Suppressions
in ‘De Profundis’
This was the title of
an essay by Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), published on 21st July 1910 under the
name ‘Jacob Tonson’ in The New Age, and republished in Arnold
Bennett: Books
and Persons, being Comments on a Past Epoch. London: Chatto & Windus 1917
pp.217-221. The selection was by Hugh
Walpole.
Much, though we think
not all, of the matter is now familiar, but as we doubt it has been reprinted
since 1917, we here publish it as an interesting contemporary document. We have used the symbol \\ to indicate a page break
in the Chatto edition for anybody who wishes to cite this precisely.
Some time ago I
pointed out (what was to me a new discovery) that certain passages in the
German translation of Oscar Wilde’s ‘De Profundis’ did not exist in the English
version as printed; and I suggested that Mr. Robert Ross, Oscar Wilde’s
faithful literary executor, should explain.
He has been good enough to do so.
He informs me that the passages in question were restored in the edition
of ‘De Profundis’ (the thirteenth) in Wilde’s Complete Works, issued by Messrs.
Methuen to a limited public, and that they have been retained in the fourteenth
(separate) edition, of which Mr. Ross sends me a copy. I possessed only the first edition. I do not want to part with it, but the
fourteenth is a great deal more interesting than the first. It contains a dedicatory letter by Mr. Ross
to Dr. Max Meyerfeld (‘But for you I do not think the book would ever have been
published’), and some highly interesting letters written in Reading Gaol by
Wilde to Mr. Ross (which had previously been published in Germany). In the course of this dedicatory letter, Mr.
Ross says ‘In sending copy \\ to Messrs. Methuen (to whom alone I submitted
it) I anticipated refusal as though the work were more own. A very distinguished man of letters who
acted as their reader advised, however, its acceptance, and urged, in view of
the uncertainty of its reception, the excision of certain passages, to which I
readily assented.’
…
This explains
clearly enough the motive for suppressing the passages. But even after making allowance for the
timidity and apprehensiveness of the publishers’ reader, I cannot quite
understand why those particular passages were cut out. Here is one of them: ‘I had genius, a
distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy, intellectual daring; I
made art a philosophy and philosophy an art.
I altered the minds of men and the colours of things; there was nothing
I said or did that did not make people wonder.
I took the drama, the most objective form known to art, and made it as
personal a mode of expression as the lyric or sonnet; at the same time I
widened its range and enriched its characteristics. Drama, novel, poem in prose, poem in rhyme, subtle or fantastic
dialogue, whatever I touched I and beautiful \\ in a new mode of
beauty. To truth itself I gave what is
false no less than what is true as its rightful province, and showed that the
false and the true and are merely forms of intellectual existence. I treated art as the supreme reality and
life as a mere mode of fiction. I awoke
the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around
me. I summed up all systems in a
phrase, and all existence in an epigram.
Along with these things I had things that were different. But I let myself be lured into long spells
of senseless and sensual ease.’ It is
difficult to see anything in the factitious but delightful brilliance of this
very characteristic swagger that would have endangered the book’s reception.
…
Mr. Ross’s
letter to me concludes thus: ‘“De Profundis”, however, even in its present
form, is only a fragment. The whole
work could not be published in the lifetime of the present generation.’ This makes, within a month, the third
toothsome dish as to which I have had the exasperating news that it is being
reserved for that spoiled child, posterity.
I may say, however, that I do not regard ‘De Profundis’ as one of
Wilde’s best books. I was disappointed \\
with it. It is too frequently
insincere, and the occasion was not one for pose. And it has another fault.
I happened to meet M. Henry Davray several times while he was
translating the book into French. M.
Davray’s knowledge of English is profound, and I was accordingly somewhat
disconcerted when one day, pointing to a sentence in the original, he asked,
‘What does that mean?’ I thought, ‘Is
Davray at last “stumped”?’ I examined
the sentence with care, and then answered ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’ ‘I thought so,’ said M. Davray. We looked at each other. M. Davray was an old friend of Wilde’s, and
was one of the dozen men who attended his desolating funeral. And I was an enthusiastic admirer of Wilde’s
style at its best. We said no
more. But a day or two later a similar
incident occurred, and yet another.
…
Wilde’s letters
to Mr. Ross from prison are extremely good.
They begin sombrely, but after a time the wit lightens, and towards the
end it is playing continually. The
first gleam of it is this: ‘I am going to take up the study of German. Indeed prison seems to be the proper place
for such \\
a study.’ On the subject of the natural
life, he says a thing which is exquisitely wise: ‘Stevenson’s letters are most
disappointing also. I see that romantic
surroundings are the worst surroundings for a romantic writer. In Gower Street Stevenson would have written
a new “Trois Mousquetaires”, in Samoa in writes letters to the Times
about Germans. I see also the traces of
a terrible strain to lead a natural life.
To chop wood with any advantage to oneself or profit to others, one
should not be able to describe the process.
In point of fact the natural life is the unconscious life. Stevenson merely extended the sphere of the
artificial by taking to digging. The
whole dreary book as given me a lesson.
If I lead my future life reading Baudelaire in a café I shall be leading
a more natural life than if I take to hedger’s work or plant cacao in
mud-swamps.’
Note.
The German edition referred to was published by S. Fischer Verlag in
Berlin; the French edition was published by Mercure de France in Paris. Davray’s problem begs the question as to the
text from which he was working. We
shall publish any discovery made about this, and of course any further remarks
by Arnold Bennett.
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