De Profundis - Oscar Wilde by Oscar Wilde
Author:Oscar Wilde
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Irish, Literary Collections, Letters, Welsh, Scottish, Fiction, Literary Criticism, English, Classics, European
ISBN: 9781604244625
Publisher: Book Jungle
Published: 2007-11-08T08:59:04.477000+00:00
I knew the Church condemned accidia, but the whole idea seemed to me quite fantastic, just the sort of sin, I fancied, a priest who knew nothing about real life would invent. Nor could I understand how Dante, who says that “sorrow remarries us to God,” 38 could have been so harsh to those who were enamoured of melancholy, if any such there really were. I had no idea that some day this would become to me one of the greatest temptations of my life.
While I was in Wandsworth Prison I longed to die. It was my one desire. When after two months in the Infirmary I was transferred here, and found myself growing gradually better in physical health, I was filled with rage. I determined to commit suicide on the very day on which I left prison. After a time that evil mood passed away, and I made up my mind to live, but to wear gloom as a King wears purple: never to smile again: to turn whatever house I entered into a house of mourning: to make my friends walk slowly in sadness with me: to teach them that melancholy is the true secret of life: to maim them with an alien sorrow: to mar them with my own pain. Now I feel quite differently. I see it would be both ungrateful and unkind of me to pull so long a face that when my friends came to see me they would have to make their faces still longer in order to show their sympathy, or, if I desired to entertain them, to invite them to sit down silently to bitter herbs and funeral baked meats. I must learn how to be cheerful and happy.
The last two occasions on which I was allowed to see my friends here I tried to be as cheerful as possible, and to show my cheerfulness in order to make them some slight return for their trouble in coming all the way from town to visit me. It is only a slight return, I know, but it is the one, I feel certain, that pleases them most. I saw Robbie for an hour on Saturday week, and I tried to give the fullest possible expression to the delight I really felt at our meeting. And that, in the views and ideas I am here shaping for myself, I am quite right is shown to me by the fact that now for the first time since my imprisonment I have a real desire to live.
There is before me so much to do that I would regard it as a terrible tragedy if I died before I was allowed to complete at any rate a little of it. I see new developments in Art and Life, each one of which is a fresh mode of perfection. I long to live so that I can explore what is no less than a new world to me. Do you want to know what this new world is? I think you can guess what it is.
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Books & Reading | Comparative Literature |
Criticism & Theory | Genres & Styles |
Movements & Periods | Reference |
Regional & Cultural | Women Authors |
4 3 2 1: A Novel by Paul Auster(11790)
The handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood(7448)
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin(6809)
Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking by M. Neil Browne & Stuart M. Keeley(5356)
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert(5352)
Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday(4957)
On Writing A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King(4663)
The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson(4583)
Ken Follett - World without end by Ken Follett(4443)
Bluets by Maggie Nelson(4261)
Adulting by Kelly Williams Brown(4234)
Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy(4149)
Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K Hamilton(4116)
White Noise - A Novel by Don DeLillo(3829)
The Poetry of Pablo Neruda by Pablo Neruda(3815)
Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock(3738)
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read(3730)
The Book of Joy by Dalai Lama(3697)
The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald(3619)
