Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, Vol. 3: The Birthday of the Infanta by P. Craig Russell

With this third of the five adaptations of Wilde's fairy tales, I'll assume anyone who cares knows the background and has read my posts on the first two books (The Selfish Giant/The Star Child and The Young King/The Remarkable Rocket). This is still the same exercise - both on the part of Wilde in the late 19th century and for Russell in the late 20th.

I still think that Wilde is serious but not entirely straight in telling these stories. (And I do intend the pun, thank you very much.) He's working in a traditional fairy-tale style, with ornate prose, a moralizing tone, and distancing plots set in long-ago-and-far-away - but very much speaking to the audience of his time, both young and old. This time out, there's only one story, and it doesn't have an obvious Christ figure - there is a vague, loose one, who could be made to fit the pattern for a sufficiently motivated reader, but that may just be baked into the style Wilde is using.

That gets us to Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, Vol. 3: The Birthday of the Infanta. It's P. Craig Russell's Op. 44 from 1997: I don't think I've mentioned this before with Russell, but he's sequentially numbered every one of his substantial works, like a composer, since basically the beginning of his career. That could come across as self-aggrandizing or -indulgent, but I love metadata and consistently complain that books don't make original publication dates and sequence clear enough, so...it's fine with me, more than fine.

This story is stuffed with elements that don't entirely cohere in this version - I haven't read Wilde's original, so I'm not sure if the Infanta's father has any more to do in the original - but it's a pretty standard Wilde parable of beauty and kindness and the lack thereof.

We're in some vaguely earlier time in Spain - the sad old unnamed king has a brother, Don Pedro, who Wilde may mean as a specific historical figure to place the story, but it's still just "back then." The Infanta - also unnamed - is the only child of the sad king, whose queen, the Infanta's mother, died soon after her birth and has been lying preserved in state ever since. Wilde carefully explains the king's grief and Don Pedro's villainy, but they're not particularly important. The Infanta is also shown to be heartless in a very Wilde-fairy-tale way - though she's also twelve and has been entirely indulged her entire life, so it's hardly her fault - but she's not particularly active, and never gets the moment of pure cruelty I kept expecting.

But she is heartless, and is entirely superior to all of the other children, who are assembled to play with her, on her terms, on this one special occasion of her birthday. It is all to amuse and entertain her, since she is the Infanta and they are not. 

We see various entertainments this fine morning - it is sunny and pleasant and a perfect day, as it must be for the birthday of such an important figure, as Wilde all but says outright in his ironic tone. The Infanta is entertained and happy, but there's a lurking sense that it may not be enough for her - that her heartlessness will always want more.

Last and most entertaining is a dwarf, some rural peasant child scooped up and bought from his father just that day, made to dance for the crowd of nobles as he used to dance artlessly in the forest. He is, of course, entirely natural - never been to the city before, all but unaware of being watched as he dances to a large crowd, quite deformed in grotesque ways but entirely innocent of what that means or possibly even that it is true.

He is a huge hit: the Infanta and her playmates laugh - not entirely cruelly - and think the dwarf was the best thing to happen that day.

The dwarf then wanders off into the palace while the children move on to "the hour of siesta." He hopes to find the Infanta and take her away to the forest - which wish we readers know is hugely misguided - but instead wanders through ever-more opulent empty rooms. Eventually, he finds a giant mirror, capers in front of it, finally realizes the horrible figure in the mirror is him, and dies of that knowledge.

(One must wonder what kind of forest this was that had no water, so that he's never seen his reflection, but we must let fairy tales have their silly moments of drama.)

The Infanta and entourage, having awoken refreshed from the siesta, want the dwarf to dance again, and so search for him, and she pouts to learn she won't get her way in this one thing. She is told that his heart has given out, and so, for the kicker at the end of the story, declares that all her playmates from that day forward must be heartless.

Dum Dum DUMMM!

A bit weak, I thought. I was sure the Infanta would cause the dwarf's death in some way - making him dance himself to death to get her approval, for example. Given that this is a fairy tale with a negative message - don't be like the Infanta, obviously, with possibly a sub-message of be more like the dwarf, happy and carefree, though perhaps with a bit less fatal cardiac arrest when discovering one's true nature - I would have though the "don't do this" would be clearer and more active.

Russell's art is bright and lovely as always, and he incorporates immense amounts of Wilde's prose into his story. I've said it before, but if you want the best possible, most faithful comics adaptation of work from another format, you really do need to get Russell to do it. It's a very specific, detailed set of skills, and he's spent decades honing them.