De profundis, p.16
De Profundis,
p.16
Then, since the giving of money, particularly the giving of money for the primal childish pleasure of eating, is in our culture the symbol of all-giving love, Bosie had to see how much money he could get Wilde to spend on him:
My ordinary expenses with you for an ordinary day in London—for luncheon, dinner, supper, amusements, hansoms and the rest of it—ranged from £12 to £20…. For our three months at Goring my expenses (rent of course included) were £1340…. My expenses for eight days in Paris for myself, you, and your Italian servant were nearly £150: Paillard alone absorbing £85.
Significantly, Bosie, on the ground that he would not give up their friendship, renounced his allowance from his father, and, on the ground that his mother’s allowance was insufficient, refused to take money from her, but this did not mean that he was prepared to deny himself any luxuries; Wilde was to take the place of both of his parents as provider.
On the other hand, a child who, like Wilde, has been overloved and indulged by his mother, and who has discovered that he has the power to charm even those who are initially hostile, may consciously be vain but unconsciously feels insecure, for he cannot believe he is as lovable as his mother seems to think, and his power to charm others seems a trick that is no indication of his real value. When such a child grows up, his emotional involvements with others, especially if there is a sexual element present, are apt to be short-lived if the other succumbs to his charm without any resistance, but he can be fascinated by someone who, without rejecting him completely, treats him badly. If he is confronted with this novel experience, his very vanity is excited by the challenge of seeing how much he can endure, until enduring and forgiving become a habit.
In every relation of life with others one has to find some moyen de vivre. In your case, one had either to give up to you or to give you up…. I gave up to you always. As a natural result, your claims, your efforts at domination, your exactions grew more and more unreasonable…. Knowing that by making a scene you could always have your way, it was but natural that you should proceed, almost unconsciously I have no doubt, to every excess of vulgar violence…. I had always thought that my giving up to you in small things meant nothing: that when a great moment arrived I could reassert my willpower in its natural superiority. It was not so…. My habit—due to indifference chiefly at first—of giving up to you in everything had become insensibly a real part of my nature. Without my knowing it, it had stereotyped my temperament to one permanent and fatal mood.
One cannot help speculating about what would have happened to their relationship if Queensberry had died; perhaps Bosie would simply have lost interest. As it was, his hatred of his father was the guiding passion of his life, so that Wilde as a person was less important to him than Wilde as a weapon, and subconsciously, maybe, Wilde and his father were symbolically interchangeable; it hardly mattered which went to prison so long as one of them did.
When your father first began to attack me it was as your private friend, and in a private letter to you…. You insisted that the quarrel had nothing to do with me: that you would not allow your father to dictate to you in your private friendships: that it would be most unfair of me to interfere. You had already, before you saw me on the subject, sent your father a foolish and vulgar telegram…. That telegram conditioned the whole of your subsequent relations with your father, and consequently the whole of my life…. From pert telegrams to priggish lawyers’ letters was a natural progress, and the result of your lawyer’s letters to your father was, of course, to urge him on still further. You left him no option but to go on…. If his interest had flagged for a moment your letters and postcards would soon have quickened it to its ancient flame. They did so.
On one point only, I think, Wilde shows a lack of self-knowledge. He did, of course, realize exactly enough the folly he had committed in suing Queensberry:
The one disgraceful, unpardonable, and to all time contemptible action of my life was my allowing myself to be forced into appealing to Society for help and protection against your father…. Once I had put into motion the forces of Society, Society turned on me and said, “Have you been living all this time in defiance of my laws, and do you now appeal to those laws for protection? … You shall abide by what you have appealed to.”
People thought it dreadful to me to have entertained at dinner the evil things of life, and to have found pleasure in their company. But they … were delightfully suggestive and stimulating. It was like feasting with panthers…. I don’t feel at all ashamed of having known them…. Clibborn and Atkins were wonderful in their infamous war against life. To entertain them was an astonishing adventure…. What is loathsome to me is the memory of interminable visits paid by me to the solicitor Humphreys in your company, when in the ghastly glare of a bleak room you and I would sit with serious faces telling serious lies to a bald man.
