De Profundis
From his cell in prison, Oscar Wilde wrote “De Profundis, ” the detailed and unsparing revelation of his love and tragedy.
From his cell in prison, Oscar Wilde wrote “De Profundis, ” the detailed and unsparing revelation of his love and tragedy.
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Author : Oscar Wilde
Genre : Social Science
Summary : Written from Wilde's prison cell at Reading Gaol to his friend and lover Lord Alfred Douglas, De Profundis explodes the conventions of the traditional love letter and offers a scathing indictment of Douglas's behavior, a mournful elegy for Wilde's own lost greatness, and an impassioned plea for reconciliation. At once a bracingly honest account of ruinous attachment and a profound meditation on human suffering, De Profundis is a classic of gay literature. Richard Ellmann calls De Profundis "a love letter...One of the greatest, and the longest, ever written." This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition contains newly commissioned notes.
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Author : Oscar Wilde
Genre : Irish prose literature
Summary :
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Author : Oscar Wilde
Genre : Literary Collections
Summary : "But it is a very unimaginative nature that only cares for people on their pedestals. A pedestal may be a very unreal thing. A pillory is a terrific reality." Thus wrote Oscar Wilde in a farewell letter to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) in 1897 while serving a two-year sentence for "gross indecency with other male persons". In it, he sorts out his life and his love for Bosie, who, he feels, abandoned him to his fate. It is an intensely personal letter that follows the stages of grief and interlaces the religious with art. It was published in 1905, five years after Wilde’s death, and given the Latin title, ‘De Profundis’ which translates to "from the depths". In 2016 Patti Smith went to Reading Prison, where Wilde was incarcerated, and read the letter out loud as part of an exhibition. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet, famous for ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ to name a couple. He was believed to be a homosexual and met a lot of resistance in his life on that account. He died in Paris at the age of 46.
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Author : Oscar Wilde
Genre : Literary Collections
Summary : Oscar Wilde’s emotionally raw manuscript details the inner turmoil surrounding his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas following his controversial arrest and conviction for gross indecency It’s an honest and intimate look at the author in his most vulnerable state. Oscar Wilde spent two years in prison from 1895 to 1897. It was during this time that he wrote a 50,000-word letter to his former lover and friend, Lord Alfred Douglas. Published under the title, De Profundis it’s an exploration of Wilde and Douglas’ relationship which was fueled by passion and disfunction. The writer criticizes Douglas’ vanity and lack of integrity, while revealing his growth and spiritual development. De Profundis is arguably one of Oscar Wilde’s most candid works. It was greatly affected by his physical and mental isolation during confinement. Despite his conditions, Wilde managed to produce a raw and unfiltered piece about love, loss and spiritual renewal. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of De Profundis is both modern and readable.
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Author : Oscar Wilde
Genre : Authors, Irish
Summary : One of the most deeply moving of Oscar Wilde's works is "De Profundis," his letter written from Reading Gaol. This autograph manuscript of "De Profundis" has been reproduced as a facsimile. Addressed to Lord Alfred (Bosie) Douglas, it is a defence of Wilde's opinions and conduct.
