Ave Imperatrix! A Dirge of Empire by Oscar Wilde.
"Set in this stormy Northern sea, Queen of these restless fields of tide, England! what shall men say of thee, Before whose feet the worlds divide?" Rare first edition of Oscar Wilde's Ave Imperatrix!
Ave Imperatrix! A Dirge of Empire by Oscar Wilde.
WILDE, Oscar.
$400.00
Item Number: 140214
Washington: Snohomish, 1902.
First edition of Wilde’s classic Hellenic poem. Octavo, original boards, illustrated with engravings and hand painted initials embellished in gilt, frontispiece by John Dennis Clancy. In very good condition.
Wilde’s “theme is not, as is often supposed, art’s divorce from life, but its inescapable arraignment by experience. His creative works almost always end in unmasking. The hand that adjusts the green carnation suddenly shakes an admonitory finger. While the ultimate virtue in Wilde’s essays is in make-believe, the denouement of his dramas and narratives is that masks have to go. We must acknowledge what we are. Wilde at least was keen to do so. Though he offered himself as the apostle of pleasure, his created world contains much pain” (Ellmann, xvi).