What Wilde failed to realize, however, was that, given the circumstances and his own character, he would sooner or later have had to take the action he did even if Bosie had not egged him on. If his card had been ignored, Queensberry would certainly have gone on to make louder accusations in even more public places, and a refusal by Wilde to answer them would have been taken by Society to mean that they were true; he would have escaped prison but not social ostracism. Some artists are indifferent to their social reputation; immersed in their work, they do not care which side of the tracks they are on. Had Verlaine received Queensberry’s card, he would probably have written on it, “Mais oui, je suis pédéraste,” and sent it back. But for Wilde the approval of Society was essential to his self-esteem.
Bosie was a horror and responsible for Wilde’s ruin, but if at the end of his life Wilde had been asked whether he regretted ever having met him, he would probably have answered no, and it would be presumptuous of us to regret it either. We cannot know what Wilde might have written if he had never met Bosie or had fallen in love with someone else; we can only note that during the four years between his meeting with Bosie and his downfall Wilde wrote the greater part of his literary work, including his one masterpiece. Perhaps Bosie had nothing to do with this, but perhaps he did, if only by forcing Wilde to earn money to support him.
From “An Improbable Life,”
The New Yorker, March 6, 1963
READING GROUP GUIDE FOR DE PROFUNDIS
Richard Ellmann suggests that De Profundis is a love letter, above all else. Does De Profundis follow the conventional form of a love letter? In what specific ways does De Profundis read like a love letter? In what ways does it differ? What makes it romantic?
Examine the letter’s structure and define its different parts. Do Wilde’s style and tone remain consistent throughout?
In De Profundis, Wilde recognizes numerous ironies regarding the circumstances of his imprisonment, most notably that he himself is imprisoned after suing Queensberry for slander. What other ironies (or paradoxes) does Wilde point out? What role does irony play in the letter? Why might Wilde choose to speak in these terms?
Do you think Wilde is a reliable narrator? How might his memories of Bosie be influenced by his imprisonment? Do you find his criticism of Bosie fair? Why or why not?
Throughout De Profundis, Wilde compares Alfred Douglas to numerous literary figures, from the lion’s whelp in Agamemnon to Hamlet’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. What, if anything, do these figures have in common? How are they different? Compare the different contexts in which Wilde alludes to these figures.
What sort of freedom awaits Wilde upon his release? How does he aim to live?
Dante’s Inferno is one of the texts to which Wilde frequently alludes in De Profundis. Examine the different contexts in which he quotes from Inferno. What similarities, if any, can you find? Why do you think Wilde quotes from Dante so often?
Discuss Wilde’s invocation of Christ as both a literary and a historical figure. What quality of Christ does Wilde most admire? Why does Wilde call Christ the first individual in history? In what ways is Christ like an artist, according to Wilde? Richard Ellmann refers to this section as the letter’s climax. Would you agree? Why or why not?
After providing a withering critique of Alfred Douglas’s behavior, Wilde turns his criticism on himself, claiming, “I must say to myself that neither you nor your father, multiplied a thousand times over, could possibly have ruined a man like me: I ruined myself: and that nobody, great or small, can be ruined except by his own hand.” Examine the reasons he gives for writing this. Do you agree with his claim?
Toward the end of the letter, Wilde writes, “A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a Member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it.” What is the price Wilde has paid for this knowledge? Is this something he could have understood in this youth? Why or why not?
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2000 Modern Library Paperback Edition
Copyright © 1962 and copyright renewed 1990 by the Estate of Oscar Wilde
Biographical note copyright © 1992 by Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
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THE ESTATE OF OSCAR WILDE: Excerpts from De Profundis contained in the preface by Richard Ellman. Copyright © 1962 by the Estate of Oscar Wilde.
Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Oscar Wilde.
ALFRED A. KNOPF, A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC.: Excerpt from Oscar Wilde by
Richard Ellman. Copyright © 1987 by the Estate of Richard Ellman.
Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
CURTIS BROWN, LTD: Excerpts from “An Improbable Life” by W. H. Auden,
originally published in the June 3, 1963 issue of The New Yorker.
Copyright © 1963 by W. H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.
MODERN LIBRARY and the TORCHBEARER Design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-75718-0
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Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
