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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/921-h.zip b/921-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0fe001d --- /dev/null +++ b/921-h.zip diff --git a/921-h/921-h.htm b/921-h/921-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..73856cf --- /dev/null +++ b/921-h/921-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2105 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>De Profundis</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + TD { vertical-align: top; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: De Profundis + + +Author: Oscar Wilde + + + +Release Date: April 13, 2007 [eBook #921] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DE PROFUNDIS*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1913 Methuen & Co. edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Note that later editions of +De Profundis contained more material. The most complete +editions are still in copyright in the U.S.A.</p> +<h1>DE PROFUNDIS</h1> +<p>. . . Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot +divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and +chronicle their return. With us time itself does not +progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one +centre of pain. The paralysing immobility of a life every +circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, +so that we eat and drink and lie down and pray, or kneel at least +for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula: +this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in the very +minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate itself to +those external forces the very essence of whose existence is +ceaseless change. Of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers +bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through +the vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken +blossoms or strewn with fallen fruit: of these we know nothing +and can know nothing.</p> +<p>For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. +The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day +may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the +thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath +which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight +in one’s cell, as it is always twilight in one’s +heart. And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the +sphere of time, motion is no more. The thing that you +personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is +happening to me now, and will happen to me again to-morrow. +Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why +I am writing, and in this manner writing. . . .</p> +<p>A week later, I am transferred here. Three more months +go over and my mother dies. No one knew how deeply I loved +and honoured her. Her death was terrible to me; but I, once +a lord of language, have no words in which to express my anguish +and my shame. She and my father had bequeathed me a name +they had made noble and honoured, not merely in literature, art, +archaeology, and science, but in the public history of my own +country, in its evolution as a nation. I had disgraced that +name eternally. I had made it a low by-word among low +people. I had dragged it through the very mire. I had +given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools +that they might turn it into a synonym for folly. What I +suffered then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write or paper +to record. My wife, always kind and gentle to me, rather +than that I should hear the news from indifferent lips, +travelled, ill as she was, all the way from Genoa to England to +break to me herself the tidings of so irreparable, so +irremediable, a loss. Messages of sympathy reached me from +all who had still affection for me. Even people who had not +known me personally, hearing that a new sorrow had broken into my +life, wrote to ask that some expression of their condolence +should be conveyed to me. . . .</p> +<p>Three months go over. The calendar of my daily conduct +and labour that hangs on the outside of my cell door, with my +name and sentence written upon it, tells me that it is May. . . +.</p> +<p>Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and +common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created +things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of +thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and +exquisite pulsation. The thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous +gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see +is in comparison coarse. It is a wound that bleeds when any +hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, +though not in pain.</p> +<p>Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Some day +people will realise what that means. They will know nothing +of life till they do,—and natures like his can realise +it. When I was brought down from my prison to the Court of +Bankruptcy, between two policemen,—waited in the long +dreary corridor that, before the whole crowd, whom an action so +sweet and simple hushed into silence, he might gravely raise his +hat to me, as, handcuffed and with bowed head, I passed him +by. Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than +that. It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love, +that the saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or +stooped to kiss the leper on the cheek. I have never said +one single word to him about what he did. I do not know to +the present moment whether he is aware that I was even conscious +of his action. It is not a thing for which one can render +formal thanks in formal words. I store it in the +treasure-house of my heart. I keep it there as a secret +debt that I am glad to think I can never possibly repay. It +is embalmed and kept sweet by the myrrh and cassia of many +tears. When wisdom has been profitless to me, philosophy +barren, and the proverbs and phrases of those who have sought to +give me consolation as dust and ashes in my mouth, the memory of +that little, lovely, silent act of love has unsealed for me all +the wells of pity: made the desert blossom like a rose, and +brought me out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony +with the wounded, broken, and great heart of the world. +When people are able to understand, not merely how beautiful +---’s action was, but why it meant so much to me, and +always will mean so much, then, perhaps, they will realise how +and in what spirit they should approach me. . . .</p> +<p>The poor are wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive +than we are. In their eyes prison is a tragedy in a +man’s life, a misfortune, a casuality, something that calls +for sympathy in others. They speak of one who is in prison +as of one who is ‘in trouble’ simply. It is the +phrase they always use, and the expression has the perfect wisdom +of love in it. With people of our own rank it is +different. With us, prison makes a man a pariah. I, +and such as I am, have hardly any right to air and sun. Our +presence taints the pleasures of others. We are unwelcome +when we reappear. To revisit the glimpses of the moon is +not for us. Our very children are taken away. Those +lovely links with humanity are broken. We are doomed to be +solitary, while our sons still live. We are denied the one +thing that might heal us and keep us, that might bring balm to +the bruised heart, and peace to the soul in pain. . . .</p> +<p>I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody +great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am +quite ready to say so. I am trying to say so, though they +may not think it at the present moment. This pitiless +indictment I bring without pity against myself. Terrible as +was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more +terrible still.</p> +<p>I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and +culture of my age. I had realised this for myself at the +very dawn of my manhood, and had forced my age to realise it +afterwards. Few men hold such a position in their own +lifetime, and have it so acknowledged. It is usually +discerned, if discerned at all, by the historian, or the critic, +long after both the man and his age have passed away. With +me it was different. I felt it myself, and made others feel +it. Byron was a symbolic figure, but his relations were to +the passion of his age and its weariness of passion. Mine +were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital +issue, of larger scope.</p> +<p>The gods had given me almost everything. But I let +myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual +ease. I amused myself with being a <i>flâneur</i>, a +dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the +smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the +spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave +me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I +deliberately went to the depths in the search for new +sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of +thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. +Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I +grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where +it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little +action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that +therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some +day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over +myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not +know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended +in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, +absolute humility.</p> +<p>I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my +nature has come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was +piteous even to look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness +and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no +voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through every +possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself +I know what Wordsworth meant when he said—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Suffering is permanent, obscure, and +dark<br /> +And has the nature of infinity.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But while there were times when I rejoiced in the idea that my +sufferings were to be endless, I could not bear them to be +without meaning. Now I find hidden somewhere away in my +nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is +meaningless, and suffering least of all. That something +hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is +Humility.</p> +<p>It is the last thing left in me, and the best: the ultimate +discovery at which I have arrived, the starting-point for a fresh +development. It has come to me right out of myself, so I +know that it has come at the proper time. It could not have +come before, nor later. Had any one told me of it, I would +have rejected it. Had it been brought to me, I would have +refused it. As I found it, I want to keep it. I must +do so. It is the one thing that has in it the elements of +life, of a new life, <i>Vita Nuova</i> for me. Of all +things it is the strangest. One cannot acquire it, except +by surrendering everything that one has. It is only when +one has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses +it.</p> +<p>Now I have realised that it is in me, I see quite clearly what +I ought to do; in fact, must do. And when I use such a +phrase as that, I need not say that I am not alluding to any +external sanction or command. I admit none. I am far +more of an individualist than I ever was. Nothing seems to +me of the smallest value except what one gets out of +oneself. My nature is seeking a fresh mode of +self-realisation. That is all I am concerned with. +And the first thing that I have got to do is to free myself from +any possible bitterness of feeling against the world.</p> +<p>I am completely penniless, and absolutely homeless. Yet +there are worse things in the world than that. I am quite +candid when I say that rather than go out from this prison with +bitterness in my heart against the world, I would gladly and +readily beg my bread from door to door. If I got nothing +from the house of the rich I would get something at the house of +the poor. Those who have much are often greedy; those who +have little always share. I would not a bit mind sleeping +in the cool grass in summer, and when winter came on sheltering +myself by the warm close-thatched rick, or under the penthouse of +a great barn, provided I had love in my heart. The external +things of life seem to me now of no importance at all. You +can see to what intensity of individualism I have +arrived—or am arriving rather, for the journey is long, and +‘where I walk there are thorns.’</p> +<p>Of course I know that to ask alms on the highway is not to be +my lot, and that if ever I lie in the cool grass at night-time it +will be to write sonnets to the moon. When I go out of +prison, R--- will be waiting for me on the other side of the big +iron-studded gate, and he is the symbol, not merely of his own +affection, but of the affection of many others besides. I +believe I am to have enough to live on for about eighteen months +at any rate, so that if I may not write beautiful books, I may at +least read beautiful books; and what joy can be greater? +After that, I hope to be able to recreate my creative +faculty.</p> +<p>But were things different: had I not a friend left in the +world; were there not a single house open to me in pity; had I to +accept the wallet and ragged cloak of sheer penury: as long as I +am free from all resentment, hardness and scorn, I would be able +to face the life with much more calm and confidence than I would +were my body in purple and fine linen, and the soul within me +sick with hate.</p> +<p>And I really shall have no difficulty. When you really +want love you will find it waiting for you.</p> +<p>I need not say that my task does not end there. It would +be comparatively easy if it did. There is much more before +me. I have hills far steeper to climb, valleys much darker +to pass through. And I have to get it all out of +myself. Neither religion, morality, nor reason can help me +at all.</p> +<p>Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian. +I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for +laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what +one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one +becomes. It is well to have learned that.</p> +<p>Religion does not help me. The faith that others give to +what is unseen, I give to what one can touch, and look at. +My gods dwell in temples made with hands; and within the circle +of actual experience is my creed made perfect and complete: too +complete, it may be, for like many or all of those who have +placed their heaven in this earth, I have found in it not merely +the beauty of heaven, but the horror of hell also. When I +think about religion at all, I feel as if I would like to found +an order for those who <i>cannot</i> believe: the Confraternity +of the Faithless, one might call it, where on an altar, on which +no taper burned, a priest, in whose heart peace had no dwelling, +might celebrate with unblessed bread and a chalice empty of +wine. Every thing to be true must become a religion. +And agnosticism should have its ritual no less than faith. +It has sown its martyrs, it should reap its saints, and praise +God daily for having hidden Himself from man. But whether +it be faith or agnosticism, it must be nothing external to +me. Its symbols must be of my own creating. Only that +is spiritual which makes its own form. If I may not find +its secret within myself, I shall never find it: if I have not +got it already, it will never come to me.</p> +<p>Reason does not help me. It tells me that the laws under +which I am convicted are wrong and unjust laws, and the system +under which I have suffered a wrong and unjust system. But, +somehow, I have got to make both of these things just and right +to me. And exactly as in Art one is only concerned with +what a particular thing is at a particular moment to oneself, so +it is also in the ethical evolution of one’s +character. I have got to make everything that has happened +to me good for me. The plank bed, the loathsome food, the +hard ropes shredded into oakum till one’s finger-tips grow +dull with pain, the menial offices with which each day begins and +finishes, 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 of 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.</p> +<p>I want to get to the point when I shall be able to say quite +simply, and without affectation that the two great turning-points +in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when +society sent me to prison. I will not say that prison is +the best thing that could have happened to me: for that phrase +would savour of too great bitterness towards myself. I +would sooner say, or hear it said of me, that I was so typical a +child of my age, that in my perversity, and for that +perversity’s sake, I turned the good things of my life to +evil, and the evil things of my life to good.</p> +<p>What is said, however, by myself or by others, matters +little. The important thing, the thing that lies before me, +the thing that I have to do, if the brief remainder of my days is +not to be maimed, marred, and incomplete, is to absorb into my +nature all that has been done to me, to make it part of me, to +accept it without complaint, fear, or reluctance. The +supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realised is +right.</p> +<p>When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try +and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is +only by realising what I am that I have found comfort of any +kind. Now I am advised by others to try on my release to +forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know +that would be equally fatal. It would mean that I would +always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that +those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody +else—the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the +seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, +the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the +grass and making it silver—would all be tainted for me, and +lose their healing power, and their power of communicating +joy. To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest +one’s own development. To deny one’s own +experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own +life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.</p> +<p>For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things +common and unclean no less than those that the priest or a vision +has cleansed, and converts them into swiftness or strength, into +the play of beautiful muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, +into the curves and colours of the hair, the lips, the eye; so +the soul in its turn has its nutritive functions also, and can +transform into noble moods of thought and passions of high import +what in itself is base, cruel and degrading; nay, more, may find +in these its most august modes of assertion, and can often reveal +itself most perfectly through what was intended to desecrate or +destroy.</p> +<p>The fact of my having been the common prisoner of a common +gaol I must frankly accept, and, curious as it may seem, one of +the things I shall have to teach myself is not to be ashamed of +it. I must accept it as a punishment, and if one is ashamed +of having been punished, one might just as well never have been +punished at all. Of course there are many things of which I +was convicted that I had not done, but then there are many things +of which I was convicted that I had done, and a still greater +number of things in my life for which I was never indicted at +all. And as the gods are strange, and punish us for what is +good and humane in us as much as for what is evil and perverse, I +must accept the fact that one is punished for the good as well as +for the evil that one does. I have no doubt that it is +quite right one should be. It helps one, or should help +one, to realise both, and not to be too conceited about +either. And if I then am not ashamed of my punishment, as I +hope not to be, I shall be able to think, and walk, and live with +freedom.</p> +<p>Many men on their release carry their prison about with them +into the air, and hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, +and at length, like poor poisoned things, creep into some hole +and die. It is wretched that they should have to do so, and +it is wrong, terribly wrong, of society that it should force them +to do so. Society takes upon itself the right to inflict +appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the +supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has +done. When the man’s punishment is over, it leaves +him to himself; that is to say, it abandons him at the very +moment when its highest duty towards him begins. It is +really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has +punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they cannot pay, +or one on whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an +irremediable wrong. I can claim on my side that if I +realise what I have suffered, society should realise what it has +inflicted on me; and that there should be no bitterness or hate +on either side.</p> +<p>Of course I know that from one point of view things will be +made different for me than for others; must indeed, by the very +nature of the case, be made so. The poor thieves and +outcasts who are imprisoned here with me are in many respects +more fortunate than I am. The little way in grey city or +green field that saw their sin is small; to find those who know +nothing of what they have done they need go no further than a +bird might fly between the twilight and the dawn; but for me the +world is shrivelled to a handsbreadth, and everywhere I turn my +name is written on the rocks in lead. For I have come, not +from obscurity into the momentary notoriety of crime, but from a +sort of eternity of fame to a sort of eternity of infamy, and +sometimes seem to myself to have shown, if indeed it required +showing, that between the famous and the infamous there is but +one step, if as much as one.</p> +<p>Still, in the very fact that people will recognise me wherever +I go, and know all about my life, as far as its follies go, I can +discern something good for me. It will force on me the +necessity of again asserting myself as an artist, and as soon as +I possibly can. If I can produce only one beautiful work of +art I shall be able to rob malice of its venom, and cowardice of +its sneer, and to pluck out the tongue of scorn by the roots.</p> +<p>And if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less +a problem to life. People must adopt some attitude towards +me, and so pass judgment, both on themselves and me. I need +not say I am not talking of particular individuals. The +only people I would care to be with now are artists and people +who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who +know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me. Nor am I +making any demands on life. In all that I have said I am +simply concerned with my own mental attitude towards life as a +whole; and I feel that not to be ashamed of having been punished +is one of the first points I must attain to, for the sake of my +own perfection, and because I am so imperfect.</p> +<p>Then I must learn how to be happy. Once I knew it, or +thought I knew it, by instinct. It was always springtime +once in my heart. My temperament was akin to joy. I +filled my life to the very brim with pleasure, as one might fill +a cup to the very brim with wine. Now I am approaching life +from a completely new standpoint, and even to conceive happiness +is often extremely difficult for me. I remember during my +first term at Oxford reading in Pater’s +<i>Renaissance</i>—that book which has had such strange +influence over my life—how Dante places low in the Inferno +those who wilfully live in sadness; and going to the college +library and turning to the passage in the <i>Divine Comedy</i> +where beneath the dreary marsh lie those who were ‘sullen +in the sweet air,’ saying for ever and ever through their +sighs—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Tristi fummo<br /> +Nell aer dolce che dal sol s’allegra.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I knew the church condemned <i>accidia</i>, 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,’ 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 see me. It +is only a slight return, I know, but it is the one, I feel +certain, that pleases them most. I saw R--- for an hour on +Saturday week, and I tried to give the fullest possible +expression of 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 for life.</p> +<p>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. It is the world +in which I have been living. Sorrow, then, and all that it +teaches one, is my new world.</p> +<p>I used to live entirely for pleasure. I shunned +suffering and sorrow of every kind. I hated both. I +resolved to ignore them as far as possible: to treat them, that +is to say, as modes of imperfection. They were not part of +my scheme of life. They had no place in my +philosophy. My mother, who knew life as a whole, used often +to quote to me Goethe’s lines—written by Carlyle in a +book he had given her years ago, and translated by him, I fancy, +also:—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Who never ate his bread in sorrow,<br /> +Who never spent the midnight hours<br /> +Weeping and waiting for the morrow,—<br /> +He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>They were the lines which that noble Queen of Prussia, whom +Napoleon treated with such coarse brutality, used to quote in her +humiliation and exile; they were the lines my mother often quoted +in the troubles of her later life. I absolutely declined to +accept or admit the enormous truth hidden in them. I could +not understand it. I remember quite well how I used to tell +her that I did not want to eat my bread in sorrow, or to pass any +night weeping and watching for a more bitter dawn.</p> +<p>I had no idea that it was one of the special things that the +Fates had in store for me: that for a whole year of my life, +indeed, I was to do little else. But so has my portion been +meted out to me; and during the last few months I have, after +terrible difficulties and struggles, been able to comprehend some +of the lessons hidden in the heart of pain. Clergymen and +people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering +as a mystery. It is really a revelation. One discerns +things one never discerned before. One approaches the whole +of history from a different standpoint. What one had felt +dimly, through instinct, about art, is intellectually and +emotionally realised with perfect clearness of vision and +absolute intensity of apprehension.</p> +<p>I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man +is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art. +What the artist is always looking for is the mode of existence in +which soul and body are one and indivisible: in which the outward +is expressive of the inward: in which form reveals. Of such +modes of existence there are not a few: youth and the arts +preoccupied with youth may serve as a model for us at one moment: +at another we may like to think that, in its subtlety and +sensitiveness of impression, its suggestion of a spirit dwelling +in external things and making its raiment of earth and air, of +mist and city alike, and in its morbid sympathy of its moods, and +tones, and colours, modern landscape art is realising for us +pictorially what was realised in such plastic perfection by the +Greeks. Music, in which all subject is absorbed in +expression and cannot be separated from it, is a complex example, +and a flower or a child a simple example, of what I mean; but +sorrow is the ultimate type both in life and art.</p> +<p>Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, +hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always +sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. Truth +in art is not any correspondence between the essential idea and +the accidental existence; it is not the resemblance of shape to +shadow, or of the form mirrored in the crystal to the form +itself; it is no echo coming from a hollow hill, any more than it +is a silver well of water in the valley that shows the moon to +the moon and Narcissus to Narcissus. Truth in art is the +unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of +the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with +spirit. For this reason there is no truth comparable to +sorrow. There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the +only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the +appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of +sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or +a star there is pain.</p> +<p>More than this, there is about sorrow an intense, an +extraordinary reality. I have said of myself that I was one +who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my +age. There is not a single wretched man in this wretched +place along with me who does not stand in symbolic relation to +the very secret of life. For the secret of life is +suffering. It is what is hidden behind everything. +When we begin to live, what is sweet is so sweet to us, and what +is bitter so bitter, that we inevitably direct all our desires +towards pleasures, and seek not merely for a ‘month or +twain to feed on honeycomb,’ but for all our years to taste +no other food, ignorant all the while that we may really be +starving the soul.</p> +<p>I remember talking once on this subject to one of the most +beautiful personalities I have ever known: a woman, whose +sympathy and noble kindness to me, both before and since the +tragedy of my imprisonment, have been beyond power and +description; one who has really assisted me, though she does not +know it, to bear the burden of my troubles more than any one else +in the whole world has, and all through the mere fact of her +existence, through her being what she is—partly an ideal +and partly an influence: a suggestion of what one might become as +well as a real help towards becoming it; a soul that renders the +common air sweet, and makes what is spiritual seem as simple and +natural as sunlight or the sea: one for whom beauty and sorrow +walk hand in hand, and have the same message. On the +occasion of which I am thinking I recall distinctly how I said to +her that there was enough suffering in one narrow London lane to +show that God did not love man, and that wherever there was any +sorrow, though but that of a child, in some little garden weeping +over a fault that it had or had not committed, the whole face of +creation was completely marred. I was entirely wrong. +She told me so, but I could not believe her. I was not in +the sphere in which such belief was to be attained to. Now +it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible +explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there +is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other +explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and +that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of +sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no +other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, +reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the +beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul.</p> +<p>When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with +too much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see +the city of God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a +child could reach it in a summer’s day. And so a +child could. But with me and such as me it is +different. One can realise a thing in a single moment, but +one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden +feet. It is so difficult to keep ‘heights that the +soul is competent to gain.’ We think in eternity, but +we move slowly through time; and how slowly time goes with us who +lie in prison I need not tell again, nor of the weariness and +despair that creep back into one’s cell, and into the cell +of one’s heart, with such strange insistence that one has, +as it were, to garnish and sweep one’s house for their +coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slave +whose slave it is one’s chance or choice to be.</p> +<p>And, though at present my friends may find it a hard thing to +believe, it is true none the less, that for them living in +freedom and idleness and comfort it is more easy to learn the +lessons of humility than it is for me, who begin the day by going +down on my knees and washing the floor of my cell. For +prison life with its endless privations and restrictions makes +one rebellious. The most terrible thing about it is not +that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are made to be +broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone. +One sometimes feels that it is only with a front of brass and a +lip of scorn that one can get through the day at all. And +he who is in a state of rebellion cannot receive grace, to use +the phrase of which the Church is so fond—so rightly fond, +I dare say—for in life as in art the mood of rebellion +closes up the channels of the soul, and shuts out the airs of +heaven. Yet I must learn these lessons here, if I am to +learn them anywhere, and must be filled with joy if my feet are +on the right road and my face set towards ‘the gate which +is called beautiful,’ though I may fall many times in the +mire and often in the mist go astray.</p> +<p>This New Life, as through my love of Dante I like sometimes to +call it, is of course no new life at all, but simply the +continuance, by means of development, and evolution, of my former +life. I remember when I was at Oxford saying to one of my +friends as we were strolling round Magdalen’s narrow +bird-haunted walks one morning in the year before I took my +degree, that I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the +garden of the world, and that I was going out into the world with +that passion in my soul. And so, indeed, I went out, and so +I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so +exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of +the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its +gloom. Failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, +suffering, tears even, the broken words that come from lips in +pain, remorse that makes one walk on thorns, conscience that +condemns, self-abasement that punishes, the misery that puts +ashes on its head, the anguish that chooses sack-cloth for its +raiment and into its own drink puts gall:—all these were +things of which I was afraid. And as I had determined to +know nothing of them, I was forced to taste each of them in turn, +to feed on them, to have for a season, indeed, no other food at +all.