Oscar Wilde. In Memoriam (souvenirs). Le "De Profundis"

by André Gide

En décembre 1900, alors qu'il séjournait dans le sud aIgérien, à Biskra, André Gide apprit par les journaux la mort d'Oscar Wilde. L'éloignement ne lui permettant pas de se joindre au cortège qui suivit la dépouille du poète, il décida d'écrire aussitôt «ces pages d'affection, d'admiration et de respectueuse pitié».

Réunis pour la première fois en 1946, ces deux courts textes d'André Gide sur Oscar Wilde (ln memoriam et Le «De profundis ») furent publiés respectivement en 1903 (in Prétextes) et en 1905.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Classics, France, 20th Century, Biography Memoir, Memoir

78 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1910

About the author

Diaries and novels, such as The Immoralist (1902) and Lafcadio's Adventures (1914), of noted French writer André Gide examine alienation and the drive for individuality in an often disapproving society; he won the Nobel Prize of 1947 for literature.

André Paul Guillaume Gide authored books. From beginnings in the symbolist movement, career of Gide ranged to anticolonialism between the two World Wars.

Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide exposes the conflict and eventual reconciliation to public view between the two sides of his personality; a straight-laced education and a narrow social moralism split apart these sides. One can see work of Gide as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritan constraints, and it gravitates around his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of full self, even to the point of owning sexual nature without betraying values at the same time. After his voyage of 1936 to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the same ethos informs his political activity, as his repudiation of Communism suggests.

Chinese 安德烈·纪德

Reviews

[Sónia Santos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Este é um daqueles livros em que a classificação “outras formas de literatura” assenta como uma luva… Não se percebe se é um livro de memórias do tempo muito curto de convivência do autor com Oscar Wilde, se pretende um registo biográfico desse mesmo tempo curtíssimo, se é uma transcrição (cansativa) do julgamento e condenação de Wilde, por "ultraje aos costumes", ou se simplesmente é um testemunho de contrição do próprio autor, na expiação dos seus demónios…

[Viji (Bookish endeavors) · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The colour of truth is grey."

The admiration for the craftsman of words by a novice to the disdain at his coup de grace, Wilde did evoke intense emotions in Gide! One fails to grasp why the author does not reflect on his changed feelings for Wilde; may be it's his own cross to bear! May be Wilde never wished to be understood, for misunderstandings of him are all one can make out from the words of ones near to him. But then every portrait that is painted with emotion is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter!

[il. menestrello · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una piccola finestra sugli ultimi anni vissuti da Oscar Wilde attraverso le parole di Gide, né più né meno. A tratti si può notare quella che in un primo momento pare essere invidia per il successo conseguito dal drammaturgo caduto in rovina, giacché Gide parla del suo stile; tuttavia, dopo una rilettura della sua opera prima "Il ritratto di Dorian Gray", mi sto trovando più d'accordo con André Gide. Al di là dei virtuosismi applicati ai capitoli di questa, della poetica senza dubbio eccezionale e della dialettica buona per l'ambito teatrale, Wilde non pare molto tagliato per la scrittura romanzesca. Ritratto quanto mi è scappato in un video-commento al riguardo di questo libro, dunque: non credo ci sia davvero invidia nelle parole di Gide...

[Tobi ﾄﾋﾞ · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was such a disappointment I found the introduction more interesting than the actual article

[Ogier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a biography as the cover inexplicability declares, but a collection of two essays Gide wrote, one in 1901 and the other in 1905.

Gide first met Wilde in Paris, in 1891, when he was at the height of his fame. Gide was dazzled by his conversation.and charmed by his admirable French. Gide quotes what Wilde said to him at some length as he transcribed the conversations immediately afterward.

The second meeting was accidental, in Biskra. Algiers. Wilde declared he adored the sun and indeed, Algiers was a holiday destination for many Europeans. But one might refer to Gide's "If it Die," his autobiography of his early life. for a more detailed description of that meeting. Gide's recount of a night in Biskra with Wilde is described in cinematic detail and is mesmerizing.

The next meeting occurred soon after Wilde was released from prison and he had taken up residence in France in a small village near Dieppe. Gide had always said he had to speak the truth, and he is unsparing in his description of a Wilde broken physically and spiritually.

The final meeting was in Paris. Gide was strolling along the boulevards with a friend, when he heard his name called . It was Wilde, seated at a sidewalk cafe. Gide joined him but seated himself so as not to be noticed by passerby. Wilde gently reproached him by declaring that when he was rich and joyful, he was honored to be near Verlaine, even when he was drunk.

The final section is an essay on De Profundis, a letter written by Oscar Wilde during his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, to "Bosie" (Lord Alfred Douglas). Gide inserts commentary at various places in the document.

Gide titled his essays: IN MEMORIAM and said of his words: ",,,perhaps a friend may express a sadness which persists, may bring, like a wreath to a forsaken grave, these pages of affection, admiration, and respectful pity."

[Amira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gide didn't have a lot to say but it's an honest first-hand account of Wilde before and after the trials. I really appreciate it.
An excellent audiobook can be found on libriVox for this one.

