The Annotated Prison Writings of Oscar Wilde

by Wilde, Nicholas Frankel (Editor)

"And I? May I say nothing, my lord?" With these words, Oscar Wilde's courtroom trials came to a close. The lord in question, High Court justice Sir Alfred Wills, sent Wilde to the cells, sentenced to two years in prison with hard labor for the crime of "gross indecency" with other men. As cries of "shame" emanated from the gallery, the convicted aesthete was roundly silenced.

But he did not remain so. Behind bars and in the period immediately after his release, Wilde wrote two of his most powerful works--the long autobiographical letter De Profundis and an expansive best-selling poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol. In The Annotated Prison Writings of Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel collects these and other prison writings, accompanied by historical illustrations and his rich facing-page annotations. As Frankel shows, Wilde experienced prison conditions designed to break even the toughest spirit, and yet his writings from this period display an imaginative and verbal brilliance left largely intact. Wilde also remained politically steadfast, determined that his writings should inspire improvements to Victorian England's grotesque regimes of punishment. But while his reformist impulse spoke to his moment, Wilde also wrote for eternity.

At once a savage indictment of the society that jailed him and a moving testimony to private sufferings, Wilde's prison writings--illuminated by Frankel's extensive notes--reveal a very different man from the famous dandy and aesthete who shocked and amused the English-speaking world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Classics, Queer, LGBT, Essays, Biography, Writing

408 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2018

Reviews

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

See my review of Frankel's _Annotated Prison Writings of Oscar Wilde_ in the journal _Textual Cultures_. The journal is open access, so anyone should be able to read what I've written: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/....

Thanks to Logan Esdale for all of his great work as book review editor for _Textual Cultures_!

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

De Profundis is a full fledged manifesto, in which Oscar Wilde meticulously recounts the numerous betrayals, degradations, humiliations and other painful injustices inflicted upon him by his ex friend/lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, of whose relationship with Wilde was the basis for the author’s arrest in 1895. Wilde was sentenced to 18 months in prison for charges of “gross indecency”, while Douglas remained a free man.

Wilde was sent to prison for almost 2 years, lost custody of his children, was forced to declare bankruptcy and surrender all his assets/valuables to the government, and had his name and reputation utterly besmirched by society…all for loving a man who didn’t write him a SINGLE letter throughout the duration of said prison sentence. Naturally, Wilde had a lot of feelings about this (understatement of the century), and he made those feelings known clearly (if not concisely) in De Profundis

The pen has never been so clearly mightier than the sword than in this devastating indictment of Lord Alfred Douglas, and the effects his ruinous friendship had on every aspect of Wilde’s life. Riddled with his signature flourishing prose and remarkable wit, Wilde deconstructs various interactions and personal conversations between himself and Douglas throughout their years of friendship; meticulously detailing every injustice, humiliation, and disappointment he suffered at the hands of his “friend”. Douglas is repeatedly berated for his selfishness, immaturity, financial incompetence, intellectual inferiority, and artistic ignorance, among countless other unsavory qualities.

Malicious and meticulous, both in detail and scope, Wilde’s unrelenting onslaught of accusations leaves no stone unturned regarding Douglas’ dubious character; every one of his actions is analyzed, every misstep magnified, every motivation is questioned…and the conclusion is far from flattering. Essentially, Wilde posits that prison pales in comparison to the ethical,intellectual, and artistic degradation he has suffered by associating himself with Lord Alfred Douglas; the pain, disappointment and humiliation of loving a manipulative, morally bankrupt gold digger with daddy issues is the worst punishment of all. Personally, I think that’s incredibly valid, and quite frankly? Relatable.

About halfway through De Profundis, however, things take a turn for the spiritual. Wilde is determined, it seems, to be the bigger man, put the past behind him, choose forgiveness, and grow/learn from his unfortunate circumstances. The text becomes much less outwardly focused, as Wilde professes his desire for healing and growth through self-realization. He stops dwelling on assigning blame or determining the precise reason for his suffering, and instead recognizes the importance of suffering in and of itself; marveling in the beauty of experiencing sorrow as a human emotion and how that experience can be translated into art (which for Wilde, of course, is the highest possible aim in life).

He spends a good deal of time ruminating on the particular suffering he’s been forced to endure in prison, and how he plans to make his suffering “count”; his desire to transform his sorrow and pain into something healthy, productive, and above all, beautiful.

“I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me” […] “to reject one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie on the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul”

Unfortunately, things start to get weird, as they always do when the subject of God comes up. Wilde begins to compare himself and his suffering to that of Jesus Christ, and the similarities don’t stop there. Wilde, believing that Sorrow = Art, and Art = Truth, and Truth = God, concludes that Christ is the ultimate artist, whose medium is sorrow (the ultimate truth). Thus, Wilde identifies with Christ as an artist, seeking to reveal the truth of life through his art. As if this wasn’t already convoluted enough, Wilde litters the surrounding text with countless references to various Greek mythology, Bible verses, Shakespearean plays, and other historical works, making this a thoroughly insufferable section to work through. Between all the wacky Christ comparisons and the incessant biblical/literary references that render this section almost unreadable, I had to deduct a half star from what would have otherwise been a 5 star rating. Alas, onward and upward!

