'Una specie di simbolista’. Borges legge Wilde

This essay investigates Borges’ opinions on Oscar Wilde’s works. Although, at the time Borges was writing, Oscar Wilde did not belong to the ranks of the most appreciated English-language authors, his presence in Borges’ work is quite conspicuous. From the first articles included in the repudiated collections (“The Ballad of Reading Prison”, in The Measure of my Hope) to the essays of his maturity (On Oscar Wilde, in Other Inquisitions), Borges’ argument delves into the cleavage between the public person and the artist and between genuineness and artificiality. Such concepts allow him to relocate Wilde in the context of late Symbolism. But the most interesting aspect certainly concerns the role played by the Irish writer within the eccentric genealogies of authors and works Borges creates. Thanks to the demon of comparison, the often risky affinities and differences that he conceives (such as Whitman and Chesterton) shed new light on Wilde’s texts and themes.