Oscar Wilde Read online

  OSCAR WILDE

  Philosophical eLibrary Editions

  of works by André Gide

  Autumn Leaves

  The Notebooks of André Walter

  Notes on Chopin

  White Notebook

  A Philosophical eLibrary Edition

  OSCAR WILDE

  IN MEMORIAM

  (REMINISCENCES)

  DE PROFUNDIS

  by

  ANDRÉ GIDE

  With a New Introduction by

  JEANINE PARISIER PLOTTEL

  Translated from the French by

  BERNARD FRECHTMAN

  PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY

  New York

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  ANDRÉ GIDE QUOTES

  IMAGE GALLERY

  OSCAR WILDE QUOTES

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  FOREWORD

  IN MEMORIAM

  PART I—EARLY PERIOD

  PART II—TRAGIC MEMORIES

  PART III—“SEBASTIAN MELMOTH”

  PART IV—THE KING OF LIFE

  PART V—PARIS

  APPENDIX

  INDEX

  INTRODUCTION

  André Gide and Oscar Wilde met for the first time when they were at a crossroad of their lives. The year was 1891, a year that was an annus mirabilis for both men. 1 The Frenchman, born on November 22, 1869 was 22 years old and the Irishman, born on October 16, 1854, was 37, fifteen years older. Oscar was already the celebrated author of many works, including poems, stories, criticism, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and near the top of his form—a form that would yield his great plays Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, Salomé, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest. André became part of the Paris literary milieu with the publication of his first works, Les Cahiers d’André Walter (The Notebooks of André Walter), a book purporting to be a journal and filled with poems, and Traité du Narcisse, a long essay that presents his own version of the myth. 2 He left a copy of the Cahiers at Stéphane Mallarmé’s home, 89 rue de Rome. Mallarmé then invited him to join the famous Tuesday evening group. Oscar, who seems to have been present at Mallarmé’s on Tuesdays in November 1891, 3 may well have met André there. Still, a note in a recent edition of Gide’s Journal indicates the two met for the first time at the home of the poet Henri de Régnier. 4

  Be that as it may, André felt at once dazzled and overwhelmed by his new acquaintance. Here, for example, dated November 28, 1891, is the very first written mention he made of Wilde as an esthete: “Oh, an admirable, admirable man.” 5 A few days later, in a December 1891 letter to Valéry (the words “De profundis” appear in front of the day Friday, i.e. “Vendredi”) he wrote: “Wilde is piously intent in killing whatever remains of my soul, because he says that to know an essence, you must stifle it: he wants me to yearn for my soul. Its value depends on how much exertion it takes to destroy it.” 6 In a social whirlwind the two dined several times in December at the home of Princess Ourousoff, the wife of the Russian ambassador to Paris, and they shared other meals with poets Marcel Schwob, Stuart Merrill, 7 Henri de Régnier and the poet/chansonnier Aristide Bruant. 8 On Christmas Eve, Gide found himself apologizing to Valéry for his silence. “Since Wilde,” he wrote, “I exist almost not at all.” 9

  The manuscript of Gide’s Journal has evidence of pages torn out, and these are the pages that deal with the three weeks, November to December 1891, presumably with the beginning of the friendship with Oscar. While we can only surmise about their content, their destruction is significant. An echo can be found at the end of Gide’s Les nourritures terrestres, The Fruits of the Earth (which we will take up a little later here), when he beseeches his interlocutor Nathanaël, and also his readers, to destroy the pages and abandon the book. What is certain is that Gide was impressed, not by the literary quality of his elder’s book, but by his legend and the seduction of his conversation and personality. In the essay at hand, In Memoriam, Gide notes that he was wrong to dismiss the literary quality of Wilde’s books.

  Wilde’s lessons in hedonism, his praise of evil, his contempt for Christian morality and Victorian values seem to have shaken his would-be-disciple and destroyed all his convictions. Gide’s Journal entry of January 1, 1892 is categorical: “Wilde was, I believe evil for me. With him, I had unlearned how to think. My emotions were more and more diverse, but I didn’t know how to organize them; above all, I could no longer follow other persons’ deductions. A thought, here and there. But my clumsiness in shifting them led me to abandon them. Now I am taking up again, with difficulty, but real pleasure, my history of philosophy, and study the problem of language that I will take up with Müller and Renan.” 10

