To Lord Alfred Douglas by Oscar Wilde (1897 - Version 2009)

Only love, whatever its nature, can explain the enormous suffering in the world.

This is the tone of the letter written by Oscar Wilde to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, from his Reading prison cell, where he was serving a sentence for “gross indecency” with men (he had been convicted of sodomy). A victim of the destructive passion he felt for Douglas, a monster with an angel face whom he affectionately called “Bosie”, Wilde’s life is divided into two phases.  Before, he enjoyed the success and glory of a dandy. After, he endured the decline that culminated in humiliation and disgrace.

Albert Camus refers to this letter as “one of the most beautiful books born of the suffering of a man.”

Author: Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854. A paradigm dandy, a spokesman for turn of the century aestheticism and the protagonist of scandals, Wilde enjoyed a huge reputation as a writer in Victorian society.

In 1884 he married Constance Lloyd and during the following years published several works in London. They had two sons.

Wilde became famous at the time, especially as a playwright with plays such as “A Woman of No Importance” and “An Ideal Husband”, to name but two.

In 1895 he moved a libel suit against the 9th Marquess of Queensberry, which resulted, in turn, with Wilde being prosecuted for gross indecency and being sentenced to two years of hard labour. After serving the sentence, Wilde left England for good.

Wilde lived in France and Italy, eventually settling in Paris, where he lived modestly under the name of Sébastien Melmoth until his death on 30 November 1900.

My thoughts: I remember walking around the centre of Porto in the summer of 2009 like it was yesterday. I was taken aback by the window of a bookstore: it was full of copies of “Carta a Bosie” proudly proclaiming itself “book of the month”.

I had to buy one, even if it was not in the original English version. Why? Because I have loved Oscar Wilde since my teens, when I read “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “The Importance of Being Earnest” and also the biography “L'affaire Oscar Wilde” by Odon Vallet, published in 1995.

This book is poignant; it touches your inner soul. On each page - especially at first - we feel the pain and disgust of Wilde. Towards the end of the book, he seems more serene and calm. Wilde writes letters from his prison cell to his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, known as Bosie, a boy-man, 15 years his junior, with whom he had a lengthy, passionate and tumultuous love affair and who had made Wilde’s life a tragedy.

The vain, selfish, superficial and spoiled character of Lord Alfred Douglas, son of the unpleasant and gross Marquess of Queensberry, makes me think and believe that sometimes there are people born with bad genes and, as they have not known love, they do not know how to receive, give and be grateful for it. Thus, I think the book is the story of two tragedies.

This small volume of 108 pages reads like a personal diary.  In it, we discover Wilde’s and Douglas’s terribly destructive and mutually dependent love affair. Wilde paints a scathing portrait of Douglas: angry, hateful, manipulative, self-centred and irresponsible. Wilde tries to open Douglas's eyes to his mistakes with fatal consequences - it is, indirectly, Douglas who led Wilde to bankruptcy and imprisonment.

The book also focuses on Wilde’s prison conditions: the endless days, the permanent sadness, the loneliness, the pain in the body and, especially, the soul. It also tells of his divorce and the loss of his role as a father to his two beloved children, Cyril and Vyvyan.