WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.060 Okay, let's just jump right in. We're talking 00:00:02.060 --> 00:00:05.120 about an incredible and honestly a confounding 00:00:05.120 --> 00:00:09.519 figure today, Oscar Wilde. His name, it's just 00:00:09.519 --> 00:00:12.400 synonymous with this whole dramatic arc of the 00:00:12.400 --> 00:00:15.119 late 19th century. You know, the ultimate master 00:00:15.119 --> 00:00:18.780 of glittering, flamboyant wit. Oh, absolutely. 00:00:19.100 --> 00:00:21.019 The writer of these glorious comedies, the high 00:00:21.019 --> 00:00:22.980 priest of aestheticism. But then at the same 00:00:22.980 --> 00:00:26.519 time, his story is also one of the tragic figure. 00:00:27.149 --> 00:00:30.329 utterly, completely destroyed by Victorian moral 00:00:30.329 --> 00:00:33.310 fervor and, well, the unforgiving legal machinery 00:00:33.310 --> 00:00:36.390 of the state. It is a breathtaking rise and it's 00:00:36.390 --> 00:00:39.189 followed by an equally brutal, really shocking 00:00:39.189 --> 00:00:41.630 fall. Yeah. And what's fascinating about the 00:00:41.630 --> 00:00:43.770 sources you provided is that they let us trace 00:00:43.770 --> 00:00:46.130 this art from the very, very beginning. We can 00:00:46.130 --> 00:00:47.969 cut through all those layers of public myth. 00:00:48.090 --> 00:00:50.090 Both of them, right? The celebrated dandy and 00:00:50.090 --> 00:00:52.189 the condemned felon. Exactly. We can look at 00:00:52.189 --> 00:00:54.530 the meticulous facts of his complex and, you 00:00:54.530 --> 00:00:56.770 know, very self -designed biography. So that's 00:00:56.770 --> 00:00:58.890 our deep dive today. We're getting into the life 00:00:58.890 --> 00:01:01.929 of Oscar Fingal of Flaherty Wells Wilde, an Irish 00:01:01.929 --> 00:01:05.019 author, poet, playwright. Widely considered the 00:01:05.019 --> 00:01:07.140 greatest playwright of the Victorian era. No 00:01:07.140 --> 00:01:09.680 question. Our mission, then, is to move beyond 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:12.420 just the quotes and the caricatures. We really 00:01:12.420 --> 00:01:14.359 need to understand the tension. And that's a 00:01:14.359 --> 00:01:16.140 word we're going to come back to a lot. The tension 00:01:16.140 --> 00:01:19.439 between his art and his life, between the public 00:01:19.439 --> 00:01:24.379 pose and. his private compulsions. Exactly. Our 00:01:24.379 --> 00:01:27.819 aim is to chart precisely how this key figure 00:01:27.819 --> 00:01:30.000 in aestheticism in the decadent movement, how 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:32.340 he managed to climb to the absolute height of 00:01:32.340 --> 00:01:34.920 London society and literary fame in the early 00:01:34.920 --> 00:01:37.659 1890s. Only to have that entire edifice just 00:01:37.659 --> 00:01:40.299 collapse. Completely. So we'll track the development 00:01:40.299 --> 00:01:42.579 of his intellect, his groundbreaking major works, 00:01:42.700 --> 00:01:45.500 the precise legal mechanism that led to the disaster, 00:01:45.680 --> 00:01:48.359 and then those painful final years in exile. 00:01:48.540 --> 00:01:51.319 You just... You can't understand the genius without 00:01:51.319 --> 00:01:53.819 understanding the tragedy he, in some ways, willingly 00:01:53.819 --> 00:01:56.120 walked into. To understand the man who would 00:01:56.120 --> 00:01:58.519 one day claim that the one duty we owe to history 00:01:58.519 --> 00:02:01.340 is to rewrite it, we have to start not in the 00:02:01.340 --> 00:02:03.900 drawing rooms of London, but in Dublin, his birthplace, 00:02:04.060 --> 00:02:07.379 1854. Right. And his early environment was genuinely 00:02:07.379 --> 00:02:10.879 unique. It was this medical, intellectual, and 00:02:10.879 --> 00:02:13.800 cultural milieu that just profoundly shaped his 00:02:13.800 --> 00:02:16.419 whole sensibility. You see this fantastic duality 00:02:16.419 --> 00:02:18.560 right there in his parents, a duality that Oscar 00:02:18.560 --> 00:02:21.919 would later embody. Absolutely. His mother, Lady 00:02:21.919 --> 00:02:25.080 Jane Wilde, was a huge defining influence. I 00:02:25.080 --> 00:02:27.599 mean, she wrote this fiery revolutionary poetry 00:02:27.599 --> 00:02:30.599 under the pseudonym Speranza. Which means hope. 00:02:31.250 --> 00:02:34.509 Exactly. Making her a staunch Irish nationalist 00:02:34.509 --> 00:02:38.969 who was theatrical, romantic. And she just instilled 00:02:38.969 --> 00:02:41.210 in her sons this love of poets and the whole 00:02:41.210 --> 00:02:43.990 neoclassical revival. She's the myth maker of 00:02:43.990 --> 00:02:46.050 the family, wasn't she? The sources point out 00:02:46.050 --> 00:02:48.650 her unshakable belief, which was completely without 00:02:48.650 --> 00:02:51.900 foundation, that she had Italian ancestry. Yeah, 00:02:51.919 --> 00:02:53.900 trying to link the family to Dante or someone. 00:02:54.099 --> 00:02:56.139 It's just a perfect example of elevating your 00:02:56.139 --> 00:02:58.759 personal reality through artistic fantasy. And 00:02:58.759 --> 00:03:01.219 that flamboyance was balanced or maybe directly 00:03:01.219 --> 00:03:03.979 contradicted by his father, Sir William Wilde. 00:03:04.039 --> 00:03:07.080 He was far more empirical. Totally. He was Ireland's 00:03:07.080 --> 00:03:10.460 leading auto -ophthalmologic surgeon and expert 00:03:10.460 --> 00:03:13.460 in eyes and ears. And he was knighted in 1864 00:03:13.460 --> 00:03:15.759 for his services to the censuses of Ireland. 00:03:15.979 --> 00:03:18.879 So he was a man obsessed with meticulous documentation 00:03:18.879 --> 00:03:22.219 with data. Right. It's so interesting, isn't 00:03:22.219 --> 00:03:25.060 it? The father, an empirical man of science, 00:03:25.180 --> 00:03:27.560 the eye and ear specialist, while the mother 00:03:27.560 --> 00:03:31.139 is this flamboyant, self -mythologizing poet. 00:03:31.280 --> 00:03:33.960 It's the perfect setup. So did Oscar rebel against 00:03:33.960 --> 00:03:36.479 the science or did he incorporate that cool, 00:03:36.580 --> 00:03:39.099 meticulous observation into his own art? I think 00:03:39.099 --> 00:03:41.180 he kind of blended them. I think that's a really 00:03:41.180 --> 00:03:43.199 good point. He approached his own life with the 00:03:43.199 --> 00:03:46.080 meticulous eye of a surgeon, observing and documenting 00:03:46.080 --> 00:03:48.680 the effects of his own poses. Yeah. And Sir William 00:03:48.680 --> 00:03:50.919 wasn't just a scientist either. He was an archaeologist 00:03:50.919 --> 00:03:54.039 who wrote extensively on Irish folklore, peasant 00:03:54.039 --> 00:03:57.169 life. It shows this wide -ranging, maybe slightly 00:03:57.169 --> 00:03:59.229 scattered intellectual curiosity. And he was 00:03:59.229 --> 00:04:01.490 also a major philanthropist. He founded a dispensary 00:04:01.490 --> 00:04:03.469 that became the forerunner of the Dublin Eye 00:04:03.469 --> 00:04:06.009 and Ear Hospital. Exactly. And the family home 00:04:06.009 --> 00:04:08.710 on Marion Square was the hub of this intellectual 00:04:08.710 --> 00:04:11.830 salon. They hosted figures like the novelist 00:04:11.830 --> 00:04:14.849 Sheridan Le Fanu, the great mathematician William 00:04:14.849 --> 00:04:17.589 Rowan Hamilton. So this is not some quiet, conservative 00:04:17.589 --> 00:04:20.589 Victorian upbringing. Not at all. It was noisy, 00:04:20.730 --> 00:04:24.149 argumentative, intellectual, and deeply theatrical. 