Everyday Canvas

Oscar Wilde and De Profundis

Prompt: "With freedom, books, flowers and the moor, who could not be happy?" Oscar Wilde What is your take on this?

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I fully agree with the happiness freedom, books, and flowers can bring; however, for not having seen it, I cannot vouch for the moor, but I hear it is breathtaking and know that it has served as a background for many a story that I love.

Freedom is precious because the opposite of freedom means to be denied the life one believes in. This, for an author, has to be devastating. Then, who can deny the positive input of flowers, as Emerson noted, “The earth laughs in flowers.” Yet, books are like souls to a writer or maybe his best friends. As a child, I used to say, “Books are the best people in my life,” to my mother’s consternation.

This quote is from Wilde’s book De Profundis, published in 1905, next to his last work which would be The Ballad of Reading Gaol. De Profundis is his 55,000-word letter to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas. In it, he rebukes Douglas for his cruelty and indifference despite the loving devotion Wilde had for him, as well as talking about his spiritual journey through his time and trials in the Reading jail.

This quote’s voice is quite different with its cheer and exuberance from the tone of the rest of De Profundis since, while in jail, Wilde was assigned to distribute books to the inmates from the limited library, which held only the classics. This type of reading plus the horrid treatment he received there changed his voice a bit, making it more arrogant, excessive, florid, sentimental, vindictive, and self-pitying.

My favorite quotes from De Profundis is: “Art only begins where Imitation ends” and “Supreme vice is shallowness.”