A crucial distinction no one has made so far is that Yeats and Keats were unabashedly emotional in their poetry, never satirical, whereas Oscar Wilde is almost the definition of satire. This plays a very important role in the song.
Wilde is a man whose whole life was satire, purposefully. This gave him a constant ironic advantage. From when he moved to England and intended on inhabiting fully the role of "English gentleman," though he was Irish, homosexual and not born into the gentleman life, his life was an entirely tongue-in-cheek decision to be someone with a "big nose who knows", the whole time writing stuff which showed you could never know everything nor be correct indisputably. This song seems at least partly, to me, to be about the very American, but more generally just plain modern, misconception that "cynicism and naivete are mutually exclusive," that simply because you are ironic and humorous and therefore will usually come out looking like the smarter one who wins, you do not necessarily win, and you certainly don't necessarily know more.
A crucial distinction no one has made so far is that Yeats and Keats were unabashedly emotional in their poetry, never satirical, whereas Oscar Wilde is almost the definition of satire. This plays a very important role in the song.
Wilde is a man whose whole life was satire, purposefully. This gave him a constant ironic advantage. From when he moved to England and intended on inhabiting fully the role of "English gentleman," though he was Irish, homosexual and not born into the gentleman life, his life was an entirely tongue-in-cheek decision to be someone with a "big nose who knows", the whole time writing stuff which showed you could never know everything nor be correct indisputably. This song seems at least partly, to me, to be about the very American, but more generally just plain modern, misconception that "cynicism and naivete are mutually exclusive," that simply because you are ironic and humorous and therefore will usually come out looking like the smarter one who wins, you do not necessarily win, and you certainly don't necessarily know more.