00:04:24.939 --> 00:04:27.680 The world was basically presented to him as a 00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:30.339 stage for ideas. Yet despite this vibrant setting, 00:04:30.459 --> 00:04:34.699 there was some early profound sorrow. Yes. The 00:04:34.699 --> 00:04:37.600 death of his younger sister, Isla, at just nine 00:04:37.600 --> 00:04:40.959 years old from a febrile illness. It left Oscar 00:04:40.959 --> 00:04:43.819 grief stricken. And the sources show he later 00:04:43.819 --> 00:04:46.300 commemorated her loss in his poem Requiescat. 00:04:46.540 --> 00:04:48.680 It's a reminder that behind all that dazzling 00:04:48.680 --> 00:04:51.339 wit, there was a deeply sensitive, vulnerable 00:04:51.339 --> 00:04:53.990 man. And there's family complexity, too. Sir 00:04:53.990 --> 00:04:56.709 William, before his marriage to Jane, he acknowledged 00:04:56.709 --> 00:04:59.170 and provided for three paternal half -siblings 00:04:59.170 --> 00:05:01.610 born out of wedlock. Which must have just destabilized 00:05:01.610 --> 00:05:04.329 that strict notion of Victorian family propriety. 00:05:04.389 --> 00:05:07.029 Of course. And it must have informed Oscars later 00:05:07.029 --> 00:05:09.149 a very complicated understanding of what was 00:05:09.149 --> 00:05:11.089 acceptable social behavior versus, you know, 00:05:11.110 --> 00:05:13.230 your personal reality. So moving on from Dublin, 00:05:13.329 --> 00:05:15.490 we see this transition into the academic world. 00:05:15.629 --> 00:05:18.410 And this is where Wilde truly began forging the 00:05:18.410 --> 00:05:20.970 classicist and the aesthetic. Right. At Portora 00:05:20.970 --> 00:05:23.569 Royal School, he excelled in classics, won the 00:05:23.569 --> 00:05:26.209 Carpenter Prize for Greek Testament, and the 00:05:26.209 --> 00:05:28.550 sources mention this prodigious speed reading 00:05:28.550 --> 00:05:30.829 ability. Oh, yeah. He allegedly claims he could 00:05:30.829 --> 00:05:32.829 read a three -volume book in half an hour and 00:05:32.829 --> 00:05:35.259 retain the plot. Which speaks to an extraordinary 00:05:35.259 --> 00:05:37.379 intellectual capacity. It's almost a metaphor 00:05:37.379 --> 00:05:40.240 for his entire life, isn't it? Consuming massive 00:05:40.240 --> 00:05:42.939 amounts of information quickly, synthesizing 00:05:42.939 --> 00:05:45.300 it, and then presenting the distilled essence 00:05:45.300 --> 00:05:49.240 as his own effortless wit. He attended Trinity 00:05:49.240 --> 00:05:53.060 College, Dublin from 1871 to 74, reading classics 00:05:53.060 --> 00:05:56.079 with Professor J .P. Mahaffey. Wilde later called 00:05:56.079 --> 00:05:58.620 Mahaffey my first and best teacher. And he was 00:05:58.620 --> 00:06:01.379 an outstanding student. He got the Berkeley Gold 00:06:01.379 --> 00:06:03.680 Medal in Greek, which was the college's highest 00:06:03.680 --> 00:06:06.279 academic award. Mahaffey's pride was immense. 00:06:06.560 --> 00:06:09.699 He boasted that he had created Wilde, only to 00:06:09.699 --> 00:06:12.079 later lament that Wilde was the only blot on 00:06:12.079 --> 00:06:14.939 my tutorship once the public pose really emerged. 00:06:15.279 --> 00:06:18.300 You can just feel the tension there. Intellectual 00:06:18.300 --> 00:06:22.060 pride battling... Victorian social anxiety. The 00:06:22.060 --> 00:06:24.959 academic system creates the genius, but then 00:06:24.959 --> 00:06:27.459 it rejects the consequence of that genius. He 00:06:27.459 --> 00:06:29.920 then moved on to Magdalene College, Oxford, from 00:06:29.920 --> 00:06:33.569 74 to 78. reading greats, earning a double first. 00:06:33.850 --> 00:06:36.870 And this is the true crucible where his public 00:06:36.870 --> 00:06:39.430 identity was formed. Heavily influenced by the 00:06:39.430 --> 00:06:42.009 two defining figures of the aesthetic and decadent 00:06:42.009 --> 00:06:45.310 movements, his tutors, Walter Pater and John 00:06:45.310 --> 00:06:47.730 Ruskin. And the clash between these two is just 00:06:47.730 --> 00:06:50.269 philosophically crucial. It explains the central 00:06:50.269 --> 00:06:53.129 conflict in Wilde's later work. It really does. 00:06:53.310 --> 00:06:55.269 On one hand, you have Walter Pater's studies 00:06:55.269 --> 00:06:57.670 in the history of the Renaissance, a book Wilde 00:06:57.670 --> 00:06:59.879 memorized tracks of. carried everywhere. And 00:06:59.879 --> 00:07:02.459 it emphasized refining your sensibility to beauty 00:07:02.459 --> 00:07:06.079 above all else, living intensely, fully in the 00:07:06.079 --> 00:07:08.100 moment. The pursuit of beauty was the highest 00:07:08.100 --> 00:07:10.399 moral good. Right. But standing diametrically 00:07:10.399 --> 00:07:12.819 opposed to that was John Ruskin. Who argued that 00:07:12.819 --> 00:07:15.399 art must be fundamentally allied with moral good 00:07:15.399 --> 00:07:17.839 and societal betterment. It had to be useful, 00:07:18.040 --> 00:07:21.029 ethical, contributory to the common good. This 00:07:21.029 --> 00:07:23.629 created an impossible philosophical tightrope 00:07:23.629 --> 00:07:26.970 for Wilde to walk. He was drawn to Pater's seductive 00:07:26.970 --> 00:07:29.250 emphasis on sensation and beauty for its own 00:07:29.250 --> 00:07:33.370 sake, but he was also deeply affected by Ruskin's 00:07:33.370 --> 00:07:36.459 call to action. His moral responsibility. The 00:07:36.459 --> 00:07:38.639 sources give us that perfect anecdote, don't 00:07:38.639 --> 00:07:41.339 they? Despite openly disliking manual labor, 00:07:41.639 --> 00:07:44.540 Wilde volunteered for Ruskin's quixotic project 00:07:44.540 --> 00:07:47.939 to convert a swampy lane into a smart, usable 00:07:47.939 --> 00:07:50.420 road. He literally attempted to dirty his hands 00:07:50.420 --> 00:07:53.459 for the sake of moral art. An experiment. Let's 00:07:53.459 --> 00:07:55.500 just say he quickly abandoned. That tension between 00:07:55.500 --> 00:07:58.060 art for its own sake and art as moral instruction, 00:07:58.319 --> 00:08:01.699 it seems impossible to sustain. And his works, 00:08:01.720 --> 00:08:04.339 like Dorian Gray, they become his own philosophical 00:08:04.339 --> 00:08:06.720 battleground, not just a novel. He chose Peter's 00:08:06.720 --> 00:08:09.459 beauty, but the consequences, the