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sherylv's review
5.0
Warning: This is definitely a biased review.
I don't think my words can effectively convey how much this book affected me.
My first taste of Wilde happened when I picked up "Only Brilliant People Are Brilliant at Breakfast" on a whim after noticing it a couple of times online. I was immediately enamored. How was everything this man has said feel like it has been plucked out of my own heart?
I did some research, and was surprised to find out Dorian Gray (which I have not read) was his only novel. A lot of themes discussed in OBPABB were foreign to me, and then I stumbled upon De Profundis. After a month, I finally bought it.
I knew I was going to be incredibly invested in this mans life and everything he had to say. I personally think the introduction of this book did it its ultimate justice. I was captivated, hungry and couldn't wait to devour it. How I have fallen in love with him!
I am incredibly grateful this included collections of his other letters, I loved reading them. Although the main letter (of over 50,000 words) can get repetitive at times, everything Wilde has to say is so lyrical, tragic and almost romantic that I did not tire of his words.
De Profundis tells of betrayal, of Wilde's journey and realization of self and art in addition to his toxic relationship with Bosie. However exaggerated, I believe him a true empath at heart. I found myself relating with him so much, in more ways than one he was able to pluck out trains of thought and ideologies that are what I feel so strongly in their essence.
Wilde is most definitely one of the most captivating people of history I have thus read about. I am so incredibly drawn to him and his writing. I believe him to be an incredibly intelligent man of many hidden layers of emotion and it shows in his writing. I see him as a man who was able to accept himself, and what prison put him through. Deep is his love and his emotions, however that in itself being the core of his ruin.
There is so much I could quote in a book as harrowing and immersive as this; I have never annotated a book as much as this one but I shall leave it at these:
I don't think my words can effectively convey how much this book affected me.
"He is desperately hurt and wounded, but he is still in command of his sentences, their structure and their sweep. in the dim light of the prison cell and with the memory of his suffering fresh, it was as though he sought a new sort of tension in his writing between breathlessness and breath-control."
My first taste of Wilde happened when I picked up "Only Brilliant People Are Brilliant at Breakfast" on a whim after noticing it a couple of times online. I was immediately enamored. How was everything this man has said feel like it has been plucked out of my own heart?
I did some research, and was surprised to find out Dorian Gray (which I have not read) was his only novel. A lot of themes discussed in OBPABB were foreign to me, and then I stumbled upon De Profundis. After a month, I finally bought it.
I knew I was going to be incredibly invested in this mans life and everything he had to say. I personally think the introduction of this book did it its ultimate justice. I was captivated, hungry and couldn't wait to devour it. How I have fallen in love with him!
I am incredibly grateful this included collections of his other letters, I loved reading them. Although the main letter (of over 50,000 words) can get repetitive at times, everything Wilde has to say is so lyrical, tragic and almost romantic that I did not tire of his words.
De Profundis tells of betrayal, of Wilde's journey and realization of self and art in addition to his toxic relationship with Bosie. However exaggerated, I believe him a true empath at heart. I found myself relating with him so much, in more ways than one he was able to pluck out trains of thought and ideologies that are what I feel so strongly in their essence.
Wilde is most definitely one of the most captivating people of history I have thus read about. I am so incredibly drawn to him and his writing. I believe him to be an incredibly intelligent man of many hidden layers of emotion and it shows in his writing. I see him as a man who was able to accept himself, and what prison put him through. Deep is his love and his emotions, however that in itself being the core of his ruin.
There is so much I could quote in a book as harrowing and immersive as this; I have never annotated a book as much as this one but I shall leave it at these:
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
“With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?”