</p> +<p>I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for +pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything +that one does. There was no pleasure I did not +experience. I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of +wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of +flutes. I lived on honeycomb. But to have continued +the same life would have been wrong because it would have been +limiting. I had to pass on. The other half of the +garden had its secrets for me also. Of course all this is +foreshadowed and prefigured in my books. Some of it is in +<i>The Happy Prince</i>, some of it in <i>The Young King</i>, +notably in the passage where the bishop says to the kneeling boy, +‘Is not He who made misery wiser than thou art’? a +phrase which when I wrote it seemed to me little more than a +phrase; a great deal of it is hidden away in the note of doom +that like a purple thread runs through the texture of <i>Dorian +Gray</i>; in <i>The Critic as Artist</i> it is set forth in many +colours; in <i>The Soul of Man</i> it is written down, and in +letters too easy to read; it is one of the refrains whose +recurring <i>motifs</i> make <i>Salome</i> so like a piece of +music and bind it together as a ballad; in the prose poem of the +man who from the bronze of the image of the ‘Pleasure that +liveth for a moment’ has to make the image of the +‘Sorrow that abideth for ever’ it is incarnate. +It could not have been otherwise. At every single moment of +one’s life one is what one is going to be no less than what +one has been. Art is a symbol, because man is a symbol.</p> +<p>It is, if I can fully attain to it, the ultimate realisation +of the artistic life. For the artistic life is simply +self-development. Humility in the artist is his frank +acceptance of all experiences, just as love in the artist is +simply the sense of beauty that reveals to the world its body and +its soul. In <i>Marius the Epicurean</i> Pater seeks to +reconcile the artistic life with the life of religion, in the +deep, sweet, and austere sense of the word. But Marius is +little more than a spectator: an ideal spectator indeed, and one +to whom it is given ‘to contemplate the spectacle of life +with appropriate emotions,’ which Wordsworth defines as the +poet’s true aim; yet a spectator merely, and perhaps a +little too much occupied with the comeliness of the benches of +the sanctuary to notice that it is the sanctuary of sorrow that +he is gazing at.</p> +<p>I see a far more intimate and immediate connection between the +true life of Christ and the true life of the artist; and I take a +keen pleasure in the reflection that long before sorrow had made +my days her own and bound me to her wheel I had written in <i>The +Soul of Man</i> that he who would lead a Christ-like life must be +entirely and absolutely himself, and had taken as my types not +merely the shepherd on the hillside and the prisoner in his cell, +but also the painter to whom the world is a pageant and the poet +for whom the world is a song. I remember saying once to +André Gide, as we sat together in some Paris +<i>café</i>, that while meta-physics had but little real +interest for me, and morality absolutely none, there was nothing +that either Plato or Christ had said that could not be +transferred immediately into the sphere of Art and there find its +complete fulfilment.</p> +<p>Nor is it merely that we can discern in Christ that close +union of personality with perfection which forms the real +distinction between the classical and romantic movement in life, +but the very basis of his nature was the same as that of the +nature of the artist—an intense and flamelike +imagination. He realised in the entire sphere of human +relations that imaginative sympathy which in the sphere of Art is +the sole secret of creation. He understood the leprosy of +the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce misery of those +who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the rich. +Some one wrote to me in trouble, ‘When you are not on your +pedestal you are not interesting.’ How remote was the +writer from what Matthew Arnold calls ‘the Secret of +Jesus.’ Either would have taught him that whatever +happens to another happens to oneself, and if you want an +inscription to read at dawn and at night-time, and for pleasure +or for pain, write up on the walls of your house in letters for +the sun to gild and the moon to silver, ‘Whatever happens +to oneself happens to another.’</p> +<p>Christ’s place indeed is with the poets. His whole +conception of Humanity sprang right out of the imagination and +can only be realised by it. What God was to the pantheist, +man was to Him. He was the first to conceive the divided +races as a unity. Before his time there had been gods and +men, and, feeling through the mysticism of sympathy that in +himself each had been made incarnate, he calls himself the Son of +the one or the Son of the other, according to his mood. +More than any one else in history he wakes in us that temper of +wonder to which romance always appeals. There is still +something to me almost incredible in the idea of a young Galilean +peasant imagining that he could bear on his own shoulders the +burden of the entire world; all that had already been done and +suffered, and all that was yet to be done and suffered: the sins +of Nero, of Caesar Borgia, of Alexander VI., and of him who was +Emperor of Rome and Priest of the Sun: the sufferings of those +whose names are legion and whose dwelling is among the tombs: +oppressed nationalities, factory children, thieves, people in +prison, outcasts, those who are dumb under oppression and whose +silence is heard only of God; and not merely imagining this but +actually achieving it, so that at the present moment all who come +in contact with his personality, even though they may neither bow +to his altar nor kneel before his priest, in some way find that +the ugliness of their sin is taken away and the beauty of their +sorrow revealed to them.</p> +<p>I had said of Christ that he ranks with the poets. That +is true. Shelley and Sophocles are of his company. +But his entire life also is the most wonderful of poems. +For ‘pity and terror’ there is nothing in the entire +cycle of Greek tragedy to touch it. The absolute purity of +the protagonist raises the entire scheme to a height of romantic +art from which the sufferings of Thebes and Pelops’ line +are by their very horror excluded, and shows how wrong Aristotle +was when he said in his treatise on the drama that it would be +impossible to bear the spectacle of one blameless in pain. +Nor in Æschylus nor Dante, those stern masters of +tenderness, in Shakespeare, the most purely human of all the +great artists, in the whole of Celtic myth and legend, where the +loveliness of the world is shown through a mist of tears, and the +life of a man is no more than the life of a flower, is there +anything that, for sheer simplicity of pathos wedded and made one +with sublimity of tragic effect, can be said to equal or even +approach the last act of Christ’s passion. The little +supper with his companions, one of whom has already sold him for +a price; the anguish in the quiet moon-lit garden; the false +friend coming close to him so as to betray him with a kiss; the +friend who still believed in him, and on whom as on a rock he had +hoped to build a house of refuge for Man, denying him as the bird +cried to the dawn; his own utter loneliness, his submission, his +acceptance of everything; and along with it all such scenes as +the high priest of orthodoxy rending his raiment in wrath, and +the magistrate of civil justice calling for water in the vain +hope of cleansing himself of that stain of innocent blood that +makes him the scarlet figure of history; the coronation ceremony +of sorrow, one of the most wonderful things in the whole of +recorded time; the crucifixion of the Innocent One before the +eyes of his mother and of the disciple whom he loved; the +soldiers gambling and throwing dice for his clothes; the terrible +death by which he gave the world its most eternal symbol; and his +final burial in the tomb of the rich man, his body swathed in +Egyptian linen with costly spices and perfumes as though he had +been a king’s son. When one contemplates all this +from the point of view of art alone one cannot but be grateful +that the supreme office of the Church should be the playing of +the tragedy without the shedding of blood: the mystical +presentation, by means of dialogue and costume and gesture even, +of the Passion of her Lord; and it is always a source of pleasure +and awe to me to remember that the ultimate survival of the Greek +chorus, lost elsewhere to art, is to be found in the servitor +answering the priest at Mass.</p> +<p>Yet the whole life of Christ—so entirely may sorrow and +beauty be made one in their meaning and manifestation—is +really an idyll, though it ends with the veil of the temple being +rent, and the darkness coming over the face of the earth, and the +stone rolled to the door of the sepulchre. One always +thinks of him as a young bridegroom with his companions, as +indeed he somewhere describes himself; as a shepherd straying +through a valley with his sheep in search of green meadow or cool +stream; as a singer trying to build out of the music the walls of +the City of God; or as a lover for whose love the whole world was +too small. His miracles seem to me to be as exquisite as +the coming of spring, and quite as natural. I see no +difficulty at all in believing that such was the charm of his +personality that his mere presence could bring peace to souls in +anguish, and that those who touched his garments or his hands +forgot their pain; or that as he passed by on the highway of life +people who had seen nothing of life’s mystery, saw it +clearly, and others who had been deaf to every voice but that of +pleasure heard for the first time the voice of love and found it +as ‘musical as Apollo’s lute’; or that evil +passions fled at his approach, and men whose dull unimaginative +lives had been but a mode of death rose as it were from the grave +when he called them; or that when he taught on the hillside the +multitude forgot their hunger and thirst and the cares of this +world, and that to his friends who listened to him as he sat at +meat the coarse food seemed delicate, and the water had the taste +of good wine, and the whole house became full of the odour and +sweetness of nard.</p> +<p>Renan in his <i>Vie de Jesus</i>—that gracious fifth +gospel, the gospel according to St. Thomas, one might call +it—says somewhere that Christ’s great achievement was +that he made himself as much loved after his death as he had been +during his lifetime. And certainly, if his place is among +the poets, he is the leader of all the lovers. He saw that +love was the first secret of the world for which the wise men had +been looking, and that it was only through love that one could +approach either the heart of the leper or the feet of God.</p> +<p>And above all, Christ is the most supreme of +individualists. Humility, like the artistic, acceptance of +all experiences, is merely a mode of manifestation. It is +man’s soul that Christ is always looking for. He +calls it ‘God’s Kingdom,’ and finds it in every +one. He compares it to little things, to a tiny seed, to a +handful of leaven, to a pearl. That is because one realises +one’s soul only by getting rid of all alien passions, all +acquired culture, and all external possessions, be they good or +evil.</p> +<p>I bore up against everything with some stubbornness of will +and much rebellion of nature, till I had absolutely nothing left +in the world but one thing. I had lost my name, my +position, my happiness, my freedom, my wealth. I was a +prisoner and a pauper. But I still had my children +left. Suddenly they were taken away from me by the +law. It was a blow so appalling that I did not know what to +do, so I flung myself on my knees, and bowed my head, and wept, +and said, ‘The body of a child is as the body of the Lord: +I am not worthy of either.’ That moment seemed to +save me. I saw then that the only thing for me was to +accept everything. Since then—curious as it will no +doubt sound—I have been happier. It was of course my +soul in its ultimate essence that I had reached. In many +ways I had been its enemy, but I found it waiting for me as a +friend. When one comes in contact with the soul it makes +one simple as a child, as Christ said one should be.</p> +<p>It is tragic how few people ever ‘possess their +souls’ before they die. ‘Nothing is more rare +in any man,’ says Emerson, ‘than an act of his +own.’ It is quite true. Most people are other +people. Their thoughts are some one else’s opinions, +their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Christ +was not merely the supreme individualist, but he was the first +individualist in history. People have tried to make him out +an ordinary philanthropist, or ranked him as an altruist with the +scientific and sentimental. But he was really neither one +nor the other. Pity he has, of course, for the poor, for +those who are shut up in prisons, for the lowly, for the +wretched; but he has far more pity for the rich, for the hard +hedonists, for those who waste their freedom in becoming slaves +to things, for those who wear soft raiment and live in +kings’ houses. Riches and pleasure seemed to him to +be really greater tragedies than poverty or sorrow. And as +for altruism, who knew better than he that it is vocation not +volition that determines us, and that one cannot gather grapes of +thorns or figs from thistles?</p> +<p>To live for others as a definite self-conscious aim was not +his creed. It was not the basis of his creed. When he +says, ‘Forgive your enemies,’ it is not for the sake +of the enemy, but for one’s own sake that he says so, and +because love is more beautiful than hate. In his own +entreaty to the young man, ‘Sell all that thou hast and +give to the poor,’ it is not of the state of the poor that +he is thinking but of the soul of the young man, the soul that +wealth was marring. In his view of life he is one with the +artist who knows that by the inevitable law of self-perfection, +the poet must sing, and the sculptor think in bronze, and the +painter make the world a mirror for his moods, as surely and as +certainly as the hawthorn must blossom in spring, and the corn +turn to gold at harvest-time, and the moon in her ordered +wanderings change from shield to sickle, and from sickle to +shield.</p> +<p>But while Christ did not say to men, ‘Live for +others,’ he pointed out that there was no difference at all +between the lives of others and one’s own life. By +this means he gave to man an extended, a Titan personality. +Since his coming the history of each separate individual is, or +can be made, the history of the world. Of course, culture +has intensified the personality of man. Art has made us +myriad-minded. Those who have the artistic temperament go +into exile with Dante and learn how salt is the bread of others, +and how steep their stairs; they catch for a moment the serenity +and calm of Goethe, and yet know but too well that Baudelaire +cried to God—</p> +<blockquote><p>‘O Seigneur, donnez moi la force et le +courage<br /> +De contempler mon corps et mon coeur sans +dégoût.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Out of Shakespeare’s sonnets they draw, to their own +hurt it may be, the secret of his love and make it their own; +they look with new eyes on modern life, because they have +listened to one of Chopin’s nocturnes, or handled Greek +things, or read the story of the passion of some dead man for +some dead woman whose hair was like threads of fine gold, and +whose mouth was as a pomegranate. But the sympathy of the +artistic temperament is necessarily with what has found +expression. In words or in colours, in music or in marble, +behind the painted masks of an Æschylean play, or through +some Sicilian shepherds’ pierced and jointed reeds, the man +and his message must have been revealed.</p> +<p>To the artist, expression is the only mode under which he can +conceive life at all. To him what is dumb is dead. +But to Christ it was not so. With a width and wonder of +imagination that fills one almost with awe, he took the entire +world of the inarticulate, the voiceless world of pain, as his +kingdom, and made of himself its eternal mouthpiece. Those +of whom I have spoken, who are dumb under oppression, and +‘whose silence is heard only of God,’ he chose as his +brothers. He sought to become eyes to the blind, ears to +the deaf, and a cry in the lips of those whose tongues had been +tied. His desire was to be to the myriads who had found no +utterance a very trumpet through which they might call to +heaven. And feeling, with the artistic nature of one to +whom suffering and sorrow were modes through which he could +realise his conception of the beautiful, that an idea is of no +value till it becomes incarnate and is made an image, he made of +himself the image of the Man of Sorrows, and as such has +fascinated and dominated art as no Greek god ever succeeded in +doing.</p> +<p>For the Greek gods, in spite of the white and red of their +fair fleet limbs, were not really what they appeared to be. +The curved brow of Apollo was like the sun’s disc crescent +over a hill at dawn, and his feet were as the wings of the +morning, but he himself had been cruel to Marsyas and had made +Niobe childless. In the steel shields of Athena’s +eyes there had been no pity for Arachne; the pomp and peacocks of +Hera were all that was really noble about her; and the Father of +the Gods himself had been too fond of the daughters of men. +The two most deeply suggestive figures of Greek Mythology were, +for religion, Demeter, an Earth Goddess, not one of the +Olympians, and for art, Dionysus, the son of a mortal woman to +whom the moment of his birth had proved also the moment of her +death.</p> +<p>But Life itself from its lowliest and most humble sphere +produced one far more marvellous than the mother of Proserpina or +the son of Semele. Out of the Carpenter’s shop at +Nazareth had come a personality infinitely greater than any made +by myth and legend, and one, strangely enough, destined to reveal +to the world the mystical meaning of wine and the real beauties +of the lilies of the field as none, either on Cithaeron or at +Enna, had ever done.</p> +<p>The song of Isaiah, ‘He is despised and rejected of men, +a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were +our faces from him,’ had seemed to him to prefigure +himself, and in him the prophecy was fulfilled. We must not +be afraid of such a phrase. Every single work of art is the +fulfilment of a prophecy: for every work of art is the conversion +of an idea into an image. Every single human being should +be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be +the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in +the mind of man. Christ found the type and fixed it, and +the dream of a Virgilian poet, either at Jerusalem or at Babylon, +became in the long progress of the centuries incarnate in him for +whom the world was waiting.</p> +<p>To me one of the things in history the most to be regretted is +that the Christ’s own renaissance, which has produced the +Cathedral at Chartres, the Arthurian cycle of legends, the life +of St. Francis of Assisi, the art of Giotto, and Dante’s +<i>Divine Comedy</i>, was not allowed to develop on its own +lines, but was interrupted and spoiled by the dreary classical +Renaissance that gave us Petrarch, and Raphael’s frescoes, +and Palladian architecture, and formal French tragedy, and St. +Paul’s Cathedral, and Pope’s poetry, and everything +that is made from without and by dead rules, and does not spring +from within through some spirit informing it. But wherever +there is a romantic movement in art there somehow, and under some +form, is Christ, or the soul of Christ. He is in <i>Romeo +and Juliet</i>, in the <i>Winter’s Tale</i>, in +Provençal poetry, in the <i>Ancient Mariner</i>, in <i>La +Belle Dame sans merci</i>, and in Chatterton’s <i>Ballad of +Charity</i>.</p> +<p>We owe to him the most diverse things and people. +Hugo’s <i>Les Misérables</i>, Baudelaire’s +<i>Fleurs du Mal</i>, the note of pity in Russian novels, +Verlaine and Verlaine’s poems, the stained glass and +tapestries and the quattro-cento work of Burne-Jones and Morris, +belong to him no less than the tower of Giotto, Lancelot and +Guinevere, Tannhäuser, the troubled romantic marbles of +Michael Angelo, pointed architecture, and the love of children +and flowers—for both of which, indeed, in classical art +there was but little place, hardly enough for them to grow or +play in, but which, from the twelfth century down to our own day, +have been continually making their appearances in art, under +various modes and at various times, coming fitfully and wilfully, +as children, as flowers, are apt to do: spring always seeming to +one as if the flowers had been in hiding, and only came out into +the sun because they were afraid that grown up people would grow +tired of looking for them and give up the search; and the life of +a child being no more than an April day on which there is both +rain and sun for the narcissus.</p> +<p>It is the imaginative quality of Christ’s own nature +that makes him this palpitating centre of romance. The +strange figures of poetic drama and ballad are made by the +imagination of others, but out of his own imagination entirely +did Jesus of Nazareth create himself. The cry of Isaiah had +really no more to do with his coming than the song of the +nightingale has to do with the rising of the moon—no more, +though perhaps no less. He was the denial as well as the +affirmation of prophecy. For every expectation that he +fulfilled there was another that he destroyed. ‘In +all beauty,’ says Bacon, ‘there is some strangeness +of proportion,’ and of those who are born of the +spirit—of those, that is to say, who like himself are +dynamic forces—Christ says that they are like the wind that +‘bloweth where it listeth, and no man can tell whence it +cometh and whither it goeth.’ That is why he is so +fascinating to artists. He has all the colour elements of +life: mystery, strangeness, pathos, suggestion, ecstasy, +love. He appeals to the temper of wonder, and creates that +mood in which alone he can be understood.</p> +<p>And to me it is a joy to remember that if he is ‘of +imagination all compact,’ the world itself is of the same +substance. I said in <i>Dorian Gray</i> that the great sins +of the world take place in the brain: but it is in the brain that +everything takes place. We know now that we do not see with +the eyes or hear with the ears. They are really channels +for the transmission, adequate or inadequate, of sense +impressions. It is in the brain that the poppy is red, that +the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings.</p> +<p>Of late I have been studying with diligence the four prose +poems about Christ. At Christmas I managed to get hold of a +Greek Testament, and every morning, after I had cleaned my cell +and polished my tins, I read a little of the Gospels, a dozen +verses taken by chance anywhere. It is a delightful way of +opening the day. Every one, even in a turbulent, +ill-disciplined life, should do the same. Endless +repetition, in and out of season, has spoiled for us the +freshness, the naïveté, the simple romantic charm of +the Gospels. We hear them read far too often and far too +badly, and all repetition is anti-spiritual. When one +returns to the Greek; it is like going into a garden of lilies +out of some, narrow and dark house.</p> +<p>And to me, the pleasure is doubled by the reflection that it +is extremely probable that we have the actual terms, the +<i>ipsissima verba</i>, used by Christ. It was always +supposed that Christ talked in Aramaic. Even Renan thought +so. But now we know that the Galilean peasants, like the +Irish peasants of our own day, were bilingual, and that Greek was +the ordinary language of intercourse all over Palestine, as +indeed all over the Eastern world. I never liked the idea +that we knew of Christ’s own words only through a +translation of a translation. It is a delight to me to +think that as far as his conversation was concerned, Charmides +might have listened to him, and Socrates reasoned with him, and +Plato understood him: that he really said εyω +ειμι ο +ποιμην ο +καλος, that when he thought of +the lilies of the field and how they neither toil nor spin, his +absolute expression was +καταyαθετε +τα κρίνα +του αγρου +τως +αυξανει ου +κοπιυ +ουδε +νηθει, and that his last word when he +cried out ‘my life has been completed, has reached its +fulfilment, has been perfected,’ was exactly as St. John +tells us it was: +τετέλεσται—no +more.</p> +<p>While in reading the Gospels—particularly that of St. +John himself, or whatever early Gnostic took his name and +mantle—I see the continual assertion of the imagination as +the basis of all spiritual and material life, I see also that to +Christ imagination was simply a form of love, and that to him +love was lord in the fullest meaning of the phrase. Some +six weeks ago I was allowed by the doctor to have white bread to +eat instead of the coarse black or brown bread of ordinary prison +fare. It is a great delicacy. It will sound strange +that dry bread could possibly be a delicacy to any one. To +me it is so much so that at the close of each meal I carefully +eat whatever crumbs may be left on my tin plate, or have fallen +on the rough towel that one uses as a cloth so as not to soil +one’s table; and I do so not from hunger—I get now +quite sufficient food—but simply in order that nothing +should be wasted of what is given to me. So one should look +on love.</p> +<p>Christ, like all fascinating personalities, had the power of +not merely saying beautiful things himself, but of making other +people say beautiful things to him; and I love the story St. Mark +tells us about the Greek woman, who, when as a trial of her faith +he said to her that he could not give her the bread of the +children of Israel, answered him that the little +dogs—(κυναρια, +‘little dogs’ it should be rendered)—who are +under the table eat of the crumbs that the children let +fall. Most people live for love and admiration. But +it is by love and admiration that we should live. If any +love is shown us we should recognise that we are quite unworthy +of it. Nobody is worthy to be loved. The fact that +God loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal things +it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is +eternally unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to be a bitter +one to bear, let us say that every one is worthy of love, except +him who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should +be taken kneeling, and <i>Domine, non sum dignus</i> should be on +the lips and in the hearts of those who receive it.</p> +<p>If ever I write again, in the sense of producing artistic +work, there are just two subjects on which and through which I +desire to express myself: one is ‘Christ as the precursor +of the romantic movement in life’: the other is ‘The +artistic life considered in its relation to conduct.’ +The first is, of course, intensely fascinating, for I see in +Christ not merely the essentials of the supreme romantic type, +but all the accidents, the wilfulnesses even, of the romantic +temperament also. He was the first person who ever said to +people that they should live ‘flower-like +lives.’ He fixed the phrase. He took children +as the type of what people should try to become. He held +them up as examples to their elders, which I myself have always +thought the chief use of children, if what is perfect should have +a use. Dante describes the soul of a man as coming from the +hand of God ‘weeping and laughing like a little +child,’ and Christ also saw that the soul of each one +should be <i>a guisa di fanciulla che piangendo e ridendo +pargoleggia</i>. He felt that life was changeful, fluid, +active, and that to allow it to be stereotyped into any form was +death. He saw that people should not be too serious over +material, common interests: that to be unpractical was to be a +great thing: that one should not bother too much over +affairs. The birds didn’t, why should man? He +is charming when he says, ‘Take no thought for the morrow; +is not the soul more than meat? is not the body more than +raiment?’ A Greek might have used the latter +phrase. It is full of Greek feeling. But only Christ +could have said both, and so summed up life perfectly for us.</p> +<p>His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should +be. If the only thing that he ever said had been, +‘Her sins are forgiven her because she loved much,’ +it would have been worth while dying to have said it. His +justice is all poetical justice, exactly what justice should +be. The beggar goes to heaven because he has been +unhappy. I cannot conceive a better reason for his being +sent there. The people who work for an hour in the vineyard +in the cool of the evening receive just as much reward as those +who have toiled there all day long in the hot sun. Why +shouldn’t they? Probably no one deserved +anything. Or perhaps they were a different kind of +people. Christ had no patience with the dull lifeless +mechanical systems that treat people as if they were things, and +so treat everybody alike: for him there were no laws: there were +exceptions merely, as if anybody, or anything, for that matter, +was like aught else in the world!</p> +<p>That which is the very keynote of romantic art was to him the +proper basis of natural life. He saw no other basis. +And when they brought him one, taken in the very act of sin and +showed him her sentence written in the law, and asked him what +was to be done, he wrote with his finger on the ground as though +he did not hear them, and finally, when they pressed him again, +looked up and said, ‘Let him of you who has never sinned be +the first to throw the stone at her.’ It was worth +while living to have said that.</p> +<p>Like all poetical natures he loved ignorant people. He +knew that in the soul of one who is ignorant there is always room +for a great idea. But he could not stand stupid people, +especially those who are made stupid by education: people who are +full of opinions not one of which they even understand, a +peculiarly modern type, summed up by Christ when he describes it +as the type of one who has the key of knowledge, cannot use it +himself, and does not allow other people to use it, though it may +be made to open the gate of God’s Kingdom. His chief +war was against the Philistines. That is the war every +child of light has to wage. Philistinism was the note of +the age and community in which he lived. In their heavy +inaccessibility to ideas, their dull respectability, their +tedious orthodoxy, their worship of vulgar success, their entire +preoccupation with the gross materialistic side of life, and +their ridiculous estimate of themselves and their importance, the +Jews of Jerusalem in Christ’s day were the exact +counterpart of the British Philistine of our own. Christ +mocked at the ‘whited sepulchre’ of respectability, +and fixed that phrase for ever. He treated worldly success +as a thing absolutely to be despised. He saw nothing in it +at all. He looked on wealth as an encumbrance to a +man. He would not hear of life being sacrificed to any +system of thought or morals. He pointed out that forms and +ceremonies were made for man, not man for forms and +ceremonies. He took sabbatarianism as a type of the things +that should be set at nought. The cold philanthropies, the +ostentatious public charities, the tedious formalisms so dear to +the middle-class mind, he exposed with utter and relentless +scorn. To us, what is termed orthodoxy is merely a facile +unintelligent acquiescence; but to them, and in their hands, it +was a terrible and paralysing tyranny. Christ swept it +aside. He showed that the spirit alone was of value. +He took a keen pleasure in pointing out to them that though they +were always reading the law and the prophets, they had not really +the smallest idea of what either of them meant. In +opposition to their tithing of each separate day into the fixed +routine of prescribed duties, as they tithe mint and rue, he +preached the enormous importance of living completely for the +moment.</p> +<p>Those whom he saved from their sins are saved simply for +beautiful moments in their lives. Mary Magdalen, when she +sees Christ, breaks the rich vase of alabaster that one of her +seven lovers had given her, and spills the odorous spices over +his tired dusty feet, and for that one moment’s sake sits +for ever with Ruth and Beatrice in the tresses of the snow-white +rose of Paradise. All that Christ says to us by the way of +a little warning is that every moment should be beautiful, that +the soul should always be ready for the coming of the bridegroom, +always waiting for the voice of the lover, Philistinism being +simply that side of man’s nature that is not illumined by +the imagination. He sees all the lovely influences of life +as modes of light: the imagination itself is the world of +light. The world is made by it, and yet the world cannot +understand it: that is because the imagination is simply a +manifestation of love, and it is love and the capacity for it +that distinguishes one human being from another.</p> +<p>But it is when he deals with a sinner that Christ is most +romantic, in the sense of most real. The world had always +loved the saint as being the nearest possible approach to the +perfection of God. Christ, through some divine instinct in +him, seems to have always loved the sinner as being the nearest +possible approach to the perfection of man. His primary +desire was not to reform people, any more than his primary desire +was to a relieve suffering. To turn an interesting thief +into a tedious honest man was not his aim. He would have +thought little of the Prisoners’ Aid Society and other +modern movements of the kind. The conversion of a publican +into a Pharisee would not have seemed to him a great +achievement. But in a manner not yet understood of the +world he regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves +beautiful holy things and modes of perfection.