tragedy, were 00:08:09.459 --> 00:08:11.920 all Ruskinian in their moralizing force. And 00:08:11.920 --> 00:08:13.879 this philosophical tension played out directly 00:08:13.879 --> 00:08:16.439 in his famous pose. Oh yeah, he decorated his 00:08:16.439 --> 00:08:18.860 rooms flamboyantly. Peacock feathers, lilies, 00:08:18.899 --> 00:08:21.079 and of course the blue china. deliberately courting 00:08:21.079 --> 00:08:23.000 controversy. Which was all summarized by his 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:24.980 first remark. I find it harder and harder every 00:08:24.980 --> 00:08:27.399 day to live up to my glue china. That quote is 00:08:27.399 --> 00:08:30.339 so often just used as a joke, but it's a manifesto, 00:08:30.339 --> 00:08:32.700 isn't it? It is. It means that the manufactured 00:08:32.700 --> 00:08:35.399 perfection of the aesthetic ideal he created 00:08:35.399 --> 00:08:39.320 required tremendous conscious effort. And ultimately, 00:08:39.419 --> 00:08:42.100 it was exhausting. He was trapped by the very 00:08:42.100 --> 00:08:44.659 image he designed. And that image was quickly 00:08:44.659 --> 00:08:48.000 established as the languorous dandy who scorned 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:50.789 all physical endeavor. Yet the sources tell us 00:08:50.789 --> 00:08:53.370 something surprising that completely subverts 00:08:53.370 --> 00:08:56.039 that simplified image. This is what I couldn't 00:08:56.039 --> 00:08:59.379 believe. He occasionally boxed and, during a 00:08:59.379 --> 00:09:02.379 notorious incident at Oxford, single -handedly 00:09:02.379 --> 00:09:04.840 fended off four students who physically assaulted 00:09:04.840 --> 00:09:07.440 him. Proving he possessed a physical capability 00:09:07.440 --> 00:09:10.220 that completely surprised his detractors. So 00:09:10.220 --> 00:09:12.820 this famously languorous dandy, the man who scorns 00:09:12.820 --> 00:09:15.399 sports, actually boxed and fought off assailants. 00:09:15.500 --> 00:09:18.179 That just disrupts the fragile, effeminate image 00:09:18.179 --> 00:09:20.460 he was trying so hard to project. It speaks to 00:09:20.460 --> 00:09:22.299 the contradictions of his character. He was never 00:09:22.299 --> 00:09:24.690 just one thing. And this complex intellectual 00:09:24.690 --> 00:09:28.529 curiosity also extended to his faith. He was 00:09:28.529 --> 00:09:31.610 deeply drawn to Catholicism's rich liturgy, the 00:09:31.610 --> 00:09:34.149 symbolism, the ritual. He discussed converting 00:09:34.149 --> 00:09:36.929 several times. He even met Pope Pius IX in Rome. 00:09:37.149 --> 00:09:39.029 But the supreme individualist couldn't commit 00:09:39.029 --> 00:09:42.049 to a formal creed, could he? Never. When he was 00:09:42.049 --> 00:09:44.789 serious about converting in 1878, he met with 00:09:44.789 --> 00:09:47.929 a priest but balked at the last minute from pledging 00:09:47.929 --> 00:09:50.279 allegiance to the necessary dogma. So instead 00:09:50.279 --> 00:09:52.399 of attending his appointed baptism, he sent a 00:09:52.399 --> 00:09:55.279 bouquet of altar lilies. He found beauty in the 00:09:55.279 --> 00:09:58.320 ritual, but not submission in the faith. Precisely. 00:09:58.320 --> 00:10:01.179 In terms of his concrete early literary efforts, 00:10:01.460 --> 00:10:05.120 he won the 1878 Newtiget Prize for his poem Ravenna. 00:10:05.259 --> 00:10:08.220 Right, and then he published poems in 1881. It 00:10:08.220 --> 00:10:09.980 was commercially successful. It sold out its 00:10:09.980 --> 00:10:12.899 first run of 750 copies. But the critics were 00:10:12.899 --> 00:10:15.840 harsh. The popular magazine Punch famously dismissed 00:10:15.840 --> 00:10:18.759 it as tame. Which led to that enduring quote. 00:10:19.399 --> 00:10:22.820 The poet is wild, but his poetry is tame. The 00:10:22.820 --> 00:10:24.779 early critics dismissed him as tame, which is 00:10:24.779 --> 00:10:27.240 just deeply ironic considering the spectacular 00:10:27.240 --> 00:10:29.679 wildness of his personal life that was brewing 00:10:29.679 --> 00:10:32.240 just beneath the surface. That scathing punch 00:10:32.240 --> 00:10:35.059 review effectively marks the end of his early 00:10:35.059 --> 00:10:37.559 poetry phase and the beginning of his, well, 00:10:37.659 --> 00:10:40.720 his celebrity phase. The 1880s is when Wilde 00:10:40.720 --> 00:10:43.960 moves fully into London society and begins to 00:10:43.960 --> 00:10:46.820 truly perform the esthete that would define his 00:10:46.820 --> 00:10:49.610 public image. He settled in London after graduation, 00:10:49.929 --> 00:10:52.710 set himself up as a bachelor, and he immediately 00:10:52.710 --> 00:10:54.610 sought out and charmed the people who mattered. 00:10:54.769 --> 00:10:57.529 A key early friendship developed with Lily Langtry, 00:10:57.649 --> 00:10:59.850 who was called the most glamorous woman in England. 00:11:00.009 --> 00:11:02.389 Right. He tutored her in Latin and encouraged 00:11:02.389 --> 00:11:05.029 her dramatic career. This shows he was networking 00:11:05.029 --> 00:11:07.830 with the social elite. not just the intellectual 00:11:07.830 --> 00:11:10.389 avant -garde. And his public reputation as the 00:11:10.389 --> 00:11:13.149 expert dandy and conversationalist grew so rapidly 00:11:13.149 --> 00:11:15.809 that aestheticism itself became this cultural 00:11:15.809 --> 00:11:18.289 phenomenon ripe for satire. Which led directly 00:11:18.289 --> 00:11:20.350 to the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, Patience. 00:11:20.470 --> 00:11:22.570 Which successfully caricatured the whole movement. 00:11:22.690 --> 00:11:25.070 And it was that very notoriety that led to his 00:11:25.070 --> 00:11:27.879 first massive opportunity. the American tour 00:11:27.879 --> 00:11:30.539 of 1882. Richard Doily Cart, the impresario, 00:11:30.700 --> 00:11:33.159 invited Wilde to North America specifically to 00:11:33.159 --> 00:11:35.360 prime interest for the U .S. tour of Patience. 00:11:35.559 --> 00:11:38.419 So he was hired to lecture on the very thing 00:11:38.419 --> 00:11:41.059 that the opera was mocking. It's a remarkable 00:11:41.059 --> 00:11:44.500 cultural feedback loop. The tour was a huge commercial 00:11:44.500 --> 00:11:47.320 success. It lasted nearly a year instead of the 00:11:47.320 --> 00:11:49.940 planned four months. And Wilde lectured on the 00:11:49.940 --> 00:11:52.440 English Renaissance. Arguing for the integration 00:11:52.440 --> 00:11:55.200 of beauty into daily life through art and interior 00:11:55.200 --> 00:11:58.559 design. A kind of fusion of Pater's philosophy 00:11:58.559 --> 00:12:01.840 and Ruskin's practical application. He was also 00:12:01.840 --> 00:12:04.259 a conscious, brilliant myth maker throughout. 