“I don’t write this letter to put bitterness into your heart, but to pluck it out of mine. For my own sake I must forgive you.”
mashedpotatoandsaladcream's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.25
“i am completely penniless, and absolutely homeless. yet there are worse things in the world than that”
“there is, i know, one answer to all that i have said to you, and that is that you loved me: that all through those two and a half years during which the fates were weaving into one scarlet pattern the threads of our divided lives you really loved me. yes: i know you did… yet besides all this there was something more, some strange attraction for you: you loved me far better than you loved anybody else. but you, like myself, have had a terrible tragedy in your life, though one of an entirely opposite chaarcter to mine. do you want to learn what it was? it was this. in you hate was always stronger than love”
this work is a letter from oscar wilde to his then lover, bosie, written over a three month period as he meditates and questions his past and how much it truly affected him and them together and as separate people. this does does redeem either of them, nor does it blame either of them despite what is written because it just truly shows the melancholy ranting of a man who got screwed over, seemingly innocently, by his lover in a time where societal pressures never would have let them be with such a high profile relationship. it’s sad and it’s angry and it’s paradoxical and it’s complicated.
“i will begin by telling you that i blame myself terribly. as i sit here in this dark cell in convict clothes, a disgraced and ruined man, i blame myself”
who was really at fault in the relationship? was is wilde for honestly being an older man pressuring a younger man (around 38 and 22, which i would find myself kinda uncomfortable with nowadays really and despite all wilde says there was no way he could have influenced bosie at all, it’s never that simple)? was bosie the real culprit of wildes money issues and was he truly such a terrible person to wilde in how he treated him with attachment issues and mean words covered over with pleading and tearful eyes?
the letter shows all of wilde off i’m his feelings, especially in his hopes of writing and creating art and moving forward after finding fulfilment in jail. but with the knowledge of the future we know he writes and publishes little else and despite all his talk about never going back to bosie, we also know he is quick to drop his authentic friends to run off with bosie yet again. so despite his clear anger and spite in his letter, it’s the same love that apparently overcomes it.
“of course i should have got rid of you. i should have shaken you out of my life as a man shakes from his railment a thing that has stung him”
“in you hate was always stronger than love… you did not realise that there is no room for both passions in the same soul… hate blinds people. you were not aware of that. love can read the writing on the remotest star, but hate so blinded you that you could see no further that the narrow, walled in, and already lust-withered garden of your common desires”
i think this is a compelling read for all. whether you’re a fan of oscar wilde, this should definitely be a go to, or if you’ve just heard of the myth and want to know the man behind it. i think it’s hard to read a published work and realise oh this is truly someone’s life, or the opposite it is easy for you to feel uncomfortable reading someone’s ramblings. letters are private and this is uncomfortable and it kept my attention (other than the section on christ and religion really) because of how complex it is. you see a side of wilde you don’t often see, he’s not the confident man who is often imagined and instead he is an angry man lost in the face of his time in prison.
harrowing. emotional. complex. intriguing.
give it a read.
“there is, i know, one answer to all that i have said to you, and that is that you loved me: that all through those two and a half years during which the fates were weaving into one scarlet pattern the threads of our divided lives you really loved me. yes: i know you did… yet besides all this there was something more, some strange attraction for you: you loved me far better than you loved anybody else. but you, like myself, have had a terrible tragedy in your life, though one of an entirely opposite chaarcter to mine. do you want to learn what it was? it was this. in you hate was always stronger than love”
this work is a letter from oscar wilde to his then lover, bosie, written over a three month period as he meditates and questions his past and how much it truly affected him and them together and as separate people. this does does redeem either of them, nor does it blame either of them despite what is written because it just truly shows the melancholy ranting of a man who got screwed over, seemingly innocently, by his lover in a time where societal pressures never would have let them be with such a high profile relationship. it’s sad and it’s angry and it’s paradoxical and it’s complicated.
“i will begin by telling you that i blame myself terribly. as i sit here in this dark cell in convict clothes, a disgraced and ruined man, i blame myself”
who was really at fault in the relationship? was is wilde for honestly being an older man pressuring a younger man (around 38 and 22, which i would find myself kinda uncomfortable with nowadays really and despite all wilde says there was no way he could have influenced bosie at all, it’s never that simple)? was bosie the real culprit of wildes money issues and was he truly such a terrible person to wilde in how he treated him with attachment issues and mean words covered over with pleading and tearful eyes?
the letter shows all of wilde off i’m his feelings, especially in his hopes of writing and creating art and moving forward after finding fulfilment in jail. but with the knowledge of the future we know he writes and publishes little else and despite all his talk about never going back to bosie, we also know he is quick to drop his authentic friends to run off with bosie yet again. so despite his clear anger and spite in his letter, it’s the same love that apparently overcomes it.
