Not recommended for people suffering from deep homophobia or deep depression. This work is a letter, a long letter, written by Oscar to his ex-lover Lord Alfred Douglas (aka Bosie) while carrying out his sentence in prison. I believe this work can only be appreciated by one who's acquired biographical information on Oscar and the events that led him to be sentenced to two years of hard labour in prison for something like "gross indecency" or "sodomy". I highly recommend this reading, specially to those who have read Richard Ellmann's biography or seen its screen version "Wilde" (Brian Gilbert, 1997).
The letter starts out by describing in minutiae to Bosie how he was ultimately responsible for destroying Oscar's life. Bosie was too coarse to realise this by himself and Oscar does tell him all the hard cold facts bringing up memories from various events. Even in what one would say is such a low moment in his life, Oscar manages to overcome all his grief and brings out all the kindness one can ever expect to find in a human being. While most people would just rip Bosie to shreds, but Oscar tries to instill in him something he never had: a conscience.
What I would call a second part of the letter gets deep into human psyche and talks about the evolution of the individual and relationships with with people, with Art, with God. While the first "part" is very sad and painful to read, in the sequence Oscar shows us how he was able to find himself and a deeper meaning to all his suffering and how he thought the destruction of his career as an Artist brought about the betterment of his own soul.
Despite all that can be said about his lifestyle and the supposed perversity of his character, this letter shows what kind of person Oscar really was: a beautiful human being who had so much to teach all of us and was led down to a path that utterly abbreviated his life depriving us of his wit, humour, intellect and appreciation for beautiful things.
To give you a taste of what you can find in this work, I'll leave you with a few short passages:
"Love is fed by imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are: by which we can see Life as a whole: by which, and by which alone, we can understand others in their real as in their ideal relations."
"If after I go out a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I shouldn't mind a bit. I can be perfectly happy by myself. With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy ? Besides, feasts are not for me anymore. That side of life is over to me, very fortunately I dare say. But if, after I go out, a friend of mine had a sorrow, and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly."
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