  That is not the whole story. Wilde’s profligacy, his self-indulgence is the source of one of Gide’s important characters, Ménalque—that is to say Menalcas, also a character of Virgil’s Eclogues. Gide published his “Portrait of Ménalque” in the 1896 issue of L’Ermitage. Although he stated it would never be reprinted, 11 it appears in all editions of Les nourritures terrestres. In addition to the famous “Families, I hate you! closed circles round the heart; doors fast shut; jealous possession of happiness,” 12 the Menalcas/Wilde utters other characteristic words. Here is one of its most celebrated passages, one that reflects the lesson Gide drew from Wilde. The remarkable Dorothy Bussy translation should be noted. Dorothy Bussy, a lifelong friend of Gide, was born Dorothy Strachey, a sister to Lytton and James Strachey, and was a teacher at the Allenwood Academy in England where Eleanor Roosevelt was among her students:

  Some people taxed me with selfishness; I taxed them with stupidity. My claim was not to love anyone in particular—man or woman—but friendship itself, or affection, or love. I refused to deprive another of what I gave to one, and would only lend myself – just as I had no wish to appropriate another’s body or heart. A nomad here too, as in nature, I took up my abode nowhere. A preference seemed to me an injustice; wishing to belong to all men, I would not give myself to anyone. 13

  The first part of In Memoriam then, depicts the brilliant 1891 Oscar Wilde without revealing the extent of the psychic possession he had upon the young man, evidence of which has just been cited. The second part where the “tragic memories” (p. 13) begin is set in North Africa at the end of January 1895 when Gide left Algiers for Blidah, and chanced upon the names of Oscar Wilde and Lord Douglas on the hotel register. 14 He began by erasing his own name, but was sorry for the act of cowardice, had his trunk carried back up again, and stayed to dinner with them. 15 While the essay gives a relatively respectful account of the meeting, Si le grain ne meurt (If It Dies), Gide’s autobiography published twenty years later, gives another far less delicate account of the events. It explores Oscar Wilde’s role and responsibility in initiating Gide and others into the culture of homosexual and heterosexual brothels, venereal diseases, drugs, and lavish hedonism. Jean Delay, the eminent psychiatrist already cited, is definite about the fact Gide was fascinated by the insolence, the extravagance, the provocations, and pretensions Wilde and Bosie had of being above the laws and morals of ordinary persons. 16

  Total disgrace for Oscar would follow when he returned to London. It came about when the Marquis of Queensberry sent him an insulting card at the Albemarle Club that he received from a footman on 28 February 1895. 17 Wilde brought a libel suit against the Marquis, lost it, was put on trial twice, and was convicted and sentenced to two years hard labor. In Paris, Stuart Merrill circulated a petition in Paris—a petition was also circulated in London—for mitigation of his sentence. Gide was among the few to sign it, 18 a harbinger of his stances in standing fast by his moral convictions, unpopular though they might be. 19

  The third part of In Memoriam is a moving account of the lugubrious
changes that prison wrought upon Wilde. Gide was among the first to visit Sebastian Melmoth, the alias he adopted when he was released from prison and took up residence in a small hotel in Berneval, a village near Dieppe in Normandy. The two men saw each other for the last time in Paris shortly before Oscar Wilde died in a small discreet hotel, rue des Beaux-arts, destitute, penniless and scorned by the literary world, while his friend would become one of the most successful authors in the western world, the recipient of a Nobel Prize in 1947, and in France, his generation’s most important conscience. Today, posterity may have rebalanced the equation: Wilde’s tales are widely read, his plays performed everywhere, and he ranks at the very top of the pantheon of English-speaking authors.

  1 That is the phrase used by Richard Ellman, Wilde’s biographer: “… in 1891, his annus mirabilis, he published four books (two volumes of stories, one of critical essays, and a novel) and a long political essay (“The Soul of Man under Socialism”) and wrote his first successful play, Lady Windermere’s Fan as well as most of Salomé.” Richard Ellman, Oscar Wilde (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988) 307.

  2 The work contains the subtitle, “theory of the symbol,” and it is dedicated to the poet Paul Valéry. Earlier in the year, the two friends had cemented their friendship with a visit to “Narcisse’s” tomb in Montpellier. Alan Sheridan, André Gide: A Life in the Present (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999) 73.

  3 Ellman 337-9.

  4 André Gide, Journal I 1887-1925, ed. Eric Marty (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1996) 1389.

  5 André Gide and Paul Valéry, Correspondance 1890-1942, ed. Robert Mallet (Paris: Gallimard 1955) 139.

  6 Correspondance 141. “Wilde s’étudie pieusement à tuer ce qui me restait d’âme, parce qu’il dit que pour connaîitre une essence, il faut la supprimer: il veut que je regrette mon âme. L’effort pour la détruire est la mesure de cette chose.”

  7 Marcel Schwob and Stuart Merrill were among the French authors who worked on and corrected the French of Oscar Wilde’s play, Salomé.

