“I lived at the turning point of the world where everything was waking up new – the New Drama, the New Novel, New Journalism, New Hedonism, New Paganism, even the New Woman. Where were you when all this was happening?”
This is a line from Tom Stoppard’s celebrated play ‘The Invention of Love’. It is spoken by Oscar Wilde, whose offstage presence is felt throughout and who finally appears at the end. He asks the same question the play asks – to A. E. Housman the English poet and scholar whose life has been lived antithetically to Wilde’s – has he ever really lived at all?
Stoppard’s plays, full of verbal dexterity are sometimes accused of lacking heart – but not here.
I still remember Housman’s meeting with his younger self. A beautiful lyric to lost possibilities, to the road not taken.
