Oscar Wilde by André Gide

“ Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life, ” offered himself as an example, and, with his own life gave, as it were, a proof ad absurdum of his words—quite like the hero of one of his most beautiful poems, like that man who was a clever story-teller, who every evening charmed the people of his village by relating the marvelous adventures which he pretended to have had during the day, but who, the day when some tragic adventure in reality befell him, could find nothing more to say.
    M. Davray prefixes to his translation of De Profundis four letters written from prison which theEnglish edition does not contain; 4 some pages of these letters are so pathetic and have so urgent a psychological interest that I can hardly refrain from copying them here. 5 I would like to quote the whole book; better to refer the reader to it—and to consider myself satisfied if I have been able, be it ever so little, to be of service to a sad and glorious memory, for which it is time to cease having only contempt, insolent indulgence, or pity even more insulting than contempt.
    1 The representatives of his family assured Wilde that they would make things comfortable for him if he agreed to undertake certain engagements, among others that of never seeing B … again. He could not or would not undertake them.
    1 Oscar Wilde, Intentions, translated by J.-Joseph Renaud, 1 vol. in-18. (P.-V. Stock). There has since appeared a much better translation by M. Charles Grolleau with a preface by Hugues Rebell (Carrington).
    2 Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, preceded by letters written from prison, and followed by the Ballad of Reading Gaol, translated by Henry-D. Davray, 1 vol. in-18 (Mercure de France).
    3 Ermitage of April 15th, 1905.
    4 Translator’s note: These letters appear in later editions.
    5 I prefer to quote the passage from De Profundis which the English publisher had good reasons for not giving. (See Appendix.)

APPENDIX
    â€œOther miserable men when they are thrown into prison, if they are robbed of the beauty of the world are at least safe in some measure from the world’s most deadly slings, most awful arrows. They can hide in the darkness of their cells and of their very disgrace make a mode of sanctuary. The world having had its will goes its way, and they are left to suffer undisturbed. With me it has been different. Sorrow after sorrow has come beating at the prison doors in search of me; they have opened the gates wide and let them in. Hardly if at all have my friends been suffered to see me. But my enemies have had full access to me always; twice in my public appearances in the Bankruptcy Court; twice again in my public transferences from one prison to another have I been shown under conditions of unspeakable humiliation to the gaze and mockery of men. The messenger of Death has brought me his tidings and gone his way; and in entire solitude and isolated from all that could give me comfort or suggest relief I have had to bear the intolerable burden of misery and remorse, which the memory of my mother placed upon me and places upon me still.Hardly has that wound been dulled, not healed, by time, when violent and bitter and harsh letters come to me from solicitors. I am at once taunted and threatened with poverty. That I can bear. I can school myself to worse than that; but my two children are taken from me by legal procedure. That is, and always will remain to me a source of infinite distress, of infinite pain, of grief without end or limit. That the law should decide and take upon itself to decide that I am one unfit to be with my own children is something quite horrible to me. The disgrace of prison is as nothing compared with it. I envy the other men who tread the yard along with me. I am sure that their children wait for them, look for their coming, will be sweet to them.
    The poor are wiser, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive than we are.”

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