He’s a gay icon, but he’s definitely not a gay rights campaigner, and it would be anachronistic to expect people to talk about their sexuality openly then.
He’s a martyr to the cause, but in De Profundis he doesn’t write about his sexuality openly – there were hints, but it was definitely euphemistic. “His fall from grace was so dramatic and so unprecedented, so that also plays a part in what we remember about him. It’s a kind of soul-searching and it wouldn’t have happened had he not been in prison under the separate system, so his prison sentence changed the tone of his writing.” It doesn’t feel like that in his work or when you read about him, and that’s no more true than in De Profundis. He feels close to us in terms of era, but it’s 116 years since he died. The form and content in Wilde’s work are conjoined, it’s very contemporary humour and use of irony, and he as a contempt sensibility. He feels very modern his aphorisms and epigrams feel like they could have been written yesterday. His plays have always been popular and I think people identify with him for living a flamboyant life in Victorian times. “It’s about his work and about his life, which are inextricably linked. We spoke to Artangel co-founder Michael Morris to find out more. Such a stellar cast further underscores the vital legacy of Wilde on art, forging paths in self-acceptance and ideas of the personal as political. Each day, De Profundis will be read in its entirety by speakers such as Ralph Fiennes, Maxine Peake, Lemn Sissay and Patti Smith while visitors to some cells will find newly-penned letters the theme of state-enforced separation by writers including Binyavanga Wainaina, Ai Weiwei, and Anne Carson.
Entitled Inside: Artists and Writers in Reading Prison, the show sees the jail space, which closed in 2013, house a series of installations by artists including Marlene Dumas, Nan Goldin, Steve McQueen and Wolfgang Tillmans.
It is no less than a denial of the soul,” Wilde wrote in his powerful unsent letter De Profundis, created in prison and part love letter, part treatise on spirituality, the self and religion.Ī new exhibition orchestrated by arts group Artangel will delve back into this potent prose time and time again, in the very place it was written – Reading Gaol. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. “To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. Homosexuality was not made legal in the UK until 1967, and voices like Wilde’s provide both comfort and hope in the face of injustice, ignorance and hatred. Wilde’s steadfast belief in his own sexuality, and his subsequent martyrdom for it, have made his writings all the more vital for the homosexual community after him. It dictates and pervades great works of art… It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection… The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.” When questioned about its meaning, Wilde said: “It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect.
In the reading of letters between Wilde and Bosey, it was in the courtroom that the chilling and resonant euphemism for homosexuality, the “love that dare not speak its name,” was coined. The court transcriptions are a testament to Wilde’s courage and unfailing, unflappable wit. The tables soon turned on Wilde, and evidence was brought forth of his “gross indecency” – or homosexuality – something the writer had at turns been trying to hide, for obvious societal and legal reasons, and also attempting to garner more public acceptance and respect for. Wilde had tried to sue Sir John Sholto Douglas, father of his lover, Alfred Lord Douglas (or Bosie), for libel after a series of homophobic insults, culminating in a note left at Wilde’s club the Albemarle reading “For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite .” To cut a long and heartbreaking story short, in 1895 – just a few months after the debut performance of his masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest – Wilde was sent to prison convicted of “gross indecency”. The story of Oscar Wilde is a brilliant, tragic and complicated one a tale that, despite many efforts, can’t easily be transformed into simple fridge magnet epithets stating that “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Aside from being eminently quotable, Wilde’s legacy is vital in both the literary sphere and in terms of his impact on gay rights and culture.