At this point, we’ve made it 75% of the way through De Profundis, and you’re probably wondering how Mr. Wilde plans to wrap things up. This last section is what I would lovingly entitle “…AND ANOTHER THING”, or perhaps even “bitch you thought!!!”, because our boy Oscar jumps RIGHT the fuck back in where he left off on his Douglas Diatribe; hurling insults and accusations, airing out all of his ex’s dirty laundry, and generally dragging the man’s name through filth. It’s petty, bitter, hostile, unhinged, and just sooooo fucking funny.

The funniest part of all, though, is how the text’s accompanying annotations expose his ass, time and time again. Wilde’s bark is so astronomically worse than his bite, but it would seem that even his bark isn’t as genuine or convincing as he’d intended for it to appear to the public. Thanks to the fastidious preservation of historical documents and other resources that helped create this book, I get the immense pleasure of reading a powerful statement written by Mr. Wilde, and then reading an annotation attached to that statement that says, “Actually, that’s not true. Here’s the proof”. Oscar, you sly dog!!!! To be fair, fact checking wasn’t really a thing in the Victorian Era, and he likely wasn’t overly concerned with being “gotcha’d” for slandering his ex-lover, more than a century after his death. Regardless, there are quite a few… discrepancies between what Wilde “remembers” and what actually happened.

The assertions made by Wilde in De Profundis, regarding his past thoughts/feelings/actions in relation to Lord Alfred Douglas are repeatedly found to be in direct contradiction with the private communication that was written by Wilde at the time; dated letters and diary entries expressing nothing but tender love, sympathy, and devotion towards Douglas, which plainly refute Wilde’s adamant proclamations of indifference, pity, or scorn; travel itineraries and hotel ledgers proving the two were together during periods that Wilde alleges were spent alone - the receipts don’t lie!; documents don’t forget! What’s especially damning is how the most glaring contradictions are written in Wilde’s own handwriting. It’s difficult to convince the public that your feelings are genuine; it’s almost impossible to do that if there are hundreds of intimate, handwritten letters, spanning several years, that adamantly state otherwise. Wilde assumed the public would have no knowledge/access to those letters, and at the time De Profundis was being written, he was correct. Unfortunately for him, privacy isn’t posthumous.

Wilde attempts to assert a more flattering (for him) interpretation of past events as the truth, to better align with his present narrative . It’s easier to admit you’ve been wronged by someone that you hate, and to hate them in return. It’s harder to admit you’ve been wronged by someone you thought you loved, but have come to hate for the wrong they inflicted upon you. It’s hardest of all to admit you’ve been wronged by someone that you STILL love; that you loved this person, even while they were actively hurting you, and that despite everything, you love them still. That’s a tough pill to swallow, and one that I think Wilde wanted to avoid confronting, much less publicizing.

He chose to downplay the magnitude of his love for Douglas, even denying it altogether at times, because the alternative would have been detrimental to his dignity; to admit that he still loved Douglas, and never stopped loving him, despite the toxic dependency, emotional immaturity, ethical and artistic degradation, familial disputes, anger management problems, complete financial ruin, and literal prison sentence……yeah, I’d be embarrassed too. If you can’t stop yourself from loving a fucking loser, the next best thing is to lie about it, or pretend otherwise.

Regardless of how much of what’s written in de profundis is factually true or not, the message is masterfully articulated, and unflinchingly brutal. If you’re looking for new ways to insult your friends/siblings/coworkers/enemies, or perhaps wish to absolutely eviscerate the character and reputation of a loved one, I suggest you look no further. Here are just a few of my personal favorites:

“Of the appalling results of my friendship with you I don’t speak at present […] It was intellectually degrading to me”

”When suddenly, unbidden, unwelcome, and under circumstances fatal to my happiness, you returned”

”Ethically you had been even still more destructive to me than you had been artistically”

”What you seemed to me to be […] so full of terrible defects, so utterly ruinous to yourself and to others, so fatal a one to know, even, or to be with”

The remainder of the book contains a few short articles that Wilde had submitted to various publications after he was released from prison, in which he advocates for prison reform. The book also includes his famous poem “The Ballad of Reading Goal”, which is phenomenal. If you take anything away from this review, let it be to read that poem, if nothing else.

xoxo Avenge Oscar Wilde

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5 stars

"Suffering is one long moment... For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow."

"With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?"

