“DE PROFUNDIS”
A Criticism by “A”
(LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS?)
“The English are very fond of a man who admits he has been wrong.”
(The Ideal Husband).
“DE PROFUNDIS”
A Criticism by
Lord Alfred Douglas
In a painful passage in this interesting posthumous book (it takes the form of a letter to an unnamed friend), Oscar Wilde relates how, on November the 13th, 1895, he stood for half an hour on the platform of Clapham Junction, handcuffed and in convict dress, surrounded by an amused and jeering mob. “For a year after that was done to me,” he writes, “I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time.” That was before he had discovered or thought he had discovered that his terrible experiences in prison, his degradation and shame were a part, and a necessary part, of his artistic life, a completion of his incomplete soul. After he had learnt humility in the bitterest school that “man’s inhumanity to man” provides for unwilling scholars, after he had drained the cup of sorrow to the dregs, after his spirit was broken—he wrote this book in which he tried to persuade himself and others that he had learnt by suffering and despair what life and pleasure had never taught him.
If Oscar Wilde’s spirit, returning to this world in a malicious mood, had wished to devise a pleasant and insinuating trap for some of his old enemies of the press, he could scarcely have hit on a better one than this book. I am convinced it was written in passionate sincerity at the time, and yet it represents a mere mood and an unimportant one of the man who wrote it, a mood too which does not even last through the 150 pages of the book. “The English are very fond of a man who admits he has been wrong,” he makes one of his characters in “The Ideal Husband” say, and elsewhere in this book he compares the advantages of pedestals and pillories in their relation to the public’s attitude towards himself. Well here he is in the pillory, and here also is Mr. Courtney in the “Daily Telegraph” getting quite fond of him for the very first time. Here is Oscar Wilde, “a genius,” “incontestably one of the greatest dramatists of modern times” as he is now graciously allowed to be, turning up unexpectedly with an admission that he was in the wrong, and telling us that his life and his art would have been incomplete without his imprisonment, that he has learnt humility and found a new mode of expression in suffering. He is “purged by grief,” “chastened by suffering,” and everything, in short, that he should be, and Mr. Courtney is touched and pleased. What Mr. Courtney and others have failed to realise, and what Wilde himself did realise very soon after he wrote this interesting but rather pathetically ineffective book, is that the mood which produced it was no other than the first symptom of that mental and physical disease generated by suffering and confinement which culminated in the death of its gifted and unfortunate author a few years later. As long as the spirit of revolt was left in Oscar Wilde, so long was left the fire of creative genius. When the spirit of revolt died, the flame began to subside, and continued to subside gradually with spasmodic flickers till its ultimate extinction. “I have got to make everything that has happened good for me.” He writes, “The plank bed, the loathsome food, the hard rope shredded into oakum till one’s finger tips grow dull with pain, the menial offices with which each day begins, the harsh orders that routine seems to necessitate, the dreadful dress that makes sorrow grotesque to look at, the silence, the solitude, the shame—each and all these things I have to transform into a spiritual experience. There is not a single degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualising of the soul.” But, alas! plank beds, loathsome food, menial offices, and oakum picking do not spiritualise the soul; at any rate, they did not spiritualise Oscar Wilde’s soul. The only effect they had was to destroy his magnificent intellect, and even, as some passages in this book show to temporarily cloud his superb sense of humour. The return of freedom gave him back the sense of humour, and the wreck of his magnificent intellect served him so well to the end of his life that, although he had hopelessly lost the power of concentration necessary to the production of literary work, he remained to the day of his death the most brilliant and the most intellectual talker in Europe.