00:12:04.440 --> 00:12:06.940 The question was asked repeatedly, did you parade 00:12:06.940 --> 00:12:09.720 down Piccadilly with a lily? And his self -aware 00:12:09.720 --> 00:12:12.240 reply was perfect. It's not whether I did it 00:12:12.240 --> 00:12:14.279 or not that's important, but whether people believed 00:12:14.279 --> 00:12:16.639 I did it. Which just shows he understood that 00:12:16.639 --> 00:12:19.860 fame was an act of creation. His life was his 00:12:19.860 --> 00:12:22.220 greatest art project. Despite the commercial 00:12:22.220 --> 00:12:24.980 success and the sophisticated audiences, his 00:12:24.980 --> 00:12:27.980 reception was not universally positive. The sources 00:12:27.980 --> 00:12:30.279 stress that he faced significant hostility from 00:12:30.279 --> 00:12:33.139 the press. Often including severe anti -Irish 00:12:33.139 --> 00:12:35.299 caricatures. Oh yeah. He was sometimes portrayed 00:12:35.299 --> 00:12:37.759 as a monkey or... really offensively, as a blackface 00:12:37.759 --> 00:12:39.860 performer. The Washington Post illustrated him 00:12:39.860 --> 00:12:42.539 alongside the wild man of Borneo. This hostile 00:12:42.539 --> 00:12:45.059 critique reminds us that beneath the veneer of 00:12:45.059 --> 00:12:48.000 the sophisticated London dandy, he was still 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:50.200 an Irishman operating in the heart of the empire, 00:12:50.500 --> 00:12:53.559 and that anti -Irish prejudice surfaced the moment 00:12:53.559 --> 00:12:56.320 he became too visibly successful or unconventional. 00:12:56.580 --> 00:12:59.580 Yet his charm transcended simple social lines. 00:12:59.799 --> 00:13:02.580 He was feted in the highest salons, but he also 00:13:02.580 --> 00:13:04.559 claimed to have drunk whiskey with minors in 00:13:04.559 --> 00:13:06.740 Leadville, Colorado. an incredibly versatile 00:13:06.740 --> 00:13:09.419 performer who could adapt his persona to any 00:13:09.419 --> 00:13:11.740 audience. Upon his return, he focused on stability, 00:13:11.960 --> 00:13:15.179 or at least the appearance of it. In 1884, he 00:13:15.179 --> 00:13:17.379 married Constance Lloyd in an Anglican ceremony. 00:13:17.659 --> 00:13:19.620 They settle into a renovated, very expensive 00:13:19.620 --> 00:13:22.710 home at No. 16 Tite Street, Chelsea. They had 00:13:22.710 --> 00:13:26.090 two sons, Cyril and Vivian, and the financial 00:13:26.090 --> 00:13:28.909 demands of this new elegant life required constant 00:13:28.909 --> 00:13:31.610 income. And briefly, he engaged with serious 00:13:31.610 --> 00:13:33.710 political concerns, which shows his awareness 00:13:33.710 --> 00:13:36.250 extended beyond the drawing room. He became the 00:13:36.250 --> 00:13:38.909 sole literary signatory on George Bernard Shaw's 00:13:38.909 --> 00:13:41.370 petition seeking a pardon for the anarchists 00:13:41.370 --> 00:13:43.629 arrested after the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago 00:13:43.629 --> 00:13:46.490 in 1886. A crucial site of Wilde that's often 00:13:46.490 --> 00:13:48.970 forgotten, he put his reputation on the line 00:13:48.970 --> 00:13:51.960 for political causes. But at the same time, his 00:13:51.960 --> 00:13:55.220 domestic life was fracturing. Yes. The sources 00:13:55.220 --> 00:13:59.600 note that in 1886, Wilde was initiated into homosexual 00:13:59.600 --> 00:14:03.440 sex by Robert Ross, a precocious 17 -year -old 00:14:03.440 --> 00:14:06.419 at Oxford. This initiation marked a profound 00:14:06.419 --> 00:14:08.759 and permanent shift. It reportedly occurred after 00:14:08.759 --> 00:14:11.139 Constance's second pregnancy, when the marriage 00:14:11.139 --> 00:14:13.440 was already under some strain. So he was now 00:14:13.440 --> 00:14:17.049 living a full double life. public, wealthy, and 00:14:17.049 --> 00:14:20.929 domesticated, and one secret, sensual, and, uh... 00:14:21.179 --> 00:14:23.620 dangerous. To support his family and his lifestyle, 00:14:23.799 --> 00:14:26.379 he entered the, let's call it, tedious world 00:14:26.379 --> 00:14:29.980 of professional labor. From 1887 to 1889, he 00:14:29.980 --> 00:14:32.279 accepted the editorship of the Ladies World magazine. 00:14:32.620 --> 00:14:34.240 Which he immediately renamed the Woman's World. 00:14:34.460 --> 00:14:36.860 Right. And he genuinely intended to elevate the 00:14:36.860 --> 00:14:39.340 content. He added serious articles on culture 00:14:39.340 --> 00:14:41.600 and politics, solicited contributions from his 00:14:41.600 --> 00:14:43.700 white artistic circle, even his wife. But the 00:14:43.700 --> 00:14:45.419 sources note that despite his initial vigor, 00:14:45.679 --> 00:14:47.820 the administrative grind just became tedious. 00:14:48.159 --> 00:14:50.440 Sales remained low. He was a creator, not an 00:14:50.509 --> 00:14:53.389 administrator, and he left in 1889. It was also 00:14:53.389 --> 00:14:55.929 during this period that his reputation for original 00:14:55.929 --> 00:14:58.990 wit led to that very public, very painful falling 00:14:58.990 --> 00:15:02.110 out with the artist James McNeill Whistler. Ah, 00:15:02.450 --> 00:15:06.289 yes. Wilde was famous for his bonnoss. One of 00:15:06.289 --> 00:15:08.850 his jokes was that Whistler had no enemies, but 00:15:08.850 --> 00:15:11.549 was intensely disliked by his friends. But the 00:15:11.549 --> 00:15:14.210 conflict culminated in that devastating perfect 00:15:14.210 --> 00:15:17.529 exchange. Wilde exclaimed he wished he had said 00:15:17.529 --> 00:15:20.149 a witty line Whistler had just produced. And 00:15:20.149 --> 00:15:22.750 Whistler's retort, you will, Oscar, you will, 00:15:22.789 --> 00:15:25.990 guessed. It captures not just the humor, but 00:15:25.990 --> 00:15:28.070 the underlying anxiety that everyone suspected 00:15:28.070 --> 00:15:30.470 Oscar borrowed his brilliance, even as he was 00:15:30.470 --> 00:15:32.870 famous for it. That one line broke their friendship. 00:15:33.250 --> 00:15:35.429 So having exhausted the possibilities of conversation, 00:15:35.629 --> 00:15:38.149 journalism, and public posing, Wilde finally 00:15:38.149 --> 00:15:40.289 pivoted to the serious prose writing that would 00:15:40.289 --> 00:15:43.039 define him. A change in medium, but the message, 00:15:43.240 --> 00:15:45.960 the primacy of beauty and individualism, that 00:15:45.960 --> 00:15:48.059 remained the same. This shift led to his major 00:15:48.059 --> 00:15:51.519 prose period between 1888 and 1891. He produced 00:15:51.519 --> 00:15:53.879 these beautiful, slightly unsettling works like 00:15:53.879 --> 00:15:56.019 The Fairy Stories, The Happy Prince, and other 00:15:56.019 --> 00:15:59.019 tales. And A House of Pomegranates, alongside 00:15:59.019 --> 00:16:01.220 short fiction like Lord Arthur Savile's Crime. 00:16:01.460 --> 00:16:04.720 Then there's the portrait of Mr. W .H. from 1889. 