"Oscar Wilde's character and Oscar Wilde's fate are one and the same. He walked toward his catastrophe with the same steps as Oedipus' the seeing-blind one. The aesthete was tragic. The dandy was tragic... Incessantly he felt the threat of life directed towards him. He kept challenging life unceasingly. He insulted reality. And he sensed life lying in wait in order to spring upon him out of the darkness." 

JULLIEN, Dominique. Translating Destiny: Hugo von Hofmannsthal's 'Tale of the 672nd Night", New York University Press, 2013, p. 183