The glorious nineteenth century was about to say a smooth farewell to the world, but on the spring of the year 1895 in England, the high class society was on fire, the cultured society was biting its nails in anticipation and the secret underground societies were forced to get back into their dark hidden places. On April 26th 1895, an Irish man who belonged to the high class and the cultured society was being prosecuted for committing one of the most obnoxious crimes in England… at that age.
Although the man had one of the most renowned lawyers defending his case at that time, Sir Edward George Clarke, when the judge asked a question referring to something mentioned in one of the man’s letters and was augmenting the charge against him, he asked to answer the question himself. Let’s see how this part of the trial went:
Judge: In your letter you mentioned the love that dare not speak its name. What is “the love that dare not speak its name”?
Man: "The love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the work of Michelangelo and the sonnets of Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "the love that dare not speak its name," and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it."
The eloquent speech and the biblical, historical and artistic references he used did not help to clear his charge and a month later, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), one of the great authors in the history of English literature and the author of great plays that mock the British aristocracy like An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, in addition to one brilliant novel that is considered a masterpiece of English literature, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was sentenced for two years of imprisonment with hard labor for the charge of gross indecency. His secret love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas (1870-1945) that was discovered, exposed and submitted to court by Lord Douglas’ father was the cause of his imprisonment for homosexuality. At that time, Wilde was married and had two sons.
While in prison, Wilde wrote a letter in 50 000 words for his lover describing his suffering in the prison, reflecting on his own life and what lead him from the luxury of the aristocracy to the darkness and loneliness of a shameful imprisonment. He starts his very long letter with the following words:
Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain…For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight in one's cell, as it is always twilight in one's heart. And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more. The thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again tomorrow. Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why I am writing, and in this manner writing. . . .
He then starts to blame himself in a very touchy piece where he says:
I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. I am trying to say so, though they may not think it at the present moment. This pitiless indictment I bring without pity against myself. Terrible
as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still… I used to live entirely for pleasure. I shunned suffering and sorrow of every kind. I hated both. I resolved to ignore them as far as possible: to treat them, that is to say, as modes of imperfection. They were not part of my scheme of life. They had no place in my philosophy.
He ends his letter by facing the fact that he is to be banished from society for ever.
Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my
footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.
Wilde was not allowed to send the letter but he took it with him and after his release in 1897, he submitted it to publishing under the title De Profundis (Latin for “From the Depth”)
After his release, he had a religious awakening and he asked for the membership of a catholic community but was refused, something that devastated what remained sane in him and he decided to live incognito and in a chosen exile in France where he stopped writing and only produced a poem titled The Ballad of Reading Goal (the prison where he was kept) which was published under a pseudonym, among its very memorable lines:
Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.
Wilde died of meningitis* in 1900 after being united with his lover against the wish of friends, families and community. On the epitaph of his grave in Pere La Chaise cemetery in Paris, the following lines from his last poem are written:
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.
The following are very useful links about Wilde and the full texts of both works mentioned above.
http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/921
http://www.emotionalliteracyeducation.com/classic_books_online/rgaol10.htm
*Meningitis is an inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord, it is caused by many factors like some kind of bacteria, overuse of some drugs and migraine, but sometimes it occurs without a specific reason.
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Oscar Wilde And The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name!
The glorious nineteenth century was about to say a smooth farewell to the world, but on the spring of the year 1895 in England, the high class society was on fire, the cultured society was biting its nails in anticipation and the secret underground societies were forced to get back into their dark hidden places. On April 26th 1895, an Irish man who belonged to the high class and the cultured society was being prosecuted for committing one of the most obnoxious crimes in England… at that age.
Although the man had one of the most renowned lawyers defending his case at that time, Sir Edward George Clarke, when the judge asked a question referring to something mentioned in one of the man’s letters and was augmenting the charge against him, he asked to answer the question himself. Let’s see how this part of the trial went:
Judge: In your letter you mentioned the love that dare not speak its name. What is “the love that dare not speak its name”?
Man: "The love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the work of Michelangelo and the sonnets of Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "the love that dare not speak its name," and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it."
The eloquent speech and the biblical, historical and artistic references he used did not help to clear his charge and a month later, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), one of the great authors in the history of English literature and the author of great plays that mock the British aristocracy like An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, in addition to one brilliant novel that is considered a masterpiece of English literature, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was sentenced for two years of imprisonment with hard labor for the charge of gross indecency. His secret love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas (1870-1945) that was discovered, exposed and submitted to court by Lord Douglas’ father was the cause of his imprisonment for homosexuality. At that time, Wilde was married and had two sons.
While in prison, Wilde wrote a letter in 50 000 words for his lover describing his suffering in the prison, reflecting on his own life and what lead him from the luxury of the aristocracy to the darkness and loneliness of a shameful imprisonment. He starts his very long letter with the following words:
Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain…For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight in one's cell, as it is always twilight in one's heart. And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more. The thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again tomorrow. Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why I am writing, and in this manner writing. . . .
He then starts to blame himself in a very touchy piece where he says:
I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. I am trying to say so, though they may not think it at the present moment. This pitiless indictment I bring without pity against myself. Terrible
as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still… I used to live entirely for pleasure. I shunned suffering and sorrow of every kind. I hated both. I resolved to ignore them as far as possible: to treat them, that is to say, as modes of imperfection. They were not part of my scheme of life. They had no place in my philosophy.
He ends his letter by facing the fact that he is to be banished from society for ever.
Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my
footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.
Wilde was not allowed to send the letter but he took it with him and after his release in 1897, he submitted it to publishing under the title De Profundis (Latin for “From the Depth”)
After his release, he had a religious awakening and he asked for the membership of a catholic community but was refused, something that devastated what remained sane in him and he decided to live incognito and in a chosen exile in France where he stopped writing and only produced a poem titled The Ballad of Reading Goal (the prison where he was kept) which was published under a pseudonym, among its very memorable lines:
Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.
Wilde died of meningitis* in 1900 after being united with his lover against the wish of friends, families and community. On the epitaph of his grave in Pere La Chaise cemetery in Paris, the following lines from his last poem are written:
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.
The following are very useful links about Wilde and the full texts of both works mentioned above.
http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/921
http://www.emotionalliteracyeducation.com/classic_books_online/rgaol10.htm
*Meningitis is an inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord, it is caused by many factors like some kind of bacteria, overuse of some drugs and migraine, but sometimes it occurs without a specific reason.
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1 comment:
Sometimes real life is better than fiction. I didn't have the slightest idea about Oscar Wilde's personal life. I think now he'll be one of my favorites, I can understand him better knowing that he is one of my people :)
thank you so much for the informative article
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