[Niles Hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this. It was a relaxing day with a thin volume written with love from Gide on Wilde to Wilde and his lost audience just then returning to him, the first seeds growing beyond the law to accept the fact they could allow them self to feel a sense of mourning for his passing, and enter the first open expressions of this by quietly daring to speak his name again in public, breaking taboo.

As for Gide's expression, it's an aquarium contained view of an obsolete moralism, that remains ethically current as moral tale, much like the best of what Gide does in his autobiography, or Wilde did in his fairy tales. Take it in as what it is without judgement. I associate it as futuristic for its time by anticipating, in tone, the era 1930-40' hollywood. I wouldn't want to prove that in a court of literary critics, but that's the rough association I connected to reading these two essays, the first written in 1901, the second in 1905.

Writ in an era when living men could be mourned, in a Paris that still engaged in lowering the price of rare wines to poets treated like shit in their own land, and born in a state of exile.

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting! Provides yet another perspective on this fascinating man. The details about Alfred Douglas I found valuable.

Quotations:

“I cannot help feeling a certain irritation, upon reading in the preface which M. Joseph Renaud joins to his translation of Intentions: “These facts, imperfectly established, be it noted, which cast into prison a writer who was glorious, rich, and esteemed by all, prove nothing against his work. Let us forget them . . . Do we not read, despite their private lives, Musset, Baudelaire, etc.? If someone were to reveal that Flaubert and Balzac have committed crimes, would we have to burn Salammbo and Cousin Bette? etc…. The works belong to us, not the authors.”—Are we still worrying about that sort of thing ! Doubtless these gracious words are said with the best intention in the world, but does not Wilde himself tell us in De Profundis: “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 realized it to the full I could not possibly be friends with him any more, or ever be in his company.” And elsewhere: “To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experience is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.” (56-7)

“‘Some day, perhaps, I shall publish the letters of Oscar Wilde to myself which will confirm everything you have said—if there can be any doubt as to the truth of what you so vividly describe.
‘This may one day become necessary in order to refute the lies of Alfred Douglas. You no doubt heard reported in a recent libel action that he swore in the witness box that he was unaware of Oscar Wilde’s guilt, and that he was the ‘only decent friend who remained with Oscar Wilde.’ You know perfectly well that Alfred Douglas was the cause of Oscar Wilde’s ruin both before and after the imprisonment. I would like to have pretended this was not the case, out of old friendship and regard for Douglas: and the fact that I had quarrelled with him personally would not have affected my determination to let the world think he was really the noble friend he always posed as being. But since he has taken on himself, in his new character of social and moral reformer, to talk about Oscar Wilde’s ‘sins’ (in most of which he participated) and has betrayed all his own friends, there is no longer any reason for me to be silent…’” (70) —Robert Ross

“But in the whole tale, and even in those last words, his admiration for Douglas, and a kind of lover’s infatuated pleasure in being mastered, were manifest. And indeed Douglas’s personality seemed much stronger and much more marked than Wilde’s; yes, Douglas’s personality was overweening; a sort of fatality swept him along; at times he seemed almost irresponsible; and he never attempted to resist himself, he would not put up with anyone or anything resisting him either. To tell the truth Bosy interested me extremely; but ‘terrible’ he certainly was, and in my opinion it is he who ought to be held responsible for all that was disastrous in Wilde’s career. Wilde beside him seemed gentle, wavering and weak-willed. Douglas was possessed by the perverse instinct that drives a child to break his finest toy; nothing ever satisfied him; he always wanted to go one better. The following example will show to what lengths his effrontery would go: I was questioning him one day about Wilde’s two sons; he laid great stress on the beauty of Cyril (I think), who was quite young at the time, and then whispered with a self-satisfied smile, ‘He will be for me.’ Add to all this a poetical gift of the rarest quality, which was apparent in the musical tone of his voice, in his gestures, his eyes and the expression of his features; there was apparent too in his whole person what physiologists call ‘a bad heredity.’” (78-9)

“In Paris I read (in part) Douglas’s abominable book, Oscar Wilde and Myself. Hypocrisy can go no further, nor falsehood be more impudent. It is a monstrous travesty of the truth, which filled me with disgust. Merely from the tone of his writing it seems to me that I should be aware he is lying, even if I had not been the direct witness of the acts of his life against which he protests and which he claims to whitewash. But even this is not enough for him. He claims that he was ignorant of Wilde’s habits! and that he upheld him at first only because he thought him innocent! Whom will he convince? I do not know; but I hope not to die before having unmasked him. This book is a villainy.” (90-1, in the form of a journal entry dated 1 June, 1918)

“Skimmed through the new book by Douglas. Going back to the declarations of his first book (Oscar Wilde and Myself), he now admits that his testimony was false; but he was more or less forced to write that book, he says, and moreover he did not write the untruthful parts himself but simply signed them, so that they appeared under his name without his being exactly their author. In this new book, no more pretence; what he is going to tell, he says, is the Truth; what he calls: “the real Truth.” I liked him almost better when he told the other kind!” (95, in the form of a journal entry dated 5 February, 1931)

[Rob · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm 40% into this book and so far it's nothing but introduction after introduction, then pages of Gide quotes and pages of Wilde quotes. When do the actual reminiscences begin?
There wasn't much substance to this book; merely a few pages of superficial observations. Better save your money and do a Google or Wikipedia search on the subject. I would give this book zero stars if I could.