</p> +<p>It seems a very dangerous idea. It is—all great +ideas are dangerous. That it was Christ’s creed +admits of no doubt. That it is the true creed I don’t +doubt myself.</p> +<p>Of course the sinner must repent. But why? Simply +because otherwise he would be unable to realise what he had +done. The moment of repentance is the moment of +initiation. More than that: it is the means by which one +alters one’s past. The Greeks thought that +impossible. They often say in their Gnomic aphorisms, +‘Even the Gods cannot alter the past.’ Christ +showed that the commonest sinner could do it, that it was the one +thing he could do. Christ, had he been asked, would have +said—I feel quite certain about it—that the moment +the prodigal son fell on his knees and wept, he made his having +wasted his substance with harlots, his swine-herding and +hungering for the husks they ate, beautiful and holy moments in +his life. It is difficult for most people to grasp the +idea. I dare say one has to go to prison to understand +it. If so, it may be worth while going to prison.</p> +<p>There is something so unique about Christ. Of course +just as there are false dawns before the dawn itself, and winter +days so full of sudden sunlight that they will cheat the wise +crocus into squandering its gold before its time, and make some +foolish bird call to its mate to build on barren boughs, so there +were Christians before Christ. For that we should be +grateful. The unfortunate thing is that there have been +none since. I make one exception, St. Francis of +Assisi. But then God had given him at his birth the soul of +a poet, as he himself when quite young had in mystical marriage +taken poverty as his bride: and with the soul of a poet and the +body of a beggar he found the way to perfection not +difficult. He understood Christ, and so he became like +him. We do not require the Liber Conformitatum to teach us +that the life of St. Francis was the true <i>Imitatio +Christi</i>, a poem compared to which the book of that name is +merely prose.</p> +<p>Indeed, that is the charm about Christ, when all is said: he +is just like a work of art. He does not really teach one +anything, but by being brought into his presence one becomes +something. And everybody is predestined to his +presence. Once at least in his life each man walks with +Christ to Emmaus.</p> +<p>As regards the other subject, the Relation of the Artistic +Life to Conduct, it will no doubt seem strange to you that I +should select it. People point to Reading Gaol and say, +‘That is where the artistic life leads a man.’ +Well, it might lead to worse places. The more mechanical +people to whom life is a shrewd speculation depending on a +careful calculation of ways and means, always know where they are +going, and go there. They start with the ideal desire of +being the parish beadle, and in whatever sphere they are placed +they succeed in being the parish beadle and no more. A man +whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a +member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent +solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably +succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his +punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it.</p> +<p>But with the dynamic forces of life, and those in whom those +dynamic forces become incarnate, it is different. People +whose desire is solely for self-realisation never know where they +are going. They can’t know. In one sense of the +word it is of course necessary, as the Greek oracle said, to know +oneself: that is the first achievement of knowledge. But to +recognise that the soul of a man is unknowable, is the ultimate +achievement of wisdom. The final mystery is oneself. +When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the +steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, +there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of +his own soul? When the son went out to look for his +father’s asses, he did not know that a man of God was +waiting for him with the very chrism of coronation, and that his +own soul was already the soul of a king.</p> +<p>I hope to live long enough and to produce work of such a +character that I shall be able at the end of my days to say, +‘Yes! this is just where the artistic life leads a +man!’ Two of the most perfect lives I have come +across in my own experience are the lives of Verlaine and of +Prince Kropotkin: both of them men who have passed years in +prison: the first, the one Christian poet since Dante; the other, +a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems +coming out of Russia. And for the last seven or eight +months, in spite of a succession of great troubles reaching me +from the outside world almost without intermission, I have been +placed in direct contact with a new spirit working in this prison +through man and things, that has helped me beyond any possibility +of expression in words: so that while for the first year of my +imprisonment I did nothing else, and can remember doing nothing +else, but wring my hands in impotent despair, and say, +‘What an ending, what an appalling ending!’ now I try +to say to myself, and sometimes when I am not torturing myself do +really and sincerely say, ‘What a beginning, what a +wonderful beginning!’ It may really be so. It +may become so. If it does I shall owe much to this new +personality that has altered every man’s life in this +place.</p> +<p>You may realise it when I say that had I been released last +May, as I tried to be, I would have left this place loathing it +and every official in it with a bitterness of hatred that would +have poisoned my life. I have had a year longer of +imprisonment, but humanity has been in the prison along with us +all, and now when I go out I shall always remember great +kindnesses that I have received here from almost everybody, and +on the day of my release I shall give many thanks to many people, +and ask to be remembered by them in turn.</p> +<p>The prison style is absolutely and entirely wrong. I +would give anything to be able to alter it when I go out. I +intend to try. But there is nothing in the world so wrong +but that the spirit of humanity, which is the spirit of love, the +spirit of the Christ who is not in churches, may make it, if not +right, at least possible to be borne without too much bitterness +of heart.</p> +<p>I know also that much is waiting for me outside that is very +delightful, from what St. Francis of Assisi calls ‘my +brother the wind, and my sister the rain,’ lovely things +both of them, down to the shop-windows and sunsets of great +cities. If I made a list of all that still remains to me, I +don’t know where I should stop: for, indeed, God made the +world just as much for me as for any one else. Perhaps I +may go out with something that I had not got before. I need +not tell you that to me reformations in morals are as meaningless +and vulgar as Reformations in theology. But while to +propose to be a better man is a piece of unscientific cant, to +have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have +suffered. And such I think I have become.</p> +<p>If after I am free a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not +invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. I can be +perfectly happy by myself. With freedom, flowers, books, +and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy? Besides, +feasts are not for me any more. I have given too many to +care about them. That side of life is over for me, very +fortunately, I dare say. But if after I am free a friend of +mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should +feel it most bitterly. If he shut the doors of the house of +mourning against me, I would come back again and again and beg to +be admitted, so that I might share in what I was entitled to +share in. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with +him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation, as the +most terrible mode in which disgrace could be inflicted on +me. But that could not be. I have a right to share in +sorrow, and he who can look at the loveliness of the world and +share its sorrow, and realise something of the wonder of both, is +in immediate contact with divine things, and has got as near to +God’s secret as any one can get.</p> +<p>Perhaps there may come into my art also, no less than into my +life, a still deeper note, one of greater unity of passion, and +directness of impulse. Not width but intensity is the true +aim of modern art. We are no longer in art concerned with +the type. It is with the exception that we have to +do. I cannot put my sufferings into any form they took, I +need hardly say. Art only begins where Imitation ends, but +something must come into my work, of fuller memory of words +perhaps, of richer cadences, of more curious effects, of simpler +architectural order, of some aesthetic quality at any rate.</p> +<p>When Marsyas was ‘torn from the scabbard of his +limbs’—<i>della vagina della membre sue</i>, to use +one of Dante’s most terrible Tacitean phrases—he had +no more song, the Greek said. Apollo had been victor. +The lyre had vanquished the reed. But perhaps the Greeks +were mistaken. I hear in much modern Art the cry of +Marsyas. It is bitter in Baudelaire, sweet and plaintive in +Lamartine, mystic in Verlaine. It is in the deferred +resolutions of Chopin’s music. It is in the +discontent that haunts Burne-Jones’s women. Even +Matthew Arnold, whose song of Callicles tells of ‘the +triumph of the sweet persuasive lyre,’ and the +‘famous final victory,’ in such a clear note of +lyrical beauty, has not a little of it; in the troubled undertone +of doubt and distress that haunts his verses, neither Goethe nor +Wordsworth could help him, though he followed each in turn, and +when he seeks to mourn for <i>Thyrsis</i> or to sing of the +<i>Scholar Gipsy</i>, it is the reed that he has to take for the +rendering of his strain. But whether or not the Phrygian +Faun was silent, I cannot be. Expression is as necessary to +me as leaf and blossoms are to the black branches of the trees +that show themselves above the prison walls and are so restless +in the wind. Between my art and the world there is now a +wide gulf, but between art and myself there is none. I hope +at least that there is none.</p> +<p>To each of us different fates are meted out. My lot has +been one of public infamy, of long imprisonment, of misery, of +ruin, of disgrace, but I am not worthy of it—not yet, at +any rate. I remember that I used to say that I thought I +could bear a real tragedy if it came to me with purple pall and a +mask of noble sorrow, but that the dreadful thing about modernity +was that it put tragedy into the raiment of comedy, so that the +great realities seemed commonplace or grotesque or lacking in +style. It is quite true about modernity. It has +probably always been true about actual life. It is said +that all martyrdoms seemed mean to the looker on. The +nineteenth century is no exception to the rule.</p> +<p>Everything about my tragedy has been hideous, mean, repellent, +lacking in style; our very dress makes us grotesque. We are +the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are +broken. We are specially designed to appeal to the sense of +humour. On November 13th, 1895, I was brought down here +from London. From two o’clock till half-past two on +that day I had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham +Junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for the world to look +at. I had been taken out of the hospital ward without a +moment’s notice being given to me. Of all possible +objects I was the most grotesque. When people saw me they +laughed. Each train as it came up swelled the +audience. Nothing could exceed their amusement. That +was, of course, before they knew who I was. As soon as they +had been informed they laughed still more. For half an hour +I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by a jeering +mob.</p> +<p>For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the +same hour and for the same space of time. That is not such +a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who +are in prison tears are a part of every day’s +experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a +day on which one’s heart is hard, not a day on which +one’s heart is happy.</p> +<p>Well, now I am really beginning to feel more regret for the +people who laughed than for myself. Of course when they saw +me I was not on my pedestal, I was in the pillory. But it +is a very unimaginative nature that only cares for people on +their pedestals. A pedestal may be a very unreal +thing. A pillory is a terrific reality. They should +have known also how to interpret sorrow better. I have said +that behind sorrow there is always sorrow. It were wiser +still to say that behind sorrow there is always a soul. And +to mock at a soul in pain is a dreadful thing. In the +strangely simple economy of the world people only get what they +give, and to those who have not enough imagination to penetrate +the mere outward of things, and feel pity, what pity can be given +save that of scorn?</p> +<p>I write this account of the mode of my being transferred here +simply that it should be realised how hard it has been for me to +get anything out of my punishment but bitterness and +despair. I have, however, to do it, and now and then I have +moments of submission and acceptance. All the spring may be +hidden in the single bud, and the low ground nest of the lark may +hold the joy that is to herald the feet of many rose-red +dawns. So perhaps whatever beauty of life still remains to +me is contained in some moment of surrender, abasement, and +humiliation. I can, at any rate, merely proceed on the +lines of my own development, and, accepting all that has happened +to me, make myself worthy of it.</p> +<p>People used to say of me that I was too individualistic. +I must be far more of an individualist than ever I was. I +must get far more out of myself than ever I got, and ask far less +of the world than ever I asked. Indeed, my ruin came not +from too great individualism of life, but from too little. +The one disgraceful, unpardonable, and to all time contemptible +action of my life was to allow myself to appeal to society for +help and protection. To have made such an appeal would have +been from the individualist point of view bad enough, but what +excuse can there ever be put forward for having made it? Of +course once I had put into motion the forces of society, society +turned on me and said, ‘Have you been living all this time +in defiance of my laws, and do you now appeal to those laws for +protection? You shall have those laws exercised to the +full. You shall abide by what you have appealed +to.’ The result is I am in gaol. Certainly no +man ever fell so ignobly, and by such ignoble instruments, as I +did.</p> +<p>The Philistine element in life is not the failure to +understand art. Charming people, such as fishermen, +shepherds, ploughboys, peasants and the like, know nothing about +art, and are the very salt of the earth. He is the +Philistine who upholds and aids the heavy, cumbrous, blind, +mechanical forces of society, and who does not recognise dynamic +force when he meets it either in a man or a movement.</p> +<p>People thought it dreadful of me to have entertained at dinner +the evil things of life, and to have found pleasure in their +company. But then, from the point of view through which I, +as an artist in life, approach them they were delightfully +suggestive and stimulating. The danger was half the +excitement. . . . My business as an artist was with Ariel. +I set myself to wrestle with Caliban. . . .</p> +<p>A great friend of mine—a friend of ten years’ +standing—came to see me some time ago, and told me that he +did not believe a single word of what was said against me, and +wished me to know that he considered me quite innocent, and the +victim of a hideous plot. I burst into tears at what he +said, and told him that while there was much amongst the definite +charges that was quite untrue and transferred to me by revolting +malice, still that my life had been full of perverse pleasures, +and that unless he accepted that as a fact about me and realised +it to the full I could not possibly be friends with him any more, +or ever be in his company. It was a terrible shock to him, +but we are friends, and I have not got his friendship on false +pretences.</p> +<p>Emotional forces, as I say somewhere in <i>Intentions</i>, are +as limited in extent and duration as the forces of physical +energy. The little cup that is made to hold so much can +hold so much and no more, though all the purple vats of Burgundy +be filled with wine to the brim, and the treaders stand knee-deep +in the gathered grapes of the stony vineyards of Spain. +There is no error more common than that of thinking that those +who are the causes or occasions of great tragedies share in the +feelings suitable to the tragic mood: no error more fatal than +expecting it of them. The martyr in his ‘shirt of +flame’ may be looking on the face of God, but to him who is +piling the faggots or loosening the logs for the blast the whole +scene is no more than the slaying of an ox is to the butcher, or +the felling of a tree to the charcoal burner in the forest, or +the fall of a flower to one who is mowing down the grass with a +scythe. Great passions are for the great of soul, and great +events can be seen only by those who are on a level with +them.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>I know of nothing in all drama more incomparable from the +point of view of art, nothing more suggestive in its subtlety of +observation, than Shakespeare’s drawing of Rosencrantz and +Guildenstern. They are Hamlet’s college +friends. They have been his companions. They bring +with them memories of pleasant days together. At the moment +when they come across him in the play he is staggering under the +weight of a burden intolerable to one of his temperament. +The dead have come armed out of the grave to impose on him a +mission at once too great and too mean for him. He is a +dreamer, and he is called upon to act. He has the nature of +the poet, and he is asked to grapple with the common complexity +of cause and effect, with life in its practical realisation, of +which he knows nothing, not with life in its ideal essence, of +which he knows so much. He has no conception of what to do, +and his folly is to feign folly. Brutus used madness as a +cloak to conceal the sword of his purpose, the dagger of his +will, but the Hamlet madness is a mere mask for the hiding of +weakness. In the making of fancies and jests he sees a +chance of delay. He keeps playing with action as an artist +plays with a theory. He makes himself the spy of his proper +actions, and listening to his own words knows them to be but +‘words, words, words.’ Instead of trying to be +the hero of his own history, he seeks to be the spectator of his +own tragedy. He disbelieves in everything, including +himself, and yet his doubt helps him not, as it comes not from +scepticism but from a divided will.</p> +<p>Of all this Guildenstern and Rosencrantz realise +nothing. They bow and smirk and smile, and what the one +says the other echoes with sickliest intonation. When, at +last, by means of the play within the play, and the puppets in +their dalliance, Hamlet ‘catches the conscience’ of +the King, and drives the wretched man in terror from his throne, +Guildenstern and Rosencrantz see no more in his conduct than a +rather painful breach of Court etiquette. That is as far as +they can attain to in ‘the contemplation of the spectacle +of life with appropriate emotions.’ They are close to +his very secret and know nothing of it. Nor would there be +any use in telling them. They are the little cups that can +hold so much and no more. Towards the close it is suggested +that, caught in a cunning spring set for another, they have met, +or may meet, with a violent and sudden death. But a tragic +ending of this kind, though touched by Hamlet’s humour with +something of the surprise and justice of comedy, is really not +for such as they. They never die. Horatio, who in +order to ‘report Hamlet and his cause aright to the +unsatisfied,’</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Absents him from felicity a while,<br /> +And in this harsh world draws his breath in pain,’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>dies, but Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are as immortal as +Angelo and Tartuffe, and should rank with them. They are +what modern life has contributed to the antique ideal of +friendship. He who writes a new <i>De Amicitia</i> must +find a niche for them, and praise them in Tusculan prose. +They are types fixed for all time. To censure them would +show ‘a lack of appreciation.’ They are merely +out of their sphere: that is all. In sublimity of soul +there is no contagion. High thoughts and high emotions are +by their very existence isolated.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>I am to be released, if all goes well with me, towards the end +of May, and hope to go at once to some little sea-side village +abroad with R--- and M---.</p> +<p>The sea, as Euripides says in one of his plays about +Iphigeneia, washes away the stains and wounds of the world.</p> +<p>I hope to be at least a month with my friends, and to gain +peace and balance, and a less troubled heart, and a sweeter +mood. I have a strange longing for the great simple +primeval things, such as the sea, to me no less of a mother than +the Earth. It seems to me that we all look at Nature too +much, and live with her too little. I discern great sanity +in the Greek attitude. They never chattered about sunsets, +or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve +or not. But they saw that the sea was for the swimmer, and +the sand for the feet of the runner. They loved the trees +for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence at +noon. The vineyard-dresser wreathed his hair with ivy that +he might keep off the rays of the sun as he stooped over the +young shoots, and for the artist and the athlete, the two types +that Greece gave us, they plaited with garlands the leaves of the +bitter laurel and of the wild parsley, which else had been of no +service to men.</p> +<p>We call ours a utilitarian age, and we do not know the uses of +any single thing. We have forgotten that water can cleanse, +and fire purify, and that the Earth is mother to us all. As +a consequence our art is of the moon and plays with shadows, +while Greek art is of the sun and deals directly with +things. I feel sure that in elemental forces there is +purification, and I want to go back to them and live in their +presence.</p> +<p>Of course to one so modern as I am, ‘Enfant de mon +siècle,’ merely to look at the world will be always +lovely. I tremble with pleasure when I think that on the +very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac +will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind +stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make +the other toss the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air +shall be Arabia for me. Linnaeus fell on his knees and wept +for joy when he saw for the first time the long heath of some +English upland made yellow with the tawny aromatic brooms of the +common furze; and I know that for me, to whom flowers are part of +desire, there are tears waiting in the petals of some rose. +It has always been so with me from my boyhood. There is not +a single colour hidden away in the chalice of a flower, or the +curve of a shell, to which, by some subtle sympathy with the very +soul of things, my nature does not answer. Like Gautier, I +have always been one of those ‘pour qui le monde visible +existe.’</p> +<p>Still, I am conscious now that behind all this beauty, +satisfying though it may be, there is some spirit hidden of which +the painted forms and shapes are but modes of manifestation, and +it is with this spirit that I desire to become in harmony. +I have grown tired of the articulate utterances of men and +things. The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life, the +Mystical in Nature this is what I am looking for. It is +absolutely necessary for me to find it somewhere.</p> +<p>All trials are trials for one’s life, just as all +sentences are sentences of death; and three times have I been +tried. The first time I left the box to be arrested, the +second time to be led back to the house of detention, the third +time to pass into a prison for two years. Society, as we +have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to +offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just +alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret +valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will +hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the +darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints +so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in +great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DE PROFUNDIS***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 921-h.htm or 921-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/9/2/921 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: De Profundis + + +Author: Oscar Wilde + + + +Release Date: April 13, 2007 [eBook #921] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DE PROFUNDIS*** + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1913 Methuen & Co. edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org. Note that later editions of De Profundis contained +more material. The most complete editions are still in copyright in the +U.S.A. + + + + + +DE PROFUNDIS + + +. . . Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. +We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time +itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one +centre of pain. The paralysing immobility of a life every circumstance +of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that we eat and +drink and lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, according to +the inflexible laws of an iron formula: this immobile quality, that makes +each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to +communicate itself to those external forces the very essence of whose +existence is ceaseless change. Of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers +bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the +vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms or +strewn with fallen fruit: of these we know nothing and can know nothing. + +For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and +moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the +light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small +iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is +always twilight in one's cell, as it is always twilight in one's heart. +And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion +is no more. The thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or +can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again to- +morrow. Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of +why I am writing, and in this manner writing. . . . + +A week later, I am transferred here. Three more months go over and my +mother dies. No one knew how deeply I loved and honoured her. Her death +was terrible to me; but I, once a lord of language, have no words in +which to express my anguish and my shame. She and my father had +bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured, not merely in +literature, art, archaeology, and science, but in the public history of +my own country, in its evolution as a nation. I had disgraced that name +eternally. I had made it a low by-word among low people. I had dragged +it through the very mire. I had given it to brutes that they might make +it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into a synonym for folly. +What I suffered then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write or paper +to record. My wife, always kind and gentle to me, rather than that I +should hear the news from indifferent lips, travelled, ill as she was, +all the way from Genoa to England to break to me herself the tidings of +so irreparable, so irremediable, a loss. Messages of sympathy reached me +from all who had still affection for me. Even people who had not known +me personally, hearing that a new sorrow had broken into my life, wrote +to ask that some expression of their condolence should be conveyed to me. +. . . + +Three months go over. The calendar of my daily conduct and labour that +hangs on the outside of my cell door, with my name and sentence written +upon it, tells me that it is May. . . . + +Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in +fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is +nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not +vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation. The thin beaten-out leaf of +tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see +is in comparison coarse. It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but +that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in +pain. + +Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Some day people will realise +what that means. They will know nothing of life till they do,--and +natures like his can realise it. When I was brought down from my prison +to the Court of Bankruptcy, between two policemen,--waited in the long +dreary corridor that, before the whole crowd, whom an action so sweet and +simple hushed into silence, he might gravely raise his hat to me, as, +handcuffed and with bowed head, I passed him by. Men have gone to heaven +for smaller things than that. It was in this spirit, and with this mode +of love, that the saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or +stooped to kiss the leper on the cheek. I have never said one single +word to him about what he did. I do not know to the present moment +whether he is aware that I was even conscious of his action. It is not a +thing for which one can render formal thanks in formal words. I store it +in the treasure-house of my heart. I keep it there as a secret debt that +I am glad to think I can never possibly repay. It is embalmed and kept +sweet by the myrrh and cassia of many tears. When wisdom has been +profitless to me, philosophy barren, and the proverbs and phrases of +those who have sought to give me consolation as dust and ashes in my +mouth, the memory of that little, lovely, silent act of love has unsealed +for me all the wells of pity: made the desert blossom like a rose, and +brought me out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony with the +wounded, broken, and great heart of the world. When people are able to +understand, not merely how beautiful ---'s action was, but why it meant +so much to me, and always will mean so much, then, perhaps, they will +realise how and in what spirit they should approach me. . . . + +The poor are wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive than we +are. In their eyes prison is a tragedy in a man's life, a misfortune, a +casuality, something that calls for sympathy in others. They speak of +one who is in prison as of one who is 'in trouble' simply. It is the +phrase they always use, and the expression has the perfect wisdom of love +in it. With people of our own rank it is different. With us, prison +makes a man a pariah. I, and such as I am, have hardly any right to air +and sun. Our presence taints the pleasures of others. We are unwelcome +when we reappear. To revisit the glimpses of the moon is not for us. Our +very children are taken away. Those lovely links with humanity are +broken. We are doomed to be solitary, while our sons still live. We are +denied the one thing that might heal us and keep us, that might bring +balm to the bruised heart, and peace to the soul in pain. . . . + +I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small +can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. I am +trying to say so, though they may not think it at the present moment. +This pitiless indictment I bring without pity against myself. Terrible +as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more +terrible still. + +I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my +age. I had realised this for myself at the very dawn of my manhood, and +had forced my age to realise it afterwards. Few men hold such a position +in their own lifetime, and have it so acknowledged. It is usually +discerned, if discerned at all, by the historian, or the critic, long +after both the man and his age have passed away. With me it was +different. I felt it myself, and made others feel it. Byron was a +symbolic figure, but his relations were to the passion of his age and its +weariness of passion. Mine were to something more noble, more permanent, +of more vital issue, of larger scope. + +The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into +long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a +_flaneur_, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the +smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own +genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of +being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for +new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, +perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, +was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of +others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot +that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, +and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some +day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I +was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed +pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only +one thing for me now, absolute humility. + +I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has come +wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; +terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept +aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have +passed through every possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth +himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he said-- + + 'Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark + And has the nature of infinity.' + +But while there were times when I rejoiced in the idea that my sufferings +were to be endless, I could not bear them to be without meaning. Now I +find hidden somewhere