All men kill the thing they love
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard.
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
-Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1898
I have read and seen many different interpretations of this poem, but my reading has always been influenced by John Green’s work showing how people have a tendency to put other people on a pedestal, especially young men putting women on a pedestal. In reality, people are people, they are flawed and complex and interesting and boring all at once.
I read this poem as a choice. If I love something, there is a physical thing in the world, and there is the concept of that thing in my mind. I must choose which one to kill. I can decide to get interested in the real thing, for what it actually is, and kill the incomplete concept I have again and again, slowly approaching reality every time. Or I can fail to choose the real thing, instead constantly comparing the reality to my imaginary concept, becoming more and more disappointed or frustrated as reality does not match my imagined perfection. This failure to choose the real thing over my concept of the thing is in itself a choice to kill the potential for a true relationship with the actual thing.
This choice is not something you choose once and are done with- it is a constant process, where you must continue to choose to be interested in and invested in the reality over the imaginary. Romantic love has the easy trap of imagining your partner as perfect, fulfilling all your needs, only to be disappointed when they show themselves to be indeed human, but it also holds the opportunity to continue to know another person better and better, to build a real relationship with a real other person, even as that other person is changing as you are learning them. It also applies to any other kind of love. You can love the idea of nature and be frustrated when it rains on your camping trip, thus killing your love of nature in that moment, or you can kill the love of the imaginary nature and “embrace the suck”, loving the cold and the wet as part of nature. You can love your country as an ideal, and be unquestioning and defensive about anyone challenging your mental picture of what your country means to you, or you can engage with what the country truly is and has been, loving the people and the stories and the progress without being blind to the negatives.
As mentioned above, I have read lots of interesting perspectives on what this poem means- please share your takes on its meaning with me in the comments!