Other miserable men, when they are thrown into prison, if they are robbed of the beauty of the world, are at least safe, in some measure, from the world’s most deadly slings, most awful arrows. They can hide in the darkness of their cells, and of their very disgrace make a mode of sanctuary. The world having had its will, goes its way, and they are left to suffer undisturbed. With me it has been different. Sorrow after sorrow has come beating at the prison doors in search of me. They have opened the gates wide and let them in. The messenger of death has brought me his tidings and gone his way, and in entire solitude, and isolated from all that could give me comfort, or suggest relief, I have to bear the intolerable burden of misery and remorse that the memory of my mother placed upon me, and places on me still. That is and always will remain to me a source of infinite distress, of infinite pain, of grief without end or limit. Now I find hidden away in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all. That something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is humility. And the end of it all is that I have got to forgive you. I must do so.
DE PROFUNDIS BY OSCAR WILDE 1897
see ya’ next time