This volume was completely fascinating from beginning to end. Reading this, I felt that I was seeing a completely different side of Wilde: not as a carefree dandy, but as a man who endured real pain and suffering. The majority of the book is taken up by "De Profundis", Wilde's long letter to his former lover Alfred Douglas ("Bosie"). That piece, in particular, struck me as incredibly profound and heartbreaking. The two quotes I have above are taken from it, and I wrote down so many more so that I could come back to them later. The much shorter letters to the Daily Chronicle are just as interesting, as they blatantly depict the horrible conditions of English prisons at the time. The poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" provides a more metaphorical and symbolic interpretation of the conditions that surround prisoners, with the added narrative of a man sentenced to be hanged. (I guess 'gaol' is pronounced 'jail', at first I thought it was just some fancy word!) It all goes to show that even the torture that was the Victorian prison couldn't keep Wilde's artistic spirit down for good. As in the annotated Dorian Gray that I recently read, Nicholas Frankel provides excellent notes. Reading them parallel to the text enhanced my reading. I felt like I learned a lot! Definitely a great way to learn more about Oscar Wilde's prison years and later life.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

De Profundis begins with an outpouring of all of Wilde’s hurts, resentments, bitterness, shame, love, anger, etc at his situation.—Who can blame him, really? It was his only way to truly vent those frustrations. He calls out “Bosie” in brutal terms for not writing to him, for taking advantage of him, and for throwing him under the bus in some cases. It’s all very raw and emotional, at times maybe even a tiny bit petty. Many of my annotations were just the word “brutal” haha. But what I love is that eventually the narrative develops into more than just the venting of grievances and gradually we see Wilde truly healing.
My favorite example is to see how his assessment changes on one particular incident:

You [Bosie] concluded your letter by saying: “When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting. The next time you are ill I will go away at once.”…how often have those words come back to me in the wretched solitary cell…For you to write thus to me, when the very illness and fever from which I was suffering I had caught from tending you, was, of course, revolting in its coarseness and crudity.

Here we can see how he is still hurting. How he maybe still valued how Bosie saw him and thought of him. Compared to much later in his letter when talking about being held before the public to laugh and leer at him:

Of course when they saw me I was not on my pedestal. I was in the pillory. But it is a very unimaginative nature that only cares for people on their pedestals…I have said that behind sorrow there is always Sorrow. It were still wiser to say that behind sorrow there is a soul. And to mock at a soul in pain is a dreadful thing. Unbeautiful are their lives who do it.

I think this is an example of what he meant when he said that he is taking all the bad that has happened to him and turning it into good. He gave all that hurt, resentment, bitterness, shame, and anger a sense of meaning. In that, he is gaining even more compassion, understanding, and empathy. And his perspective on things shows growth.

He, eventually, accounts for his role in how things happened, admits he had everything a man could ask for and yet dug for the depths in wanting more, but now, No matter what, he is accepting what has happened and is seeking to make a better person of himself, to let go of bitterness and resentment, and to forgive. At first, I admit I was skeptical, but I began to see his point— that by taking the bad and making it good he is giving what happened purpose and meaning and adapting and surviving and living on without letting it all crush his soul and humanity. This gave me perspective on my own traumas and I’m so glad to have access to something that is this special, and yet, was never really meant for the public’s eyes— by pouring out his own soul, he might not have realized how many souls he’s been able to touch and to help heal.

I suppose this review is mostly for De Profundis which is the bulk of this compilation of writings, but the other pieces are wonderful as well and I appreciate his writings to newspapers and publications about what can be done for the prison system. Even now, people don’t speak out enough about these types of continuing issues. He was ahead of his time.

[Crocat · Rating 4 out of 5]

These letters are, I think, one of the best insights into the mind of Oscar Wilde that exist to this day. At prison, he seems to have been at his most vulnerable, most bitter, but also most reflective, showing the usually more hidden depths of his personality. They have made me even more certain that he really had a gift for words (especially the eerie Ballad of Reading Gaol), but they've also shown me that while he seems a deeply compassionate and sensitive person, his ego is... Grand, to say the least. The insults he hurled at Alfred Douglas were so pedantic and long-winded that I had trouble getting though the bulk of them.

The book itself is given out in a nice, helpful way. The footnotes and such were at times very clarifying, at times interesting, and at times felt entirely useless and a drag to get through. For a scholar, I imagine they would be of utmost importance, but I abandoned them entirely by the end.

[Susannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant edition of Oscar Wilde’s prison writings, containing De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol which I have read before as well as the two letters that Wilde wrote to the Daily Chronicle after he was released to help campaign against the prison conditions which I had not read before.

As well as the quality of the writing which is excellent, De Profundis in particular is one of the best things Wilde wrote, this edition is particularly good for the notes which give context and further information on what is written to help with understanding the text. I would highly recommend this edition for Oscar Wilde fans.

[Wilder Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are parts of De Profundis that broke me wide open. I truly love Oscar Wilde and feel connected to his writings. He is the world's greatest wordsmith and we are lucky to have access to so much of his writings.

[lina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very heavy, yet thought-provoking assembly of Wilde's later works. The introduction as well as notes are of immense value in understanding the texts on a deeper, more profound level. This book remembers Wilde for his unbreakable spirit and literary talent even in inhumane circumstances.

[Chiara Niamh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece for any Oscar's lover!

[Elizabeth Camarena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wilde had me completely heartbroken throughout most of this book. He shares so many anecdotes that rang true for me personally

[Mills College Library]

828.8 W672p 2018