So I bought his book “From the Depth” which is actually a long letter that he wrote to Bosie when he was in jail. Yet I haven 't finish reading the book but already I can tell that it was essentially a love letter. At the very beginning it seemed that Wilde was blaming Bosie---he took all his property and energy and indirectly put him in jail. However, as I moved on, I found his deepest love for Bosie was overwhelmingly flooding out through every single word in the letter. He loved him entirely, and desperately.
Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie) was hopelessly engulfed by hatred for his father, and he used Oscar as his weapon. Poor Oscar promised his lover that he would never let the old Douglas hurt him and as for the price, he was put in jail as “gross indecency”.
Oscar's health was vitally destroyed by doing hard labor in prison, and he went to see Bosie again after he was set free. They parted three months later. Oscar died at the age of 46 in a small hotel in Paris in 1900.
Oscar Wilde was an aesthetician and Bosie was truly pretty. The well-known artist fell in love with the Lord at the first sight and since then he could not help himself for the rest of his life. They loved each other, however, falling in love with someone filled up with hatred makes your own life risky, and Oscar was absolutely the biggest loser---he lost everything---reputation, fortune, family and almost his life. However, he never regretted. It was love that drove him to create such great works, and it was also love that destroyed him in the end.
I saw the movie again yesterday and this time I understood better. I was inspirationally impressed by his wise eloquence and deeply touched by the following speech which he addressed on the court:
'The 'Love that dare not speak its name' in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made as the very basis for his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michaelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michaelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the 'Love that dare not speak its name', and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual,and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.'
Oscar Wilde, who was execrated at his time as homosexuality, will be honored for ever as a great artist.
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