The Annotated Prison Writing of Oscar Wilde Edited by Nicholas Frankel

The Annotated Prison Writing of Oscar Wilde Edited by Nicholas Frankel is a moving book published by Harvard University Press about the saddest chapter experienced by this beloved and wonderful author; the years spent in prison after a long trial for homosexuality, a serious crime, in the past, in the UK. I am always conquered, pleasantly conquered by the beauty of the writing of Oscar Wilde; I read two times De Profundis in italian; an emotion to read it in original. He is fantastic. There are not other words for describing this writer: maybe, yes another one: sublime. What I appreciate the most of Wilde s his soul. He is profound, honest, he analyzes his story of perdition for Douglas under all aspects in this long letter; at the same time he is conscious that the feelings he felt for this boy meant to him prison, bad reputation.

In a passage of the De Profundis he explains, after some considerations about the departure of his mother: "She and my father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured not merely in Literature, Art, Archeology, and Science, but in the public history of my own country (Oscar Wilde was irish), in its evolution as a nation. I had disgraced that name eternally. I had made it a low byword among low people..."

Oscar Wilde during the years spent in prison experienced a terrible illness at one of his ears; not cured properly he lost most of the hearing; his mental and physical health in general deteriorated,  but he remained extremely vivid, frank, honest and vibrant telling what he felt for his beloved Douglas.

De Profundis remains a literary masterpiece. I read it during my teenage age the first time. "Melodic" in his writing there's no doubt that Wilde was a real Lord of Words. Gentle, passionate, sincere, he is a blanket of tender and passionate words for every reader; when you read his books you know that every phrase is sincere, that every passage is written with sentiment and intention without hypocrisy.
There is clearly a honest intellect and brain; when he wrote he didn't never search of hiding himself, or his sentiments and feelings.
His genuine touch, his integrity, his honesty in writing are part of who Oscar Wilde was; these characteristics exalt, thanks also to masterpieces of literature of incommensurate value, the person he was, giving back to us a beautiful soul.

During the years spent in prison he also contacted a newsmagazine the Daily Chronicle with two touching letters about the sad, horrible, poor conditions of prisons. Children in particular were at the attention of Wilde because of the poor treatments reserved them, the impossibility of eating properly; to Wilde children hadn't to stay in prison; but, if necessary,  they should have spent a complete different rehabilitative passage; they hadn't to stay closed per 23 hours in jail; not without food, but doing exercise, continuing to learn or maybe starting to become acculturated in  jail, eating properly.
He won't also forget the case of a prisoner, who, slowly slowly was losing his mind. The Chronicle will start thanks to Wilde's suggestions a long battle for best conditions in prisons. The second letter in fact will focus about this battle started by the newsmagazine. To Wilde it was important to insist for a better reform.

The relationship with Douglas and other men portrayed in De Profundis, leave us a long wonderful letter, and the most powerful legacy of this writer. An honest legacy, of a man who loved and was betrayed; of a man who, thanks to his position, was used and lost everything. Money, success, fame, his family. His reputation. Everything. 

Elegant in his writing, Wilde at some point at the Clemency Petition to the House Secretary: "It is but natural that living in this silence, this solitude, this isolation from all human and humans influences, this tomb for those who are not yet dead, the petitioner should, day and night in every waking hour, be tortured by the fear of absolute and entire insanity."

From De Profundis: "In the perturbed and fitful nights of anguish, in the long monotonous days of pain, it is myself I blame. I blame myself for allowing an unintellectual friendship, a friendship whose primary aim was not the creation and contemplation of beautiful things, to entirely dominate my life."

Oscar Wilde thinks at some point that Douglas was not worthy of his love.
But he adds: "...Love does not traffic in a marketplace, nor use a huckster's scales. It's joy, like the joy of intellect, is to feel itself alive. The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no less."

Oscar Wilde characterized this unlucky friendship with Douglas as "fatal" because changed the course of his destiny; a radiant one. He closes this letter with this terrible phrases: "You came to me to learn the Pleasure of Life and the Pleasure of Art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of Sorrow, and its beauty."

Enchanting work the one created by mr. Frankel. On the pages in your left you find the explanation of the various texts taken in considerations and on the right ones the text with Wilde's written words; included  also the Ballad of Reading Gaol.

Some verses...

The watcher watched him as he slept,
And could not understand
How one could sleep so sweet a sleep
With a hangman close at hand.

But there is no sleep when men must weep
Who never yet have wept:
So we-the fool, the fraud, the knave-
That endless vigil kept,
And though each brain on hands of pain
Another terror's crept.
....

We were as men who thought a fen
Of filthy darkness grope:
We did not dare to breath a prayer,
or give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.


Highly recommended.

I thank Harvard University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori