Eden (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wilderthan) wrote2009-01-04 12:52 pm
wilderthan) wrote2009-01-04 12:52 pm
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Review - The Happy Prince And Other Stories
This is a beautiful little collection of stories by Oscar Wilde. I thought I'd never read any of them, but I'd definitely read "The Selfish Giant" before, and some of the others seemed familiar. The stories are all a little like fairy tales, though, so that's probably part of it.
My favourites were "The Nightingale and the Rose" and "The Fisherman and His Soul", I think. All of them are lovely, though. I especially like the beginning of Star-Child. Some of the lines in it are gorgeous, like: "And when they came to the Mountain-Torrent she was hanging motionless in air, for the Ice-King had kissed her." I remember loving "The Selfish Giant" when I was little: I was very Christian then and the ending, with the Christ imagery, used to make me cry. It's still a lovely image to me now, and I like the last line: "And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms."
These aren't exactly happy stories -- The Happy Prince's heart breaks, the Nightingale dies, the dwarf in The Birthday of the Infanta hates himself, and the Fisherman loses his little Mermaid -- but when you read a lot of old fairy tales you find out that actually, they aren't. I'm glad I picked this up to read.
My favourites were "The Nightingale and the Rose" and "The Fisherman and His Soul", I think. All of them are lovely, though. I especially like the beginning of Star-Child. Some of the lines in it are gorgeous, like: "And when they came to the Mountain-Torrent she was hanging motionless in air, for the Ice-King had kissed her." I remember loving "The Selfish Giant" when I was little: I was very Christian then and the ending, with the Christ imagery, used to make me cry. It's still a lovely image to me now, and I like the last line: "And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms."
These aren't exactly happy stories -- The Happy Prince's heart breaks, the Nightingale dies, the dwarf in The Birthday of the Infanta hates himself, and the Fisherman loses his little Mermaid -- but when you read a lot of old fairy tales you find out that actually, they aren't. I'm glad I picked this up to read.