TODAY'S GAY WISDOM
More From Oscar Wilde’s DE PROFUNDIS
The poor are
wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive than we are. In their
eyes prison is a tragedy in a man's life, a misfortune, a casuality,
something that calls for sympathy in others. They speak of one who is in
prison as of one who is 'in trouble' simply. It is the phrase they
always use, and the expression has the perfect wisdom of love in it.
With people of our own rank it is different.
With us, prison
makes a man a pariah. I, and such as I am, have hardly any right to air
and sun. Our presence taints the pleasures of others. We are unwelcome
when we reappear. To revisit the glimpses of the moon is not for us. Our
very children are taken away. Those lovely links with humanity are
broken. We are doomed to be solitary, while our sons still live. We are
denied the one thing that might heal us and keep us, that might bring
balm to the bruised heart, and peace to the soul in pain. . . .
I must say to
myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be
ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. I am trying
to say so, though they may not think it at the present moment. This
pitiless indictment I bring without pity against myself. Terrible as was
what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible
still.
I was a man who
stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. I had
realised this for myself at the very dawn of my manhood, and had forced
my age to realise it afterwards. Few men hold such a position in their
own lifetime, and have it so acknowledged. It is usually discerned, if
discerned at all, by the historian, or the critic, long after both the
man and his age have passed away. With me it was different. I felt it
myself, and made others feel it. Byron was a symbolic figure, but his
relations were to the passion of his age and its weariness of passion.
Mine were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue,
of larger scope.
The gods had
given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells
of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a FLANEUR, a
dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures
and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to
waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the
heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new
sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought,
perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end,
was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of
others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot
that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character,
and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some
day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was
no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed
pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one
thing for me now, absolute humility.
I have lain in
prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has come wild despair; an
abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; terrible and
impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery
that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through
every possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself I know
what Wordsworth meant when he said –
'Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark And has the nature of infinity.'