It must not be supposed, however, that this book is not a remarkable book and one which is not worth careful reading. There are fine prose passages in it, and occasional felicities of phrase which recall the Oscar Wilde of “The House of Pomegranates” and the “Prose-Poems,” and here and there rather unexpectedly comes an epigram like this for example: “There were Christians before Christ. For that we should be grateful. The unfortunate thing is that there have been none since.” True, he spoils the epigram by adding, “I make one exception, St. Francis of Assisi.” A concession to the tyranny of facts and the relative importance of sincerity to style, which is most uncharacteristic of the “old Oscar.” Nevertheless, the trace of the master hand is still visible, and the book contains much that is profound and subtle on the philosophy of Christ as conceived by this modern evangelist of the gospel of Life and Literature. One does not travel further than the 33rd page of the book before finding glaring and startling inconsistencies in the mental attitude of the writer towards his fate, for whereas on page 18 in a rather rhetorical passage he speaks of the “eternal disgrace” he had brought on the “noble and honoured name” bequeathed him by his father and mother, on page 33 “Reason” tells him “that the laws under which he was convicted are wrong and unjust laws, and the system under which he has suffered a wrong and unjust system.” But this is the spirit of revolt not quite crushed. He says that if he had been released a year sooner, as in fact he very nearly was, he would have left his prison full of rage and bitterness, and without the treasure of his new-found “Humility.” I am unregenerate enough to wish that he had brought his rage and bitterness with him out of prison. True, he would never have written this book if he had come out of prison a year sooner, but he would almost certainly have written several more incomparable comedies, and we who reverenced him as a great artist in words, and mourned his downfall as an irreparable blow to English Literature would have been spared the rather painful experience of reading the posthumous praise now at last so lavishly given to what certainly cannot rank within measurable distance of his best work.
A.
From “The Motorist and Traveller” (March 1, 1905).
LIST
OF PRIVATELY ISSUED
HISTORICAL, ARTISTIC,
AND CLASSICAL WORKS
IN ENGLISH
| Thaïs | Romance of the Byzantine Empire (Fourth Century) |
From the French of ANATOLE FRANCE
With Twenty Copper-plate Etchings by Martin van Maele
PRICE 21s.
“Thaïs” is a work of religious mysticism. The story of the Priest-hero who sought to stamp out the flames of nature is told with a delicacy and realism that will at once charm and command the reader’s attention. Anatole France is one of the most brilliant literary men in the world, and stands foremost amongst giants like Daudet, Zola, and Maupassant.
The book before us is a historical novel based on the legend of the conversion of the courtesan Thaïs of Alexandria by a monk of the Thebaïd. Thaïs may be described as first cousin to the Pelagia of Charles Kingsley “Hypatia;” indeed, the two books, dealing as they do with the same place and period, Alexandria in the fourth century, offer points of resemblance, as well as of difference, many and various, and sufficiently interesting to be commended to the notice of students of comparative criticism. There is, however, a subtle and profound moral lesson about the work of Mr. Anatole France which is wanting in Kingsley’s shallower and more commonplace conception of human motive and passion. The keynote is struck in the warning which an old schoolfellow of the monk Paphnutius addresses to him when he learns of his intention to snatch Thaïs as a brand from the burning: “Beware of offending Venus. She is a powerful goddess; she will be angry with you if you take away her chief minister.” The monk disregards the warning of the man of the world, and perseveres with his self-imposed task, and that so successfully that Thaïs forsakes her life of pleasure, and ultimately expires in the odour of sanctity. Custodes, sed quis custodiet ipsos? Paphnutius has deceived himself, and has failed to perceive that what he took for zeal for a lost soul was in reality but human desire for a fair face. The monk, who has won Heaven for the beautiful sinner, loses it himself for love of her, and is left at the end, baffled and blaspheming, before the dead body of the woman he has loved all the time without knowing that he loved her.
It is impossible for the reviewer to convey any adequate notion of the subtle skill with which the author deals with a delicate but intensely human theme. Alike as a piece of psychical analysis and as a picture of the age, this book stands head and shoulders above any that we have ever read about the period with which it deals. It is a work of rare beauty, and, we may add, of profound moral truth, albeit not written precisely virginibus puerisque.
It is emphatically the work of a great artist.—(From a Notice in “The Pall Mall Gazette”).
The Well of Santa Clara
This work is, from the deep interest of its contents, the beauty of its typography and paper, and the elegance and daring of the illustrations, one of the finest works in édition de luxe yet offered to the collectors of rare books.
Apart from the other stories, all of them written with that exquisite grace and ironical humour for which Anatole France is unmatched, “The Human Tragedy,” forming half of the book, is alone worthy to rank amongst the master-efforts of literature. The dominant idea of “The Human Tragedy” is foreshadowed by the quotation from Euripedes: All the life of man is full of pain, and there is no surcease of sorrow. If there be aught better elsewhere than this present life, it is hid, shrouded in the clouds of darkness.
The English rendering of this work is, from its purity and strength of style, a veritable tour de force. The book will be prized and appreciated by scholars and lovers of the beautiful in art.
New Grasset characters have been used for this work, limited to 500 numbered copies on handmade paper; each page of text is contained in an artistic green border, and the work in its entirety constitutes a volume of rare excellence.
Twenty-one clever Copper-plate Engravings (in the most finished style) by Martin van Maele.
The Well of Santa Clara
CONTENTS
| Pages | |||
| Prologue.—The Reverend Father Adone Doni | 1 | ||
| I. | San Satiro | 18 | |
| II. | Messer Guido Cavalcanti | 71 | |
| III. | Lucifer | 102 | |
| IV. | The Loaves of Black Bread | 116 | |
| V. | The Merry-hearted Buffalmacco | 126 | |
| I. | The Cockroaches | 127 | |
| II. | The Ascending up of Andria Tafin | 143 | |
| III. | The Master | 163 | |
| IV. | The Painter | 172 | |
| VI. | The Lady of Verona | 184 | |
| VII. | The Human Tragedy | ||
| I. | Fra Giovanni | 193 | |
| II. | The Lamp | 206 | |
| III. | The Seraphic Doctor | 210 | |
| IV. | The Loaf on the Flat Stone | 214 | |
| V. | The Table under the Fig-tree | 218 | |
| VI. | The Temptation | 223 | |
| VII. | The Subtle Doctor | 232 | |
| VIII. | The Burning Coal | 245 | |
| IX. | The House of Innocence | 248 | |
| X. | The Friends of Order | 260 | |
| XI. | The Revolt of Gentleness | 271 | |
| XII. | Words of Love | 280 | |
| XIII. | The Truth | 288 | |
| XIV. | Giovanni’s Dream | 304 | |
| XV. | The Judgment | 317 | |
| XVI. | The Prince of this World | 326 | |
| VIII. | The Mystic Blood | 343 | |
| IX. | A Sound Security | 360 | |
| X. | History of Doña Maria d’Avalos and the Duke d’Andria | 379 | |
| XI. | Bonaparte at San Miniato | 405 | |
Price: One Guinea.
Oscar Wilde’s Works.
Poems in Prose:
| The Artist |  | The Disciple |
| The Doer of Good | The Master | |
| The House of Judgment, etc. | ||
| Limited Edition of Five Hundred Copies on superior English vellum paper, and printed in Grasset characters in red and black. | Price 5s. | |
| Fifty copies on Japanese paper. | Price 10s. |
OSCAR WILDE:
What Never Dies
(Ce qui ne meurt pas)
One Volume small crown 8vo., bound in white parchment. Nearly 400 pages.
Price 10s. 6d.
Translated into English by ‘Sebastian Melmoth’ (Oscar Wilde), from the French of Barbey d’Aurevilly. A strange and powerful romance of LOVE AND PASSION IN A COUNTRY HOUSE, similar to the plot unfolded in Guy de Maupassant’s “Lady’s Man,” but told in even more lordly and brilliant language; the wonderful French of “Barbey” being rendered into yet more wonderful English by Oscar Wilde.
| Sole Authorized Version | THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY |
| By Oscar Wilde |
Limited Edition of One Hundred Copies on Real
Hand-made English paper, Price 15s.
Translated from the Latin by
Oscar Wilde
The Satyricon of Petronius
A Literal and Complete Translation
with Notes and Introduction.
Circular free for 2½d.
Price, £1. 11s. 6d.
Fifteen Copies on Papier de Chine, Price £2. 2s.
This Edition is not only the ... MOST COMPLETE AND BRILLIANT ever done into English, but it constitutes also a typographical bijou, being printed in a limited number on handmade paper in red and black throughout.
Unknown Poems by Lord Byron
DON LEON
| A Poem by the late | Lord Byron |
Author of Childe Harold, Don Juan, etc.
And forming part of the Private
Journal of His Lordship, supposed
to havebeen entirely destroyed
by Thos. Moore.
| “Pardon, dear Tom, these thoughts on days gone by; Me men revile and thou must justify. Yet in my bosom apprehensions rise (For brother poets have their jealousies), Lest under false pretences thou shoudst turn A faithless friend, and these confessions burn.” |
“Don Juan” is generally spoken of as a composition remarkable for its daring gallantry; but here is a long connected poetical work by the same Author which far outdistances “Don Juan” both in audacity of conception and licence of language.
These poems were issued sub rosâ in 1866, and owing to the fact that interested persons bought up immediately on its appearance and burnt the entire output, any stray copies that chanced to escape the general destruction, when they turn up nowadays, fetch from Five to Ten Guineas each.
The size of the book is small crown octavo,
134 pp., in artistic paper wrappers.
This issue has been limited to Two Hundred and Fifty copies as follows:
| Price: | |
| 175 on Ordinary Vellum paper | 10s.6d. |
| 75 on French hand-made paper | £1.1s. |
Detailed circular on demand for 2d.
Curious By-Paths of History
Studies of Louis XIV; Richelieu; Mdlle de la Vallière; Madame de Pompadour; Sophie Arnould’s Sickness; The True Charlotte Corday; A Savage “Hound;” In the Hands of the “Charcutiers;” Napoleon’s Superstitions; The Affair of Madame Récamier and Queen Elizabeth of England, etc.
Followed by a fascinating study of
FLAGELLATION IN FRANCE from a Medical and Historical Standpoint
With special Foreword by the Editor, dealing with the Reviewers of a previous work, and sundry other cognate matters good to be known; particularly concerning the high-handed proceedings of British Philistinism, which here receives “a rap on the knuckles.” A fine realistic Frontispiece after a design by Daniel Vierge, etched by F. Massé.
The whole (in Two Volumes), Price 21s.
With this book is given away (undercover) a fine plate entitled CONJUGAL
CORRECTION, reproduced in Aquatint by the Maison Goupil,
of Paris, after the famous Oil Painting of Correggio.
Fascinating Historical Studies by a French Physician.
The Secret Cabinet of History
Peeped into by a Doctor (Dr. Cabanès)
Translated by W. C. COSTELLO,
And preceded by a letter
from the pen of
M. VICTORIEN SARDOU
(de l’Académie française).
One stout Volume of 260 pages. Edition limited to 500 Copies, on fine quality Dutch (Van Gelder) azure paper, with wide margins and untrimmed edges, specially manufactured for this Edition; cloth bound.
Price 12s. 6d.
The “get up” of the book will please all who like beautiful printing and choice paper.
Although the bizarre character of some of the subjects may tempt us to imagine that it is all a fiction, torn from the “Arabian Nights,” and placed in an Eighteenth Century setting, the references and authorities marshalled by Dr. Cabanès will quickly convince the sceptically inclined that the whole is based on unimpeachable documents.
“Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles”
(Louis XI.)
Done now for the first time into English.
One Hundred Merrie and Delightsome Stories
right pleasaunte to relate in all goodly compagnie by way of joyaunce and jollity
Two volumes demy 8vo., over 526 pages on fine English antique
deckle-edged paper, with Fifty Coloured Illustrations by
LÉON LEBÈQUE, the whole strongly bound in
English water-coloured Silk Cloth.
Price £3.3s.
500 NUMBERED COPIES PRINTED
For England and America
ALSO 75 LARGE NUMBERED COPIES
Printed on Japanese vellum
PRICE: £5. 5s. net
Although this work has been published many times in French during the last four-and-a half centuries, it has never hitherto been done into English, and in fact is little known in England at all on account of its archaic form, which renders the reading of the original impossible to any but a student of old French.
Very little inferior to Boccaccio and far superior to the Heptameron, the stories possess a brightness and gaiety entirely their own; moreover they are of high literary merit.
Illustrated Circular free by post for 5d.
The ...
Evolution and Dissolution of the Sexual Instinct ...
By ... Doctor Charles FÉRÉ of the Bicêtre Hospital, (PARIS)
Price: 21s.
“Truth and science are never immoral; but it cannot be denied that the narration of facts relating to sexual physiology and pathology, if their real significance is not pointed out, may be the cause of perversion in the case of predisposed subjects. The danger appears more serious to those who think that normal individuals may be perverted under the influence of environment, and yet more serious when the sexual instinct is represented as an uncontrollable instinct, which nobody can resist, however abnormal the form in which the instinct may reveal itself.”
The Only Worthy Translation into French
OSCAR WILDE
Intentions
Traduction française de HUGUES REBELL
Préface de CHARLES GROLLEAU
Orné d’un portrait
Un volume in-8o carré. Impression de luxe sur antique vellum.
Prix: 6 francs.
Il a été tiré trente exemplaires sur Japon impérial.
Prix: 12 francs.
PARIS
CHARLES CARRINGTON, LIBRAIRE-EDITEUR
13, Faubourg Montmartre, 13
1906
NOTICE
“INTENTIONS” est un des ouvrages les plus curieux qui se puisse lire. On y trouve tout l’esprit, si paradoxal, toute l’étonnante culture du brillant écrivain que fut Oscar WILDE.
Des cinq Essais que contient ce livre, trois sont sous forme de dialogue et donnent l’impression parfaite de ce qui fut le plus grand prestige de WILDE: la Causerie.
La traduction que nous publions aujourd’hui, outre sa fidélité scrupuleuse et son incontestable élégance, offre cet attrait particulier d’être le dernier travail d’un des jeunes maîtres de la prose française, Hugues REBELL, qui l’acheva peu de jours avant sa mort.
La préface de M. Charles GROLLEAU, écrite avec une délicatesse remarquable et une émotion pénétrante, constitue la plus subtile étude psychologique que l’on ait jamais publiée sur Oscar WILDE.
Sous presse:
Du même Auteur:
Poèmes en Prose.
La Duchesse de Padoue.
La Maison des Grenades.
L’œuvre d’Oscar Wilde demande à être traduite à la fois avec précision et avec art. Les phrases ont des significations si ténues et le choix des mots est si habile qu’une traduction défectueuse, abondante en contre-sens ou en coquilles, risquerait de décevoir grandement le lecteur. Car il faut bien compter que ceux qui se soucient de connaître Oscar Wilde ne peuvent être ni des concierges ni des cochers de fiacre; ils n’appartiennent certainement pas à ce «grand public» qui se délecte aux émouvants feuilletons de nos quotidiens populaires ou qui savoure avidement les élucubrations égrillardes de certains fabricants de prétendue littérature. C’est ce qu’avait compris l’éditeur Carrington quand il chargea Hugues Rebell de lui traduire Intentions. Ces essais d’Oscar Wilde représentent plus particulièrement le côté paradoxal et frondeur de sa personalité. Il y exprime ses idées ou plutôt ses subtilités esthétiques; il y «cause» plus qu’ailleurs, à tel point que trois de ces essais sur cinq sont dialogués; l’auteur s’entretient avec des personnages qu’il suppose aussi cultivés, aussi beaux esprits que lui-même: «s’entretient» est beaucoup dire, car ce sont plutôt des contradicteurs auxquels il suggère les objections dont il a besoin pour poursuivre le développement et le triomphe de ses arguments. La conversation vagabonde à plaisir et le causeur y fait étalage de toutes les richesses de son esprit, de son imagination, de sa mémoire. Au milieu de ces citations, de ces allusions, de ces exemples innombrables empruntés à tous les temps et à tous les pays, le traducteur a chance de s’égarer s’il n’est lui-même homme d’une culture très sûre et très variée. Hugues Rebell pouvait, sans danger de paraître ignorant ou ridicule, entreprendre de donner une version d’Intentions. Il n’avait certes pas fait de la littérature anglaise contemporaine, non plus que d’aucune époque, l’objet d’études spéciales. Mais il connaissait cette littérature dans son ensemble beaucoup mieux que certains qui s’autorisent de quelques excursions à Londres pour clamer à tout venant leur compétence douteuse. J’ai souvenir de maintes occasions où Rebell, avec cet air mystérieux qu’il ne pouvait s’empêcher de prendre pour les choses les plus simples, m’attirait à l’écart de tel groupe d’amis, où la conversation était générale, pour me parler de tel jeune auteur sur qui l’une de mes chroniques avait attiré son attention. Et, chaque fois, il faisait preuve, en ces matières, d’un savoir très étendu.
Hugues Rebell fit donc cette nécessaire traduction, et, dit l’éditeur dans une note préliminaire, «c’est le dernier travail auquel il put se livrer. Il nous en remit les derniers feuillets peu de jours avant sa mort». Rebell devait préfacer ce travail d’une étude sur la vie et les oeuvres du poète anglais, étude qu’il ne put qu’ébaucher, malheureusement, car, avec Gide,—mais celui-ci d’un point de vue différent et peut-être opposé,—il était exclusivement qualifié pour saisir, démêler et interpréter l’étrange personnalité de Wilde. Quelques fragments de cette étude nous sont donnés cependant et ils nous font très vivement regretter que le vigoureux et paradoxal auteur de l’Union des Trois Aristocraties n’ait pu achever son travail.
Mais ce regret bien légitime se mitige grandement à mesure qu’on lit la belle préface de M. Charles Grolleau. Prenant pour épigraphe cette pensée de Pascal: «Je blâme également et ceux qui prennent le parti de louer l’homme, et ceux qui le prennent de le blâmer, et ceux qui le prennent de se divertir; et je ne puis approuver que ceux qui cherchent en gémissant», M. Grolleau s’efforce de comprendre et de résoudre ce «douloureux problème» que fut Wilde. Et il le fait avec cette réserve et ce parfait bon goût que doivent s’imposer les véritables amis et les sincères admirateurs d’Oscar Wilde. Il y a plus, dans ces cinquante pages: il y a l’une des meilleures études qui aient jamais été faites du brillant dramaturge. Bien qu’il s’en défende, M. Grolleau, dans cette langue élégante et harmonieuse que lui connaissent ceux qui ont lu ses beaux vers, réussit a discerner mieux et à mieux révéler que certaines diatribes «l’âme et la passion» de l’auteur de De Profundis.
Je me suis interdit d’écrire une biographie. Je ne connais que l’écrivain, et l’homme est trop vivant encore et si blessé! J’ai la dévotion des plaies, et le plus beau rite de cette dévotion est le geste qui voile.
Toute «cette meditation sur une âme très belle» est écrite avec ce tact délicat et cette tendre sympathie. Ainsi, après avoir admiré ces émouvantes pages, le lecteur peut aborder dans un état d’esprit convenable les essais parfois déconcertants qui sont réunis sous le titre significatif d’Intentions. C’est dans cette belle édition qu’il faut les lire. On sait avec quel souci d’artiste M. Carrington établit ses volumes; il n’y laisse pas de ces incroyables coquilles, de ces épais mastics qui ressemblent si fort à des contre-sens, et, sachant quel public intelligent et éclairé voudrait ce livre, il n’a pas eu l’idée saugrenue d’abîmer ses pages par d’inutiles notes assurant le lecteur par exemple que Dante a écrit la Divine Comédie, que Shelley fut un grand poète, que Keats mourut poitrinaire, que George Eliot était femme de lettres et Lancret peintre. Un portrait de l’auteur est reproduit en tête de cette excellente édition.
Henry-D. Davray.
(Extrait du “Mercure de France,” 15 septembre 1905).
Footnotes:
[1] Hugues Rebell.
[2] Hugues Rebell.
[3] Sebastian Melmoth (Oscar Wilde).
[4] Hugues Rebell.
[5] De Profundis.
[6] Hugues Rebell.
[7] Studies in Prose & Verse, by Arthur Symons. (Lond. 1905).
[8] Sebastian Melmoth.
[9] Intentions.
[10] Hugues Rebell.
[11] Macaulay.
[12] De Profundis, 1905.
[13] De Profundis, 1905.
[14] Both of the articles given above appeared for the first time in the St. James’s Gazette.
The Trial
of
Oscar Wilde
FROM THE SHORTHAND REPORTS
Then gently scan your brither man,
Still gentler, sister woman,
Though they may gang a’ kennin’ wrang,
To step aside is human.
Robt. Burns.
PARIS
PRIVATELY PRINTED
1906