What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

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Oscar Wilde’s Lipstick-Covered Tomb | Via

The practice started in the late 1990s, when somebody decided to leave a lipstick kiss on the tomb. Since then lipstick kisses and hearts have been joined by a rash of red graffiti containing expressions of love, such as: “Wilde child we remember you”, “Keep looking at the stars” and “Real beauty ends where intellect begins”. Kissing Oscar’s tomb on the Paris tourist circuit has become a cult pastime.

A fine of €9,000 ($12,000) was imposed on anyone caught kissing or damaging the historical monument, but it had no effect. It was hard to catch people in the act, and most culprits were tourists who were long gone before the police could bring them to court. Appeals from Wilde’s grandson Merlin Holland to stop the practice also fell on deaf ears. A plaque asking fans to respect the tomb instead of defacing it went in vain.

Meanwhile, those greasy red lipstick stains seeped into the stone making it harder and harder to clean. Every cleaning eroded a layer of stone rendering it even more porous, so the next cleaning had to go even deeper and wear away the stone even more.

I have no idea why anyone would believe Oscar Wilde isn’t delighted by this.

It’s beautiful
and illegal. Oscar Wilde would most certainly be delighted by such lovely vandalism.

Oscar Wilde has more legal protection when he’s dead than when he was alive.

I can respect his family’s wishes, though I disagree with them.

For future generations: please kiss my gravestone so often, it’s completely red from your lipsticks. Nothing was ever meant to be permanent.

All these people saying he’d like this. Yes maybe he would, but from a historical preservation standpoint this is a nightmare. Stone wears over time already, especially tombstones exposed to the elements. It’s why tombstones in old cemeteries are fragile, break easy, are often hard to read, etc. It takes a lot of work to preserve them correctly. You can only use certain chemicals and processes to clean them.

To think your being able to kiss Wilde’s grave and leave a lipstick mark is more important than maintaining his grave is there for future generations to visit is selfish and shortsighted.

I’m glad they put the clear wall around it but it’s sad that they had to.

image

What’s a better memorial to Oscar Wilde - a single immaculate headstone whose only inherent significance comes in being from the same time as him, or a succession of headstones worn lovingly down by conscious acts of remembrance? His actual grave isn’t going anywhere, nor as his remains: it’s only a piece of stone. Believe me, I am all for historical preservation, but at a certain point you’ve got to accept that it’s physically impossible to preserve everything from history in mint condition forever. His legacy is what matters, and his legacy is of loving defiance; of people who were born long after his death still caring enough to visit his grave and leave a kiss. 

All stone erodes eventually, no matter how you care for it. Better it wear down a little faster from a spirit of love than endure in a way that kills it.

(via madmaudlingoes)

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