00:16:05.610 --> 00:16:07.809 This story beautifully illustrates his belief 00:16:07.809 --> 00:16:11.190 that to shed oneself of an idea, one must first 00:16:11.190 --> 00:16:13.889 convince another of its truth. He was building 00:16:13.889 --> 00:16:16.149 theories that justified his own emerging lifestyle. 00:16:16.710 --> 00:16:19.289 The story advanced the theory that Shakespeare's 00:16:19.289 --> 00:16:21.250 sonnets were written out of love for a boy actor, 00:16:21.490 --> 00:16:24.309 Willie Hughes, based on a couple of purported 00:16:24.309 --> 00:16:27.320 puns. a literary fantasy dressed up as criticism. 00:16:27.559 --> 00:16:29.740 He collected his deeper aesthetic theories and 00:16:29.740 --> 00:16:32.799 intentions in 1891 using the dialogue form he 00:16:32.799 --> 00:16:35.539 had mastered as a conversationalist. These essays, 00:16:35.559 --> 00:16:38.340 like The Decay of Lying and The Critic as Artist. 00:16:38.600 --> 00:16:40.940 They laid out his formal intellectual case against 00:16:40.940 --> 00:16:44.120 moralizing on art. His core argument, and I'm 00:16:44.120 --> 00:16:47.259 quoting the sources here, was that art is individualism, 00:16:47.299 --> 00:16:50.159 and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating 00:16:50.159 --> 00:16:52.990 force. That anti -social sentiment, the idea 00:16:52.990 --> 00:16:55.549 that art should disturb rather than soothe, feeds 00:16:55.549 --> 00:16:58.070 directly into his only political text, The Soul 00:16:58.070 --> 00:17:00.370 of Man Under Socialism. Which is often misunderstood, 00:17:00.529 --> 00:17:02.669 but it's crucial for understanding his individualism. 00:17:02.769 --> 00:17:05.849 Right. We need to slow down here because Wilde's 00:17:05.849 --> 00:17:08.690 socialism was incredibly unique. He was not advocating 00:17:08.690 --> 00:17:11.130 for collective labor or traditional economic 00:17:11.130 --> 00:17:14.670 reform. No. His argument was profoundly aesthetic. 00:17:15.319 --> 00:17:18.640 not economic. He proposed that cooperation should 00:17:18.640 --> 00:17:21.019 replace competition, converting private property 00:17:21.019 --> 00:17:23.980 into public wealth. But the entire purpose of 00:17:23.980 --> 00:17:27.180 this societal shift was to free humanity from 00:17:27.180 --> 00:17:29.680 necessity. So he envisioned a future society 00:17:29.680 --> 00:17:32.259 populated by artists, freed from the necessity 00:17:32.259 --> 00:17:35.680 of labor by machines, focusing solely on creation. 00:17:36.019 --> 00:17:38.259 It's a utopian vision built around the assumption 00:17:38.259 --> 00:17:40.859 that the highest human pursuit is aesthetic creation. 00:17:41.319 --> 00:17:43.779 And critically, he stressed that the best government 00:17:43.779 --> 00:17:46.720 for artists was no government at all. So this 00:17:46.720 --> 00:17:49.619 radical individualism alienated both the conservative 00:17:49.619 --> 00:17:52.599 moneyed classes he dined with and the traditional 00:17:52.599 --> 00:17:55.160 communal socialists he briefly collaborated with. 00:17:55.319 --> 00:17:57.619 He was politically isolated by his own purity 00:17:57.619 --> 00:17:59.819 of thought. And this philosophy provided the 00:17:59.819 --> 00:18:02.299 bedrock for the novel that defined his decadent 00:18:02.299 --> 00:18:05.259 face, The Picture of Dorian Gray, first published 00:18:05.259 --> 00:18:07.700 in Lippincott's monthly magazine in July 1890. 00:18:08.140 --> 00:18:11.700 The plot device is just genius. Dorian Gray inadvertently 00:18:11.700 --> 00:18:14.259 makes a Faustian bargain, where only his painted 00:18:14.259 --> 00:18:16.779 portrait shows the ravages of time and the consequences 00:18:16.779 --> 00:18:19.579 of his increasingly hedonistic life, while he 00:18:19.579 --> 00:18:22.539 remains eternally young and beautiful. It's the 00:18:22.539 --> 00:18:25.740 ultimate aesthetic novel. It juxtaposes the beauty 00:18:25.740 --> 00:18:28.819 of the artistic surface Dorian's body with the 00:18:28.819 --> 00:18:31.200 moral ugliness of the reality it hides in the 00:18:31.200 --> 00:18:33.240 painting. And reviewers immediately understood 00:18:33.240 --> 00:18:35.660 what he was doing, and they reacted with, well, 00:18:35.720 --> 00:18:38.460 profound shock and moral panic. They called it 00:18:38.460 --> 00:18:50.049 unclean. Wilde responded vigorously to the critics, 00:18:50.289 --> 00:18:53.130 clarifying his formalist stance in that famous 00:18:53.130 --> 00:18:55.849 preface he added for the 1891 book publication. 00:18:56.190 --> 00:18:58.650 Featuring epigrams like... Books are well written 00:18:58.650 --> 00:19:00.690 or badly written. That is all. And there is no 00:19:00.690 --> 00:19:03.230 such thing as a moral or an immoral book. He 00:19:03.230 --> 00:19:05.009 was trying to provide an intellectual shield 00:19:05.009 --> 00:19:07.589 against the moral outrage. He also revised the 00:19:07.589 --> 00:19:10.450 text extensively, adding six chapters and excising 00:19:10.450 --> 00:19:13.450 some of the more overt homoeroticism, a sophisticated 00:19:13.450 --> 00:19:16.390 legal and philosophical maneuver. But the damage 00:19:16.390 --> 00:19:19.009 was done. The novel established him as the master 00:19:19.009 --> 00:19:21.549 of decadence and, critically, it served later 00:19:21.549 --> 00:19:24.549 as evidence of his immorality in court. The distinction 00:19:24.549 --> 00:19:26.710 between the artist and his work was just completely 00:19:26.710 --> 00:19:30.950 lost on Victorian society. The 1890s saw Wilde 00:19:30.950 --> 00:19:33.170 reach his creative and, crucially, his financial 00:19:33.170 --> 00:19:36.309 zenith by turning back to drama. While he was 00:19:36.309 --> 00:19:39.829 in Paris in 1891, he wrote Salome in French. 00:19:40.430 --> 00:19:42.769 A tragedy about Salome requesting the head of 00:19:42.769 --> 00:19:45.109 John the Baptist. This play had high expectations. 00:19:45.369 --> 00:19:47.730 Sarah Bernhardt even starred in rehearsals, but 00:19:47.730 --> 00:19:49.829 it was immediately refused a license in England. 00:19:50.009 --> 00:19:52.009 Right, because the portrayal of biblical subjects 00:19:52.009 --> 00:19:55.150 was prohibited on stage. It's just another example 00:19:55.150 --> 00:19:57.250 of the constraints Victorian morality imposed 00:19:57.250 --> 00:20:00.430 on his pure aesthetic vision. And it's so ironic 00:20:00.430 --> 00:20:02.130 that the play was eventually first performed 00:20:02.130 --> 00:20:05.250 in Paris in 1896, when he was already in prison 00:20:05.250 --> 00:20:07.809 for other moral crimes. But this failure led 00:20:07.809 --> 00:20:10.759 him to pivot. to a genre he absolutely conquered, 00:20:10.900 --> 00:20:14.180 the society comedy. He found runaway success 00:20:14.180 --> 00:20:16.680 by critiquing Victorian society on its own terms, 00:20:16.839 --> 00:20:18.960 targeting his audience with adroit precision, 00:20:19.240 --> 00:20:21.940 his first major hit, Lady Windermere's Fan, in 00:20:21.940 --> 00:20:25.640 1892. Subtly subverted harsh social codes involving 00:20:25.640 --> 00:20:28.549 reputation and forgiveness. And the money was 00:20:28.549 --> 00:20:30.890 just staggering. I mean, that play was enormously 00:20:30.890 --> 00:20:33.210 successful. It earned him 7 ,000 pounds in the 00:20:33.210 --> 00:20:35.589 first year alone. You can't just say he was successful. 