“of course i should have got rid of you. i should have shaken you out of my life as a man shakes from his railment a thing that has stung him”
“in you hate was always stronger than love… you did not realise that there is no room for both passions in the same soul… hate blinds people. you were not aware of that. love can read the writing on the remotest star, but hate so blinded you that you could see no further that the narrow, walled in, and already lust-withered garden of your common desires”
i think this is a compelling read for all. whether you’re a fan of oscar wilde, this should definitely be a go to, or if you’ve just heard of the myth and want to know the man behind it. i think it’s hard to read a published work and realise oh this is truly someone’s life, or the opposite it is easy for you to feel uncomfortable reading someone’s ramblings. letters are private and this is uncomfortable and it kept my attention (other than the section on christ and religion really) because of how complex it is. you see a side of wilde you don’t often see, he’s not the confident man who is often imagined and instead he is an angry man lost in the face of his time in prison.
harrowing. emotional. complex. intriguing.
give it a read.
7_nicole_7's review
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
5.0
"If after I go out a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I shouldn't mind a bit. I can be perfectly happy by myself. With freedom, books, flowers and the moon, who could not be happy?"
De Profundis was one of Oscar Wildes works which I wanted to read for quite a while and now that I finally did I can say that it was not what I expected. It is a love letter, alright, but it is so much more than that. It really, profoundly, captures the innermost thoughts of Wilde and his change during his imprisonment not only regarding his personality but also his way of seeing the world, his sense of being and how he feels everything so very deeply. Oscar found love where there would not have been any for some people and he shows his humanity aswell as his sorrow which he feels is omnipresent.
I am aware of the fact that one should keep in mind that the narrative is not to be trusted completely but I still relished this book immensely. It has made me ponder about a lot of things which I did not think of before and it taught me a lot. As a huge fan of Oscar Wilde, I may have been a bit biased, yet I still think that even if I wasn't I would have loved De Profundis as well as all the other letters featured in this book (and the ballad of reading gaol).
Truly a work of art. A must-read!
De Profundis was one of Oscar Wildes works which I wanted to read for quite a while and now that I finally did I can say that it was not what I expected. It is a love letter, alright, but it is so much more than that. It really, profoundly, captures the innermost thoughts of Wilde and his change during his imprisonment not only regarding his personality but also his way of seeing the world, his sense of being and how he feels everything so very deeply. Oscar found love where there would not have been any for some people and he shows his humanity aswell as his sorrow which he feels is omnipresent.
I am aware of the fact that one should keep in mind that the narrative is not to be trusted completely but I still relished this book immensely. It has made me ponder about a lot of things which I did not think of before and it taught me a lot. As a huge fan of Oscar Wilde, I may have been a bit biased, yet I still think that even if I wasn't I would have loved De Profundis as well as all the other letters featured in this book (and the ballad of reading gaol).
Truly a work of art. A must-read!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Toxic friendship, Outing, and Toxic relationship
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
beth2400's review
5.0
Oscar Wilde was an incredible writer and I regret taking so long to begin reading his work. This book had everything- De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol are very well written and touching, and both the introduction and notes helped and greatly improved in giving the context to the work and overall more information.
anarcho_zymurgist's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.5
Particularly heartbreaking to read, not so much because of the unjust destruction of Wilde's reputation and falling out with his lover, but rather due to a sense that his imprisonment has broken him irreparably. I think when we remember famous authors who have been imprisoned, we typically think of the ones who emerged even stronger out the other side (Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn immediately come to mind for me). Not so for Wilde. These last works, while fine, are not his best, and should be approached as grim curiosities.