de Profundis
Preface
by Richard Ellmann
De Profundis is a kind of dramatic monologue, which constantly
questions and takes into account the silent recipient's supposed
responses. Given the place where it was written, Wilde might have
been expected to confess his guilt. Instead he refuses to admit that
his past conduct with young men was guilty, and declares that the
laws by which he was condemned were unjust. The closest he comes to
the subject of homosexuality is to say, impenitently, that what the
paradox was for him in the realm of thought, sexual deviation was in
the realm of conduct. More than half of De Profundis is taken up by
his confession, not of his own sins, but of Bosie's. He evokes two
striking images for that young man. One is his favorite passage from
Agamemnon, about bringing up a lion's whelp inside one's house only
to have it run amok. Aeschylus compared it to Helen, Wilde to
Douglas. The other is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who have no
realization of Hamlet's tragedy, being "the little cups that can
hold so much and no more."
The main theme of self-recrimination is that ... read full excerpt from: De Profundis ebook