00:20:35.809 --> 00:20:37.809 We have to emphasize that this is the equivalent 00:20:37.809 --> 00:20:40.269 of nearly a million pounds today. He had achieved 00:20:40.269 --> 00:20:43.650 massive mainstream establishment financial validation, 00:20:43.950 --> 00:20:46.589 the very establishment he was secretly undermining. 00:20:46.839 --> 00:20:49.259 That financial success continued rapidly with 00:20:49.259 --> 00:20:52.240 A Woman of No Importance in 1893 and then An 00:20:52.240 --> 00:20:55.960 Ideal Husband in 1895. By every metric, he was 00:20:55.960 --> 00:20:58.000 one of the most successful and wealthy playwrights 00:20:58.000 --> 00:21:00.539 in London. His undisputed masterpiece, of course, 00:21:00.700 --> 00:21:03.319 is The Importance of Being Earnest, which premiered 00:21:03.319 --> 00:21:06.660 in February 1895. Written in his artistic maturity, 00:21:06.980 --> 00:21:10.119 lighter in tone. Lacking that woman with a past 00:21:10.119 --> 00:21:12.400 archetype found in the earlier plays. Right. 00:21:12.460 --> 00:21:15.460 The plot revolves entirely around Bunbury. maintaining 00:21:15.460 --> 00:21:18.220 alternative personas or double lives to escape 00:21:18.220 --> 00:21:21.220 stifling social rules. The very structure of 00:21:21.220 --> 00:21:23.839 the play mirrors his own double life. He was 00:21:23.839 --> 00:21:25.819 writing a comedy based on the necessity of deception. 00:21:26.200 --> 00:21:28.900 H .G. Wells, reviewing it, praised the humor 00:21:28.900 --> 00:21:32.119 that is Gilbershian, decorated with Wilde's innumerable 00:21:32.119 --> 00:21:35.200 spangles of that wit. It was an immediate triumph 00:21:35.200 --> 00:21:38.019 and cemented his artistic reputation forever. 00:21:38.359 --> 00:21:40.339 But the personal cost of this height of fame 00:21:40.339 --> 00:21:43.150 was immense. and it was inextricably linked to 00:21:43.150 --> 00:21:45.490 his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, known 00:21:45.490 --> 00:21:49.029 to everyone as Bozy. Introduced in 1891, they 00:21:49.029 --> 00:21:51.769 began what the sources call a tempestuous affair. 00:21:52.109 --> 00:21:55.450 Wilde, now running up to 100 pounds a week, indulged 00:21:55.450 --> 00:21:58.980 Douglas' every whim. material, artistic, or sexual. 00:21:59.180 --> 00:22:01.660 This level of conspicuous consumption and reckless 00:22:01.660 --> 00:22:04.099 spending was completely unsustainable, but it 00:22:04.099 --> 00:22:06.220 fueled a relationship. And most dangerously, 00:22:06.319 --> 00:22:08.339 through Douglas and his associate Alfred Taylor, 00:22:08.660 --> 00:22:10.640 Wilde was introduced to the Victorian sexual 00:22:10.640 --> 00:22:13.440 underground, working class male prostitutes from 00:22:13.440 --> 00:22:16.019 1892 onward. He offered them lavish gifts, dined 00:22:16.019 --> 00:22:18.220 them privately, blurring class lines that Victorian 00:22:18.220 --> 00:22:21.279 society violently protected. This terrifying 00:22:21.279 --> 00:22:24.819 duality, the grand public figure with two massive 00:22:24.819 --> 00:22:26.920 hits running at the same time. and the secret 00:22:26.920 --> 00:22:29.980 life indulging in extreme danger, it led to that 00:22:29.980 --> 00:22:32.480 chilling, haunting description in De Profundis. 00:22:32.559 --> 00:22:35.019 It was like feasting with panthers. The danger 00:22:35.019 --> 00:22:37.799 was half the excitement. He was fully aware of 00:22:37.799 --> 00:22:40.680 the risk, but the proximity to catastrophe fueled 00:22:40.680 --> 00:22:42.900 the aesthetic experience for him. Which brings 00:22:42.900 --> 00:22:45.980 us directly to the gathering storm, the Queensberry 00:22:45.980 --> 00:22:49.500 feud. John Sholto Douglas. the 9th Marquis of 00:22:49.500 --> 00:22:52.119 Queensbury Bosie's father, known for creating 00:22:52.119 --> 00:22:55.140 modern boxing rules, intensely disapproved of 00:22:55.140 --> 00:22:57.660 his son's relationship with Wilde. He saw it 00:22:57.660 --> 00:23:00.619 as corrupting and disgraceful. The feud escalated 00:23:00.619 --> 00:23:02.779 into outright warfare. Queensberry confronted 00:23:02.779 --> 00:23:06.319 Wilde in 1894, demanding he cease seeing his 00:23:06.319 --> 00:23:09.099 son, threatening, if I catch you and my son again 00:23:09.099 --> 00:23:11.700 in any public restaurant, I will thrash you. 00:23:11.880 --> 00:23:14.339 And Wilde, in this moment of hubris fueled by 00:23:14.339 --> 00:23:16.819 his success, shot back with his own confidence. 00:23:17.119 --> 00:23:19.019 I don't know what the Queensberry rules are, 00:23:19.160 --> 00:23:21.619 but the Oscar Wilde rule is to shoot on sight. 00:23:21.859 --> 00:23:24.180 Queensberry was determined to publicly humiliate 00:23:24.180 --> 00:23:26.500 Wilde. He intended to throw rotting vegetables 00:23:26.500 --> 00:23:28.960 onto the stage during the earnest premiere. Which 00:23:28.960 --> 00:23:31.119 would have ruined the play and Wilde's reputation. 00:23:31.500 --> 00:23:34.900 But Wilde had him barred. This public conflict 00:23:34.900 --> 00:23:37.319 set the stage for the catastrophic legal disaster 00:23:37.319 --> 00:23:41.180 just 15 weeks later. The speed of the destruction 00:23:41.180 --> 00:23:44.140 is what's so staggering. He was at his artistic 00:23:44.140 --> 00:23:46.900 and financial zenith, and then he was in prison 00:23:46.900 --> 00:23:50.000 a few months later. The actual mechanism of the 00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.710 fall began on February 18, 1895. Queensberry, 00:23:54.710 --> 00:23:57.130 forwarded at the theater, left his infamous calling 00:23:57.130 --> 00:24:00.970 card at Wilde's club. Inscribed with, For Oscar 00:24:00.970 --> 00:24:03.630 Wilde posing somdomite with sodomite misspelled. 00:24:03.769 --> 00:24:06.670 This was the trap. And wild, spurred on by Boese 00:24:06.670 --> 00:24:09.130 and against the fervent, repeated advice of every 00:24:09.130 --> 00:24:11.190 sensible friend he had. Like Frank Harris, who 00:24:11.190 --> 00:24:13.430 warned him to flee immediately. He issued a civil 00:24:13.430 --> 00:24:16.369 writ for criminal libel. This was a hugely reckless 00:24:16.369 --> 00:24:18.789 and risky move. It was reckless because a charge 00:24:18.789 --> 00:24:20.670 of criminal libel carried a possible sentence 00:24:20.670 --> 00:24:23.190 of up to two years in prison if Queensberry lost. 00:24:23.490 --> 00:24:25.420 Yeah. But more importantly, under the Liable 00:24:25.420 --> 00:24:28.680 Act 1843, Queensberry could only avoid conviction 00:24:28.680 --> 00:24:31.319 by proving two things. One, that the accusation 00:24:31.319 --> 00:24:34.019 was true in substance and in fact. And two, that 00:24:34.019 --> 00:24:36.359 it was for some public benefit. So Queensberry's 00:24:36.359 --> 00:24:39.259 defense team, they turned into a forensic investigative 00:24:39.259 --> 00:24:43.119 unit, hiring private detectives to dig up every 00:24:43.119 --> 00:24:45.559 single piece of evidence of Wilde's homosexual 00:24:45.559 --> 00:24:50.180 liaisons, names, addresses, gifts. Dates? Wilde's 00:24:50.180 --> 00:24:52.700 life was about to be put on brutal public display. 