away in my nature something that tells me that +nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all. +That something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is +Humility. + +It is the last thing left in me, and the best: the ultimate discovery at +which I have arrived, the starting-point for a fresh development. It has +come to me right out of myself, so I know that it has come at the proper +time. It could not have come before, nor later. Had any one told me of +it, I would have rejected it. Had it been brought to me, I would have +refused it. As I found it, I want to keep it. I must do so. It is the +one thing that has in it the elements of life, of a new life, _Vita +Nuova_ for me. Of all things it is the strangest. One cannot acquire +it, except by surrendering everything that one has. It is only when one +has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses it. + +Now I have realised that it is in me, I see quite clearly what I ought to +do; in fact, must do. And when I use such a phrase as that, I need not +say that I am not alluding to any external sanction or command. I admit +none. I am far more of an individualist than I ever was. Nothing seems +to me of the smallest value except what one gets out of oneself. My +nature is seeking a fresh mode of self-realisation. That is all I am +concerned with. And the first thing that I have got to do is to free +myself from any possible bitterness of feeling against the world. + +I am completely penniless, and absolutely homeless. Yet there are worse +things in the world than that. I am quite candid when I say that rather +than go out from this prison with bitterness in my heart against the +world, I would gladly and readily beg my bread from door to door. If I +got nothing from the house of the rich I would get something at the house +of the poor. Those who have much are often greedy; those who have little +always share. I would not a bit mind sleeping in the cool grass in +summer, and when winter came on sheltering myself by the warm +close-thatched rick, or under the penthouse of a great barn, provided I +had love in my heart. The external things of life seem to me now of no +importance at all. You can see to what intensity of individualism I have +arrived--or am arriving rather, for the journey is long, and 'where I +walk there are thorns.' + +Of course I know that to ask alms on the highway is not to be my lot, and +that if ever I lie in the cool grass at night-time it will be to write +sonnets to the moon. When I go out of prison, R--- will be waiting for +me on the other side of the big iron-studded gate, and he is the symbol, +not merely of his own affection, but of the affection of many others +besides. I believe I am to have enough to live on for about eighteen +months at any rate, so that if I may not write beautiful books, I may at +least read beautiful books; and what joy can be greater? After that, I +hope to be able to recreate my creative faculty. + +But were things different: had I not a friend left in the world; were +there not a single house open to me in pity; had I to accept the wallet +and ragged cloak of sheer penury: as long as I am free from all +resentment, hardness and scorn, I would be able to face the life with +much more calm and confidence than I would were my body in purple and +fine linen, and the soul within me sick with hate. + +And I really shall have no difficulty. When you really want love you +will find it waiting for you. + +I need not say that my task does not end there. It would be +comparatively easy if it did. There is much more before me. I have +hills far steeper to climb, valleys much darker to pass through. And I +have to get it all out of myself. Neither religion, morality, nor reason +can help me at all. + +Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian. I am one of those +who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is +nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in +what one becomes. It is well to have learned that. + +Religion does not help me. The faith that others give to what is unseen, +I give to what one can touch, and look at. My gods dwell in temples made +with hands; and within the circle of actual experience is my creed made +perfect and complete: too complete, it may be, for like many or all of +those who have placed their heaven in this earth, I have found in it not +merely the beauty of heaven, but the horror of hell also. When I think +about religion at all, I feel as if I would like to found an order for +those who _cannot_ believe: the Confraternity of the Faithless, one might +call it, where on an altar, on which no taper burned, a priest, in whose +heart peace had no dwelling, might celebrate with unblessed bread and a +chalice empty of wine. Every thing to be true must become a religion. +And agnosticism should have its ritual no less than faith. It has sown +its martyrs, it should reap its saints, and praise God daily for having +hidden Himself from man. But whether it be faith or agnosticism, it must +be nothing external to me. Its symbols must be of my own creating. Only +that is spiritual which makes its own form. If I may not find its secret +within myself, I shall never find it: if I have not got it already, it +will never come to me. + +Reason does not help me. It tells me that the laws under which I am +convicted are wrong and unjust laws, and the system under which I have +suffered a wrong and unjust system. But, somehow, I have got to make +both of these things just and right to me. And exactly as in Art one is +only concerned with what a particular thing is at a particular moment to +oneself, so it is also in the ethical evolution of one's character. I +have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me. The +plank bed, the loathsome food, the hard ropes shredded into oakum till +one's finger-tips grow dull with pain, the menial offices with which each +day begins and finishes, 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 of 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. + +I want to get to the point when I shall be able to say quite simply, and +without affectation that the two great turning-points in my life were +when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison. I +will not say that prison is the best thing that could have happened to +me: for that phrase would savour of too great bitterness towards myself. +I would sooner say, or hear it said of me, that I was so typical a child +of my age, that in my perversity, and for that perversity's sake, I +turned the good things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life +to good. + +What is said, however, by myself or by others, matters little. The +important thing, the thing that lies before me, the thing that I have to +do, if the brief remainder of my days is not to be maimed, marred, and +incomplete, is to absorb into my nature all that has been done to me, to +make it part of me, to accept it without complaint, fear, or reluctance. +The supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realised is right. + +When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget +who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realising what I am +that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised by others to try +on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know +that would be equally fatal. It would mean that I would always be +haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that those things that +are meant for me as much as for anybody else--the beauty of the sun and +moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the silence +of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping +over the grass and making it silver--would all be tainted for me, and +lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To +regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny +one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It +is no less than a denial of the soul. + +For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and +unclean no less than those that the priest or a vision has cleansed, and +converts them into swiftness or strength, into the play of beautiful +muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, into the curves and colours of +the hair, the lips, the eye; so the soul in its turn has its nutritive +functions also, and can transform into noble moods of thought and +passions of high import what in itself is base, cruel and degrading; nay, +more, may find in these its most august modes of assertion, and can often +reveal itself most perfectly through what was intended to desecrate or +destroy. + +The fact of my having been the common prisoner of a common gaol I must +frankly accept, and, curious as it may seem, one of the things I shall +have to teach myself is not to be ashamed of it. I must accept it as a +punishment, and if one is ashamed of having been punished, one might just +as well never have been punished at all. Of course there are many things +of which I was convicted that I had not done, but then there are many +things of which I was convicted that I had done, and a still greater +number of things in my life for which I was never indicted at all. And +as the gods are strange, and punish us for what is good and humane in us +as much as for what is evil and perverse, I must accept the fact that one +is punished for the good as well as for the evil that one does. I have +no doubt that it is quite right one should be. It helps one, or should +help one, to realise both, and not to be too conceited about either. And +if I then am not ashamed of my punishment, as I hope not to be, I shall +be able to think, and walk, and live with freedom. + +Many men on their release carry their prison about with them into the +air, and hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, and at length, +like poor poisoned things, creep into some hole and die. It is wretched +that they should have to do so, and it is wrong, terribly wrong, of +society that it should force them to do so. Society takes upon itself +the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also +has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has +done. When the man's punishment is over, it leaves him to himself; that +is to say, it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty +towards him begins. It is really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns +those whom it has punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they +cannot pay, or one on whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an +irremediable wrong. I can claim on my side that if I realise what I have +suffered, society should realise what it has inflicted on me; and that +there should be no bitterness or hate on either side. + +Of course I know that from one point of view things will be made +different for me than for others; must indeed, by the very nature of the +case, be made so. The poor thieves and outcasts who are imprisoned here +with me are in many respects more fortunate than I am. The little way in +grey city or green field that saw their sin is small; to find those who +know nothing of what they have done they need go no further than a bird +might fly between the twilight and the dawn; but for me the world is +shrivelled to a handsbreadth, and everywhere I turn my name is written on +the rocks in lead. For I have come, not from obscurity into the +momentary notoriety of crime, but from a sort of eternity of fame to a +sort of eternity of infamy, and sometimes seem to myself to have shown, +if indeed it required showing, that between the famous and the infamous +there is but one step, if as much as one. + +Still, in the very fact that people will recognise me wherever I go, and +know all about my life, as far as its follies go, I can discern something +good for me. It will force on me the necessity of again asserting myself +as an artist, and as soon as I possibly can. If I can produce only one +beautiful work of art I shall be able to rob malice of its venom, and +cowardice of its sneer, and to pluck out the tongue of scorn by the +roots. + +And if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less a problem +to life. People must adopt some attitude towards me, and so pass +judgment, both on themselves and me. I need not say I am not talking of +particular individuals. The only people I would care to be with now are +artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and +those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me. Nor am I making +any demands on life. In all that I have said I am simply concerned with +my own mental attitude towards life as a whole; and I feel that not to be +ashamed of having been punished is one of the first points I must attain +to, for the sake of my own perfection, and because I am so imperfect. + +Then I must learn how to be happy. Once I knew it, or thought I knew it, +by instinct. It was always springtime once in my heart. My temperament +was akin to joy. I filled my life to the very brim with pleasure, as one +might fill a cup to the very brim with wine. Now I am approaching life +from a completely new standpoint, and even to conceive happiness is often +extremely difficult for me. I remember during my first term at Oxford +reading in Pater's _Renaissance_--that book which has had such strange +influence over my life--how Dante places low in the Inferno those who +wilfully live in sadness; and going to the college library and turning to +the passage in the _Divine Comedy_ where beneath the dreary marsh lie +those who were 'sullen in the sweet air,' saying for ever and ever +through their sighs-- + + 'Tristi fummo + Nell aer dolce che dal sol s'allegra.' + +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,' 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 see me. It is only a slight return, I know, but it is +the one, I feel certain, that pleases them most. I saw R--- for an hour +on Saturday week, and I tried to give the fullest possible expression of +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 for life. + +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. It is the world in which I have +been living. Sorrow, then, and all that it teaches one, is my new world. + +I used to live entirely for pleasure. I shunned suffering and sorrow of +every kind. I hated both. I resolved to ignore them as far as possible: +to treat them, that is to say, as modes of imperfection. They were not +part of my scheme of life. They had no place in my philosophy. My +mother, who knew life as a whole, used often to quote to me Goethe's +lines--written by Carlyle in a book he had given her years ago, and +translated by him, I fancy, also:-- + + 'Who never ate his bread in sorrow, + Who never spent the midnight hours + Weeping and waiting for the morrow,-- + He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.' + +They were the lines which that noble Queen of Prussia, whom Napoleon +treated with such coarse brutality, used to quote in her humiliation and +exile; they were the lines my mother often quoted in the troubles of her +later life. I absolutely declined to accept or admit the enormous truth +hidden in them. I could not understand it. I remember quite well how I +used to tell her that I did not want to eat my bread in sorrow, or to +pass any night weeping and watching for a more bitter dawn. + +I had no idea that it was one of the special things that the Fates had in +store for me: that for a whole year of my life, indeed, I was to do +little else. But so has my portion been meted out to me; and during the +last few months I have, after terrible difficulties and struggles, been +able to comprehend some of the lessons hidden in the heart of pain. +Clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of +suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation. One discerns things +one never discerned before. One approaches the whole of history from a +different standpoint. What one had felt dimly, through instinct, about +art, is intellectually and emotionally realised with perfect clearness of +vision and absolute intensity of apprehension. + +I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, +is at once the type and test of all great art. What the artist is always +looking for is the mode of existence in which soul and body are one and +indivisible: in which the outward is expressive of the inward: in which +form reveals. Of such modes of existence there are not a few: youth and +the arts preoccupied with youth may serve as a model for us at one +moment: at another we may like to think that, in its subtlety and +sensitiveness of impression, its suggestion of a spirit dwelling in +external things and making its raiment of earth and air, of mist and city +alike, and in its morbid sympathy of its moods, and tones, and colours, +modern landscape art is realising for us pictorially what was realised in +such plastic perfection by the Greeks. Music, in which all subject is +absorbed in expression and cannot be separated from it, is a complex +example, and a flower or a child a simple example, of what I mean; but +sorrow is the ultimate type both in life and art. + +Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and +callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike +pleasure, wears no mask. Truth in art is not any correspondence between +the essential idea and the accidental existence; it is not the +resemblance of shape to shadow, or of the form mirrored in the crystal to +the form itself; it is no echo coming from a hollow hill, any more than +it is a silver well of water in the valley that shows the moon to the +moon and Narcissus to Narcissus. Truth in art is the unity of a thing +with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made +incarnate: the body instinct with spirit. For this reason there is no +truth comparable to sorrow. There are times when sorrow seems to me to +be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the +appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow +have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there +is pain. + +More than this, there is about sorrow an intense, an extraordinary +reality. I have said of myself that I was one who stood in symbolic +relations to the art and culture of my age. There is not a single +wretched man in this wretched place along with me who does not stand in +symbolic relation to the very secret of life. For the secret of life is +suffering. It is what is hidden behind everything. When we begin to +live, what is sweet is so sweet to us, and what is bitter so bitter, that +we inevitably direct all our desires towards pleasures, and seek not +merely for a 'month or twain to feed on honeycomb,' but for all our years +to taste no other food, ignorant all the while that we may really be +starving the soul. + +I remember talking once on this subject to one of the most beautiful +personalities I have ever known: a woman, whose sympathy and noble +kindness to me, both before and since the tragedy of my imprisonment, +have been beyond power and description; one who has really assisted me, +though she does not know it, to bear the burden of my troubles more than +any one else in the whole world has, and all through the mere fact of her +existence, through her being what she is--partly an ideal and partly an +influence: a suggestion of what one might become as well as a real help +towards becoming it; a soul that renders the common air sweet, and makes +what is spiritual seem as simple and natural as sunlight or the sea: one +for whom beauty and sorrow walk hand in hand, and have the same message. +On the occasion of which I am thinking I recall distinctly how I said to +her that there was enough suffering in one narrow London lane to show +that God did not love man, and that wherever there was any sorrow, though +but that of a child, in some little garden weeping over a fault that it +had or had not committed, the whole face of creation was completely +marred. I was entirely wrong. She told me so, but I could not believe +her. I was not in the sphere in which such belief was to be attained to. +Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible +explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the +world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced that +there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been +built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no +other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the +full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but +pain for the beautiful soul. + +When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too much +pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of God. It +is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it in a summer's +day. And so a child could. But with me and such as me it is different. +One can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long +hours that follow with leaden feet. It is so difficult to keep 'heights +that the soul is competent to gain.' We think in eternity, but we move +slowly through time; and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I +need not tell again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back +into one's cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange +insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's house for +their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slave +whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be. + +And, though at present my friends may find it a hard thing to believe, it +is true none the less, that for them living in freedom and idleness and +comfort it is more easy to learn the lessons of humility than it is for +me, who begin the day by going down on my knees and washing the floor of +my cell. For prison life with its endless privations and restrictions +makes one rebellious. The most terrible thing about it is not that it +breaks one's heart--hearts are made to be broken--but that it turns one's +heart to stone. One sometimes feels that it is only with a front of +brass and a lip of scorn that one can get through the day at all. And he +who is in a state of rebellion cannot receive grace, to use the phrase of +which the Church is so fond--so rightly fond, I dare say--for in life as +in art the mood of rebellion closes up the channels of the soul, and +shuts out the airs of heaven. Yet I must learn these lessons here, if I +am to learn them anywhere, and must be filled with joy if my feet are on +the right road and my face set towards 'the gate which is called +beautiful,' though I may fall many times in the mire and often in the +mist go astray. + +This New Life, as through my love of Dante I like sometimes to call it, +is of course no new life at all, but simply the continuance, by means of +development, and evolution, of my former life. I remember when I was at +Oxford saying to one of my friends as we were strolling round Magdalen's +narrow bird-haunted walks one morning in the year before I took my +degree, that I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden +of the world, and that I was going out into the world with that passion +in my soul. And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake +was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to +me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its +shadow and its gloom. Failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, +suffering, tears even, the broken words that come from lips in pain, +remorse that makes one walk on thorns, conscience that condemns, self- +abasement that punishes, the misery that puts ashes on its head, the +anguish that chooses sack-cloth for its raiment and into its own drink +puts gall:--all these were things of which I was afraid. And as I had +determined to know nothing of them, I was forced to taste each of them in +turn, to feed on them, to have for a season, indeed, no other food at +all. + +I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it +to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no +pleasure I did not experience. I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup +of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived +on honeycomb. But to have continued the same life would have been wrong +because it would have been limiting. I had to pass on. The other half +of the garden had its secrets for me also. Of course all this is +foreshadowed and prefigured in my books. Some of it is in _The Happy +Prince_, some of it in _The Young King_, notably in the passage where the +bishop says to the kneeling boy, 'Is not He who made misery wiser than +thou art'? a phrase which when I wrote it seemed to me little more than a +phrase; a great deal of it is hidden away in the note of doom that like a +purple thread runs through the texture of _Dorian Gray_; in _The Critic +as Artist_ it is set forth in many colours; in _The Soul of Man_ it is +written down, and in letters too easy to read; it is one of the refrains +whose recurring _motifs_ make _Salome_ so like a piece of music and bind +it together as a ballad; in the prose poem of the man who from the bronze +of the image of the 'Pleasure that liveth for a moment' has to make the +image of the 'Sorrow that abideth for ever' it is incarnate. It could +not have been otherwise. At every single moment of one's life one is +what one is going to be no less than what one has been. Art is a symbol, +because man is a symbol. + +It is, if I can fully attain to it, the ultimate realisation of the +artistic life. For the artistic life is simply self-development. +Humility in the artist is his frank acceptance of all experiences, just +as love in the artist is simply the sense of beauty that reveals to the +world its body and its soul. In _Marius the Epicurean_ Pater seeks to +reconcile the artistic life with the life of religion, in the deep, +sweet, and austere sense of the word. But Marius is little more than a +spectator: an ideal spectator indeed, and one to whom it is given 'to +contemplate the spectacle of life with appropriate emotions,' which +Wordsworth defines as the poet's true aim; yet a spectator merely, and +perhaps a little too much occupied with the comeliness of the benches of +the sanctuary to notice that it is the sanctuary of sorrow that he is +gazing at. + +I see a far more intimate and immediate connection between the true life +of Christ and the true life of the artist; and I take a keen pleasure in +the reflection that long before sorrow had made my days her own and bound +me to her wheel I had written in _The Soul of Man_ that he who would lead +a Christ-like life must be entirely and absolutely himself, and had taken +as my types not merely the shepherd on the hillside and the prisoner in +his cell, but also the painter to whom the world is a pageant and the +poet for whom the world is a song. I remember saying once to Andre Gide, +as we sat together in some Paris _cafe_, that while meta-physics had but +little real interest for me, and morality absolutely none, there was +nothing that either Plato or Christ had said that could not be +transferred immediately into the sphere of Art and there find its +complete fulfilment. + +Nor is it merely that we can discern in Christ that close union of +personality with perfection which forms the real distinction between the +classical and romantic movement in life, but the very basis of his nature +was the same as that of the nature of the artist--an intense and +flamelike imagination. He realised in the entire sphere of human +relations that imaginative sympathy which in the sphere of Art is the +sole secret of creation. He understood the leprosy of the leper, the +darkness of the blind, the fierce misery of those who live for pleasure, +the strange poverty of the rich. Some one wrote to me in trouble, 'When +you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting.' How remote was +the writer from what Matthew Arnold calls 'the Secret of Jesus.' Either +would have taught him that whatever happens to another happens to +oneself, and if you want an inscription to read at dawn and at +night-time, and for pleasure or for pain, write up on the walls of your +house in letters for the sun to gild and the moon to silver, 'Whatever +happens to oneself happens to another.' + +Christ's place indeed is with the poets. His whole conception of +Humanity sprang right out of the imagination and can only be realised by +it. What God was to the pantheist, man was to Him. He was the first to +conceive the divided races as a unity. Before his time there had been +gods and men, and, feeling through the mysticism of sympathy that in +himself each had been made incarnate, he calls himself the Son of the one +or the Son of the other, according to his mood. More than any one else +in history he wakes in us that temper of wonder to which romance always +appeals. There is still something to me almost incredible in the idea of +a young Galilean peasant imagining that he could bear on his own +shoulders the burden of the entire world; all that had already been done +and suffered, and all that was yet to be done and suffered: the sins of +Nero, of Caesar Borgia, of Alexander VI., and of him who was Emperor of +Rome and Priest of the Sun: the sufferings of those whose names are +legion and whose dwelling is among the tombs: oppressed nationalities, +factory children, thieves, people in prison, outcasts, those who are dumb +under oppression and whose silence is heard only of God; and not merely +imagining this but actually achieving it, so that at the present moment +all who come in contact with his personality, even though they may +neither bow to his altar nor kneel before his priest, in some way find +that the ugliness of their sin is taken away and the beauty of their +sorrow revealed to them. + +I had said of Christ that he ranks with the poets. That is true. Shelley +and Sophocles are of his company. But his entire life also is the most +wonderful of poems. For 'pity and terror' there is nothing in the entire +cycle of Greek tragedy to touch it. The absolute purity of the +protagonist raises the entire scheme to a height of romantic art from +which the sufferings of Thebes and Pelops' line are by their very horror +excluded, and shows how wrong Aristotle was when he said in his treatise +on the drama that it would be impossible to bear the spectacle of one +blameless in pain. Nor in AEschylus nor Dante, those stern masters of +tenderness, in Shakespeare, the most purely human of all the great +artists, in the whole of Celtic myth and legend, where the loveliness of +the world is shown through a mist of tears, and the life of a man is no +more than the life of a flower, is there anything that, for sheer +simplicity of pathos wedded and made one with sublimity of tragic effect, +can be said to equal or even approach the last act of Christ's passion. +The little supper with his companions, one of whom has already sold him +for a price; the anguish in the quiet moon-lit garden; the false friend +coming close to him so as to betray him with a kiss; the friend who still +believed in him, and on whom as on a rock he had hoped to build a house +of refuge for Man, denying him as the bird cried to the dawn; his own +utter loneliness, his submission, his acceptance of everything; and along +with it all such scenes as the high priest of orthodoxy rending his +raiment in wrath, and the magistrate of civil justice calling for water +in the vain hope of cleansing himself of that stain of innocent blood +that makes him the scarlet figure of history; the coronation ceremony of +sorrow, one of the most wonderful things in the whole of recorded time; +the crucifixion of the Innocent One before the eyes of his mother and of +the disciple whom he loved; the soldiers gambling and throwing dice for +his clothes; the terrible death by which he gave the world its most +eternal symbol; and his final burial in the tomb of the rich man, his +body swathed in Egyptian linen with costly spices and perfumes as though +he had been a king's son. When one contemplates all this from the point +of view of art alone one cannot but be grateful that the supreme office +of the Church should be the playing of the tragedy without the shedding +of blood: the mystical presentation, by means of dialogue and costume and +gesture even, of the Passion of her Lord; and it is always a source of +pleasure and awe to me to remember that the ultimate survival of the +Greek chorus, lost elsewhere to art, is to be found in the servitor +answering the priest at Mass. + +Yet the whole life of Christ--so entirely may sorrow and beauty be made +one in their meaning and manifestation--is really an idyll, though it +ends with the veil of the temple being rent, and the darkness coming over +the face of the earth, and the stone rolled to the door of the sepulchre. +One always thinks of him as a young bridegroom with his companions, as +indeed he somewhere describes himself; as a shepherd straying through a +valley with his sheep in search of green meadow or cool stream; as a +singer trying to build out of the music the walls of the City of God; or +as a lover for whose love the whole world was too small. His miracles +seem to me to be as exquisite as the coming of spring, and quite as +natural. I see no difficulty at all in believing that such was the charm +of his personality that his mere presence could bring peace to souls in +anguish, and that those who touched his garments or his hands forgot +their pain; or that as he passed by on the highway of life people who had +seen nothing of life's mystery, saw it clearly, and others who had been +deaf to every voice but that of pleasure heard for the first time the +voice of love and found it as 'musical as Apollo's lute'; or that evil +passions fled at his approach, and men whose dull unimaginative lives had +been but a mode of death rose as it were from the grave when he called +them; or that when he taught on the hillside the multitude forgot their +hunger and thirst and the cares of this world, and that to his friends +who listened to him as he sat at meat the coarse food seemed delicate, +and the water had the taste of good wine, and the whole house became full +of the odour and sweetness of nard. + +Renan in his _Vie de Jesus_--that gracious fifth gospel, the gospel +according to St. Thomas, one might call it--says somewhere that Christ's +great achievement was that he made himself as much loved after his death +as he had been during his lifetime. And certainly, if his place is among +the poets, he is the leader of all the lovers. He saw that love was the +first secret of the world for which the wise men had been looking, and +that it was only through love that one could approach either the heart of +the leper or the feet of God. + +And