De Profundis

How De Profundis got its name
Oscar Wilde did not choose the title De Profundis. After composing his famous letter to Lord Alfred Douglas ('Bosie') in Reading Gaol in 1897, he gave it to his friend and literary executor Robert Ross, with a semi-serious suggestion for a title: Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis Letter: In Prison and in Chains').Ross, however, ignored the suggestion, publishing it in 1905, five years after Wilde's death, with the title De Profundis ('from the depths', an allusion to Psalm 130).
Ross's title stands in a long line of literary De Profundises. Baudelaire had tried one, as had Christina Rossetti (though they were considerably briefer); later on, Dorothy Parker and C.S. Lewis had a go.One other note of titular interest is that in 1924 Douglas published his sonnet sequence In Excelsis ('from the heights'). This was also written in prison - he got six months for libelling Churchill - and was intended to mirror Ross's title. ~ The Telegraph UK

Psalm 130
(Septuagint numbering: Psalm 129)
Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord;
Lord, hear my voice.
Let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.
If Thou, O Lord, shalt observe iniquities;
Lord, who shall endure it?
For with Thee there is merciful forgiveness:
and by reason of Thy law, I have waited for Thee, O Lord.
My soul hath relied on His word;
My soul hath hoped in the Lord.
From the morning watch even until night,
Let Israel hope in the Lord.
Because with the Lord there is mercy,
And with Him plentiful redemption.
And He shall redeem Israel from all her iniquities.
I find that the most tragic thing about De Profundis, is how optimistic Oscar is towards the end of it. He believed that his life after prison, however difficult, would be a happy one. He believed that he would recover, that he would write again, that he would have a chance for a new beginning. He completely misunderstood just what his life was going to be life after his release.

…I’d be quite happy to sleep in the summer on the grass under the stars, so long as there was love in my heart…

I finished De Profundis a few days ago. It affected me more than I expected it to. I found it, not only deeply insightful, but also incredibly touching and even heartbreaking.

The gods are strange, and punish us for what is good and humane in us as much as for what is evil and perverse...

The history of the manuscript is a complicated one. De Profundis was written by Wilde in a form of a letter to Bosie Douglas between January and March 1897, during the last year of Wilde’s imprisonment in Reading Gaol. Upon his release, Wilde handed the letter to Robbie Ross, instructing him to make a copy of it, and send the original to Bosie. Whether Ross followed Wilde’s instructions is unknown. Bosie later claimed that while he indeed received a rather resentful letter form Wilde via Ross, it wasn’t De Profundis. The original manuscript was 50,000 words long, and the letter Bosie received was written on a few pages in Ross's handwriting. In any case, he only read a few lines of it before throwing it in the fire... Ross maintained that Wilde wanted him to publish the manuscript, while Bosie claimed that Wilde repented writing the letter, and wanted it destroyed. Neither man can be fully trusted on this. Many believe that Ross’s statements and actions were disingenuous, coloured by the bitterness between him and Bosie, while Bosie was never known for truthfulness or sincerity to begin with.

Bosie Douglas claimed in his resent-laden, churlish autobiography “Oscar Wilde and Myself”, that he wasn’t even aware that De Profundis existed, let alone that it was a letter addressed to him, until 1905 when an abridged version of the manuscript was published by Robbie Ross. Ross expurgated all references to the Queensberry family, and presented the unpublished parts to the British Museum as a ‘gift to the nation’.

In 1913 Bosie sued Arthur Ransome for libellous passages in his book 'Oscar Wilde'. Ransome, who was coincidentally a close friend of Robbie Ross from whom he probably obtained the libellous passages - pleaded justification. The case centred around whether, as Ransome claimed, Bosie really was ruinous to Oscar's life. The evidence for this claim was supported by the disclosure of the suppressed portions of De Profundis, which was brought out of hiding in the British Museum, read out in court, and subsequently published in the national newspapers. Up until this moment, Bosie was not aware that there existed unpublished portions of the letter.

Bosie’s reaction was, predictably, one of outrage. I believe that “Oscar Wilde and Myself” (a book he fiercely repudiated after managing to reconcile himself to Oscar's memory) was written and published largely in self-defense against De Profundis. The ‘allegations’ in the unpublished parts of the manuscript - which he tried unsuccessfully to recover from the British Museum and Ross – terrified him. Unsurprisingly, he denied each an every accusation made by Wilde in De Profundis, and maintained that he could address and counter each one if he was only given the chance. He went as far as to say that Wilde wasn’t in his right mind when he wrote De Profundis. And that the whole thing should be regarded as ramblings of a man driven mad by the horrors of prison life.

It is perhaps the greatest love letter ever written. Filled with a torrent of accusation, recrimination and passion, Wilde eventually reached an extraordinary state of under-standing and reconciliation.