Oscar Wilde reads from “Ballad Of Reading Gaol”
Is this voice of Oscar Wilde? This is not recording from some spiritual medium, but from old cylinder.
Is this voice of Oscar Wilde? This is not recording from some spiritual medium, but from old cylinder.
25 comments
I have read Ellman’s biography but it is generally agreed today after extensive modern analysis that this recording is a fake.
They did not publish “The Ballad” under his name at first, so most people would not know it was by Wilde. (It was published in 1898 under the name C.3.3.).
If it’s not him reading, than WHO ELSE would be likely to make a wax cylinder recording of himself reading “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”? That seems to me the best reason for believing it may be him. It also seems to me that Wilde would have been fascinated by the idea of preserving for posterity the sound of his own voice, not to mention the fact that Walt Whitman also recorded himself reading from his own poetry, as Wilde may have known.
Could they know the truth?
Salacious young youth
As the air became evidently fresh
Were they deluded?
As the deal was concluded
And their skin came to terms with his flesh
Thus he hid there, behind
Acted as inclined
With a twist on the bees and the birds
Would the boys in his stable
Rejoice at the label
Oscar Wilde, a bender of words.
1. He did not have a high pitched voice, in fact, nobody actually knows but if he had had a high pitched voice the Victorians would have eaten that up and spread it everywhere in Punch after they found out that he was gay.
2.Not sure about authenticity as the exhibition was either too close or by the time of his death.
3. He didn’t have an Irish accent. He lost it in Oxford, but he continued to be a proud Irishman (his Mom was a political Irish activist)
I wish it were true, though.
it’s garbage
Something you cannot know for sure.
You seem to forget that Wilde came from an era where Irish ancenstry and accent hindered acceptance in british society, so Oscar would likely be able to ’switch off’ his accent. Many notable speakers in parliament had an official voice, taught to them in finishing school.
The Duke of Wellington, much earlier, went to great lengths to hide his Irish roots, famously saying:
“If a dog is born in a stable that does not make it a horse”.
whatever…
hey there Wilde did indeed record the ballad, from what i understand the recording is in the archive of university college dublin. Apparently he had a rather high pitched voice. Perhaps to double check one could check out the definitive biography by Richard Ellman. It would be fascinating if the whole thing were made available. It’s definitely not TS Eliot some of his recordings are pretty widely available. Have a good one
I doubt any one would have wanted to record Wilde by the time he had written ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, Robert Ross barely managed to publish ‘De Profundis’ years later.
I cannot believe that this is actually his voice. Granted, he was educated at a prestigious college, but he would still have some kind of an Irish accent. Additionally, the man was like six and a half feet tall and must have had a deepish voice – that sounds like the voice of someone barely pushing 5′7″.
I would love to hear a recording of the voice of Oscar Wilde, but unless he was deliberately trying to sound like someone else… I don’t think this is him.
it is not his voice. it would not sound like this considering his irish heritage, there would be some hint of the Dubliner and there absolutely isn’t. if anything, it sounds more like TS Eliot.
he had a low voice
love this
This is a fake, I’m afraid, according to the British Sound Archive – and when it was broadcast on the BBC biography, it was accompanied by a deliberately vague caption that said it was ‘believed’ to be the voice of Oscar Wilde – it didn’t specify by whom this was believed…
most likely not authentic; in addition to his own son’s avowal that it couldn’t be Wilde, the “analysis of the technical aspects enabled us to get beyond the existing debate and its reliance on memory to the internal evidence that the original recording could not have been a cylinder and could not have been recorded as early as 1900. Oscar Wilde died in that year: it could not be his voice on the recording.” (© The British Library) heartbreaking i know.
Thank you so much for posting this
I’m pretty sure this is the real thing. For one, it was on a BBC documentary, a documentaries, I think, are usually pretty reliable – at least, more reliable than Youtube. Also, in _Oscar Wilde_ by Frank Harris, Harris says Wilde had a expressive, charming tenor voice – which is what I hear on the recording. And I believe Harris on this more than any other Oscar scholar because Harris was a close friend of Wilde’s for a long time and would know what his voice sounds like.
I listen to this everyday…thank you doloreshaze1935 for posting this!
ok let me write you how I found this voice. Record of his voice was demonstrated in one BBC documentary about Oscar Wilde, I just taped the voice, it is not from ghost. It was produced on old cylinder. I guess creators of documentary were considering this voice genuine.
my five stars for oscar wilde like video me quebraste con oscar wilde te puse un video mìo mi poema mi imagen mi voz gracias besos cuenta conmigo
Oscar.Wilde MI ÌDOLO EL MEJOR DEL MUNDO…
colorsandsounds
colorsandsounds
colorsandsounds
poetry writing love
Thank you.
Spoken like a true intellectual.
yeah it is
Really??
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