above all, Christ is the most supreme of individualists. Humility, +like the artistic, acceptance of all experiences, is merely a mode of +manifestation. It is man's soul that Christ is always looking for. He +calls it 'God's Kingdom,' and finds it in every one. He compares it to +little things, to a tiny seed, to a handful of leaven, to a pearl. That +is because one realises one's soul only by getting rid of all alien +passions, all acquired culture, and all external possessions, be they +good or evil. + +I bore up against everything with some stubbornness of will and much +rebellion of nature, till I had absolutely nothing left in the world but +one thing. I had lost my name, my position, my happiness, my freedom, my +wealth. I was a prisoner and a pauper. But I still had my children +left. Suddenly they were taken away from me by the law. It was a blow +so appalling that I did not know what to do, so I flung myself on my +knees, and bowed my head, and wept, and said, 'The body of a child is as +the body of the Lord: I am not worthy of either.' That moment seemed to +save me. I saw then that the only thing for me was to accept everything. +Since then--curious as it will no doubt sound--I have been happier. It +was of course my soul in its ultimate essence that I had reached. In +many ways I had been its enemy, but I found it waiting for me as a +friend. When one comes in contact with the soul it makes one simple as a +child, as Christ said one should be. + +It is tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. +'Nothing is more rare in any man,' says Emerson, 'than an act of his +own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts +are some one else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a +quotation. Christ was not merely the supreme individualist, but he was +the first individualist in history. People have tried to make him out an +ordinary philanthropist, or ranked him as an altruist with the scientific +and sentimental. But he was really neither one nor the other. Pity he +has, of course, for the poor, for those who are shut up in prisons, for +the lowly, for the wretched; but he has far more pity for the rich, for +the hard hedonists, for those who waste their freedom in becoming slaves +to things, for those who wear soft raiment and live in kings' houses. +Riches and pleasure seemed to him to be really greater tragedies than +poverty or sorrow. And as for altruism, who knew better than he that it +is vocation not volition that determines us, and that one cannot gather +grapes of thorns or figs from thistles? + +To live for others as a definite self-conscious aim was not his creed. It +was not the basis of his creed. When he says, 'Forgive your enemies,' it +is not for the sake of the enemy, but for one's own sake that he says so, +and because love is more beautiful than hate. In his own entreaty to the +young man, 'Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor,' it is not of +the state of the poor that he is thinking but of the soul of the young +man, the soul that wealth was marring. In his view of life he is one +with the artist who knows that by the inevitable law of self-perfection, +the poet must sing, and the sculptor think in bronze, and the painter +make the world a mirror for his moods, as surely and as certainly as the +hawthorn must blossom in spring, and the corn turn to gold at harvest- +time, and the moon in her ordered wanderings change from shield to +sickle, and from sickle to shield. + +But while Christ did not say to men, 'Live for others,' he pointed out +that there was no difference at all between the lives of others and one's +own life. By this means he gave to man an extended, a Titan personality. +Since his coming the history of each separate individual is, or can be +made, the history of the world. Of course, culture has intensified the +personality of man. Art has made us myriad-minded. Those who have the +artistic temperament go into exile with Dante and learn how salt is the +bread of others, and how steep their stairs; they catch for a moment the +serenity and calm of Goethe, and yet know but too well that Baudelaire +cried to God-- + + 'O Seigneur, donnez moi la force et le courage + De contempler mon corps et mon coeur sans degout.' + +Out of Shakespeare's sonnets they draw, to their own hurt it may be, the +secret of his love and make it their own; they look with new eyes on +modern life, because they have listened to one of Chopin's nocturnes, or +handled Greek things, or read the story of the passion of some dead man +for some dead woman whose hair was like threads of fine gold, and whose +mouth was as a pomegranate. But the sympathy of the artistic temperament +is necessarily with what has found expression. In words or in colours, +in music or in marble, behind the painted masks of an AEschylean play, or +through some Sicilian shepherds' pierced and jointed reeds, the man and +his message must have been revealed. + +To the artist, expression is the only mode under which he can conceive +life at all. To him what is dumb is dead. But to Christ it was not so. +With a width and wonder of imagination that fills one almost with awe, he +took the entire world of the inarticulate, the voiceless world of pain, +as his kingdom, and made of himself its eternal mouthpiece. Those of +whom I have spoken, who are dumb under oppression, and 'whose silence is +heard only of God,' he chose as his brothers. He sought to become eyes +to the blind, ears to the deaf, and a cry in the lips of those whose +tongues had been tied. His desire was to be to the myriads who had found +no utterance a very trumpet through which they might call to heaven. And +feeling, with the artistic nature of one to whom suffering and sorrow +were modes through which he could realise his conception of the +beautiful, that an idea is of no value till it becomes incarnate and is +made an image, he made of himself the image of the Man of Sorrows, and as +such has fascinated and dominated art as no Greek god ever succeeded in +doing. + +For the Greek gods, in spite of the white and red of their fair fleet +limbs, were not really what they appeared to be. The curved brow of +Apollo was like the sun's disc crescent over a hill at dawn, and his feet +were as the wings of the morning, but he himself had been cruel to +Marsyas and had made Niobe childless. In the steel shields of Athena's +eyes there had been no pity for Arachne; the pomp and peacocks of Hera +were all that was really noble about her; and the Father of the Gods +himself had been too fond of the daughters of men. The two most deeply +suggestive figures of Greek Mythology were, for religion, Demeter, an +Earth Goddess, not one of the Olympians, and for art, Dionysus, the son +of a mortal woman to whom the moment of his birth had proved also the +moment of her death. + +But Life itself from its lowliest and most humble sphere produced one far +more marvellous than the mother of Proserpina or the son of Semele. Out +of the Carpenter's shop at Nazareth had come a personality infinitely +greater than any made by myth and legend, and one, strangely enough, +destined to reveal to the world the mystical meaning of wine and the real +beauties of the lilies of the field as none, either on Cithaeron or at +Enna, had ever done. + +The song of Isaiah, 'He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows +and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him,' had +seemed to him to prefigure himself, and in him the prophecy was +fulfilled. We must not be afraid of such a phrase. Every single work of +art is the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every work of art is the +conversion of an idea into an image. Every single human being should be +the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the +realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of +man. Christ found the type and fixed it, and the dream of a Virgilian +poet, either at Jerusalem or at Babylon, became in the long progress of +the centuries incarnate in him for whom the world was waiting. + +To me one of the things in history the most to be regretted is that the +Christ's own renaissance, which has produced the Cathedral at Chartres, +the Arthurian cycle of legends, the life of St. Francis of Assisi, the +art of Giotto, and Dante's _Divine Comedy_, was not allowed to develop on +its own lines, but was interrupted and spoiled by the dreary classical +Renaissance that gave us Petrarch, and Raphael's frescoes, and Palladian +architecture, and formal French tragedy, and St. Paul's Cathedral, and +Pope's poetry, and everything that is made from without and by dead +rules, and does not spring from within through some spirit informing it. +But wherever there is a romantic movement in art there somehow, and under +some form, is Christ, or the soul of Christ. He is in _Romeo and +Juliet_, in the _Winter's Tale_, in Provencal poetry, in the _Ancient +Mariner_, in _La Belle Dame sans merci_, and in Chatterton's _Ballad of +Charity_. + +We owe to him the most diverse things and people. Hugo's _Les +Miserables_, Baudelaire's _Fleurs du Mal_, the note of pity in Russian +novels, Verlaine and Verlaine's poems, the stained glass and tapestries +and the quattro-cento work of Burne-Jones and Morris, belong to him no +less than the tower of Giotto, Lancelot and Guinevere, Tannhauser, the +troubled romantic marbles of Michael Angelo, pointed architecture, and +the love of children and flowers--for both of which, indeed, in classical +art there was but little place, hardly enough for them to grow or play +in, but which, from the twelfth century down to our own day, have been +continually making their appearances in art, under various modes and at +various times, coming fitfully and wilfully, as children, as flowers, are +apt to do: spring always seeming to one as if the flowers had been in +hiding, and only came out into the sun because they were afraid that +grown up people would grow tired of looking for them and give up the +search; and the life of a child being no more than an April day on which +there is both rain and sun for the narcissus. + +It is the imaginative quality of Christ's own nature that makes him this +palpitating centre of romance. The strange figures of poetic drama and +ballad are made by the imagination of others, but out of his own +imagination entirely did Jesus of Nazareth create himself. The cry of +Isaiah had really no more to do with his coming than the song of the +nightingale has to do with the rising of the moon--no more, though +perhaps no less. He was the denial as well as the affirmation of +prophecy. For every expectation that he fulfilled there was another that +he destroyed. 'In all beauty,' says Bacon, 'there is some strangeness of +proportion,' and of those who are born of the spirit--of those, that is +to say, who like himself are dynamic forces--Christ says that they are +like the wind that 'bloweth where it listeth, and no man can tell whence +it cometh and whither it goeth.' That is why he is so fascinating to +artists. He has all the colour elements of life: mystery, strangeness, +pathos, suggestion, ecstasy, love. He appeals to the temper of wonder, +and creates that mood in which alone he can be understood. + +And to me it is a joy to remember that if he is 'of imagination all +compact,' the world itself is of the same substance. I said in _Dorian +Gray_ that the great sins of the world take place in the brain: but it is +in the brain that everything takes place. We know now that we do not see +with the eyes or hear with the ears. They are really channels for the +transmission, adequate or inadequate, of sense impressions. It is in the +brain that the poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark +sings. + +Of late I have been studying with diligence the four prose poems about +Christ. At Christmas I managed to get hold of a Greek Testament, and +every morning, after I had cleaned my cell and polished my tins, I read a +little of the Gospels, a dozen verses taken by chance anywhere. It is a +delightful way of opening the day. Every one, even in a turbulent, ill- +disciplined life, should do the same. Endless repetition, in and out of +season, has spoiled for us the freshness, the naivete, the simple +romantic charm of the Gospels. We hear them read far too often and far +too badly, and all repetition is anti-spiritual. When one returns to the +Greek; it is like going into a garden of lilies out of some, narrow and +dark house. + +And to me, the pleasure is doubled by the reflection that it is extremely +probable that we have the actual terms, the _ipsissima verba_, used by +Christ. It was always supposed that Christ talked in Aramaic. Even +Renan thought so. But now we know that the Galilean peasants, like the +Irish peasants of our own day, were bilingual, and that Greek was the +ordinary language of intercourse all over Palestine, as indeed all over +the Eastern world. I never liked the idea that we knew of Christ's own +words only through a translation of a translation. It is a delight to me +to think that as far as his conversation was concerned, Charmides might +have listened to him, and Socrates reasoned with him, and Plato +understood him: that he really said [Greek text], that when he thought of +the lilies of the field and how they neither toil nor spin, his absolute +expression was [Greek text], and that his last word when he cried out 'my +life has been completed, has reached its fulfilment, has been perfected,' +was exactly as St. John tells us it was: [Greek text]--no more. + +While in reading the Gospels--particularly that of St. John himself, or +whatever early Gnostic took his name and mantle--I see the continual +assertion of the imagination as the basis of all spiritual and material +life, I see also that to Christ imagination was simply a form of love, +and that to him love was lord in the fullest meaning of the phrase. Some +six weeks ago I was allowed by the doctor to have white bread to eat +instead of the coarse black or brown bread of ordinary prison fare. It +is a great delicacy. It will sound strange that dry bread could possibly +be a delicacy to any one. To me it is so much so that at the close of +each meal I carefully eat whatever crumbs may be left on my tin plate, or +have fallen on the rough towel that one uses as a cloth so as not to soil +one's table; and I do so not from hunger--I get now quite sufficient +food--but simply in order that nothing should be wasted of what is given +to me. So one should look on love. + +Christ, like all fascinating personalities, had the power of not merely +saying beautiful things himself, but of making other people say beautiful +things to him; and I love the story St. Mark tells us about the Greek +woman, who, when as a trial of her faith he said to her that he could not +give her the bread of the children of Israel, answered him that the +little dogs--([Greek text], 'little dogs' it should be rendered)--who are +under the table eat of the crumbs that the children let fall. Most +people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration +that we should live. If any love is shown us we should recognise that we +are quite unworthy of it. Nobody is worthy to be loved. The fact that +God loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal things it is +written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy. +Or if that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that every +one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is a +sacrament that should be taken kneeling, and _Domine, non sum dignus_ +should be on the lips and in the hearts of those who receive it. + +If ever I write again, in the sense of producing artistic work, there are +just two subjects on which and through which I desire to express myself: +one is 'Christ as the precursor of the romantic movement in life': the +other is 'The artistic life considered in its relation to conduct.' The +first is, of course, intensely fascinating, for I see in Christ not +merely the essentials of the supreme romantic type, but all the +accidents, the wilfulnesses even, of the romantic temperament also. He +was the first person who ever said to people that they should live +'flower-like lives.' He fixed the phrase. He took children as the type +of what people should try to become. He held them up as examples to +their elders, which I myself have always thought the chief use of +children, if what is perfect should have a use. Dante describes the soul +of a man as coming from the hand of God 'weeping and laughing like a +little child,' and Christ also saw that the soul of each one should be _a +guisa di fanciulla che piangendo e ridendo pargoleggia_. He felt that +life was changeful, fluid, active, and that to allow it to be stereotyped +into any form was death. He saw that people should not be too serious +over material, common interests: that to be unpractical was to be a great +thing: that one should not bother too much over affairs. The birds +didn't, why should man? He is charming when he says, 'Take no thought +for the morrow; is not the soul more than meat? is not the body more than +raiment?' A Greek might have used the latter phrase. It is full of +Greek feeling. But only Christ could have said both, and so summed up +life perfectly for us. + +His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be. If the only +thing that he ever said had been, 'Her sins are forgiven her because she +loved much,' it would have been worth while dying to have said it. His +justice is all poetical justice, exactly what justice should be. The +beggar goes to heaven because he has been unhappy. I cannot conceive a +better reason for his being sent there. The people who work for an hour +in the vineyard in the cool of the evening receive just as much reward as +those who have toiled there all day long in the hot sun. Why shouldn't +they? Probably no one deserved anything. Or perhaps they were a +different kind of people. Christ had no patience with the dull lifeless +mechanical systems that treat people as if they were things, and so treat +everybody alike: for him there were no laws: there were exceptions +merely, as if anybody, or anything, for that matter, was like aught else +in the world! + +That which is the very keynote of romantic art was to him the proper +basis of natural life. He saw no other basis. And when they brought him +one, taken in the very act of sin and showed him her sentence written in +the law, and asked him what was to be done, he wrote with his finger on +the ground as though he did not hear them, and finally, when they pressed +him again, looked up and said, 'Let him of you who has never sinned be +the first to throw the stone at her.' It was worth while living to have +said that. + +Like all poetical natures he loved ignorant people. He knew that in the +soul of one who is ignorant there is always room for a great idea. But +he could not stand stupid people, especially those who are made stupid by +education: people who are full of opinions not one of which they even +understand, a peculiarly modern type, summed up by Christ when he +describes it as the type of one who has the key of knowledge, cannot use +it himself, and does not allow other people to use it, though it may be +made to open the gate of God's Kingdom. His chief war was against the +Philistines. That is the war every child of light has to wage. +Philistinism was the note of the age and community in which he lived. In +their heavy inaccessibility to ideas, their dull respectability, their +tedious orthodoxy, their worship of vulgar success, their entire +preoccupation with the gross materialistic side of life, and their +ridiculous estimate of themselves and their importance, the Jews of +Jerusalem in Christ's day were the exact counterpart of the British +Philistine of our own. Christ mocked at the 'whited sepulchre' of +respectability, and fixed that phrase for ever. He treated worldly +success as a thing absolutely to be despised. He saw nothing in it at +all. He looked on wealth as an encumbrance to a man. He would not hear +of life being sacrificed to any system of thought or morals. He pointed +out that forms and ceremonies were made for man, not man for forms and +ceremonies. He took sabbatarianism as a type of the things that should +be set at nought. The cold philanthropies, the ostentatious public +charities, the tedious formalisms so dear to the middle-class mind, he +exposed with utter and relentless scorn. To us, what is termed orthodoxy +is merely a facile unintelligent acquiescence; but to them, and in their +hands, it was a terrible and paralysing tyranny. Christ swept it aside. +He showed that the spirit alone was of value. He took a keen pleasure in +pointing out to them that though they were always reading the law and the +prophets, they had not really the smallest idea of what either of them +meant. In opposition to their tithing of each separate day into the +fixed routine of prescribed duties, as they tithe mint and rue, he +preached the enormous importance of living completely for the moment. + +Those whom he saved from their sins are saved simply for beautiful +moments in their lives. Mary Magdalen, when she sees Christ, breaks the +rich vase of alabaster that one of her seven lovers had given her, and +spills the odorous spices over his tired dusty feet, and for that one +moment's sake sits for ever with Ruth and Beatrice in the tresses of the +snow-white rose of Paradise. All that Christ says to us by the way of a +little warning is that every moment should be beautiful, that the soul +should always be ready for the coming of the bridegroom, always waiting +for the voice of the lover, Philistinism being simply that side of man's +nature that is not illumined by the imagination. He sees all the lovely +influences of life as modes of light: the imagination itself is the world +of light. The world is made by it, and yet the world cannot understand +it: that is because the imagination is simply a manifestation of love, +and it is love and the capacity for it that distinguishes one human being +from another. + +But it is when he deals with a sinner that Christ is most romantic, in +the sense of most real. The world had always loved the saint as being +the nearest possible approach to the perfection of God. Christ, through +some divine instinct in him, seems to have always loved the sinner as +being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of man. His +primary desire was not to reform people, any more than his primary desire +was to a relieve suffering. To turn an interesting thief into a tedious +honest man was not his aim. He would have thought little of the +Prisoners' Aid Society and other modern movements of the kind. The +conversion of a publican into a Pharisee would not have seemed to him a +great achievement. But in a manner not yet understood of the world he +regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy things +and modes of perfection. + +It seems a very dangerous idea. It is--all great ideas are dangerous. +That it was Christ's creed admits of no doubt. That it is the true creed +I don't doubt myself. + +Of course the sinner must repent. But why? Simply because otherwise he +would be unable to realise what he had done. The moment of repentance is +the moment of initiation. More than that: it is the means by which one +alters one's past. The Greeks thought that impossible. They often say +in their Gnomic aphorisms, 'Even the Gods cannot alter the past.' Christ +showed that the commonest sinner could do it, that it was the one thing +he could do. Christ, had he been asked, would have said--I feel quite +certain about it--that the moment the prodigal son fell on his knees and +wept, he made his having wasted his substance with harlots, his swine- +herding and hungering for the husks they ate, beautiful and holy moments +in his life. It is difficult for most people to grasp the idea. I dare +say one has to go to prison to understand it. If so, it may be worth +while going to prison. + +There is something so unique about Christ. Of course just as there are +false dawns before the dawn itself, and winter days so full of sudden +sunlight that they will cheat the wise crocus into squandering its gold +before its time, and make some foolish bird call to its mate to build on +barren boughs, so there were Christians before Christ. For that we +should be grateful. The unfortunate thing is that there have been none +since. I make one exception, St. Francis of Assisi. But then God had +given him at his birth the soul of a poet, as he himself when quite young +had in mystical marriage taken poverty as his bride: and with the soul of +a poet and the body of a beggar he found the way to perfection not +difficult. He understood Christ, and so he became like him. We do not +require the Liber Conformitatum to teach us that the life of St. Francis +was the true _Imitatio Christi_, a poem compared to which the book of +that name is merely prose. + +Indeed, that is the charm about Christ, when all is said: he is just like +a work of art. He does not really teach one anything, but by being +brought into his presence one becomes something. And everybody is +predestined to his presence. Once at least in his life each man walks +with Christ to Emmaus. + +As regards the other subject, the Relation of the Artistic Life to +Conduct, it will no doubt seem strange to you that I should select it. +People point to Reading Gaol and say, 'That is where the artistic life +leads a man.' Well, it might lead to worse places. The more mechanical +people to whom life is a shrewd speculation depending on a careful +calculation of ways and means, always know where they are going, and go +there. They start with the ideal desire of being the parish beadle, and +in whatever sphere they are placed they succeed in being the parish +beadle and no more. A man whose desire is to be something separate from +himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a +prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably +succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those +who want a mask have to wear it. + +But with the dynamic forces of life, and those in whom those dynamic +forces become incarnate, it is different. People whose desire is solely +for self-realisation never know where they are going. They can't know. +In one sense of the word it is of course necessary, as the Greek oracle +said, to know oneself: that is the first achievement of knowledge. But +to recognise that the soul of a man is unknowable, is the ultimate +achievement of wisdom. The final mystery is oneself. When one has +weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and +mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. +Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul? When the son went out to +look for his father's asses, he did not know that a man of God was +waiting for him with the very chrism of coronation, and that his own soul +was already the soul of a king. + +I hope to live long enough and to produce work of such a character that I +shall be able at the end of my days to say, 'Yes! this is just where the +artistic life leads a man!' Two of the most perfect lives I have come +across in my own experience are the lives of Verlaine and of Prince +Kropotkin: both of them men who have passed years in prison: the first, +the one Christian poet since Dante; the other, a man with a soul of that +beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia. And for the +last seven or eight months, in spite of a succession of great troubles +reaching me from the outside world almost without intermission, I have +been placed in direct contact with a new spirit working in this prison +through man and things, that has helped me beyond any possibility of +expression in words: so that while for the first year of my imprisonment +I did nothing else, and can remember doing nothing else, but wring my +hands in impotent despair, and say, 'What an ending, what an appalling +ending!' now I try to say to myself, and sometimes when I am not +torturing myself do really and sincerely say, 'What a beginning, what a +wonderful beginning!' It may really be so. It may become so. If it +does I shall owe much to this new personality that has altered every +man's life in this place. + +You may realise it when I say that had I been released last May, as I +tried to be, I would have left this place loathing it and every official +in it with a bitterness of hatred that would have poisoned my life. I +have had a year longer of imprisonment, but humanity has been in the +prison along with us all, and now when I go out I shall always remember +great kindnesses that I have received here from almost everybody, and on +the day of my release I shall give many thanks to many people, and ask to +be remembered by them in turn. + +The prison style is absolutely and entirely wrong. I would give anything +to be able to alter it when I go out. I intend to try. But there is +nothing in the world so wrong but that the spirit of humanity, which is +the spirit of love, the spirit of the Christ who is not in churches, may +make it, if not right, at least possible to be borne without too much +bitterness of heart. + +I know also that much is waiting for me outside that is very delightful, +from what St. Francis of Assisi calls 'my brother the wind, and my sister +the rain,' lovely things both of them, down to the shop-windows and +sunsets of great cities. If I made a list of all that still remains to +me, I don't know where I should stop: for, indeed, God made the world +just as much for me as for any one else. Perhaps I may go out with +something that I had not got before. I need not tell you that to me +reformations in morals are as meaningless and vulgar as Reformations in +theology. But while to propose to be a better man is a piece of +unscientific cant, to have become a deeper man is the privilege of those +who have suffered. And such I think I have become. + +If after I am free a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me +to it, I should not mind a bit. I can be perfectly happy by myself. With +freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy? +Besides, feasts are not for me any more. I have given too many to care +about them. That side of life is over for me, very fortunately, I dare +say. But if after I am free a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to +allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly. If he shut the +doors of the house of mourning against me, I would come back again and +again and beg to be admitted, so that I might share in what I was +entitled to share in. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, +I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation, as the most terrible +mode in which disgrace could be inflicted on me. But that could not be. +I have a right to share in sorrow, and he who can look at the loveliness +of the world and share its sorrow, and realise something of the wonder of +both, is in immediate contact with divine things, and has got as near to +God's secret as any one can get. + +Perhaps there may come into my art also, no less than into my life, a +still deeper note, one of greater unity of passion, and directness of +impulse. Not width but intensity is the true aim of modern art. We are +no longer in art concerned with the type. It is with the exception that +we have to do. I cannot put my sufferings into any form they took, I +need hardly say. Art only begins where Imitation ends, but something +must come into my work, of fuller memory of words perhaps, of richer +cadences, of more curious effects, of simpler architectural order, of +some aesthetic quality at any rate. + +When Marsyas was 'torn from the scabbard of his limbs'--_della vagina +della membre sue_, to use one of Dante's most terrible Tacitean +phrases--he had no more song, the Greek said. Apollo had been victor. +The lyre had vanquished the reed. But perhaps the Greeks were mistaken. +I hear in much modern Art the cry of Marsyas. It is bitter in +Baudelaire, sweet and plaintive in Lamartine, mystic in Verlaine. It is +in the deferred resolutions of Chopin's music. It is in the discontent +that haunts Burne-Jones's women. Even Matthew Arnold, whose song of +Callicles tells of 'the triumph of the sweet persuasive lyre,' and the +'famous final victory,' in such a clear note of lyrical beauty, has not a +little of it; in the troubled undertone of doubt and distress that haunts +his verses, neither Goethe nor Wordsworth could help him, though he +followed each in turn, and when he seeks to mourn for _Thyrsis_ or to +sing of the _Scholar Gipsy_, it is the reed that he has to take for the +rendering of his strain. But whether or not the Phrygian Faun was +silent, I cannot be. Expression is as necessary to me as leaf and +blossoms are to the black branches of the trees that show themselves +above the prison walls and are so restless in the wind. Between my art +and the world there is now a wide gulf, but between art and myself there +is none. I hope at least that there is none. + +To each of us different fates are meted out. My lot has been one of +public infamy, of long imprisonment, of misery, of ruin, of disgrace, but +I am not worthy of it--not yet, at any rate. I remember that I used to +say that I thought I could bear a real tragedy if it came to me with +purple pall and a mask of noble sorrow, but that the dreadful thing about +modernity was that it put tragedy into the raiment of comedy, so that the +great realities seemed commonplace or grotesque or lacking in style. It +is quite true about modernity. It has probably always been true about +actual life. It is said that all martyrdoms seemed mean to the looker +on. The nineteenth century is no exception to the rule. + +Everything about my tragedy has been hideous, mean, repellent, lacking in +style; our very dress makes us grotesque. We are the zanies of sorrow. +We are clowns whose hearts are broken. We are specially designed to +appeal to the sense of humour. On November 13th, 1895, I was brought +down here from London. From two o'clock till half-past two on that day I +had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham Junction in convict dress, +and handcuffed, for the world to look at. I had been taken out of the +hospital ward without a moment's notice being given to me. Of all +possible objects I was the most grotesque. When people saw me they +laughed. Each train as it came up swelled the audience. Nothing could +exceed their amusement. That was, of course, before they knew who I was. +As soon as they had been informed they laughed still more. For half an +hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by a jeering mob. + +For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour +and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic thing as +possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison tears are a part +of every day's experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is +a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is +happy. + +Well, now I am really beginning to feel more regret for the people who +laughed than for myself. Of course when they saw me I was not on my +pedestal, I was in the pillory. But it is a very unimaginative nature +that only cares for people on their pedestals. A pedestal may be a very +unreal thing. A pillory is a terrific reality. They should have known +also how to interpret sorrow better. I have said that behind sorrow +there is always sorrow. It were wiser still to say that behind sorrow +there is always a soul. And to mock at a soul in pain is a dreadful +thing. In the strangely simple economy of the world people only get what +they give, and to those who have not enough imagination to penetrate the +mere outward of things, and feel pity, what pity can be given save that +of scorn? + +I write this account of the mode of my being transferred here simply that +it should be realised how hard it has been for me to get anything out of +my punishment but bitterness and despair. I have, however, to do it, and +now and then I have moments of submission and acceptance. All the spring +may be hidden in the single bud, and the low ground nest of the lark may +hold the joy that is to herald the feet of many rose-red dawns. So +perhaps whatever beauty of life still remains to me is contained in some +moment of surrender, abasement, and humiliation. I can, at any rate, +merely proceed on the lines of my own development, and, accepting all +that has happened to me, make myself worthy of it. + +People used to say of me that I was too individualistic. I must be far +more of an individualist than ever I was. I must get far more out of +myself than ever I got, and ask far less of the world than ever I asked. +Indeed, my ruin came not from too great individualism of life, but from +too little. The one disgraceful, unpardonable, and to all time +contemptible action of my life was to allow myself to appeal to society +for help and protection. To have made such an appeal would have been +from the individualist point of view bad enough, but what excuse can +there ever be put forward for having made it? Of course once I had put +into motion the forces of society, society turned on me and said, 'Have +you been living all this time in defiance of my laws, and do you now +appeal to those laws for protection? You shall have those laws exercised +to the full. You shall abide by what you have appealed to.' The result +is I am in gaol. Certainly no man ever fell so ignobly, and by such +ignoble instruments, as I did. + +The Philistine element in life is not the failure to understand art. +Charming people, such as fishermen, shepherds, ploughboys, peasants and +the like, know nothing about art, and are the very salt of the earth. He +is the Philistine who upholds and aids the heavy, cumbrous, blind, +mechanical forces of society, and who does not recognise dynamic force +when he meets it either in a man or a movement. + +People thought it dreadful of me to have entertained at dinner the evil +things of life, and to have found pleasure in their company. But then, +from the point of view through which I, as an artist in life, approach +them they were delightfully suggestive and stimulating. The danger was +half the excitement. . . . My business as an artist was with Ariel. I +set myself to wrestle with Caliban. . . . + +A great friend of mine--a friend of ten years' standing--came to see me +some time ago, and told me that he did not believe a single word of what +was said against me, and wished me to know that he considered me quite +innocent, and the victim of a hideous plot. I burst into tears at what +he said, and told him that while there was much amongst the definite +charges that was quite untrue and transferred to me by revolting malice, +still that my life had been full of perverse pleasures, and that unless +he accepted that as a fact about me and realised it to the full I could +not possibly be friends with him any more, or ever be in his company. It +was a terrible shock to him, but we are friends, and I have not got his +friendship on false pretences. + +Emotional forces, as I say somewhere in _Intentions_, are as limited in +extent and duration as the forces of physical energy. The little cup +that is made to hold so much can hold so much and no more, though all the +purple vats of Burgundy be filled with wine to the brim, and the treaders +stand knee-deep in the gathered grapes of the stony vineyards of Spain. +There is no error more common than that of thinking that those who are +the causes or occasions of great tragedies share in the feelings suitable +to the tragic mood: no error more fatal than expecting it of them. The +martyr in his 'shirt of flame' may be looking on the face of God, but to +him who is piling the faggots or loosening the logs for the blast the +whole scene is no more than the slaying of an ox is to the butcher, or +the felling of a tree to the charcoal burner in the forest, or the fall +of a flower to one who is mowing down the grass with a scythe. Great +passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by +those who are on a level with them. + +* * * * * + +I know of nothing in all drama more incomparable from the point of view +of art, nothing more suggestive in its subtlety of observation, than +Shakespeare's drawing of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are Hamlet's +college friends. They have been his companions. They bring with them +memories of pleasant days together. At the moment when they come across +him in the play he is staggering under the weight of a burden intolerable +to one of his temperament. The dead have come armed out of the grave to +impose on him a mission at once too great and too mean for him. He is a +dreamer, and he is called upon to act. He has the nature of the poet, +and he is asked to grapple with the common complexity of cause and +effect, with life in its practical realisation, of which he knows +nothing, not with life in its ideal essence, of which he knows so much. +He has no conception of what to do, and his folly is to feign folly. +Brutus used madness as a cloak to conceal the sword of his purpose, the +dagger of his will, but the Hamlet madness is a mere mask for the hiding +of weakness. In the making of fancies and jests he sees a chance of +delay. He keeps playing with action as an artist plays with a theory. He +makes himself the spy of his proper actions, and listening to his own +words knows them to be but 'words, words, words.' Instead of trying to +be the hero of his own history, he seeks to be the spectator of his own +tragedy. He disbelieves in everything, including himself, and yet his +doubt helps him not, as it comes not from scepticism but from a divided +will. + +Of all this Guildenstern and Rosencrantz realise nothing. They bow and +smirk and smile, and what the one says the other echoes with sickliest +intonation. When, at last, by means of the play within the play, and the +puppets in their dalliance, Hamlet 'catches the conscience' of the King, +and drives the wretched man in terror from his throne, Guildenstern and +Rosencrantz see no more in his conduct than a rather painful breach of +Court etiquette. That is as far as they can attain to in 'the +contemplation of the spectacle of life with appropriate emotions.' They +are close to his very secret and know nothing of it. Nor would there be +any use in telling them. They are the little cups that can hold so much +and no more. Towards the close it is suggested that, caught in a cunning +spring set for another, they have met, or may meet, with a violent and +sudden death. But a tragic ending of this kind, though touched by +Hamlet's humour with something of the surprise and justice of comedy, is +really not for such as they. They never die. Horatio, who in order to +'report Hamlet and his cause aright to the unsatisfied,' + + 'Absents him from felicity a while, + And in this harsh world draws his breath in pain,' + +dies, but Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are as immortal as Angelo and +Tartuffe, and should rank with them. They are what modern life has +contributed to the antique ideal of friendship. He who writes a new _De +Amicitia_ must find a niche for them, and praise them in Tusculan prose. +They are types fixed for all time. To censure them would show 'a lack of +appreciation.' They are merely out of their sphere: that is all. In +sublimity of soul there is no contagion. High thoughts and high emotions +are by their very existence isolated. + +* * * * * + +I am to be released, if all goes well with me, towards the end of May, +and hope to go at once to some little sea-side village abroad with R--- +and M---. + +The sea, as Euripides says in one of his plays about Iphigeneia, washes +away the stains and wounds of the world. + +I hope to be at least a month with my friends, and to gain peace and +balance, and a less troubled heart, and a sweeter mood. I have a strange +longing for the great simple primeval things, such as the sea, to me no +less of a mother than the Earth. It seems to me that we all look at +Nature too much, and live with her too little. I discern great sanity in +the Greek attitude. They never chattered about sunsets, or discussed +whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not. But they saw +that the sea was for the swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the +runner. They loved the trees for the shadow that they cast, and the +forest for its silence at noon. The vineyard-dresser wreathed his hair +with ivy that he might keep off the rays of the sun as he stooped over +the young shoots, and for the artist and the athlete, the two types that +Greece gave us, they plaited with garlands the leaves of the bitter +laurel and of the wild parsley, which else had been of no service to men. + +We call ours a utilitarian age, and we do not know the uses of any single +thing. We have forgotten that water can cleanse, and fire purify, and +that the Earth is mother to us all. As a consequence our art is of the +moon and plays with shadows, while Greek art is of the sun and deals +directly with things. I feel sure that in elemental forces there is +purification, and I want to go back to them and live in their presence. + +Of course to one so modern as I am, 'Enfant de mon siecle,' merely to +look at the world will be always lovely. I tremble with pleasure when I +think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the +lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir +into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss +the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for +me. Linnaeus fell on his knees and wept for joy when he saw for the +first time the long heath of some English upland made yellow with the +tawny aromatic brooms of the common furze; and I know that for me, to +whom flowers are part of desire, there are tears waiting in the petals of +some rose. It has always been so with me from my boyhood. There is not +a single colour hidden away in the chalice of a flower, or the curve of a +shell, to which, by some subtle sympathy with the very soul of things, my +nature does not answer. Like Gautier, I have always been one of those +'pour qui le monde visible existe.' + +Still, I am conscious now that behind all this beauty, satisfying though +it may be, there is some spirit hidden of which the painted forms and +shapes are but modes of manifestation, and it is with this spirit that I +desire to become in harmony. I have grown tired of the articulate +utterances of men and things. The Mystical in Art, the Mystical in Life, +the Mystical in Nature this is what I am looking for. It is absolutely +necessary for me to find it somewhere. + +All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences +of death; and three times have I been tried. The first time I left the +box to be arrested, the second time to be led back to the house of +detention, the third time to pass into a prison for two years. Society, +as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; +but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have +clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence +I may weep undisturbed. 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We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. +With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to +circle round one centre of pain. The paralysing immobility of a +life every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable +pattern, so that we eat and drink and lie down and pray, or kneel +at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron +formula: this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in +the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate +itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence +is ceaseless change. Of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers +bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the +vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms +or strewn with fallen fruit: of these we know nothing and can know +nothing. + +For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very +sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and +gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled +glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is +grey and niggard. It is always twilight in one's cell, as it is +always twilight in one's heart. And in the sphere of thought, no +less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more. The thing that +you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is +happening to me now, and will happen to me again to-morrow. +Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why I +am writing, and in this manner writing. . . . + +A week later, I am transferred here. Three more months go over and +my mother dies. No one knew how deeply I loved and honoured her. +Her death was terrible to me; but I, once a lord of language, have +no words in which to express my anguish and my shame. She and my +father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured, +not merely in literature, art, archaeology, and science, but in the +public history of my own country, in its evolution as a nation. I +had disgraced that name eternally. I had made it a low by-word +among low people. I had dragged it through the very mire. I had +given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools +that they might turn it into a synonym for folly. What I suffered +then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write or paper to record. +My wife, always kind and gentle to me, rather than that I should +hear the news from indifferent lips, travelled, ill as she was, all +the way from Genoa to England to break to me herself the tidings of +so irreparable, so irremediable, a loss. Messages of sympathy +reached me from all who had still affection for me. Even people +who had not known me personally, hearing that a new sorrow had +broken into my life, wrote to ask that some expression of their +condolence should be conveyed to me. . . . + +Three months go over. The calendar of my daily conduct and labour +that hangs on the outside of my cell door, with my name and +sentence written upon it, tells me that it is May. . . . + +Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common +in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. +There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which +sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation. The +thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the +direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse. It +is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, +and even then must bleed again, though not in pain. + +Where there is sorrow there in holy ground. Some day people will +realise what that means. They will know nothing of life till they +do, - and natures like his can realise it. When I was brought down +from my prison to the Court of Bankruptcy, between two policemen, - +waited in the long dreary corridor that, before the whole crowd, +whom an action so sweet and simple hushed into silence, he might +gravely raise his hat to me, as, handcuffed and with bowed head, I +passed him by. Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than +that. It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love, that the +saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss +the leper on the cheek. I have never said one single word to him +about what he did. I do not know to the present moment whether he +is aware that I was even conscious of his action. It is not a +thing for which one can render formal thanks in formal words. I +store it in the treasure-house of my heart. I keep it there as a +secret debt that I am glad to think I can never possibly repay. It +is embalmed and kept sweet by the myrrh and cassia of many tears. +When wisdom has been profitless to me, philosophy barren, and the +proverbs and phrases of those who have sought to give me +consolation as dust and ashes in my mouth, the memory of that +little, lovely, silent act of love has unsealed for me all the +wells of pity: made the desert blossom like a rose, and brought me +out of the bitterness of lonely exile into harmony with the +wounded, broken, and great heart of the world. When people are +able to understand, not merely how beautiful -'s action was, but +why it meant so much to me, and always will mean so much, then, +perhaps, they will realise how and in what spirit they should +approach me. . . . + +The poor are wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive than +we are. In their eyes prison is a tragedy in a man's life, a +misfortune, a casuality, something that calls for sympathy in +others. They speak of one who is in prison as of one who is 'in +trouble' simply. It is the phrase they always use, and the +expression has the perfect wisdom of love in it. With people of +our own rank it is different. With us, prison makes a man a +pariah. I, and such as I am, have hardly any right to air and sun. +Our presence taints the pleasures of others. We are unwelcome when +we reappear. To revisit the glimpses of the moon is not for us. +Our very children are taken away. Those lovely links with humanity +are broken. We are doomed to be solitary, while our sons still +live. We are denied the one thing that might heal us and keep us, +that might bring balm to the bruised heart, and peace to the soul +in pain. . . . + +I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or +small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to +say so. I am trying to say so, though they may not think it at the +present moment. This pitiless indictment I bring without pity +against myself. Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I +did to myself was far more terrible still. + +I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture +of my age. I had realised this for myself at the very dawn of my +manhood, and had forced my age to realise it afterwards. Few men +hold such a position in their own lifetime, and have it so +acknowledged. It is usually discerned, if discerned at all, by the +historian, or the critic, long after both the man and his age have +passed away. With me it was different. I felt it myself, and made +others feel it. Byron was a symbolic figure, but his relations +were to the passion of his age and its weariness of passion. Mine +were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue, +of larger scope. + +The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured +into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself +with being a FLANEUR, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded +myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the +spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me +a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went +to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox +was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the +sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, +or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure +where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little +action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that +therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day +to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I +was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I +allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. +There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility. + +I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has +come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to +look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish +that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was +dumb. I have passed through every possible mood of suffering. +Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he +said - + + +'Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark +And has the nature of infinity.' + + +But while there were times when I rejoiced in the idea that my +sufferings were to be endless, I could not bear them to be without +meaning. Now I find hidden somewhere away in my nature something +that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and +suffering least of all. That something hidden away in my nature, +like a treasure in a field, is Humility. + +It is the last thing left in me, and the best: the ultimate +discovery at which I have arrived, the starting-point for a fresh +development. It has come to me right out of myself, so I know that +it has come at the proper time. It could not have come before, nor +later. Had any one told me of it, I would have rejected it. Had +it been brought to me, I would have refused it. As I found it, I +want to keep it. I must do so. It is the one thing that has in it +the elements of life, of a new life, VITA NUOVA for me. Of all +things it is the strangest. One cannot acquire it, except by +surrendering everything that one has. It is only when one has lost +all things, that one knows that one possesses it. + +Now I have realised that it is in me, I see quite clearly what I +ought to do; in fact, must do. And when I use such a phrase as +that, I need not say that I am not alluding to any external +sanction or command. I admit none. I am far more of an +individualist than I ever was. Nothing seems to me of the smallest +value except what one gets out of oneself. My nature is seeking a +fresh mode of self-realisation. That is all I am concerned with. +And the first thing that I have got to do is to free myself from +any possible bitterness of feeling against the world. + +I am completely penniless, and absolutely homeless. Yet there are +worse things in the world than that. I am quite candid when I say +that rather than go out from this prison with bitterness in my +heart against the world, I would gladly and readily beg my bread +from door to door. If I got nothing from the house of the rich I +would get something at the house of the poor. Those who have much +are often greedy; those who have little always share. I would not +a bit mind sleeping in the cool grass in summer, and when winter +came on sheltering myself by the warm close-thatched rick, or under +the penthouse of a great barn, provided I had love in my heart. +The external things of life seem to me now of no importance at all. +You can see to what intensity of individualism I have arrived - or +am arriving rather, for the journey is long, and 'where I walk +there are thorns.' + +Of course I know that to ask alms on the highway is not to be my +lot, and that if ever I lie in the cool grass at night-time it will +be to write sonnets to the moon. When I go out of prison, R- will +be waiting for me on the other side of the big iron-studded gate, +and he is the symbol, not merely of his own affection, but of the +affection of many others besides. I believe I am to have enough to +live on for about eighteen months at any rate, so that if I may not +write beautiful books, I may at least read beautiful books; and +what joy can be greater? After that, I hope to be able to recreate +my creative faculty. + +But were things different: had I not a friend left in the world; +were there not a single house open to me in pity; had I to accept +the wallet and ragged cloak of sheer penury: as long as I am free +from all resentment, hardness and scorn, I would be able to face +the life with much more calm and confidence than I would were my +body in purple and fine linen, and the soul within me sick with +hate. + +And I really shall have no difficulty. When you really want love +you will find it waiting for you. + +I need not say that my task does not end there. It would be +comparatively easy if it did. There is much more before me. I +have hills far steeper to climb, valleys much darker to pass +through. And I have to get it all out of myself. Neither +religion, morality, nor reason can help me at all. + +Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian. I am one of +those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see +that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is +something wrong in what one becomes. It is well to have learned +that. + +Religion does not help me. The faith that others give to what is +unseen, I give to what one can touch, and look at. My gods dwell +in temples made with hands; and within the circle of actual +experience is my creed made perfect and complete: too complete, it +may be, for like many or all of those who have placed their heaven +in this earth, I have found in it not merely the beauty of heaven, +but the horror of hell also. When I think about religion at all, I +feel as if I would like to found an order for those who CANNOT +believe: the Confraternity of the Faithless, one might call it, +where on an altar, on which no taper burned, a priest, in whose +heart peace had no dwelling, might celebrate with unblessed bread +and a chalice empty of wine. Every thing to be true must become a +religion. And agnosticism should have its ritual no less than +faith. It has sown its martyrs, it should reap its saints, and +praise God daily for having hidden Himself from man. But whether +it be faith or agnosticism, it must be nothing external to me. Its +symbols must be of my own creating. Only that is spiritual which +makes its own form. If I may not find its secret within myself, I +shall never find it: if I have not got it already, it will never +come to me. + +Reason does not help me. It tells me that the laws under which I +am convicted are wrong and unjust laws, and the system under which +I have suffered a wrong and unjust system. But, somehow, I have +got to make both of these things just and right to me. And exactly +as in Art one is only concerned with what a particular thing is at +a particular moment to oneself, so it is also in the ethical +evolution of one's character. I have got to make everything that +has happened to me good for me. The plank bed, the loathsome food, +the hard ropes shredded into oakum till one's finger-tips grow dull +with pain, the menial offices with which each day begins and +finishes, 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 of 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. + +I want to get to the point when I shall be able to say quite +simply, and without affectation that the two great turning-points +in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society +sent me to prison. I will not say that prison is the best thing +that could have happened to me: for that phrase would savour of +too great bitterness towards myself. I would sooner say, or hear +it said of me, that I was so typical a child of my age, that in my +perversity, and for that perversity's sake, I turned the good +things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life to good. + +What is said, however, by myself or by others, matters little. The +important thing, the thing that lies before me, the thing that I +have to do, if the brief remainder of my days is not to be maimed, +marred, and incomplete, is to absorb into my nature all that has +been done to me, to make it part of me, to accept it without +complaint, fear, or reluctance. The supreme vice is shallowness. +Whatever is realised is right. + +When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and +forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realising +what I am that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised +by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a +prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal. It would mean +that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, +and that those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody +else - the beauty of the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, +the music of daybreak and the silence of great nights, the rain +falling through the leaves, or the dew creeping over the grass and +making it silver - would all be tainted for me, and lose their +healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To regret +one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny +one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own +life. It is no less than a denial of the soul. + +For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and +unclean no less than those that the priest or a vision has +cleansed, and converts them into swiftness or strength, into the +play of beautiful muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, into the +curves and colours of the hair, the lips, the eye; so the soul in +its turn has its nutritive functions also, and can transform into +noble moods of thought and passions of high import what in itself +is base, cruel and degrading; nay, more, may find in these its most +august modes of assertion, and can often reveal itself most +perfectly through what was intended to desecrate or destroy. + +The fact of my having been the common prisoner of a common gaol I +must frankly accept, and, curious as it may seem, one of the things +I shall have to teach myself is not to be ashamed of it. I must +accept it as a punishment, and if one is ashamed of having been +punished, one might just as well never have been punished at all. +Of course there are many things of which I was convicted that I had +not done, but then there are many things of which I was convicted +that I had done, and a still greater number of things in my life +for which I was never indicted at all. And as the gods are +strange, and punish us for what is good and humane in us as much as +for what is evil and perverse, I must accept the fact that one is +punished for the good as well as for the evil that one does. I +have no doubt that it is quite right one should be. It helps one, +or should help one, to realise both, and not to be too conceited +about either. And if I then am not ashamed of my punishment, as I +hope not to be, I shall be able to think, and walk, and live with +freedom. + +Many men on their release carry their prison about with them into +the air, and hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, and at +length, like poor poisoned things, creep into some hole and die. +It is wretched that they should have to do so, and it is wrong, +terribly wrong, of society that it should force them to do so. +Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment +on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, +and fails to realise what it has done. When the man's punishment +is over, it leaves him to himself; that is to say, it abandons him +at the very moment when its highest duty towards him begins. It is +really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has +punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they cannot pay, or +one on whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an irremediable +wrong. I can claim on my side that if I realise what I have +suffered, society should realise what it has inflicted on me; and +that there should be no bitterness or hate on either side. + +Of course I know that from one point of view things will be made +different for me than for others; must indeed, by the very nature +of the case, be made so. The poor thieves and outcasts who are +imprisoned here with me are in many respects more fortunate than I +am. The little way in grey city or green field that saw their sin +is small; to find those who know nothing of what they have done +they need go no further than a bird might fly between the twilight +and the dawn; but for me the world is shrivelled to a handsbreadth, +and everywhere I turn my name is written on the rocks in lead. For +I have come, not from obscurity into the momentary notoriety of +crime, but from a sort of eternity of fame to a sort of eternity of +infamy, and sometimes seem to myself to have shown, if indeed it +required showing, that between the famous and the infamous there is +but one step, if as much as one. + +Still, in the very fact that people will recognise me wherever I +go, and know all about my life, as far as its follies go, I can +discern something good for me. It will force on me the necessity +of again asserting myself as an artist, and as soon as I possibly +can. If I can produce only one beautiful work of art I shall be +able to rob malice of its venom, and cowardice of its sneer, and to +pluck out the tongue of scorn by the roots. + +And if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less a +problem to life. People must adopt some attitude towards me, and +so pass judgment, both on themselves and me. I need not say I am +not talking of particular individuals. The only people I would +care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: +those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: +nobody else interests me. Nor am I making any demands on life. In +all that I have said I am simply concerned with my own mental +attitude towards life as a whole; and I feel that not to be ashamed +of having been punished is one of the first points I must attain +to, for the sake of my own perfection, and because I am so +imperfect. + +Then I must learn how to be happy. Once I knew it, or thought I +knew it, by instinct. It was always springtime once in my heart. +My temperament was akin to joy. I filled my life to the very brim +with pleasure, as one might fill a cup to the very brim with wine. +Now I am approaching life from a completely new standpoint, and +even to conceive happiness is often extremely difficult for me. I +remember during my first term at Oxford reading in Pater's +RENAISSANCE - that book which has had such strange influence over +my life - how Dante places low in the Inferno those who wilfully +live in sadness; and going to the college library and turning to +the passage in the DIVINE COMEDY where beneath the dreary marsh lie +those who were 'sullen in the sweet air,' saying for ever and ever +through their sighs - + + +'Tristi fummo +Nell aer dolce che dal sol s'allegra.' + + +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,' 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 see me. It is only a +slight return, I know, but it is the one, I feel certain, that +pleases them most. I saw R- for an hour on Saturday week, and I +tried to give the fullest possible expression of 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 for life. + +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. +It is the world in which I have been living. Sorrow, then, and all +that it teaches one, is my new world. + +I used to live entirely for pleasure. I shunned suffering and +sorrow of every kind. I hated both. I resolved to ignore them as +far as possible: to treat them, that is to say, as modes of +imperfection. They were not part of my scheme of life. They had +no place in my philosophy. My mother, who knew life as a whole, +used often to quote to me Goethe's lines - written by Carlyle in a +book he had given her years ago, and translated by him, I fancy, +also:- + + +'Who never ate his bread in sorrow, +Who never spent the midnight hours +Weeping and waiting for the morrow, - +He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.' + + +They were the lines which that noble Queen of Prussia, whom +Napoleon treated with such coarse brutality, used to quote in her +humiliation and exile; they were the lines my mother often quoted +in the troubles of her later life. I absolutely declined to accept +or admit the enormous truth hidden in them. I could not understand +it. I remember quite well how I used to tell her that I did not +want to eat my bread in sorrow, or to pass any night weeping and +watching for a more bitter dawn. + +I had no idea that it was one of the special things that the Fates +had in store for me: that for a whole year of my life, indeed, I +was to do little else. But so has my portion been meted out to me; +and during the last few months I have, after terrible difficulties +and struggles, been able to comprehend some of the lessons hidden +in the heart of pain. Clergymen and people who use phrases without +wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a +revelation. One discerns things one never discerned before. One +approaches the whole of history from a different standpoint. What +one had felt dimly, through instinct, about art, is intellectually +and emotionally realised with perfect clearness of vision and +absolute intensity of apprehension. + +I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is +capable, is at once the type and test of all great art. What the +artist is always looking for is the mode of existence in which soul +and body are one and indivisible: in which the outward is +expressive of the inward: in which form reveals. Of such modes of +existence there are not a few: youth and the arts preoccupied with +youth may serve as a model for us at one moment: at another we may +like to think that, in its subtlety and sensitiveness of +impression, its suggestion of a spirit dwelling in external things +and making its raiment of earth and air, of mist and city alike, +and in its morbid sympathy of its moods, and tones, and colours, +modern landscape art is realising for us pictorially what was +realised in such plastic perfection by the Greeks. Music, in which +all subject is absorbed in expression and cannot be separated from +it, is a complex example, and a flower or a child a simple example, +of what I mean; but sorrow is the ultimate type both in life and +art. + +Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard +and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, +unlike pleasure, wears no mask. Truth in art is not any +correspondence between the essential idea and the accidental +existence; it is not the resemblance of shape to shadow, or of the +form mirrored in the crystal to the form itself; it is no echo +coming from a hollow hill, any more than it is a silver well of +water in the valley that shows the moon to the moon and Narcissus +to Narcissus. Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: +the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made +incarnate: the body instinct with spirit. For this reason there +is no truth comparable to sorrow. There are times when sorrow +seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of +the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, +but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a +child or a star there is pain. + +More than this, there is about sorrow an intense, an extraordinary +reality. I have said of myself that I was one who stood in +symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. There is not +a single wretched man in this wretched place along with me who does +not stand in symbolic relation to the very secret of life. For the +secret of life is suffering. It is what is hidden behind +everything. When we begin to live, what is sweet is so sweet to +us, and what is bitter so bitter, that we inevitably direct all our +desires towards pleasures, and seek not merely for a 'month or +twain to feed on honeycomb,' but for all our years to taste no +other food, ignorant all the while that we may really be starving +the soul. + +I remember talking once on this subject to one of the most +beautiful personalities I have ever known: a woman, whose sympathy +and noble kindness to me, both before and since the tragedy of my +imprisonment, have been beyond power and description; one who has +really assisted me, though she does not know it, to bear the burden +of my troubles more than any one else in the whole world has, and +all through the mere fact of her existence, through her being what +she is - partly an ideal and partly an influence: a suggestion of +what one might become as well as a real help towards becoming it; a +soul that renders the common air sweet, and makes what is spiritual +seem as simple and natural as sunlight or the sea: one for whom +beauty and sorrow walk hand in hand, and have the same message. On +the occasion of which I am thinking I recall distinctly how I said +to her that there was enough suffering in one narrow London lane to +show that God did not love man, and that wherever there was any +sorrow, though but that of a child, in some little garden weeping +over a fault that it had or had not committed, the whole face of +creation was completely marred. I was entirely wrong. She told me +so, but I could not believe her. I was not in the sphere in which +such belief was to be attained to. Now it seems to me that love of +some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary +amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive +of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, +and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of +sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other +way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the +full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, +but pain for the beautiful soul. + +When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too +much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of +God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it +in a summer's day. And so a child could. But with me and such as +me it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment, +but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. +It is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to +gain.' We think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and +how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell +again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's +cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange +insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's +house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter +master, or a slave whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be. + +And, though at present my friends may find it a hard thing to +believe, it is true none the less, that for them living in freedom +and idleness and comfort it is more easy to learn the lessons of +humility than it is for me, who begin the day by going down on my +knees and washing the floor of my cell. For prison life with its +endless privations and restrictions makes one rebellious. The most +terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one's heart - hearts +are made to be broken - but that it turns one's heart to stone. +One sometimes feels that it is only with a front of brass and a lip +of scorn that one can get through the day at all. And he who is in +a state of rebellion cannot receive grace, to use the phrase of +which the Church is so fond - so rightly fond, I dare say - for in +life as in art the mood of rebellion closes up the channels of the +soul, and shuts out the airs of heaven. Yet I must learn these +lessons here, if I am to learn them anywhere, and must be filled +with joy if my feet are on the right road and my face set towards +'the gate which is called beautiful,' though I may fall many times +in the mire and often in the mist go astray. + +This New Life, as through my love of Dante I like sometimes to call +it, is of course no new life at all, but simply the continuance, by +means of development, and evolution, of my former life. I remember +when I was at Oxford saying to one of my friends as we were +strolling round Magdalen's narrow bird-haunted walks one morning in +the year before I took my degree, that I wanted to eat of the fruit +of all the trees in the garden of the world, and that I was going +out into the world with that passion in my soul. And so, indeed, I +went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined +myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit +side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and +its gloom. Failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, suffering, +tears even, the broken words that come from lips in pain, remorse +that makes one walk on thorns, conscience that condemns, self- +abasement that punishes, the misery that puts ashes on its head, +the anguish that chooses sack-cloth for its raiment and into its +own drink puts gall:- all these were things of which I was afraid. +And as I had determined to know nothing of them, I was forced to +taste each of them in turn, to feed on them, to have for a season, +indeed, no other food at all. + +I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I +did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. +There was no pleasure I did not experience. I threw the pearl of +my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the +sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb. But to have continued the +same life would have been wrong because it would have been +limiting. I had to pass on. The other half of the garden had its +secrets for me also. Of course all this is foreshadowed and +prefigured in my books. Some of it is in THE HAPPY PRINCE, some of +it in THE YOUNG KING, notably in the passage where the bishop says +to the kneeling boy, 'Is not He who made misery wiser than thou +art'? a phrase which when I wrote it seemed to me little more than +a phrase; a great deal of it is hidden away in the note of doom +that like a purple thread runs through the texture of DORIAN GRAY; +in THE CRITIC AS ARTIST it is set forth in many colours; in THE +SOUL OF MAN it is written down, and in letters too easy to read; it +is one of the refrains whose recurring MOTIFS make SALOME so like a +piece of music and bind it together as a ballad; in the prose poem +of the man who from the bronze of the image of the 'Pleasure that +liveth for a moment' has to make the image of the 'Sorrow that +abideth for ever' it is incarnate. It could not have been +otherwise. At every single moment of one's life one is what one is +going to be no less than what one has been. Art is a symbol, +because man is a symbol. + +It is, if I can fully attain to it, the ultimate realisation of the +artistic life. For the artistic life is simply self-development. +Humility in the artist is his frank acceptance of all experiences, +just as love in the artist is simply the sense of beauty that +reveals to the world its body and its soul. In MARIUS THE +EPICUREAN Pater seeks to reconcile the artistic life with the life +of religion, in the deep, sweet, and austere sense of the word. +But Marius is little more than a spectator: an ideal spectator +indeed, and one to whom it is given 'to contemplate the spectacle +of life with appropriate emotions,' which Wordsworth defines as the +poet's true aim; yet a spectator merely, and perhaps a little too +much occupied with the comeliness of the benches of the sanctuary +to notice that it is the sanctuary of sorrow that he is gazing at. + +I see a far more intimate and immediate connection between the true +life of Christ and the true life of the artist; and I take a keen +pleasure in the reflection that long before sorrow had made my days +her own and bound me to her wheel I had written in THE SOUL OF MAN +that he who would lead a Christ-like life must be entirely and +absolutely himself, and had taken as my types not merely the +shepherd on the hillside and the prisoner in his cell, but also the +painter to whom the world is a pageant and the poet for whom the +world is a song. I remember saying once to Andre Gide, as we sat +together in some Paris CAFE, that while meta-physics had but little +real interest for me, and morality absolutely none, there was +nothing that either Plato or Christ had said that could not be +transferred immediately into the sphere of Art and there find its +complete fulfilment. + +Nor is it merely that we can discern in Christ that close union of +personality with perfection which forms the real distinction +between the classical and romantic movement in life, but the very +basis of his nature was the same as that of the nature of the +artist - an intense and flamelike imagination. He realised in the +entire sphere of human relations that imaginative sympathy which in +the sphere of Art is the sole secret of creation. He understood +the leprosy of the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce +misery of those who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the +rich. Some one wrote to me in trouble, 'When you are not on your +pedestal you are not interesting.' How remote was the writer from +what Matthew Arnold calls 'the Secret of Jesus.' Either would have +taught him that whatever happens to another happens to oneself, and +if you want an inscription to read at dawn and at night-time, and +for pleasure or for pain, write up on the walls of your house in +letters for the sun to gild and the moon to silver, 'Whatever +happens to oneself happens to another.' + +Christ's place indeed is with the poets. His whole conception of +Humanity sprang right out of the imagination and can only be +realised by it. What God was to the pantheist, man was to Him. He +was the first to conceive the divided races as a unity. Before his +time there had been gods and men, and, feeling through the +mysticism of sympathy that in himself each had been made incarnate, +he calls himself the Son of the one or the Son of the other, +according to his mood. More than any one else in history he wakes +in us that temper of wonder to which romance always appeals. There +is still something to me almost incredible in the idea of a young +Galilean peasant imagining that he could bear on his own shoulders +the burden of the entire world; all that had already been done and +suffered, and all that was yet to be done and suffered: the sins +of Nero, of Caesar Borgia, of Alexander VI., and of him who was +Emperor of Rome and Priest of the Sun: the sufferings of those +whose names are legion and whose dwelling is among the tombs: +oppressed nationalities, factory children, thieves, people in +prison, outcasts, those who are dumb under oppression and whose +silence is heard only of God; and not merely imagining this but +actually achieving it, so that at the present moment all who come +in contact with his personality, even though they may neither bow +to his altar nor kneel before his priest, in some way find that the +ugliness of their sin is taken away and the beauty of their sorrow +revealed to them. + +I had said of Christ that he ranks with the poets. That is true. +Shelley and Sophocles are of his company. But his entire life also +is the most wonderful of poems. For 'pity and terror' there is +nothing in the entire cycle of Greek tragedy to touch it. The +absolute purity of the protagonist raises the entire scheme to a +height of romantic art from which the sufferings of Thebes and +Pelops' line are by their very horror excluded, and shows how wrong +Aristotle was when he said in his treatise on the drama that it +would be impossible to bear the spectacle of one blameless in pain. +Nor in AEschylus nor Dante, those stern masters of tenderness, in +Shakespeare, the most purely human of all the great artists, in the +whole of Celtic myth and legend, where the loveliness of the world +is shown through a mist of tears, and the life of a man is no more +than the life of a flower, is there anything that, for sheer +simplicity of pathos wedded and made one with sublimity of tragic +effect, can be said to equal or even approach the last act of +Christ's passion. The little supper with his companions, one of +whom has already sold him for a price; the anguish in the quiet +moon-lit garden; the false friend coming close to him so as to +betray him with a kiss; the friend who still believed in him, and +on whom as on a rock he had hoped to build a house of refuge for +Man, denying him as the bird cried to the dawn; his own utter +loneliness, his submission, his acceptance of everything; and along +with it all such scenes as the high priest of orthodoxy rending his +raiment in wrath, and the magistrate of civil justice calling for +water in the vain hope of cleansing himself of that stain of +innocent blood that makes him the scarlet figure of history; the +coronation ceremony of sorrow, one of the most wonderful things in +the whole of recorded time; the crucifixion of the Innocent One +before the eyes of his mother and of the disciple whom he loved; +the soldiers gambling and throwing dice for his clothes; the +terrible death by which he gave the world its most eternal symbol; +and his final burial in the tomb of the rich man, his body swathed +in Egyptian linen with costly spices and perfumes as though he had +been a king's son. When one contemplates all this from the point +of view of art alone one cannot but be grateful that the supreme +office of the Church should be the playing of the tragedy without +the shedding of blood: the mystical presentation, by means of +dialogue and costume and gesture even, of the Passion of her Lord; +and it is always a source of pleasure and awe to me to remember +that the ultimate survival of the Greek chorus, lost elsewhere to +art, is to be found in the servitor answering the priest at Mass. + +Yet the whole life of Christ - so entirely may sorrow and beauty be +made one in their meaning and manifestation - is really an idyll, +though it ends with the veil of the temple being rent, and the +darkness coming over the face of the earth, and the stone rolled to +the door of the sepulchre. One always thinks of him as a young +bridegroom with his companions, as indeed he somewhere describes +himself; as a shepherd straying through a valley with his sheep in +search of green meadow or cool stream; as a singer trying to build +out of the music the walls of the City of God; or as a lover for +whose love the whole world was too small. His miracles seem to me +to be as exquisite as the coming of spring, and quite as natural. +I see no difficulty at all in believing that such was the charm of +his personality that his mere presence could bring peace to souls +in anguish, and that those who touched his garments or his hands +forgot their pain; or that as he passed by on the highway of life +people who had seen nothing of life's mystery, saw it clearly, and +others who had been deaf to every voice but that of pleasure heard +for the first time the voice of love and found it as 'musical as +Apollo's lute'; or that evil passions fled at his approach, and men +whose dull unimaginative lives had been but a mode of death rose as +it were from the grave when he called them; or that when he taught +on the hillside the multitude forgot their hunger and thirst and +the cares of this world, and that to his friends who listened to +him as he sat at meat the coarse food seemed delicate, and the +water had the taste of good wine, and the whole house became full +of the odour and sweetness of nard. + +Renan in his VIE DE JESUS - that gracious fifth gospel, the gospel +according to St. Thomas, one might call it - says somewhere that +Christ's great achievement was that he made himself as much loved +after his death as he had been during his lifetime. And certainly, +if his place is among the poets, he is the leader of all the +lovers. He saw that love was the first secret of the world for +which the wise men had been looking, and that it was only through +love that one could approach either the heart of the leper or the +feet of God. + +And above all, Christ is the most supreme of individualists. +Humility, like the artistic, acceptance of all experiences, is +merely a mode of manifestation. It is man's soul that Christ is +always looking for. He calls it 'God's Kingdom,' and finds it in +every one. He compares it to little things, to a tiny seed, to a +handful of leaven, to a pearl. That is because one realises one's +soul only by getting rid of all alien passions, all acquired +culture, and all external possessions, be they good or evil. + +I bore up against everything with some stubbornness of will and +much rebellion of nature, till I had absolutely nothing left in the +world but one thing. I had lost my name, my position, my +happiness, my freedom, my wealth. I was a prisoner and a pauper. +But I still had my children left. Suddenly they were taken away +from me by the law. It was a blow so appalling that I did not know +what to do, so I flung myself on my knees, and bowed my head, and +wept, and said, 'The body of a child is as the body of the Lord: I +am not worthy of either.' That moment seemed to save me. I saw +then that the only thing for me was to accept everything. Since +then - curious as it will no doubt sound - I have been happier. It +was of course my soul in its ultimate essence that I had reached. +In many ways I had been its enemy, but I found it waiting for me as +a friend. When one comes in contact with the soul it makes one +simple as a child, as Christ said one should be. + +It is tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they +die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man,' says Emerson, 'than an act +of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. +Their thoughts are some one else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, +their passions a quotation. Christ was not merely the supreme +individualist, but he was the first individualist in history. +People have tried to make him out an ordinary philanthropist, or +ranked him as an altruist with the scientific and sentimental. But +he was really neither one nor the other. Pity he has, of course, +for the poor, for those who are shut up in prisons, for the lowly, +for the wretched; but he has far more pity for the rich, for the +hard hedonists, for those who waste their freedom in becoming +slaves to things, for those who wear soft raiment and live in +kings' houses. Riches and pleasure seemed to him to be really +greater tragedies than poverty or sorrow. And as for altruism, who +knew better than he that it is vocation not volition that +determines us, and that one cannot gather grapes of thorns or figs +from thistles? + +To live for others as a definite self-conscious aim was not his +creed. It was not the basis of his creed. When he says, 'Forgive +your enemies,' it is not for the sake of the enemy, but for one's +own sake that he says so, and because love is more beautiful than +hate. In his own entreaty to the young man, 'Sell all that thou +hast and give to the poor,' it is not of the state of the poor that +he is thinking but of the soul of the young man, the soul that +wealth was marring. In his view of life he is one with the artist +who knows that by the inevitable law of self-perfection, the poet +must sing, and the sculptor think in bronze, and the painter make +the world a mirror for his moods, as surely and as certainly as the +hawthorn must blossom in spring, and the corn turn to gold at +harvest-time, and the moon in her ordered wanderings change from +shield to sickle, and from sickle to shield. + +But while Christ did not say to men, 'Live for others,' he pointed +out that there was no difference at all between the lives of others +and one's own life. By this means he gave to man an extended, a +Titan personality. Since his coming the history of each separate +individual is, or can be made, the history of the world. Of +course, culture has intensified the personality of man. Art has +made us myriad-minded. Those who have the artistic temperament go +into exile with Dante and learn how salt is the bread of others, +and how steep their stairs; they catch for a moment the serenity +and calm of Goethe, and yet know but too well that Baudelaire cried +to God - + + +'O Seigneur, donnez moi la force et le courage +De contempler mon corps et mon coeur sans degout.' + + +Out of Shakespeare's sonnets they draw, to their own hurt it may +be, the secret of his love and make it their own; they look with +new eyes on modern life, because they have listened to one of +Chopin's nocturnes, or handled Greek things, or read the story of +the passion of some dead man for some dead woman whose hair was +like threads of fine gold, and whose mouth was as a pomegranate. +But the sympathy of the artistic temperament is necessarily with +what has found expression. In words or in colours, in music or in +marble, behind the painted masks of an AEschylean play, or through +some Sicilian shepherds' pierced and jointed reeds, the man and his +message must have been revealed. + +To the artist, expression is the only mode under which he can +conceive life at all. To him what is dumb is dead. But to Christ +it was not so. With a width and wonder of imagination that fills +one almost with awe, he took the entire world of the inarticulate, +the voiceless world of pain, as his kingdom, and made of himself +its eternal mouthpiece. Those of whom I have spoken, who are dumb +under oppression, and 'whose silence is heard only of God,' he +chose as his brothers. He sought to become eyes to the blind, ears +to the deaf, and a cry in the lips of those whose tongues had been +tied. His desire was to be to the myriads who had found no +utterance a very trumpet through which they might call to heaven. +And feeling, with the artistic nature of one to whom suffering and +sorrow were modes through which he could realise his conception of +the beautiful, that an idea is of no value till it becomes +incarnate and is made an image, he made of himself the image of the +Man of Sorrows, and as such has fascinated and dominated art as no +Greek god ever succeeded in doing. + +For the Greek gods, in spite of the white and red of their fair +fleet limbs, were not really what they appeared to be. The curved +brow of Apollo was like the sun's disc crescent over a hill at +dawn, and his feet were as the wings of the morning, but he himself +had been cruel to Marsyas and had made Niobe childless. In the +steel shields of Athena's eyes there had been no pity for Arachne; +the pomp and peacocks of Hera were all that was really noble about +her; and the Father of the Gods himself had been too fond of the +daughters of men. The two most deeply suggestive figures of Greek +Mythology were, for religion, Demeter, an Earth Goddess, not one of +the Olympians, and for art, Dionysus, the son of a mortal woman to +whom the moment of his birth had proved also the moment of her +death. + +But Life itself from its lowliest and most humble sphere produced +one far more marvellous than the mother of Proserpina or the son of +Semele. Out of the Carpenter's shop at Nazareth had come a +personality infinitely greater than any made by myth and legend, +and one, strangely enough, destined to reveal to the world the +mystical meaning of wine and the real beauties of the lilies of the +field as none, either on Cithaeron or at Enna, had ever done. + +The song of Isaiah, 'He is despised and rejected of men, a man of +sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces +from him,' had seemed to him to prefigure himself, and in him the +prophecy was fulfilled. We must not be afraid of such a phrase. +Every single work of art is the fulfilment of a prophecy: for +every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image. +Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: +for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, +either in the mind of God or in the mind of man. Christ found the +type and fixed it, and the dream of a Virgilian poet, either at +Jerusalem or at Babylon, became in the long progress of the +centuries incarnate in him for whom the world was waiting. + +To me one of the things in history the most to be regretted is that +the Christ's own renaissance, which has produced the Cathedral at +Chartres, the Arthurian cycle of legends, the life of St. Francis +of Assisi, the art of Giotto, and Dante's DIVINE COMEDY, was not +allowed to develop on its own lines, but was interrupted and +spoiled by the dreary classical Renaissance that gave us Petrarch, +and Raphael's frescoes, and Palladian architecture, and formal +French tragedy, and St. Paul's Cathedral, and Pope's poetry, and +everything that is made from without and by dead rules, and does +not spring from within through some spirit informing it. But +wherever there is a romantic movement in art there somehow, and +under some form, is Christ, or the soul of Christ. He is in ROMEO +AND JULIET, in the WINTER'S TALE, in Provencal poetry, in the +ANCIENT MARINER, in LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI, and in Chatterton's +BALLAD OF CHARITY. + +We owe to him the most diverse things and people. Hugo's LES +MISERABLES, Baudelaire's FLEURS DU MAL, the note of pity in Russian +novels, Verlaine and Verlaine's poems, the stained glass and +tapestries and the quattro-cento work of Burne-Jones and Morris, +belong to him no less than the tower of Giotto, Lancelot and +Guinevere, Tannhauser, the troubled romantic marbles of Michael +Angelo, pointed architecture, and the love of children and flowers +- for both of which, indeed, in classical art there was but little +place, hardly enough for them to grow or play in, but which, from +the twelfth century down to our own day, have been continually +making their appearances in art, under various modes and at various +times, coming fitfully and wilfully, as children, as flowers, are +apt to do: spring always seeming to one as if the flowers had been +in hiding, and only came out into the sun because they were afraid +that grown up people would grow tired of looking for them and give +up the search; and the life of a child being no more than an April +day on which there is both rain and sun for the narcissus. + +It is the imaginative quality of Christ's own nature that makes him +this palpitating centre of romance. The strange figures of poetic +drama and ballad are made by the imagination of others, but out of +his own imagination entirely did Jesus of Nazareth create himself. +The cry of Isaiah had really no more to do with his coming than the +song of the nightingale has to do with the rising of the moon - no +more, though perhaps no less. He was the denial as well as the +affirmation of prophecy. For every expectation that he fulfilled +there was another that he destroyed. 