  8 Jean Delay, The Youth of André Gide, abridged and trans. June Guicharnaud (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1963) 289.

  9 Correspondance 144. “Pardonne-moi de m’être tu: depuis Wilde je n’existe plus que très peu.”

  10 Journal I 148. “Wilde ne m’a fait, je crois, que du mal. Avec lui, j’avais désappris de penser. J’avais des emotions plus diverses mais je ne savais plus les ordonner: je ne pouvais surtout plus suivre les deductions des autres. Quelques pensées, parfois; mais ma maladresse à les remuer me les faisait abandoner. Je reprends maintenant, difficilement mais avec de grandes joies mon histoire de la philosophie où j’étudie le problème du langage (que je reprends avec Müller et Renan.)”

  11 According to a letter to his friend Marcel Drouin, 24 January 1896 cited in André Gide, Romans, Récits et soties. Oeuvres lyriques (Paris: Gallimard, Edition de la Pléiade, 1958) 1483.

  12 André Gide, The Fruits of the Earth, trans. Dorothy Bussy (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1949) 68.

  13 Fruits of the Earth 71.

  14 According to Jean Delay, unpublished notes for Si le grain ne meurt, Gide’s autobiography, indicate he had met Oscar Wilde and Lord Douglas in Florence the preceding year. Youth of André Gide 391.

  15 Youth of André Gide 391.

  16 Youth of André Gide 437.

  17 Ellmann 438. The card, left ten days before, read: “To Oscar Wilde, posing Somdomite (sic).”

  18 Ellmann 493.

  19 See his books Corydon, Voyage au Congo, Retour de l’URSS and Retouches au Retour de l’URSS, also his support of the Free French and General Charles De Gaulle during World War II.

  Jeanine Parisier Plottel

  New York, New York 2012

  JEANINE PARISIER PLOTTEL, professor emeritus of French, CUNY Hunter College & The Graduate Center, is the former executive director of the New York State Conference, American Association of University Professors and former chair of the Hunter Dept. of Romance Languages. The French government has decorated her twice (Palmes Académiques) for her contribution to French language, literature and culture. She is a former trustee of Barnard College, and a trustee of the Society for French-American Cultural Exchange (FACE). She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Maison Française at Columbia University, the Institute for French Studies at New York University, and the Henri Peyre French Institute of the City University Graduate Center. An author of numerous books and articles in both English and French, the editor and publisher of New York Literary Forum, she is an honorary life member of the Modern Language Association. A graduate of Barnard College, she received her master’s and doctoral degrees in French literature from Columbia University.

  ANDRÉ GIDE QUOTES

  Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself—and thus make yourself indispensable.

  Courage is very important. Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.

  Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

  God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.

  I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress.

  The funny thing about love is that it must continually grow or it will diminish.

  It is now, and in this world, that we must live.

  A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.

  To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom.

  It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves—in finding themselves.

  The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.

  No theory is good unless it permits, not rest, but the greatest work. No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go on beyond.

  Art begins with resistance—at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor.

  The individual never asserts himself more than when he forgets himself.

  Obtain from yourself all that makes complaining useless. No longer implore from others what you yourself can obtain.

  It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labor of peace.

  There are admirable potentialities in every human being. Believe in your strength and your youth. Learn to repeat endlessly to yourself, “It all depends on me.”

  Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.

  Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

  Nothing prevents happiness like the memory of happiness.

  Know thyself. A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever studies himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.

  The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say—because they were too obvious.

  Society knows perfectly well how to kill a man and has methods more subtle than death.

  Dare to be yourself.

  Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.

  Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.

  It is good to follow one’s own bent, so long as it leads upward.

  In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime.

  At times it seems that I am living my life backward, and that at the approach of old age my real youth will begin.

  One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

  The color of truth is grey.

  Work and struggle and never accept an evil t
hat you can change.

  The greatest intelligence is precisely the one that suffers most from its own limitations.

  Only fools don’t contradict themselves.

  Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you.

  Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.

  Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself.

  To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.

  He who makes great demands upon himself is naturally inclined to make great demands upon others.

  It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.

  Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. It’s their way of falling.

  The most decisive actions of our life—I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future—are, more often than not, unconsidered.

  My soul was born covered with wrinkles—wrinkles that my ancestors and parents most assiduously put there and that I had the greatest trouble removing.

  Seize from every moment its unique novelty and do not prepare your joys.

  Understanding is the beginning of approving.

  Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.

  Welcome anything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.

  The scholar seeks, the artist finds.

  Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves!

  We live counterfeit lives in order to resemble the idea we first had of ourselves.

  A work of art is an exaggeration.

  Our judgments about things vary according to the time left us to live—that we think is left us to live.