{"id":93078,"date":"2015-12-25T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2015-12-25T14:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=93078"},"modified":"2015-12-21T12:12:39","modified_gmt":"2015-12-21T17:12:39","slug":"suffering-is-one-very-long-moment-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/12\/25\/suffering-is-one-very-long-moment-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Suffering Is One Very Long Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re away until January 4, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2015. Please enjoy, and have a happy New Year!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Oscar Wilde and Lord Douglas, ca. 1893.<\/p><\/div>\n

How Oscar Wilde\u2019s prison sentence\u00a0changed him.<\/em><\/p>\n

Max Nelson is writing a series<\/a> on prison literature. Read the previous entry, on writers who found God from behind bars<\/a><\/em>, here.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The first time Oscar Wilde saw the inside of a prison, it was 1882\u2014thirteen years before he\u2019d serve the famous criminal sentence that produced De Profundis<\/a><\/em>, his 55,000-word letter to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas. Financially pressed and known primarily as a public speaker\u2014by then he had only published a thin volume of poems\u2014he\u2019d committed to a nine-month lecture tour of America. During his stop in Lincoln, Nebraska, he and the young literature professor George Woodberry were taken to visit the local penitentiary. The warden led them into a yard where, Wilde later wrote the suffragist journalist Helena Sickert, they were confronted by \u201cpoor odd types of humanity in striped dresses making bricks in the sun.\u201d All the faces he glimpsed, he remarked with relief, \u201cwere mean-looking, which consoled me, for I should hate to see a criminal with a noble face.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 1889, Wilde\u2019s judgments about prison had become less snobbish, if no less flippant. Reviewing a volume of poetry by Wilfred Blunt \u201ccomposed in the bleak cell of Galway Gaol,\u201d he agreed with the book\u2019s author that \u201can unjust imprisonment for a noble cause strengthens as well as deepens the nature.\u201d And yet the idea that prison was basically common, a strengthening exercise for the lower classes, still attracted him as a dark, wicked opportunity to conflate the awful with the trivial. As late as 1894, he could have the mischievous, debt-ridden Algernon insist midway through The Importance of Being Earnest<\/em> that \u201cI am really not going to be imprisoned in the suburbs for dining in the West End.\u201d When Algernon hears from a threatening solicitor that \u201cthe gaol itself is fashionable and well-aired; and there are ample opportunities of taking exercise at certain stated hours of the day,\u201d he answers indignantly: \u201cExercise! Good God! No gentleman ever takes exercise.\u201d Read More >>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re away until January 4, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2015. Please enjoy, and have a happy New Year! How Oscar Wilde\u2019s prison sentence\u00a0changed him. Max Nelson is writing a series on prison literature. Read the previous entry, on writers who found God from behind bars, here. The first time Oscar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":851,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20653],"tags":[4846,2823,19768,19762,19761,19436,14307,19764,11213,1435,8902,19435,19763,19769,15410,19767,19765,19766],"class_list":["post-93078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2015","tag-britain","tag-class","tag-courtroom","tag-de-profundis","tag-gaol","tag-incarceration","tag-jail","tag-lord-alfred-douglas","tag-nebraska","tag-oscar-wilde","tag-prison","tag-prison-literature","tag-prison-writing","tag-reading-prison","tag-suffering","tag-trial","tag-victorian-england","tag-wilfred-blunt"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow Did Prison Change Oscar Wilde? 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