuntum mawar putih kepada si cebol. Pemberian tersebut sangat membesarkan hati si cebol sehingga ia berani menerbangkan khayal setinggi-tingginya dan terjatuh dengan amat sakit ketika kenyataan berupa sebuah cermin melumpuhkannya tanpa ampun. Si Nelayan dan Jiwanya adalah cerita paling panjang dalam buku ini. Si nelayan, yang terpikat pada seorang putri duyung, melepas jiwanya tanpa dibekali hati demi dapat hidup bersama kekasihnya. Sang Jiwa yang tidak rela dilepas tanpa hati pun berkelana mencari dalih untuk memancing tubuhnya kembali. Anak Bintang adalah semacam perpanjangan dongeng Malin Kundang di mana sang anak durhaka masih mampu melakukan perjalanan magis untuk menebus dosanya.

Secara keseluruhan, aku sangat menikmati dongeng-dongeng dalam buku ini. Aku jadi tergerak untuk segera membaca Pangeran yang Bahagia dan berharap dapan membaca karya-karya Oscar Wilde yang lain.

Reading the ePub version from feedbooks
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/4677

I was quite shocked (and unhappy) that the 1st story ends up with God saving the day and had to look up Wilde's religious beliefs. The 2nd story just ends; not in any decent kind of way.

All in all, it was OK but nothing like the other Wilde stories I have read.

Oscar Wilde was made for writing fairy stories. He writes with the necessary magic, the wonder of beauty. His aestheticism was extremely useful in this endeavor, and his wit can be found in these stories as well. The stories aren't quite like other fairy stories in that they oftentimes do not have completely happy endings. A few actually moved me to tears.

The Happy Prince, The Selfish Giant, and The Young King seemed especially strong to me. I wouldn't be able to choose a favorite among them. The others are good too, of course, but just weren't as sweetly touching. In The Happy Prince, the Prince says

"I am glad that you are going, little Swallow....you have stayed too long here; but you must kiss me on the lips, for I love you."

How incredibly sweet is that? And while I truly adored The Fisherman and His Soul, it seemed too long for the genre at nearly sixty pages.

The stories are beautiful and sweet. The descriptions are divine, and there was a surprising amount of character development considering these are fairy stories. People don't seem to remember Oscar Wilde for these stories--he's remembered more for The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest. I think that should change; these stories are written just as well, just as cleverly, and are spectacularly enjoyable.

Considering I knew of and about Oscar Wilde, I was much more surprised at the themes and characters than I should've been.