00:24:52.900 --> 00:24:55.059 Frank Harris warned him to flee to France immediately, 00:24:55.380 --> 00:24:57.779 saying Queensbury's lawyers would easily prove 00:24:57.779 --> 00:25:00.859 sodomy. But Wilde just dismissed the advice. 00:25:01.299 --> 00:25:03.619 Showing either a fatal paralysis of inaction 00:25:03.619 --> 00:25:06.819 or this hubristic belief that his charm could 00:25:06.819 --> 00:25:09.160 win over the jury. He's reported to have just 00:25:09.160 --> 00:25:11.970 said, the train is gone, it's too late. The libel 00:25:11.970 --> 00:25:14.730 trial began at the Old Bailey in April 1895, 00:25:14.869 --> 00:25:17.670 and it captivated and horrified Victorian society 00:25:17.670 --> 00:25:20.450 in equal measure. And Queensberry's lawyer, Edward 00:25:20.450 --> 00:25:23.109 Carson QC, was a formidable and particularly 00:25:23.109 --> 00:25:25.970 cruel opponent, a fellow Dubliner from Wyatt's 00:25:25.970 --> 00:25:27.869 time at Trinity College. They knew each other. 00:25:28.400 --> 00:25:30.400 Which must have made the betrayal feel so personal. 00:25:30.619 --> 00:25:32.720 Carson's cross -examination was devastating because 00:25:32.720 --> 00:25:35.619 he deviated from normal legal protocol. He turned 00:25:35.619 --> 00:25:37.740 the courtroom into a philosophical battleground. 00:25:37.960 --> 00:25:40.319 He attacked Wilde's core literary theories first, 00:25:40.460 --> 00:25:42.579 asking how he perceived the moral content of 00:25:42.579 --> 00:25:45.480 his work. And this is where Wilde, true to his 00:25:45.480 --> 00:25:49.019 philosophy, offered his iconic but entirely counterproductive 00:25:49.019 --> 00:25:52.200 defense. That art is only capable of being well 00:25:52.200 --> 00:25:55.440 or poorly made. And that only brutes and illiterates 00:25:55.440 --> 00:25:57.849 would judge art morally. intellectually brilliant, 00:25:57.970 --> 00:26:01.789 but legally suicidal. Completely. Carson then 00:26:01.789 --> 00:26:03.849 systematically pressed on Wilde's credibility. 00:26:04.150 --> 00:26:06.910 He forced Wilde to admit lying about his age 00:26:06.910 --> 00:26:10.730 under oath. Wilde was 40, but claimed 39 justifying 00:26:10.730 --> 00:26:13.549 Queensberry's accusation of posing. He also quoted 00:26:13.549 --> 00:26:16.329 directly from Dorian Gray to paint Wilde's decadent 00:26:16.329 --> 00:26:19.109 philosophy as corrupting, treating the novel 00:26:19.109 --> 00:26:21.509 as biographical evidence of a criminal mindset. 00:26:22.079 --> 00:26:24.400 The fatal line of questioning centered on Wilde's 00:26:24.400 --> 00:26:26.559 friendships with lower -class males, some as 00:26:26.559 --> 00:26:28.920 young as 16, implying they were prostitutes. 00:26:29.339 --> 00:26:31.299 Wilde admitted to being on a first -name basis 00:26:31.299 --> 00:26:33.799 and lavishing gifts on them. Insisting they were 00:26:33.799 --> 00:26:35.680 merely friends and that he didn't believe in 00:26:35.680 --> 00:26:37.799 social barriers, he was trying to maintain a 00:26:37.799 --> 00:26:40.619 position of benevolent aristocracy. But the moment 00:26:40.619 --> 00:26:43.279 of legal disaster came when Carson asked directly 00:26:43.279 --> 00:26:46.609 if he had kissed a certain servant boy. And Wilde, 00:26:46.609 --> 00:26:48.869 trying to employ his characteristic flippancy, 00:26:48.950 --> 00:26:52.329 replied, oh dear no, he was a particularly plain 00:26:52.329 --> 00:26:55.390 boy, unfortunately ugly, I pitied him for it. 00:26:55.470 --> 00:26:59.250 That flippant remark cost him everything. Carson 00:26:59.250 --> 00:27:01.589 seized on it, repeatedly asking why the boy's 00:27:01.589 --> 00:27:03.930 looks were relevant, forcing Wilde to break his 00:27:03.930 --> 00:27:06.910 composure. He became completely flustered, saying 00:27:06.910 --> 00:27:09.750 Carson was trying to unnerve me. This single 00:27:09.750 --> 00:27:12.269 lapse proved that his aesthetic standards, not 00:27:12.269 --> 00:27:14.650 merely friendship, governed his selection of 00:27:14.650 --> 00:27:17.509 companions, linking his artistic theory directly 00:27:17.509 --> 00:27:20.420 to the moral accusations. So when Carson announced 00:27:20.420 --> 00:27:22.960 that he had witnesses, male prostitutes ready 00:27:22.960 --> 00:27:25.640 to testify to sexual acts with Wilde, his lawyers 00:27:25.640 --> 00:27:27.920 advised him to drop the prosecution immediately. 00:27:28.299 --> 00:27:30.960 Queensberry was found not guilty and the fallout 00:27:30.960 --> 00:27:33.720 was immediate. Wilde was left legally liable 00:27:33.720 --> 00:27:35.880 for Queensberry's substantial defense expenses 00:27:35.880 --> 00:27:38.240 leading directly to his bankruptcy. But the law 00:27:38.240 --> 00:27:40.920 did not stop there. The moment the libel case 00:27:40.920 --> 00:27:43.019 collapsed, a warrant was issued for Wilde's arrest 00:27:43.019 --> 00:27:45.940 for gross indecency. It's vital to understand 00:27:45.940 --> 00:27:49.039 the legal mechanism here. He was charged under 00:27:49.039 --> 00:27:51.480 Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 00:27:51.480 --> 00:27:55.720 1885. This act wasn't originally aimed specifically 00:27:55.720 --> 00:27:58.700 at consensual acts. No, but it created this powerful, 00:27:58.839 --> 00:28:02.500 blunt instrument, Section 11, which criminalized 00:28:02.500 --> 00:28:05.059 any male intimacy that did not amount to the 00:28:05.059 --> 00:28:07.980 capital crime of buggery. It was a net cast wide 00:28:07.980 --> 00:28:10.740 and Wilde flew straight into it. Friends again 00:28:10.740 --> 00:28:12.460 advised him to flee the country immediately. 00:28:13.100 --> 00:28:15.880 recognizing the severity of the charge. But Wilde, 00:28:15.900 --> 00:28:19.119 perhaps still paralyzed, stayed. At the second 00:28:19.119 --> 00:28:21.500 criminal trial, prosecutor Charles Gill asked 00:28:21.500 --> 00:28:24.740 that famous loaded question, what is the love 00:28:24.740 --> 00:28:27.279 that dare not speak its name? Wilde's response, 00:28:27.539 --> 00:28:29.880 despite being legally perilous, was magnificent. 00:28:30.319 --> 00:28:32.799 He delivered a powerful speech, defining it as 00:28:32.799 --> 00:28:35.099 such a great affection of an elder for a younger 00:28:35.099 --> 00:28:37.240 man as there was between David and Jonathan. 