I made the mistake of first reading the abridged version of De Profundis. This isn’t entirely my fault. For decades, efforts were made to censor the most provocative and personal parts of De Profundis—all the stuff about Wilde’s fraught* relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas—AKA Bosie. Even with those sections removed, it’s still a fascinating, intellectually potent text. Add in the stuff about Bosie, and it becomes much more heart-rending and powerful.

De Profundis is a 50,000-word letter from Wilde to Douglas written during Wilde’s second year of imprisonment in Reading Gaol for gross indecency. In the first half of the letter, Wilde goes into great, intimate detail about their one-way, abusive relationship. Wilde might have been the older man, but he was in thrall to Douglas. Even when he realises that Douglas is a selfish cad who expects to be paid for and lavished with love and praise, Wilde can’t seem to get away. He does try, but gets sucked back in by his ego, the sweet words of Douglas, and even the pleadings of Douglas’s mother, who hoped that Wilde could steer her wayward son in the right direction. It all goes horribly wrong. Especially when Boise’s father gets involved and starts threatening Wilde. At this point, Wilde is bankrupt and estranged from his wife and children. But he only goes to jail because Bosie convinces Wilde to take Bosie’s father to court for defamation (that’s not what they called it back then). It does not go well.***

There’s something cathartic about De Profundis: a chance for Wilde to bare it all, to put his raw emotions on the page in the hope that Bosie will appreciate his part in Wilde’s fall. But it’s also a profoundly religious text, one that put paid to my misconception that Wilde was an atheist. He was non-denominational but converted to Catholicism on his deathbed. The second half of the letter shifts away from their relationship and instead becomes an intense meditation on suffering. Not just Wilde’s suffering in jail but also the very nature of suffering. “Suffering is one very long moment,” he tells us. “We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods and chronicle their return.” (This line is, interestingly, the opening of the abridged version).

This fascination with suffering transitions into an ecstatic meditation on the character and divinity of Christ. Wilde talks about how much Christ has influenced art, how “the imaginative quality of Christ’s own nature” has given us the most diverse things and people: “Hugo’s *Les Miserables*, Baudelaire’s *Fleurs du Mal*, the note of pity in Russian novels, Verlaine and Verlaine’s poems…” and so on. It’s rather glorious and beautiful. Even if you’re not a believer.

It’s also very moving. Especially Wilde’s excitement at leaving prison and his desire to live a more simplistic life, where he takes pleasure in the simpler things: “With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?” That’s not how it turns out for Wilde. On leaving prison, he is rejected by the Church and by most of his friends, including his wife and children. It’s so sad. So tragic. But De Profundis is still an incredible document.

*Understatement. Actually, understatement doesn’t cut it. Poor Oscar **

**Yes, I’m aware we only get Oscar’s side of the story. But having read up on Bosie, it’s clear he was a bit of a prick. When parts of De Profundis came out in 1912, he gave Wilde another kicking.

***Another understatement.