De Profundis - Oscar Wilde (little readers .TXT) 📗

to do; in fact, must do. And when I use such a phrase as

that, I need not say that I am not alluding to any external

sanction or command. I admit none. I am far more of an

individualist than I ever was. Nothing seems to me of the smallest

value except what one gets out of oneself. My nature is seeking a

fresh mode of self-realisation. That is all I am concerned with.

And the first thing that I have got to do is to free myself from

any possible bitterness of feeling against the world.

 

I am completely penniless, and absolutely homeless. Yet there are

worse things in the world than that. I am quite candid when I say

that rather than go out from this prison with bitterness in my

heart against the world, I would gladly and readily beg my bread

from door to door. If I got nothing from the house of the rich I

would get something at the house of the poor. Those who have much

are often greedy; those who have little always share. I would not

a bit mind sleeping in the cool grass in summer, and when winter

came on sheltering myself by the warm close-thatched rick, or under

the penthouse of a great barn, provided I had love in my heart.

The external things of life seem to me now of no importance at all.

You can see to what intensity of individualism I have arrived - or

am arriving rather, for the journey is long, and ‘where I walk

there are thorns.’

 

Of course I know that to ask alms on the highway is not to be my

lot, and that if ever I lie in the cool grass at night-time it will

be to write sonnets to the moon. When I go out of prison, R-will

be waiting for me on the other side of the big iron-studded gate,

and he is the symbol, not merely of his own affection, but of the

affection of many others besides. I believe I am to have enough to

live on for about eighteen months at any rate, so that if I may not

write beautiful books, I may at least read beautiful books; and

what joy can be greater? After that, I hope to be able to recreate

my creative faculty.

 

But were things different: had I not a friend left in the world;

were there not a single house open to me in pity; had I to accept

the wallet and ragged cloak of sheer penury: as long as I am free

from all resentment, hardness and scorn, I would be able to face

the life with much more calm and confidence than I would were my

body in purple and fine linen, and the soul within me sick with

hate.

 

And I really shall have no difficulty. When you really want love

you will find it waiting for you.

 

I need not say that my task does not end there. It would be

comparatively easy if it did. There is much more before me. I

have hills far steeper to climb, valleys much darker to pass

through. And I have to get it all out of myself. Neither

religion, morality, nor reason can help me at all.

 

Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian. I am one of

those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see

that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is

something wrong in what one becomes. It is well to have learned

that.

 

Religion does not help me. The faith that others give to what is

unseen, I give to what one can touch, and look at. My gods dwell

in temples made with hands; and within the circle of actual

experience is my creed made perfect and complete: too complete, it

may be, for like many or all of those who have placed their heaven

in this earth, I have found in it not merely the beauty of heaven,

but the horror of hell also. When I think about religion at all, I

feel as if I would like to found an order for those who CANNOT

believe: the Confraternity of the Faithless, one might call it,

where on an altar, on which no taper burned, a priest, in whose

heart peace had no dwelling, might celebrate with unblessed bread

and a chalice empty of wine. Every thing to be true must become a

religion. And agnosticism should have its ritual no less than

faith. It has sown its martyrs, it should reap its saints, and

praise God daily for having hidden Himself from man. But whether

it be faith or agnosticism, it must be nothing external to me. Its

symbols must be of my own creating. Only that is spiritual which

makes its own form. If I may not find its secret within myself, I

shall never find it: if I have not got it already, it will never

come to me.

 

Reason does not help me. It tells me that the laws under which I

am convicted are wrong and unjust laws, and the system under which

I have suffered a wrong and unjust system. But, somehow, I have

got to make both of these things just and right to me. And exactly

as in Art one is only concerned with what a particular thing is at

a particular moment to oneself, so it is also in the ethical

evolution of one’s character. I have got to make everything that

has happened to me good for me. The plank bed, the loathsome food,

the hard ropes shredded into oakum till one’s finger-tips grow dull

with pain, the menial offices with which each day begins and

finishes, the harsh orders that routine seems to necessitate, the

dreadful dress that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, the silence,

the solitude, the shame - each and all of these things I have to

transform into a spiritual experience. There is not a single

degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a

spiritualising of the soul.

 

I want to get to the point when I shall be able to say quite

simply, and without affectation that the two great turning-points

in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society

sent me to prison. I will not say that prison is the best thing

that could have happened to me: for that phrase would savour of

too great bitterness towards myself. I would sooner say, or hear

it said of me, that I was so typical a child of my age, that in my

perversity, and for that perversity’s sake, I turned the good

things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life to good.

 

What is said, however, by myself or by others, matters little. The

important thing, the thing that lies before me, the thing that I

have to do, if the brief remainder of my days is not to be maimed,

marred, and incomplete, is to absorb into my nature all that has

been done to me, to make it part of me, to accept it without

complaint, fear, or reluctance. The supreme vice is shallowness.

Whatever is realised is right.

 

When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and

forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realising

what I am that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised

by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a

prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal. It would mean

that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace,

and that those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody

else - the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons,

the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain

falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and

making it silver - would all be tainted for me, and lose their

healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To regret

one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny

one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own

life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

 

For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and

unclean no less than those that the priest or a vision has

cleansed, and converts them into swiftness or strength, into the

play of beautiful muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, into the

curves and colours of the hair, the lips, the eye; so the soul in

its turn has its nutritive functions also, and can transform into

noble moods of thought and passions of high import what in itself

is base, cruel and degrading; nay, more, may find in these its most

august modes of assertion, and can often reveal itself most

perfectly through what was intended to desecrate or destroy.

 

The fact of my having been the common prisoner of a common gaol I

must frankly accept, and, curious as it may seem, one of the things

I shall have to teach myself is not to be ashamed of it. I must

accept it as a punishment, and if one is ashamed of having been

punished, one might just as well never have been punished at all.

Of course there are many things of which I was convicted that I had

not done, but then there are many things of which I was convicted

that I had done, and a still greater number of things in my life

for which I was never indicted at all. And as the gods are

strange, and punish us for what is good and humane in us as much as

for what is evil and perverse, I must accept the fact that one is

punished for the good as well as for the evil that one does. I

have no doubt that it is quite right one should be. It helps one,

or should help one, to realise both, and not to be too conceited

about either. And if I then am not ashamed of my punishment, as I

hope not to be, I shall be able to think, and walk, and live with

freedom.

 

Many men on their release carry their prison about with them into

the air, and hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, and at

length, like poor poisoned things, creep into some hole and die.

It is wretched that they should have to do so, and it is wrong,

terribly wrong, of society that it should force them to do so.

Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment

on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness,

and fails to realise what it has done. When the man’s punishment

is over, it leaves him to himself; that is to say, it abandons him

at the very moment when its highest duty towards him begins. It is

really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has

punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they cannot pay, or

one on whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an irremediable

wrong. I can claim on my side that if I realise what I have

suffered, society should realise what it has inflicted on me; and

that there should be no bitterness or hate on either side.

 

Of course I know that from one point of view things will be made

different for me than for others; must indeed, by the very nature

of the case, be made so.