De profundis (Wilde Oscar)

De profundis is a long letter that Oscar Wilde wrote with his/her young lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, since the prison of Reading, at the beginning of 1897. It is published in version expurgée in 1905 and in its integral version corrected in 1962.

Summary

Context

After fourteen months of forced labors and following its transfer of the prison of Reading, Wilde is seen granting the exceptional privilege on behalf of the head warden to have a small equipment of writing and receives the permission to write on the condition of giving every evening its writings, its paper and its pen with the penitentiary authorities. It is in these circumstances difficult that it writes this long letter with his young lover in whom it tests the need to take stock of their relation and, especially, to say all to him that it has on the heart.

By reading the detail of all the events which led the author to the bankruptcy and the prison, one discovers the particular relation which bound Oscar Wilde to Alfred Douglas, a relation of love, but of terribly destroying reciprocal dependence. Wilde draws up a portrait with the vitriol of the young man, coleric, heinous, manipulator, irresponsible, egocentric person, impermeable with art and, especially, deeply immature. Wilde makes him quantity of reproaches, evokes all the wounds that it inflicted to him in all ease, tries to open the eyes to him on its faults with the fatal consequences. It is also delayed on its detention conditions, the interminable days, permanent sadness, loneliness, the pains with the body but especially with the heart.

And yet, this letter remains a cry of love. “I was to keep at all costs the Love in my heart. If I went in prison without Amour, that would have become my Heart? ”. “After the terrible sentence, when I was in behavior of convict and that the doors of the prison were closed again, I sat down among the ruins of my marvellous life, crushed by the anguish, décontenancé by terror, dazed by the pain. And yet, I did not hate myself. Each day, I said `I must keep the Love in my heart today, if not how would I survive all the day?' ”.

With the wire of the pages, and thus of the days of writing, Wilde the need tests to join again with its passion for the Art and the Littérature. It draws from the poetry and works of great authors of the answers to his suffering and its sadness. It approaches even the Catholic religion to find comfort there, in particular in the image of the Christ which it regards as a model of Individualisme.

Comments

If the writing is very beautiful and very touching, the structure of the text is unmethodical. There are completely not exhausted repetitions, ideas and topics approached in a a little chaotic way. It is obviously due to the nature of this text which was not intended for the publication and, especially, in the very difficult conditions under which he was written. Wilde will go even until being excused some: “I cannot reconstitute my letter, nor the récrire. You must take it such as it is, marked at many places by my tears, with the signs of passion or the pain, and make best than you will be able” . This text remains nevertheless testimony authentic and moving by a wounded man, still and always deeply in love.

History of the manuscript

At the beginning of 1897: Oscar Wilde starts the writing of the letter at the beginning of 1897 and completes it three months later, little time before its release.

May 1897: After its release, Wilde gives the letter to Robert Ross which it meets in France. He asks him to make two typed copies and to give the original of the manuscript of them to Alfred Douglas.

August 1897: The copies (containing errors) are finished. Robert Ross sends a copy (and not the original) to Alfred Douglas. This last initially affirmed to have received it and to have destroyed it after having read the first pages of them. Later, he will deny to have received it.

1905: Five years after the death of Wilde Oscar, Robert Ross publishes a expurgée version of the letter to which it gives the title De profundis .

1909: After having published a second more extended version of it, Robert Ross deposits the original manuscript with the British Museum, by asking that it be put under seals during 50 years.

1927: Alfred Douglas learns that the will of Wilde Oscar was that Robert Ross (deceased in 1918) gives the original manuscript to him and not a copy. Douglas requires of British Museum that it provide him the manuscript. British Museum refuses.

1949: Four years after the death of Alfred Douglas, Vyvyan Holland (the son of Wilde Oscar) publishes the full version of the letter on the basis of second copy of the manuscript.

1962: British Museum releases the manuscript. The text De profundis is corrected on the basis of manuscript, then completely published in The Letters off Oscar Wilde .

See too