The King of Life
9 hrs. 55 min.
Language
Russian
Author
Jan Parandowski
Author
Jan Parandowski
Narrator
Evgeny Ternovsky
Narrator
Evgeny Ternovsky
Description
A novelized biography of Oscar Wilde. The critic calls “The King of Life” one of the best Polish biographical novels, standing alongside books by a master of this genre such as André Maurois. Parandowski admitted that, in recreating any historical figure, he always aimed to properly embody the character. He took to heart the tragedy of Oscar Wilde’s fate, and therefore he is so hateful of the evil demon of the poet — which in reality turned out to be Lord Alfred Douglas, “the child with honey-colored hair,” as well as his father, the Marquis of Queensberry, who set boxing rules for the English, but had very questionable ideas about the code of honor.
The leitmotif of the struggle for the dignity of the artist unites the biographies of Oscar Wilde and Petrarch made by Parandowski. He did not hide the fact that, resurrecting figures from the past that caught his attention, he wants to make them participants in our era. In his work, the writer appears not only as a connoisseur of ancient and classical heritage, not only as a subtle stylist, but also as an original thinker, steadfastly believing in the human being, in the power of his reason, and in creative possibilities. He was also convinced of the power of artistic words and did not doubt that the accumulated cultural and moral values over centuries are called to effectively contribute to improving both people and the world around them — values that have the property of “utmost modernity,” and therefore he tirelessly popularized them. “Parandowski devoted all his creative work to spreading the great traditions of European humanism,” it says in the obituary published in Polish press the day after his death. The idea of continuity of epochs in the field of culture permeates Jan Parandowski’s books, helping to recognize the spiritual legacy of the past as an enduringly significant part of our civilization.
The leitmotif of the struggle for the dignity of the artist unites the biographies of Oscar Wilde and Petrarch made by Parandowski. He did not hide the fact that, resurrecting figures from the past that caught his attention, he wants to make them participants in our era. In his work, the writer appears not only as a connoisseur of ancient and classical heritage, not only as a subtle stylist, but also as an original thinker, steadfastly believing in the human being, in the power of his reason, and in creative possibilities. He was also convinced of the power of artistic words and did not doubt that the accumulated cultural and moral values over centuries are called to effectively contribute to improving both people and the world around them — values that have the property of “utmost modernity,” and therefore he tirelessly popularized them. “Parandowski devoted all his creative work to spreading the great traditions of European humanism,” it says in the obituary published in Polish press the day after his death. The idea of continuity of epochs in the field of culture permeates Jan Parandowski’s books, helping to recognize the spiritual legacy of the past as an enduringly significant part of our civilization.
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