If you ever go to Paris, make sure you visit the Pere Lechaise Cemetery. It was a sharp, frigid day in November when my friend Tarryn and I visited it. We were 18 and had been spending our gap year before university abroad. We were hungry for new experiences, and had learnt so much in our few months away from home. Yet we were still so impressionable, sensitive and naive. Experiences that would no pass over me then profoundly changed my outlook.
The graveyard was icy - the grass crunching beneath our feet, our breath swirling in the air before us. It was strange to me to come to a cemetery, pick up a map and then hunt down the resting places of great men and women. I felt disrespectful as we clambered over the gravestones of unknown residents to marvel at the remains of Ingres and to hold a moment of silent vigil at the Marlboro and condom strewn grave of Jim Morrison. Pere Lechaise Cemetery is on a hill, and we made our slow progression up to the site of Oscar Wilde's memorial. As we came to the apex of the hill we saw a white, stone memorial. A large modernist angel dominates the tomb, and it reminded me of something in a Pharaoh's tomb. As Tarryn and I moved closer we realised that the surface of the angel was mottled in shades of raspberry, scarlet, fuschia, cherry and plum. Upon closer inspection these smudges were a collection of hundreds of kisses left by admirers. The grave is marked with a sign asking visitors to respect, and not deface it. And so, in deference to, or perhaps in spite of this sign, faithful followers have left this mark only. We were touched by the dedication to Wilde so long after his death, by the love he seemed to inspire. We had come seeking Morrison and in the process had found Wilde. And so we rouged our lips and silently pressed our pursed mouths to the cold stone.
We walked back down to the entrance quietly, mindful of the things we had encountered and suddenly well aware of our own mortality. Aware of the greatness that had gone before.
Over the next year I read every bit of Wilde I could get my hands on and fell deeper and deeper under the spell that had been cast when I first saw that strange angel. Wilde's wit was as sharp as a razor, his insight profound, and so below I present you with a select collection of Wilde's quotes:
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth."
"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."
"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."
"I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works."
"I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being."
"I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything."
