Charmides (poem)

Charmides was Oscar Wilde's longest^[1] and one of his most controversial poems. It was first published in his 1881 collection Poems. The story is original to Wilde, though it takes some hints from Lucian of Samosata and other ancient writers; it tells a tale of transgressive sexual passion in a mythological setting in ancient Greece. Contemporary reviewers almost unanimously condemned it, but modern assessments vary widely. It has been called "an engaging piece of doggerel",^[2] a "comic masterpiece whose shock-value is comparable to that of Manet's Olympia and Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe",^[3] and "a Decadent poem par excellence" in which "[t]he illogicality of the plot and its deus-ex-machina resolution render the poem purely decorative".^[4] It is arguably the work in which Wilde first found his own poetic voice.^[5]