De Profundis
By Oscar Wilde
()
About this ebook
In its first half, Wilde recounts their previous relationship and extravagant lifestyle which eventually led to Wilde's conviction and imprisonment for gross indecency. He indicts both Lord Alfred's vanity and his own weakness in acceding to those wishes. In the second half, Wilde charts his spiritual development in prison and identification with Jesus Christ, whom he characterises as a romantic, individualist artist.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854 and died on the 30th November 1900. He was an Irish playwright, poet, and author of numerous short stories and one novel. Known for his biting wit, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. Several of his plays continue to be widely performed, especially The Importance of Being Earnest.
Read more from Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/550 Great Love Letters You Have To Read (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Works Of Oscar Wilde Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Picture Of Dorian Gray Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Comedies: Lady Windermere's Fan, An Ideal Husband, A Woman of No Importance, and The Importance of Being Earnest Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA House of Pomegranates Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5De Profundis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest Christmas Stories of All Time: Timeless Classics That Celebrate the Season Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Importance of Being Earnest: A Play Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/550 Beautiful Christmas Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Picture of Dorian Gray Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blood, Sperm, Black Velvet: The Seminal Book Of English Decadence (1888-1908) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGothic Classics: 60+ Books in One Volume Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Own Dear Darling Boy: The Letters of Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Penny Dreadfuls MEGAPACK ®: 10 Classic Shockers! Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Complete Works of Oscar Wilde Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5
Related to De Profundis
Related ebooks
De Profundis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLlandry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Revolutions of Time Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVendetta Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBetween Heaven and Hell Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sorrows of Satan or, The Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire, A Romance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMizora: A Prophecy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVendetta: A Story of One Forgotten Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jump into the Abyss! Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Recollections of My Youth (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Confession of Piers Gaveston Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFalkland: A Gothic Romance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSociety and Solitude (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPaul Patoff Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFalkland, Complete Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRhinotmetus. The Memoir of Justinian II Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPharos, The Egyptian Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Searcher Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOrmond, Volume III (of 3) or, The Secret Witness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAsh Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLetters from Switzerland and Travels in Italy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe sorrows of Satana Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTime Is A Temple: & Other Time Killers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWalden (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEdgar Huntly, or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Law of Man Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blood of the Goddess Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dr Nikola's Experiment Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gates Between Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Biography & Memoir For You
The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meditations: Complete and Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Stolen Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Bulletproof: Protect Yourself, Read People, Influence Situations, and Live Fearlessly Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diary of a Young Girl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Taste: My Life Through Food Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: the heartfelt, funny memoir by a New York Times bestselling therapist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mommie Dearest Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Girls Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jack Reacher Reading Order: The Complete Lee Child’s Reading List Of Jack Reacher Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Rediscovered Books): A Triumph Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Disorganized Mind: Coaching Your ADHD Brain to Take Control of Your Time, Tasks, and Talents Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World's Most Beloved Neighbor Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for De Profundis
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
De Profundis - Oscar Wilde
VAGINA
OSCAR WILDE
DE PROFUNDIS
D
e Profundis by Oscar Wilde De Profundis
. . . Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain. The paralysing immobility of a life every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that we eat and drink and lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula: this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence is ceaseless change. Of seed−time or harvest, of the reapers bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms or strewn with fallen fruit: of these we know nothing and can know nothing.
For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly−muffled glass of the small iron−barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight in one's cell, as it is always twilight in one's heart. And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more. The thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again to−morrow. Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why I am writing, and in this manner writing. . . .
A week later, I am transferred here. Three more months go over and my mother dies.
No one knew how deeply I loved and honoured her. Her death was terrible to me; but I, once a lord of language, have no words in which to express my anguish and my shame. She and my father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured, not merely in literature, art, archaeology, and science, but in the public history of my own country, in its evolution as a nation. I had disgraced that name eternally. I had made it a low by−word among low people. I had dragged it through the very mire. I had given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into a synonym for folly. What I suffered then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write or paper to record. My wife, always kind and gentle to me, rather than that I should hear the news from indifferent lips, travelled, ill as she was, all the way from Genoa to England to break to me herself the tidings of so irreparable, so irremediable, a loss. Messages of sympathy reached me from all who had still affection for me. Even people who had not known me personally, hearing that a new sorrow had broken into my life, wrote to ask that some expression of their condolence should be conveyed to me. . . .
Three months go over. The calendar of my daily conduct and labour that hangs on the
outside of my cell door, with my name and sentence written upon it, tells me that it is May. .
. .
Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation. The thin beaten−out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse. It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain.
Where there is sorrow there in holy ground. Some day people will realise what that means. They will know nothing of life till they do, − and natures like his can realise it. When I was brought down from my prison to the Court of Bankruptcy, between two policemen, − waited in the long dreary corridor that, before the whole crowd, whom an action so sweet and simple hushed into silence, he might gravely raise his hat to me, as, handcuffed and with bowed head, I passed him by. Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that. It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love, that the saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss the leper on the cheek. I have never said one single word to him about what he did. I do not know to the present moment whether he is aware that I was even conscious of his action. It is not a thing for which one can render formal thanks in formal words. I store it in the treasure−house of my heart. I keep it there as a