[Joseph Raffetto · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this short memoir. Andre Gide captured his experiences with Oscar Wilde and gave us a portrait of Wilde that is fascinating and intimate.

[Elimds9 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This worked well in audiobook form, as it starts off a bit disjointed, alternately listing Gide and Wilde quotes, which I probably would have gotten bored by had I not been listening to it. However, it grows into an intimate exploration of Wilde’s personality and motivations throughout his life, through the eyes of Gide. I think this is why tipped it over to four stars for me - it wasn’t a dry, chronological biography of Wilde, but a reflection of Wilde based on selected encounters, coloured by the worldview of Gide himself.

[Andy Davis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretty vapid stuff. Quite a slight pen picture of Wilde. Prose not brilliant and no real insights into his relationship with Wilde. We know they meet in North Africa - we know they misbehave there but that isn't mentioned. They meet again during the writers exile in France near Dieppe and in a cafe in Paris. Most of the first meeting is an anecdote of Wilde's about prison of no great cleverness. The cafe scene is a sad epilogue but the whole is brief in the extreme and padded with quotes and notes.

[Orest Mercator · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprisingly insightful and moving little book. I want to read more Gide—and Wilde—after reading this.

Notes to self: The tone is neither elegiac nor historical, but folkloric. He speaks, so it seems, the continuous thread of a life’s incoherence, retelling episodes with a perfect balance of commentary and restraint: “love and be silent” (Lear).

He’s a master of enjambing across a paragraph break.

Good observer. | The look of a person and then the translation from the look into a psychoanalysis.

[Eva · Rating 4 out of 5]

André Gide träffade Oscar Wilde vid flera tillfällen på 1890-talet, och återberättar här Oscar Wildes egna ord, vid de olika tillfällena. Fantastiska minnesbilder, som visar Wildes skiftande livsbana. Gide skrev ner samtalen tätt inpå mötet, och ser det som fakta. Och det stämmer med den känsla man får när man läser Wilde. Känns rörande äkta.

[em_night · Rating 3 out of 5]

Une première partie assez intéressante pour me donner envie d'en apprendre plus sur Oscar Wilde. La suite m'a semblé bien écrite mais quelque peu confuse. Je n'ai pas réussi à saisir ou voulait en venir l'auteur.

[Sergio Caredda · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'incontro tra Gide e Wilde è più del semplice incontro tra due figure letterarie importanti, ma differenti. Nelle pagine di questo volume, che contiene due piccoli saggi sulla vita di Wilde, traspare l'ammirazione di Gilde non solo per il lato artistico, ma anche per quello umano "scandaloso" che rappresentava Wilde. Uno spaccato interessante e per certi versi anche sensuale.

[Rosemond Cates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quick and very interesting first hand account of the amazing Oscar Wilde.

[María Iglesias · Rating 3 out of 5]

DramaDramaDrama

[elena · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Gia · Rating 5 out of 5]

winter

[Mejix · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't know much about Gide but this book and his initial dismissal of Proust makes me think he was kind of an idiot. The best thing about this book is when Wilde speaks.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are short essays in memory of Wilde. Gide remembers his encounters with Wilde, who was his 15-year-senior, before Wilde’s infamous trial and 2 years before his death. Gide was enchanted and his remembrance was affectionate, with much writing in Wilde’s own words, his stories and conversations with Gide. Wilde was always after beauties in his own will. However, in his last meeting with Gide, Wilde commented the Russian authors had pity in their work and he started having pity after his prison time. These are glimpses of Wilde’s life in two profoundly different periods.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wilde to Gide: "Understand that there are two worlds: the one that is without one’s speaking about it; it’s called the real world because there’s no need to talk about it in order to see it. And the other is the world of art; that’s the one which has to be talked about because it would not exist otherwise.”

[bor · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are interested in getting to know Oscar Wilde this writings are just for you. I was particularly not interested in doing so but I managed to enjoy most of the pages here. He gets repetitive in many senses and jumps from different subjects quickly thought the letter but I think that fits within the context of his life at the time.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mournful and honest tribute to Wilde, told through recollected conversations and direct quotations from De Profundis. It's one man's reflection on what prison did to Wilde and how he attempted to live thereafter.

[Mabel Vivaldi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interessante racconto sugli ultimi anni di vita di Oscar Wilde; dedicato prettamente agli amanti di questo artista, utile per capire fino in fondo la sua figura e vedere la sua vita da un'altra prospettiva

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

این اثر آندره ژید را هم هوشنگ ایرانی به فارسی برگردانده است.

[Sleepydrummer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sad recollections of Oscar Wilde.

"But life always wounds those who approach it from dreams."

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wilde, intocable desde el papel, se convierte cada vez más en una figura interesante y compleja gracias a este libro.

[MARCO PAVAN]

Perlina o piccola perla?