Creative Liberties and Oscar Wilde

'Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis', meaning 'Letter: In Prison and in Chains' was the original title but De Profundis (from the depths) was the title under which his famous letter was published.

One of the first works of Oscar Wilde that I read was 'The Ghost of Canterville'. It was a novella, part of the required school reading material. I did not particulary like the story but maybe it was due to the fact that I was forced to read it and then memorise for the english grade. I don't remember much from that book but something that stuck to my mind was one of Wilde's quote written under the copyright page.

I can resist anything but temptation

The whole year went by but our teacher failed to mention the fantastic backstory of this legendary writer. I kept seeing his random quotes pop up on the internet but I didn't read any of his works until I stumbled on a collection of 100 greatest poems in the school Library.

The Ballad of the Reading Gaol

He did not wear his scarlet coat,

For blood and wine are red,

And blood and wine were on his hands

When they found him with the dead,

The poor dead woman whom he loved,

And murdered in her bed.

Oscar Wilde was jailed at the infamous Reading prison (also where Assange is currently jailed) for 2 years of hard labour for his homosexuality. He was not allowed to write or publish work here. He was only allowed to write letters, finding a loophole there he wrote De Profundis, a long letter that never got sent. The ballad of the Reading Gaol was published when he left the prison.

I did not know the history behind this long ballad, I did not even know whether it was based on a real or fictional situation. Still, I fell in love with the emotions expressed with a dance of words I never knew was possible. Literature should shock you, it should unsettle you and that is exactly how I felt while reading the poem.

This piece is what started my personal research for Wilde. I learned that the unsent letter was meant for his lover Bosie who betrayed him. His letters addressed to different authors painted him as an utterly charismatic person, the kind who is king of dinner conversations.

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

When I read The Picture of Dorian Gray I could make out from the conversations between characters, Wilde had an unusual and interesting way of percieving the most mundane things in life. He could find beauty in the worst wretched human behaviour or a fault in the kindest of gestures. I read another short work of his, The nightingale and the rose. It is amazing how he knows how to break a persons heart with words. With Mr. Oscar, I find there is more to the way he writes things, than what he ultimately writes. Alright, this is the part which annoyed the most when it came up in my research. Dorian Gray being the epitome of hedonism and immorality obviously did not fit well with the Victorian people. The publisher had to make some blunt alterations to his text. Lines which openly depict Basil (one of the characters) having questions about his feelings for Dorian were cut due to hints towards homosexuality. A lot of his quotes have been misattributed. About 75% of Wilde quotes that are on the internet were never said by him or do not have citations. When the charges of homosexuality came on him, bank sold of his books, his possession and his works, making it more difficult to find the original published texts. You can find a close reading of the difference in the published work of his here- But this still did not unnerve me as much as it did when I read and researched about the ill-fated massacre of words that was done to 'Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis', the work that was even stripped of it's original title. Now know as De Profundis, at the time of it's publishing got into trouble with the Queensbury family (the lineage of the man he was romantically involved with)

All text mentioning Oscar Wilde's injustice and blame onto his lover was removed. His bittersweet sentences were diluted to simple bland liners.

Then comes the matter of copyrigts, almost no version that claims to be unabridged on the internet today is an original text. Even the ones published around 1907 excluded almost 10 first pages of the letter. The partial versions begin, “Suffering is one…” or “My place would be…” The only version that is believed to be close to the reminiscent text is the Dover Thrift version, which unfortunately is not free to read except for a small sample. I was happy to know that atleast there was ONE edition that was correct but something still did not satisfy me. I found the original hand written De Profundis manuscript.

Then I read it next to the Dover Thrift edition. And Alas, whole paragraphs of his words were watered down again.

Currently, the only way to read the letter is to go ahead and download 80 pages of the manuscript, and then try and decipher his handwriting. I have read abridged works before and I have been fine with them. Penguin Classic's Les Miserables was perfectly edited and I believe that I enjoyed it more than the original texts, which were whopping 3x the lenght of the abridged version.

The reason why editing of this work really unnerved me enough to spend days scouring the internet was that it rarely happens that I fail to read past the 16th page of a letter because there is a pool of salt water in my eyes. De Profundis had too much of raw emotions and suffering that a man with a wild imagination, couldn't, in my eyes endure.

The way he could write without spite and still explain the unrequited love and betrayal he felt. And this WAS NOT EVEN HIS ORIGINAL WORDS! I was reading an abridged letter!

Imagine how much damage the original would do to mortal psyche.