[lit-ideas] The Importance of Being Dorian
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 02:54:25 EDT
In a message dated 7/8/2009 11:31:07 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
I've been watching my grandchildren
slowly -- ever so slowly -- learn that language need not be in earnest.
By
the time I'm through with them they won't know what earnestness means.
------
J. Wager:
>One of the most remarkable works for the stage ever!
>Characters lie almost every time they open their mouths, but it turns
>out that each and every lie is actually genuine truth!
---
According to a good source, what Wilde meant was
The importance of being Gay (if you can believe that!)
---- "Dorian" is also code for 'Gay':
--
I've been watching my grandchildren
slowly -- ever so slowly -- learn that language need not be in earnest.
By
the time I'm through with them they won't know what earnestness means.
-----
1879 G. M. HOPKINS Lett. to R. Bridges (1955) 89, I do avoid them [sc.
inversions], because they weaken..the earnestness or in-earnestness of the
utterance.
----
1561 T. NORTON Calvin's Inst. IV. xx. 162 They must watch with all care,
earnestnesse, and diligence. 1670 WALTON Lives III. 158 Never expressing an
earnestness..but an humble Gravity sutable to the Aged. 1779 JOHNSON Lett.
(1788) II. ccvii. 55 Keep your mind quiet, do not think with earnestness
even of your health. 1833 LAMB Elia (1860) 361 Sawing, every one with the
might and earnestness of a Demiurgus. 1849 ROBERTSON Serm. Ser. I. ii. (1866)
32 Earnestness; that is, sincerity of purpose. 1848 W. K. KELLY tr. L.
Blanc's Hist. Ten Y. II. 581 The discussion began with warmth on one side, and
grave earnestness on the other.
---
cf. urning [a. Ger., coined by K. H. Ulrichs (‘Numa Numantius’) in 1864.]
A homosexual. Cf. URANIAN a.1 1c, n.2, URANISM. 1883 Jrnl. Nervous &
Mental Dis. Apr. 200 For himself and fellow-Urnings there was nothing left
but this unnatural love. 1892 C. G. CHADDOCK tr. Krafft-Ebing's
Psychopathia Sexualis 255 The urning loves and deifies the male object of his
affections. 1896 J. A. SYMONDS Probl. Mod. Ethics vii. 91 Man, Woman, and
Urningthe
third being either a male or a female in whom we observe a real and
inborn, not an acquired or a spurious inversion of appetite. 1909 E. CARPENTER
Intermediate Sex (ed. 2) 135 According to the information of De Joux..the
number of Urnings in all Europe is about five millions.
Early in his relationship with 'Bosie' Douglas, Wilde and his wife visited
Douglas' mother, Lady Queensberry, who wanted to talk to them about her
son's lack of academic achievements (he left Oxford without a degree) and
extravagant habits.
For Wilde the visit "had all the embarrassment associated with meeting
one's beloved's mother". Lady Queensberry lived in Bracknell.
Wilde's use of the name Ernest is obviously code-word.
Nicholson in his poem "Of Boy's Names"
in Love in Earnest: Sonnets, Ballades, and Lyrics (1892)
writes
"Though Frank may ring like silver bell, And Cecil softer music claim, They
cannot work the miracle, –
'Tis Ernest sets my heart a-flame."
The poem was promoted by Symonds and Nicholson and Wilde contributed pieces
to the same issue of The Chameleon magazine.
As Aronson shown, the word "earnest" soon became a code-word for
homosexual, as in:
"Is he earnest?", in the same way that
"Is he so?" and "Is he musical?" were also employed.
"bunbury" and "bunburying", meanwhile, which are used to implicate double
lives and as excuses for absences, are—according to a letter from A. Crowley
to Sir Bruce Lockhart -- an inside joke that came about after Wilde
boarded a train at Banbury on which he met a schoolboy.
They got into conversation and subsequently arranged to meet again at
Sunbury.
D. Sinden wrote:
"Everybody in theatrical circles knew that. Earnest was a synonym for
homosexual, and to Bunburying was homosexual sex. I asked Sir John Gielgud,
the notorious cottager, for further confirmation and he said, "The Question!"
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
Villa Speranza, Bordighera
----
Refs: Sedfield, "The Wilde Century"
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