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On Reading Oscar Wilde's "Tomb of Keats"
Reading Oscar Wilde's article "Tomb of Keats" very nearly brought me to tears, I miss Keats that much (I do miss him and the fact that I could never have met him does nothing to change that fact). But in a way it's actually consoling to read something written by a dead author about a previously dead author. I sometimes wax melancholy over the idea that all my favourite authors are dead, it seems to me that they all lived and wrote and died and then, years, decades, even centuries later, I was born to read and mourn them. But reading Wilde's "Tomb of Keats" put things in perspective. Here I see Wilde, who died long before I was born, mourning and appreciating Keats, who died long before Wilde was born. Seeing the progression of time and lives in this way, as a progression including myself and not as a series of events which I look back on, I don't feel quite so isolated in my appreciation of authors. Or at least I feel that others have felt this way before me and so have company in my isolation.
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a note from the author:
Wilde's article is available at the following URL (remove the spaces, I'm trying to cheat FP's not allowing links):
www . readbookonline . net/readOnLine/9875/