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Author : Oscar Wilde
Genre :
Summary : The eighty-page manuscript of this letter rests in the British Museum. It was written in Reading Gaol on prison paper during the last months, from January to March, of Oscar Wilde's two-year sentence for "unnatural practices," or homosexuality. It was addressed to Lord Alfred Douglas, but when Wilde was not allowed to send it from prison he handed it to his friend Robert Ross the day after he was released on May 19, 1897, with instructions to type a copy and send the original to Lord Alfred, who always claimed he never received it. Part of the work was first published under Ross's title, De Profundis, in 1905 and again in 1908. A typescript was given by Ross to Vyvyn Holland, Wilde's younger son, who published it in 1949. Rupert Hart-Davis demonstrated that this first complete edition contained hundreds of errors, and he published the manuscript after it was released by the British Museum from the fifty-year restriction Ross placed on it when he deposited the manuscript in 1909. As a letter, it becomes the center of the definitive edition of Wilde's letters; in the shorter form edited by Ross it is both an apologia and a literary essay. Nevertheless, in its entirety it has a unity and a unique value as Wilde's testament to his life as an artist.Since it is cast in the form of an epistle, the work needs some contextual reference to Wilde's life and works before and after his imprisonment and the composition of the letter. The prison sentence marked the end of his marriage, his income, and his life in England; thereafter he lived in exile as Sebastian Melmoth. One link with the past, however, was not broken: the association with Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde's return to the young man, the cause of his imprisonment, divorce, and bankruptcy, and to the kind of associates whose evidence had convicted him, seems to invalidate the promise to lead a new life with which De Profundis closes. Wilde claimed, however, that while, on one hand, the conditions of exile, disgrace, and penury drove him to those acquaintances, on the other, they were the creations of his art and not the conditions of his life. Wilde's one conviction was that he was an artist, and he doggedly transposed the terms of life and art. His term for the new life was Dante's La vita nuova (c. 1292). Similarly, Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) was to be the parable of his life; it was more true to his life because of its artistry than was his biography. The strain of maintaining this paradox ended his life three years after his release and finished his writing career shortly after the composition of De Profundis. The resolution of the paradox is the intention of the long letter.This epistle is therefore connected both with Wilde's biography (in which sense it is autobiography) and with his literary canon. In the letter, he suggests that his sentence and fate are "prefigured" in works such as The Picture of Dorian Gray. The immediate artistic fruits of the "new life" are the two letters to the Morning Chronicle and The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), his only writing after De Profundis; parts of the last amount to a prose poem falling somewhere between the prose of the two letters and poetry of the ballad, Wilde's longest and most effective poem. The two letters are included in Ross's 1908 edition and show plainly the real conditions under which De Profundis was written. Wilde sums them up as constant hunger, diarrhea from the rotten food, and insomnia from the diarrhea and the plank bed in his cell. His description of prison life is vivid and awful; out of his experience, immediately after his release, he showed courage in writing letters to defend a discharged warder and to plead for decent treatment of child prisoners. Perhaps he could have played a prominent role in prison reform had not exile intervened; yet it is difficult to see Wilde in that role unless he really meant what he said in De Profundis. As it was, events showed...
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Author : Oscar Wilde
Genre :
Summary : Differentiated book- It has a historical context with research of the time-In case you do not know what De Profundis is about, you should warn them that it may not be suitable for anyone to read. Unless they have an extremely curious spirit and want to read it because they do.De Profundis is the letter that Oscar Wilde wrote for Alfred Douglas -or Bosie- (in other places you can say it was the letter to his lover and things like that but for me it is the letter for the culprit of his ruin) from Reading jail.As I said at the beginning, I do not see that it is something of general interest, yet they usually publish letters from recognized writers. But for someone who, like me, loves Oscar Wilde and his work, De Profundis is essential. Let's see ... the letter begins by exposing and remembering all the things Oscar did for the stupid Bosie. It becomes somewhat jagged and recriminating and does not fail to point out to the recipient all its failures and defects.He does a review of specific events, and sometimes includes dates and places, we find out what his relationship was like from Wilde's own perspective. The whole first part caused me anger and frustration, I could not believe that someone as exceptional as Oscar has ended up interacting with a person as immature, stupid and capricious as Bosie was. The same writer realizes that but was already too involved to cut the problem at the root.He tells us how he was involved in the critical relationship between Douglas, son and father, and how that mutual hatred they had ended up finding him guilty and sending him to jail.He tells us about love and hate; he does not stop mentioning suffering and pain; He talks to us about art and has a few moments of pride in this regard (although coming from him they are completely justified); He tells us how he felt his material, artistic and spiritual ruin; he has a theological moment in which he reflects on religion and on Christ; and towards the latter he tells us about the transformation he had in his experience in prison, how pain and suffering opened his eyes to other types of beauty that he had not previously known or wanted to appreciate. How all this he lived made him a new person.