Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde




Dear BOSIE, After long and fruitless waiting I have determined
to write to you myself, as much for your sake as for mine, as I
would not like to think that I had passed through two long years
of imprisonment without ever having received a single line from you,
or any news or message even, except such a gave me pain.
Our ill-fated and most lamentable friendship has ended in ruin
and public infamy for me, yet the memory of our ancient affection
is often with me, and the thought that loathing, bitterness
and contempt should for ever take the place in my heurt once
held by love is very sad to me : and you yourself will, I think, feel
in your heart that to write to me as I lie in the loneliness of prison
life is better than to publish my letters without my permission or
to dedicate poems to me unasked, though the world will know
nothing of whatever words of grief or passion, of remorse or indifference
you may choose to send as your answer or your appeal.

I have no doubt that in this letter which I have to write of your
life and of mine, of the past and of the future, of sweet things
changed to bitterness and of bitter things that may be turned into
joy, there will be much that will wound your vanity to the quick.
If it prove so, read the letter over and over again till it kills
your vanity. If you find in it something of which you feel that
you are unjustly accused, remember that one should be thankful
that there is any fault of which one can be unjustly accused.
If there be in it one single passage that brings tears to your
eyes, weep as we weep in prison where the day no less than
the night is set apart for tears. It is the only thing that can save
you. If you go complaining to your mother, as you did with
Référence to the scorn of you I displayed in my letter to Robbie,
so that she may flatter and soothe you back into self-complacency
or conceit, you will be completely lost. If you find one false excuse
for yourself you will soon find a hundred, and be just that you were before.
Do you still say, as you said to Robbie in your answer, that I'attribute
unworthy motives'to you ? Ah ! you had no motives in life.
You had appetites merely. A motive is an intellectual aim.
That you were 'very young' when our friendship began ? Your defect
was not that you knew so little about life, but that you knew so much.
The morning dawn of boyhood with its delicate bloom, its clear pure
light, its joy of innocence and expectation you had left far behind.
With very swift and running feet you had passed from
Romance to Realism.The gutter and the things that live in it had
begun to fascinate you.
That was the origin of the trouble in which you sought my aid,
and I, unwisely according to the wisdom of this world, out of pity
and kindness, gave it to you.
You must read this letter right throught, thought each word
may become to you as the fire or knife of the surgeon that makes
the delicate flesh burn or bleed. Remember that the fool to the eyes
of the gods and the fool to the eyes of man are very differente.
One who is entirely ignorant of the mode of the art in its revelation
or the mood of thought in its progress, of the pomp of the Latin line
or the richer music of the vowelled Greek, of Tusan sculpture
or Elizabertan song, may yet be full of the very sweetest wisdom.
The real fool, such as the gods mock or mar, is he who does not
know himself. I was such a one too long. You have been such a
one too long, Be so no more.