Getting to Know Wilde: A Q & A Session
Slightly adapted from a handwritten questionnaire filled by Wilde as a student in the form of in a two-page entry of an ‘Album for Confessions or Tastes, Habits and Convictions’, 1877:
Q: What is your favorite flower?
A: Lilium auratum.
Q: What is your favorite tree?
A: Stone pine and lemon tree.
Q: What is your favorite object in nature?
A: The sea (when there are no bathing machines).
Q: What is your favorite season of year?
A: Beginning of autumn.
Q: What is your favorite gem?
A: Sapphire in winter, diamond in summer.
Q: What is your favorite style of beauty?
A: That of Guido’s St. Sebastian and of the “Venus of Melos.”
Q: Who are your favorite poets?
A: Euripides, Keats, Theocritus, and myself.
Q: Who are your favorite poetesses?
A: Sappho and Lady Wilde
Q: Who are your favorite prose authors?
A: Plato and John Ruskin.
Q: Who is your favorite character in Romance?
A: Achilles, Nausikaa
Q: What is your favorite book to take up for an hour?
A: I never take up books for an hour.
Q: What Book (not religious) would you part with last?
A: My Euripides.
Q: What epoch would you have chosen to live in?
A: The Italian Renaissance.
Q: Where would you like to live?
A: Florence and Rome.
Q: What is your favorite occupation?
A: Reading my own sonnets.
Q: What trait of character do you most admire in man?
A: The power of attracting friends.
Q: What trait of character do you most admire in woman?
A: The power of becoming either a Cleopatra, or a St. Catherine.
Q: What trait of character do you most detest in each?
A: Vanity, self-esteem, conceitedness.
Q: If not yourself, who would you rather be?
A: A cardinal of the Catholic church.
Q: What is your idea of happiness?
A: Absolute power over men’s minds, even if accompanied by chronic toothache.
Q: What is your idea of misery?
A: Living a poor and respectable life in an obscure village.
Q: What is your bête noir?
A: A thorough Irish Protestant.
Q: What is your dream?
A: Getting my hair cut.
Q: What do you believe to be your distinguishing characteristics?
A: Inordinate self-esteem.
Q: What is the sublimest passions of which human nature is capable?
A: Asceticism, ambition.
Q: What are the sweetest words in the world?
A: Well done!
Q: What are the saddest words?
A: Failure.