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.
