Talks with the Mirror

Last Chapter As A Teen (19): literary success

2020

I was recently introduced to Oscar Wilde. I spent a great couple of years ignoring him because I lived by the philosophy that, if everyone loves it, I must stay away from it while it is hip. But now, due to an English course I took, I know of him and his work. 

The dude was a genius of literature. His work is almost exotic but with a sense of classiness that is unparalleled in any work I have read before. He sounds lavish, and he was undeniably so. He lived a life without being bothered by the society filled with prejudice which he was incarcerated in. When you read his work, you can tell that in the middle of a bee-hive, he was the only one not helping to make honey, and rather preferred to sit on a flower just to sit.

He believed in art for art's sake, rather than it be some mirror to the soul of society or the artist. He believed that it was a miracle to live a life, that most people just existed through it.  Everyone saw him as a weird person, which he would be considered even in today's age. But, to him it did not matter, as it shouldn't.

The thing that captivated me the  most about him, though, was his end. He ended up broke, dependent on friends, and ultimately died of an infection common among homeless people in 1900. 

Alone.

His work is still admired today, and he is discussed in classes and lectures and nerdy literary arguments, but his end was the saddest of things.

It troubles me that such genius comes at such a high price. So many great artists all end up either alone, broke, or suffering of the same mental ailment that gave origin to their so called genius. 

Some say that the best writers were the most lonely of people, since writing requires so much concentration. As someone who enjoys writing, getting to see what it takes to be successful in it makes me wonder whether I truly love it. I guess I see genius as the devil. I'm not willing to pay the price of not living life in order to better write about it. 

I would rather write little and at an "okay" level, than spend all of my time writing about experiences I do not go out and experience. Speak from experience, I guess.

Some of  these classical writers can write an entire page on who influenced them the most. They will list people you never heard of, people they spent countless hours reading about. They do write amazing work, yet how much must they abdicate in order to be seen as a genius and talked about for ages after their solitary death?

Instead of being a great and celebrated writer who lived a lonely life, can I be an okay writer that spends time alone writing from time to time, but spends most of her time living and experiencing the beautiful chance of life with people she loves?

I think I can. Haha. It's actually not that complicated, just do you boo! No big epiphany needed. Nothing has to be absolute. I bet there are many writers who we won't ever remember but who spent their lives doing healthy amounts of everything they loved, and are now dead and happy.

I wanna die happy.