'In all beauty,' says Bacon, +'there is some strangeness of proportion,' and of those who are +born of the spirit - of those, that is to say, who like himself are +dynamic forces - Christ says that they are like the wind that +'bloweth where it listeth, and no man can tell whence it cometh and +whither it goeth.' That is why he is so fascinating to artists. +He has all the colour elements of life: mystery, strangeness, +pathos, suggestion, ecstasy, love. He appeals to the temper of +wonder, and creates that mood in which alone he can be understood. + +And to me it is a joy to remember that if he is 'of imagination all +compact,' the world itself is of the same substance. I said in +DORIAN GRAY that the great sins of the world take place in the +brain: but it is in the brain that everything takes place. We +know now that we do not see with the eyes or hear with the ears. +They are really channels for the transmission, adequate or +inadequate, of sense impressions. It is in the brain that the +poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings. + +Of late I have been studying with diligence the four prose poems +about Christ. At Christmas I managed to get hold of a Greek +Testament, and every morning, after I had cleaned my cell and +polished my tins, I read a little of the Gospels, a dozen verses +taken by chance anywhere. It is a delightful way of opening the +day. Every one, even in a turbulent, ill-disciplined life, should +do the same. Endless repetition, in and out of season, has spoiled +for us the freshness, the naivete, the simple romantic charm of the +Gospels. We hear them read far too often and far too badly, and +all repetition is anti-spiritual. When one returns to the Greek; +it is like going into a garden of lilies out of some, narrow and +dark house. + +And to me, the pleasure is doubled by the reflection that it is +extremely probable that we have the actual terms, the IPSISSIMA +VERBA, used by Christ. It was always supposed that Christ talked +in Aramaic. Even Renan thought so. But now we know that the +Galilean peasants, like the Irish peasants of our own day, were +bilingual, and that Greek was the ordinary language of intercourse +all over Palestine, as indeed all over the Eastern world. I never +liked the idea that we knew of Christ's own words only through a +translation of a translation. It is a delight to me to think that +as far as his conversation was concerned, Charmides might have +listened to him, and Socrates reasoned with him, and Plato +understood him: that he really said [Greek text which cannot be +reproduced], that when he thought of the lilies of the field and +how they neither toil nor spin, his absolute expression was [Greek +text which cannot be reproduced], and that his last word when he +cried out 'my life has been completed, has reached its fulfilment, +has been perfected,' was exactly as St. John tells us it was: +[Greek text which cannot be reproduced] - no more. + +While in reading the Gospels - particularly that of St. John +himself, or whatever early Gnostic took his name and mantle - I see +the continual assertion of the imagination as the basis of all +spiritual and material life, I see also that to Christ imagination +was simply a form of love, and that to him love was lord in the +fullest meaning of the phrase. Some six weeks ago I was allowed by +the doctor to have white bread to eat instead of the coarse black +or brown bread of ordinary prison fare. It is a great delicacy. +It will sound strange that dry bread could possibly be a delicacy +to any one. To me it is so much so that at the close of each meal +I carefully eat whatever crumbs may be left on my tin plate, or +have fallen on the rough towel that one uses as a cloth so as not +to soil one's table; and I do so not from hunger - I get now quite +sufficient food - but simply in order that nothing should be wasted +of what is given to me. So one should look on love. + +Christ, like all fascinating personalities, had the power of not +merely saying beautiful things himself, but of making other people +say beautiful things to him; and I love the story St. Mark tells us +about the Greek woman, who, when as a trial of her faith he said to +her that he could not give her the bread of the children of Israel, +answered him that the little dogs - ([Greek text which cannot be +reproduced], 'little dogs' it should be rendered) - who are under +the table eat of the crumbs that the children let fall. Most +people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and +admiration that we should live. If any love is shown us we should +recognise that we are quite unworthy of it. Nobody is worthy to be +loved. The fact that God loves man shows us that in the divine +order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be +given to what is eternally unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to be +a bitter one to bear, let us say that every one is worthy of love, +except him who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should +be taken kneeling, and DOMINE, NON SUM DIGNUS should be on the lips +and in the hearts of those who receive it. + +If ever I write again, in the sense of producing artistic work, +there are just two subjects on which and through which I desire to +express myself: one is 'Christ as the precursor of the romantic +movement in life': the other is 'The artistic life considered in +its relation to conduct.' The first is, of course, intensely +fascinating, for I see in Christ not merely the essentials of the +supreme romantic type, but all the accidents, the wilfulnesses +even, of the romantic temperament also. He was the first person +who ever said to people that they should live 'flower-like lives.' +He fixed the phrase. He took children as the type of what people +should try to become. He held them up as examples to their elders, +which I myself have always thought the chief use of children, if +what is perfect should have a use. Dante describes the soul of a +man as coming from the hand of God 'weeping and laughing like a +little child,' and Christ also saw that the soul of each one should +be A GUISA DI FANCIULLA CHE PIANGENDO E RIDENDO PARGOLEGGIA. He +felt that life was changeful, fluid, active, and that to allow it +to be stereotyped into any form was death. He saw that people +should not be too serious over material, common interests: that to +be unpractical was to be a great thing: that one should not bother +too much over affairs. The birds didn't, why should man? He is +charming when he says, 'Take no thought for the morrow; is not the +soul more than meat? is not the body more than raiment?' A Greek +might have used the latter phrase. It is full of Greek feeling. +But only Christ could have said both, and so summed up life +perfectly for us. + +His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be. If the +only thing that he ever said had been, 'Her sins are forgiven her +because she loved much,' it would have been worth while dying to +have said it. His justice is all poetical justice, exactly what +justice should be. The beggar goes to heaven because he has been +unhappy. I cannot conceive a better reason for his being sent +there. The people who work for an hour in the vineyard in the cool +of the evening receive just as much reward as those who have toiled +there all day long in the hot sun. Why shouldn't they? Probably +no one deserved anything. Or perhaps they were a different kind of +people. Christ had no patience with the dull lifeless mechanical +systems that treat people as if they were things, and so treat +everybody alike: for him there were no laws: there were +exceptions merely, as if anybody, or anything, for that matter, was +like aught else in the world! + +That which is the very keynote of romantic art was to him the +proper basis of natural life. He saw no other basis. And when +they brought him one, taken in the very act of sin and showed him +her sentence written in the law, and asked him what was to be done, +he wrote with his finger on the ground as though he did not hear +them, and finally, when they pressed him again, looked up and said, +'Let him of you who has never sinned be the first to throw the +stone at her.' It was worth while living to have said that. + +Like all poetical natures he loved ignorant people. He knew that +in the soul of one who is ignorant there is always room for a great +idea. But he could not stand stupid people, especially those who +are made stupid by education: people who are full of opinions not +one of which they even understand, a peculiarly modern type, summed +up by Christ when he describes it as the type of one who has the +key of knowledge, cannot use it himself, and does not allow other +people to use it, though it may be made to open the gate of God's +Kingdom. His chief war was against the Philistines. That is the +war every child of light has to wage. Philistinism was the note of +the age and community in which he lived. In their heavy +inaccessibility to ideas, their dull respectability, their tedious +orthodoxy, their worship of vulgar success, their entire +preoccupation with the gross materialistic side of life, and their +ridiculous estimate of themselves and their importance, the Jews of +Jerusalem in Christ's day were the exact counterpart of the British +Philistine of our own. Christ mocked at the 'whited sepulchre' of +respectability, and fixed that phrase for ever. He treated worldly +success as a thing absolutely to be despised. He saw nothing in it +at all. He looked on wealth as an encumbrance to a man. He would +not hear of life being sacrificed to any system of thought or +morals. He pointed out that forms and ceremonies were made for +man, not man for forms and ceremonies. He took sabbatarianism as a +type of the things that should be set at nought. The cold +philanthropies, the ostentatious public charities, the tedious +formalisms so dear to the middle-class mind, he exposed with utter +and relentless scorn. To us, what is termed orthodoxy is merely a +facile unintelligent acquiescence; but to them, and in their hands, +it was a terrible and paralysing tyranny. Christ swept it aside. +He showed that the spirit alone was of value. He took a keen +pleasure in pointing out to them that though they were always +reading the law and the prophets, they had not really the smallest +idea of what either of them meant. In opposition to their tithing +of each separate day into the fixed routine of prescribed duties, +as they tithe mint and rue, he preached the enormous importance of +living completely for the moment. + +Those whom he saved from their sins are saved simply for beautiful +moments in their lives. Mary Magdalen, when she sees Christ, +breaks the rich vase of alabaster that one of her seven lovers had +given her, and spills the odorous spices over his tired dusty feet, +and for that one moment's sake sits for ever with Ruth and Beatrice +in the tresses of the snow-white rose of Paradise. All that Christ +says to us by the way of a little warning is that every moment +should be beautiful, that the soul should always be ready for the +coming of the bridegroom, always waiting for the voice of the +lover, Philistinism being simply that side of man's nature that is +not illumined by the imagination. He sees all the lovely +influences of life as modes of light: the imagination itself is +the world of light. The world is made by it, and yet the world +cannot understand it: that is because the imagination is simply a +manifestation of love, and it is love and the capacity for it that +distinguishes one human being from another. + +But it is when he deals with a sinner that Christ is most romantic, +in the sense of most real. The world had always loved the saint as +being the nearest possible approach to the perfection of God. +Christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always +loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the +perfection of man. His primary desire was not to reform people, +any more than his primary desire was to a relieve suffering. To +turn an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not his +aim. He would have thought little of the Prisoners' Aid Society +and other modern movements of the kind. The conversion of a +publican into a Pharisee would not have seemed to him a great +achievement. But in a manner not yet understood of the world he +regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy +things and modes of perfection. + +It seems a very dangerous idea. It is - all great ideas are +dangerous. That it was Christ's creed admits of no doubt. That it +is the true creed I don't doubt myself. + +Of course the sinner must repent. But why? Simply because +otherwise he would be unable to realise what he had done. The +moment of repentance is the moment of initiation. More than that: +it is the means by which one alters one's past. The Greeks thought +that impossible. They often say in their Gnomic aphorisms, 'Even +the Gods cannot alter the past.' Christ showed that the commonest +sinner could do it, that it was the one thing he could do. Christ, +had he been asked, would have said - I feel quite certain about it +- that the moment the prodigal son fell on his knees and wept, he +made his having wasted his substance with harlots, his swine- +herding and hungering for the husks they ate, beautiful and holy +moments in his life. It is difficult for most people to grasp the +idea. I dare say one has to go to prison to understand it. If so, +it may be worth while going to prison. + +There is something so unique about Christ. Of course just as there +are false dawns before the dawn itself, and winter days so full of +sudden sunlight that they will cheat the wise crocus into +squandering its gold before its time, and make some foolish bird +call to its mate to build on barren boughs, so there were +Christians before Christ. For that we should be grateful. The +unfortunate thing is that there have been none since. I make one +exception, St. Francis of Assisi. But then God had given him at +his birth the soul of a poet, as he himself when quite young had in +mystical marriage taken poverty as his bride: and with the soul of +a poet and the body of a beggar he found the way to perfection not +difficult. He understood Christ, and so he became like him. We do +not require the Liber Conformitatum to teach us that the life of +St. Francis was the true IMITATIO CHRISTI, a poem compared to which +the book of that name is merely prose. + +Indeed, that is the charm about Christ, when all is said: he is +just like a work of art. He does not really teach one anything, +but by being brought into his presence one becomes something. And +everybody is predestined to his presence. Once at least in his +life each man walks with Christ to Emmaus. + +As regards the other subject, the Relation of the Artistic Life to +Conduct, it will no doubt seem strange to you that I should select +it. People point to Reading Gaol and say, 'That is where the +artistic life leads a man.' Well, it might lead to worse places. +The more mechanical people to whom life is a shrewd speculation +depending on a careful calculation of ways and means, always know +where they are going, and go there. They start with the ideal +desire of being the parish beadle, and in whatever sphere they are +placed they succeed in being the parish beadle and no more. A man +whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a +member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent +solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably +succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. +Those who want a mask have to wear it. + +But with the dynamic forces of life, and those in whom those +dynamic forces become incarnate, it is different. People whose +desire is solely for self-realisation never know where they are +going. They can't know. In one sense of the word it is of course +necessary, as the Greek oracle said, to know oneself: that is the +first achievement of knowledge. But to recognise that the soul of +a man is unknowable, is the ultimate achievement of wisdom. The +final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the +balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the +seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can +calculate the orbit of his own soul? When the son went out to look +for his father's asses, he did not know that a man of God was +waiting for him with the very chrism of coronation, and that his +own soul was already the soul of a king. + +I hope to live long enough and to produce work of such a character +that I shall be able at the end of my days to say, 'Yes! this is +just where the artistic life leads a man!' Two of the most perfect +lives I have come across in my own experience are the lives of +Verlaine and of Prince Kropotkin: both of them men who have passed +years in prison: the first, the one Christian poet since Dante; +the other, a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ which +seems coming out of Russia. And for the last seven or eight +months, in spite of a succession of great troubles reaching me from +the outside world almost without intermission, I have been placed +in direct contact with a new spirit working in this prison through +man and things, that has helped me beyond any possibility of +expression in words: so that while for the first year of my +imprisonment I did nothing else, and can remember doing nothing +else, but wring my hands in impotent despair, and say, 'What an +ending, what an appalling ending!' now I try to say to myself, and +sometimes when I am not torturing myself do really and sincerely +say, 'What a beginning, what a wonderful beginning!' It may really +be so. It may become so. If it does I shall owe much to this new +personality that has altered every man's life in this place. + +You may realise it when I say that had I been released last May, as +I tried to be, I would have left this place loathing it and every +official in it with a bitterness of hatred that would have poisoned +my life. I have had a year longer of imprisonment, but humanity +has been in the prison along with us all, and now when I go out I +shall always remember great kindnesses that I have received here +from almost everybody, and on the day of my release I shall give +many thanks to many people, and ask to be remembered by them in +turn. + +The prison style is absolutely and entirely wrong. I would give +anything to be able to alter it when I go out. I intend to try. +But there is nothing in the world so wrong but that the spirit of +humanity, which is the spirit of love, the spirit of the Christ who +is not in churches, may make it, if not right, at least possible to +be borne without too much bitterness of heart. + +I know also that much is waiting for me outside that is very +delightful, from what St. Francis of Assisi calls 'my brother the +wind, and my sister the rain,' lovely things both of them, down to +the shop-windows and sunsets of great cities. If I made a list of +all that still remains to me, I don't know where I should stop: +for, indeed, God made the world just as much for me as for any one +else. Perhaps I may go out with something that I had not got +before. I need not tell you that to me reformations in morals are +as meaningless and vulgar as Reformations in theology. But while +to propose to be a better man is a piece of unscientific cant, to +have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have +suffered. And such I think I have become. + +If after I am free a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not +invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. I can be perfectly happy +by myself. With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could +not be perfectly happy? Besides, feasts are not for me any more. +I have given too many to care about them. That side of life is +over for me, very fortunately, I dare say. But if after I am free +a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, +I should feel it most bitterly. If he shut the doors of the house +of mourning against me, I would come back again and again and beg +to be admitted, so that I might share in what I was entitled to +share in. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I +should feel it as the most poignant humiliation, as the most +terrible mode in which disgrace could be inflicted on me. But that +could not be. I have a right to share in sorrow, and he who can +look at the loveliness of the world and share its sorrow, and +realise something of the wonder of both, is in immediate contact +with divine things, and has got as near to God's secret as any one +can get. + +Perhaps there may come into my art also, no less than into my life, +a still deeper note, one of greater unity of passion, and +directness of impulse. Not width but intensity is the true aim of +modern art. We are no longer in art concerned with the type. It +is with the exception that we have to do. I cannot put my +sufferings into any form they took, I need hardly say. Art only +begins where Imitation ends, but something must come into my work, +of fuller memory of words perhaps, of richer cadences, of more +curious effects, of simpler architectural order, of some aesthetic +quality at any rate. + +When Marsyas was 'torn from the scabbard of his limbs' - DELLA +VAGINA DELLA MEMBRE SUE, to use one of Dante's most terrible +Tacitean phrases - he had no more song, the Greek said. Apollo had +been victor. The lyre had vanquished the reed. But perhaps the +Greeks were mistaken. I hear in much modern Art the cry of +Marsyas. It is bitter in Baudelaire, sweet and plaintive in +Lamartine, mystic in Verlaine. It is in the deferred resolutions +of Chopin's music. It is in the discontent that haunts Burne- +Jones's women. Even Matthew Arnold, whose song of Callicles tells +of 'the triumph of the sweet persuasive lyre,' and the 'famous +final victory,' in such a clear note of lyrical beauty, has not a +little of it; in the troubled undertone of doubt and distress that +haunts his verses, neither Goethe nor Wordsworth could help him, +though he followed each in turn, and when he seeks to mourn for +THYRSIS or to sing of the SCHOLAR GIPSY, it is the reed that he has +to take for the rendering of his strain. But whether or not the +Phrygian Faun was silent, I cannot be. Expression is as necessary +to me as leaf and blossoms are to the black branches of the trees +that show themselves above the prison walls and are so restless in +the wind. Between my art and the world there is now a wide gulf, +but between art and myself there is none. I hope at least that +there is none. + +To each of us different fates are meted out. My lot has been one +of public infamy, of long imprisonment, of misery, of ruin, of +disgrace, but I am not worthy of it - not yet, at any rate. I +remember that I used to say that I thought I could bear a real +tragedy if it came to me with purple pall and a mask of noble +sorrow, but that the dreadful thing about modernity was that it put +tragedy into the raiment of comedy, so that the great realities +seemed commonplace or grotesque or lacking in style. It is quite +true about modernity. It has probably always been true about +actual life. It is said that all martyrdoms seemed mean to the +looker on. The nineteenth century is no exception to the rule. + +Everything about my tragedy has been hideous, mean, repellent, +lacking in style; our very dress makes us grotesque. We are the +zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken. We are +specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour. On November +13th, 1895, I was brought down here from London. From two o'clock +till half-past two on that day I had to stand on the centre +platform of Clapham Junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for +the world to look at. I had been taken out of the hospital ward +without a moment's notice being given to me. Of all possible +objects I was the most grotesque. When people saw me they laughed. +Each train as it came up swelled the audience. Nothing could +exceed their amusement. That was, of course, before they knew who +I was. As soon as they had been informed they laughed still more. +For half an hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded +by a jeering mob. + +For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same +hour and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic +thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison +tears are a part of every day's experience. A day in prison on +which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not +a day on which one's heart is happy. + +Well, now I am really beginning to feel more regret for the people +who laughed than for myself. Of course when they saw me I was not +on my pedestal, I was in the pillory. But it is a very +unimaginative nature that only cares for people on their pedestals. +A pedestal may be a very unreal thing. A pillory is a terrific +reality. They should have known also how to interpret sorrow +better. I have said that behind sorrow there is always sorrow. It +were wiser still to say that behind sorrow there is always a soul. +And to mock at a soul in pain is a dreadful thing. In the +strangely simple economy of the world people only get what they +give, and to those who have not enough imagination to penetrate the +mere outward of things, and feel pity, what pity can be given save +that of scorn? + +I write this account of the mode of my being transferred here +simply that it should be realised how hard it has been for me to +get anything out of my punishment but bitterness and despair. I +have, however, to do it, and now and then I have moments of +submission and acceptance. All the spring may be hidden in the +single bud, and the low ground nest of the lark may hold the joy +that is to herald the feet of many rose-red dawns. So perhaps +whatever beauty of life still remains to me is contained in some +moment of surrender, abasement, and humiliation. I can, at any +rate, merely proceed on the lines of my own development, and, +accepting all that has happened to me, make myself worthy of it. + +People used to say of me that I was too individualistic. I must be +far more of an individualist than ever I was. I must get far more +out of myself than ever I got, and ask far less of the world than +ever I asked. Indeed, my ruin came not from too great +individualism of life, but from too little. The one disgraceful, +unpardonable, and to all time contemptible action of my life was to +allow myself to appeal to society for help and protection. To have +made such an appeal would have been from the individualist point of +view bad enough, but what excuse can there ever be put forward for +having made it? Of course once I had put into motion the forces of +society, society turned on me and said, 'Have you been living all +this time in defiance of my laws, and do you now appeal to those +laws for protection? You shall have those laws exercised to the +full. You shall abide by what you have appealed to.' The result +is I am in gaol. Certainly no man ever fell so ignobly, and by +such ignoble instruments, as I did. + +The Philistine element in life is not the failure to understand +art. Charming people, such as fishermen, shepherds, ploughboys, +peasants and the like, know nothing about art, and are the very +salt of the earth. He is the Philistine who upholds and aids the +heavy, cumbrous, blind, mechanical forces of society, and who does +not recognise dynamic force when he meets it either in a man or a +movement. + +People thought it dreadful of me to have entertained at dinner the +evil things of life, and to have found pleasure in their company. +But then, from the point of view through which I, as an artist in +life, approach them they were delightfully suggestive and +stimulating. The danger was half the excitement. . . . My business +as an artist was with Ariel. I set myself to wrestle with Caliban. +. . . + +A great friend of mine - a friend of ten years' standing - came to +see me some time ago, and told me that he did not believe a single +word of what was said against me, and wished me to know that he +considered me quite innocent, and the victim of a hideous plot. I +burst into tears at what he said, and told him that while there was +much amongst the definite charges that was quite untrue and +transferred to me by revolting malice, still that my life had been +full of perverse pleasures, and that unless he accepted that as a +fact about me and realised it to the full I could not possibly be +friends with him any more, or ever be in his company. It was a +terrible shock to him, but we are friends, and I have not got his +friendship on false pretences. + +Emotional forces, as I say somewhere in INTENTIONS, are as limited +in extent and duration as the forces of physical energy. The +little cup that is made to hold so much can hold so much and no +more, though all the purple vats of Burgundy be filled with wine to +the brim, and the treaders stand knee-deep in the gathered grapes +of the stony vineyards of Spain. There is no error more common +than that of thinking that those who are the causes or occasions of +great tragedies share in the feelings suitable to the tragic mood: +no error more fatal than expecting it of them. The martyr in his +'shirt of flame' may be looking on the face of God, but to him who +is piling the faggots or loosening the logs for the blast the whole +scene is no more than the slaying of an ox is to the butcher, or +the felling of a tree to the charcoal burner in the forest, or the +fall of a flower to one who is mowing down the grass with a scythe. +Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be +seen only by those who are on a level with them. + +* * * * * + +I know of nothing in all drama more incomparable from the point of +view of art, nothing more suggestive in its subtlety of +observation, than Shakespeare's drawing of Rosencrantz and +Guildenstern. They are Hamlet's college friends. They have been +his companions. They bring with them memories of pleasant days +together. At the moment when they come across him in the play he +is staggering under the weight of a burden intolerable to one of +his temperament. The dead have come armed out of the grave to +impose on him a mission at once too great and too mean for him. He +is a dreamer, and he is called upon to act. He has the nature of +the poet, and he is asked to grapple with the common complexity of +cause and effect, with life in its practical realisation, of which +he knows nothing, not with life in its ideal essence, of which he +knows so much. He has no conception of what to do, and his folly +is to feign folly. Brutus used madness as a cloak to conceal the +sword of his purpose, the dagger of his will, but the Hamlet +madness is a mere mask for the hiding of weakness. In the making +of fancies and jests he sees a chance of delay. He keeps playing +with action as an artist plays with a theory. He makes himself the +spy of his proper actions, and listening to his own words knows +them to be but 'words, words, words.' Instead of trying to be the +hero of his own history, he seeks to be the spectator of his own +tragedy. He disbelieves in everything, including himself, and yet +his doubt helps him not, as it comes not from scepticism but from a +divided will. + +Of all this Guildenstern and Rosencrantz realise nothing. They bow +and smirk and smile, and what the one says the other echoes with +sickliest intonation. When, at last, by means of the play within +the play, and the puppets in their dalliance, Hamlet 'catches the +conscience' of the King, and drives the wretched man in terror from +his throne, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz see no more in his conduct +than a rather painful breach of Court etiquette. That is as far as +they can attain to in 'the contemplation of the spectacle of life +with appropriate emotions.' They are close to his very secret and +know nothing of it. Nor would there be any use in telling them. +They are the little cups that can hold so much and no more. +Towards the close it is suggested that, caught in a cunning spring +set for another, they have met, or may meet, with a violent and +sudden death. But a tragic ending of this kind, though touched by +Hamlet's humour with something of the surprise and justice of +comedy, is really not for such as they. They never die. Horatio, +who in order to 'report Hamlet and his cause aright to the +unsatisfied,' + + +'Absents him from felicity a while, +And in this harsh world draws his breath in pain,' + +dies, but Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are as immortal as Angelo +and Tartuffe, and should rank with them. They are what modern life +has contributed to the antique ideal of friendship. He who writes +a new DE AMICITIA must find a niche for them, and praise them in +Tusculan prose. They are types fixed for all time. To censure +them would show 'a lack of appreciation.' They are merely out of +their sphere: that is all. In sublimity of soul there is no +contagion. High thoughts and high emotions are by their very +existence isolated. + + +I am to be released, if all goes well with me, towards the end of +May, and hope to go at once to some little sea-side village abroad +with R- and M-. + +The sea, as Euripides says in one of his plays about Iphigeneia, +washes away the stains and wounds of the world. + +I hope to be at least a month with my friends, and to gain peace +and balance, and a less troubled heart, and a sweeter mood. I have +a strange longing for the great simple primeval things, such as the +sea, to me no less of a mother than the Earth. It seems to me that +we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. I +discern great sanity in the Greek attitude. They never chattered +about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were +really mauve or not. But they saw that the sea was for the +swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner. They loved the +trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence +at noon. The vineyard-dresser wreathed his hair with ivy that he +might keep off the rays of the sun as he stooped over the young +shoots, and for the artist and the athlete, the two types that +Greece gave us, they plaited with garlands the leaves of the bitter +laurel and of the wild parsley, which else had been of no service +to men. + +We call ours a utilitarian age, and we do not know the uses of any +single thing. We have forgotten that water can cleanse, and fire +purify, and that the Earth is mother to us all. As a consequence +our art is of the moon and plays with shadows, while Greek art is +of the sun and deals directly with things. I feel sure that in +elemental forces there is purification, and I want to go back to +them and live in their presence. + +Of course to one so modern as I am, 'Enfant de mon siecle,' merely +to look at the world will be always lovely. I tremble with +pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison +both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, +and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying +gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its +plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for me. Linnaeus fell +on his knees and wept for joy when he saw for the first time the +long heath of some English upland made yellow with the tawny +aromatic brooms of the common furze; and I know that for me, to +whom flowers are part of desire, there are tears waiting in the +petals of some rose. It has always been so with me from my +boyhood. There is not a single colour hidden away in the chalice +of a flower, or the curve of a shell, to which, by some subtle +sympathy with the very soul of things, my nature does not answer. +Like Gautier, I have always been one of those 'pour qui le monde +visible existe.' + +Still, I am conscious now that behind all this beauty, satisfying +though it may be, there is some spirit hidden of which the painted +forms and shapes are but modes of manifestation, and it is with +this spirit that I desire to become in harmony. I have grown tired +of the articulate utterances of men and things. The Mystical in +Art, the Mystical in Life, the Mystical in Nature this is what I am +looking for. It is absolutely necessary for me to find it +somewhere. + +All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are +sentences of death; and three times have I been tried. The first +time I left the box to be arrested, the second time to be led back +to the house of detention, the third time to pass into a prison for +two years. Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place +for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on +unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may +hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. +She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the +darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so +that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great +waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde + diff --git a/old/dprof10.zip b/old/dprof10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..646e559 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/dprof10.zip |