Friday, June 29, 2007

The Birthday of the Infanta



But the Infanta was the most graceful of all, and the most tastefully attired, after the somewhat cumbrous fashion of the day. Her robe was of grey satin, the skirt and the wide puffed sleeves heavily embroidered with silver, and the stiff corset studded with rows of fine pearls. Two tiny slippers with big pink rosettes peeped out beneath her dress as she walked. Pink and pearl was her great gauze fan, and in her hair, which like an aureole of faded gold stood out stiffly round her pale little face, she had a beautiful white rose.
~
from Oscar Wilde's The Birthday of the Infanta

As a child I loved this short but heart-breaking story by Oscar Wilde. Jessie Marion King's poignant illustrations accompany it well.




But somehow the Birds liked him. They had seen him often in the forest, dancing about like an elf after the eddying leaves, or crouched up in the hollow of some old oak-tree, sharing his nuts with the squirrels. They did not mind his being ugly, a bit. Why, even the nightingale herself, who sang so sweetly in the orange groves at night that sometimes the Moon leaned down to listen, was not much to look at after all; and, besides, he had been kind to them, and during that terribly bitter winter, when there were no berries on the trees, and the ground was as hard as iron, and the wolves had come down to the very gates of the city to look for food, he had never once forgotten them, but had always given them crumbs out of his little hunch of black bread, and divided with them whatever poor breakfast he had.
~The Birthday of the Infanta




Yes, she must certainly come to the forest and play with him. He would give her his own little bed, and would watch outside the window till dawn, to see that the wild horned cattle did not harm her, nor the gaunt wolves creep too near the hut. And at dawn he would tap at the shutters and wake her, and they would go out and dance together all the day long. It was really not a bit lonely in the forest.
~ The Birthday of the Infanta
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I knew he wrote wonderful children's stories and adored his children, but we never read any of them to our children when they were growing up. It never occurred to me.

Anonymous said...

+JMJ+

I read The Selfish Giant to my little brothers. It was one of their favourites.

They never got into The Happy Prince, though it was one of my favourites when I was younger.

elena maria vidal said...

I loved both of those stories.

Anonymous said...

+JMJ+

I forgot to add: I never really got into The Birthday of the Infanta. It was just so sad! :(

Hans Christian Andersen's unhappier, darker stories were all right for me (I particularly loved The Swineherd and The Red Shoes); but when Wilde became brutal, I had to cringe and look the other way.

It's all right when the Selfish Giant dies, because he is with the little boy he loves the most. It's the same for the Swallow--and the dignity with which the Happy Prince meets his end is in a whole other league. The little dwarf died with his heart broken. I guess that is what I couldn't take.

Now that I'm rereading it, though . . . there is the sense that he didn't die in vain. I can't really explain why I think so (or why the Infanta's last line, as heartless as it sounds, is so moving), but it's a new impression for me.

elena maria vidal said...

I know exactly what you mean- there is always a supernatural poignancy to Wilde's stories.