00:28:37.400 --> 00:28:39.480 And such as Plato made the very basis of his 00:28:39.480 --> 00:28:42.170 philosophy. He called it beautiful, pure as it 00:28:42.170 --> 00:28:44.130 is, perfect and intellectual, adding that the 00:28:44.130 --> 00:28:47.089 world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the 00:28:47.089 --> 00:28:49.710 pillory for it. That statement was met with loud 00:28:49.710 --> 00:28:51.789 applause in the courtroom, mingled with some 00:28:51.789 --> 00:28:55.349 hisses. It shows the fierce split in public opinion, 00:28:55.529 --> 00:28:58.670 even as it was illegal. Legally, however, it 00:28:58.670 --> 00:29:01.390 reinforced the prosecutor's case that Wilde was 00:29:01.390 --> 00:29:04.400 publicly advocating for illegal behavior. The 00:29:04.400 --> 00:29:06.980 first jury was unable to reach a verdict, suggesting 00:29:06.980 --> 00:29:09.839 some division. But in the final trial on May 00:29:09.839 --> 00:29:13.839 25th, 1895, Wilde and Alfred Taylor were convicted 00:29:13.839 --> 00:29:16.279 of gross indecency. And sentenced to two years 00:29:16.279 --> 00:29:19.690 hard labor, the maximum penalty. The judge in 00:29:19.690 --> 00:29:22.170 his sentencing called the maximum penalty totally 00:29:22.170 --> 00:29:25.210 inadequate for a case such as this. This reveals 00:29:25.210 --> 00:29:27.849 the extreme moralizing vengeance driving the 00:29:27.849 --> 00:29:30.410 judicial system at the time. So Wilde was jailed 00:29:30.410 --> 00:29:34.569 for two years from May 1895 to May 1897. And 00:29:34.569 --> 00:29:36.049 his journey through the prison system was one 00:29:36.049 --> 00:29:38.950 of systematic, unrelenting physical and mental 00:29:38.950 --> 00:29:41.450 degradation deliberately designed to break the 00:29:41.450 --> 00:29:44.099 spirit. He was first held at Newgate. Then Pentonville, 00:29:44.240 --> 00:29:46.259 where the hard labor was literal and brutal. 00:29:46.420 --> 00:29:48.519 This included walking a treadmill, often for 00:29:48.519 --> 00:29:51.019 hours a day, and picking oakum. Separating the 00:29:51.019 --> 00:29:54.539 fibers and scraps of old navy ropes. An agonizingly 00:29:54.539 --> 00:29:57.460 tedious and thankless task. The intellectual, 00:29:57.700 --> 00:30:00.519 sensory -driven esthete reduced to brute physical 00:30:00.519 --> 00:30:03.180 toil. The mental deprivation was just as acute. 00:30:03.559 --> 00:30:05.740 Inmates were only allowed to read two books, 00:30:05.920 --> 00:30:08.849 The Bible and The Pilgrim's Progress. The man 00:30:08.849 --> 00:30:11.390 who memorized Pater and corresponded with great 00:30:11.390 --> 00:30:14.329 artists was starved of all intellectual stimulus. 00:30:14.569 --> 00:30:16.930 And his health, which was never robust, suffered 00:30:16.930 --> 00:30:19.609 immensely. At Wandsworth, he collapsed from illness 00:30:19.609 --> 00:30:21.910 and hunger, fracturing his right eardrum in the 00:30:21.910 --> 00:30:24.170 fall. The sources are clear that this injury, 00:30:24.269 --> 00:30:26.970 an old ear separation, was poorly treated, and 00:30:26.970 --> 00:30:29.509 it contributed directly to the fatal mastoid 00:30:29.509 --> 00:30:32.130 infection that killed him years later. The prison 00:30:32.130 --> 00:30:34.369 system literally planted the seed of his death. 00:30:34.470 --> 00:30:36.269 The lowest point of his incarceration, however, 00:30:36.369 --> 00:30:39.190 was his transfer in November 1895 to Reading 00:30:39.190 --> 00:30:42.049 Jail. This was an experience of profound public 00:30:42.049 --> 00:30:45.029 shaming. He was moved from London, and at Clapham 00:30:45.029 --> 00:30:47.509 Junction Railway Station, a crowd gathered and 00:30:47.509 --> 00:30:49.950 jeered and spat at him on the platform. You can 00:30:49.950 --> 00:30:52.630 just imagine the scene. The most famous man in 00:30:52.630 --> 00:30:56.089 Britain... the master of society and wit, reduced 00:30:56.089 --> 00:30:59.450 to a publicly humiliated, sickly target of working 00:30:59.450 --> 00:31:02.450 -class hatred. It was the complete obliteration 00:31:02.450 --> 00:31:04.589 of the pose. For the remainder of his sentence 00:31:04.589 --> 00:31:07.349 at Reading, he was known only by the dehumanizing 00:31:07.349 --> 00:31:11.089 moniker, C -3 .3, third cell on the third floor 00:31:11.089 --> 00:31:14.289 of C Award. This stripping away of identity Oscar 00:31:14.289 --> 00:31:17.509 Wilde reduced to a sequential number is a psychological 00:31:17.509 --> 00:31:20.710 tactic of incarceration that must have been agonizing 00:31:20.710 --> 00:31:23.569 for a man who defined himself solely by his name 00:31:23.569 --> 00:31:25.910 and persona. Fortunately, there was a small intervention. 00:31:26.579 --> 00:31:29.279 Due to the efforts of Richard B. Haldane, a liberal 00:31:29.279 --> 00:31:32.240 MP and penal reformer, Wilde was eventually allowed 00:31:32.240 --> 00:31:34.880 greater privileges. Specifically, access to books 00:31:34.880 --> 00:31:37.259 and writing materials. The intellectual life, 00:31:37.339 --> 00:31:39.259 which they had tried to strip away, was cautiously 00:31:39.259 --> 00:31:41.960 restored. And he requested texts by Dante, works 00:31:41.960 --> 00:31:44.160 in ancient Greek, and essays by Cardinal Newman 00:31:44.160 --> 00:31:46.059 and Walter Pater. The fact that he requested 00:31:46.059 --> 00:31:48.240 Pater, the original inspiration for the aesthetic 00:31:48.240 --> 00:31:50.140 life that led him to prison, is just fascinating. 00:31:50.460 --> 00:31:52.519 It shows he was trying to reconcile the source 00:31:52.519 --> 00:31:54.420 of his triumph with the source of his failure. 00:31:54.759 --> 00:31:57.200 This crucial... Rescott allowed him to write 00:31:57.200 --> 00:32:00.319 his most searing and deeply personal work, De 00:32:00.319 --> 00:32:04.140 Profundis, literally out of the depths. Written 00:32:04.140 --> 00:32:07.740 between January and March 1897, a staggering 00:32:07.740 --> 00:32:10.519 50 ,000 -word letter addressed to Lord Alfred 00:32:10.519 --> 00:32:12.880 Douglas, which he was allowed to take with him 00:32:12.880 --> 00:32:15.859 upon release. The letter is essentially an agonizing 00:32:15.859 --> 00:32:18.240 attempt at psychological and spiritual reckoning. 00:32:18.589 --> 00:32:21.730 He begins by placing his identity in high, almost 00:32:21.730 --> 00:32:25.049 tragic terms, stating his role as one who stood 00:32:25.049 --> 00:32:27.230 in symbolic relations to the art and culture 00:32:27.230 --> 00:32:30.269 of my age. He sees himself not merely as a failed 00:32:30.269 --> 00:32:33.230 man, but as a symbolic martyr to the conflict 00:32:33.230 --> 00:32:36.029 between art and life. The first half is a stunning 00:32:36.029 --> 00:32:38.450 cold repudiation of Douglass, whom he blames 00:32:38.450 --> 00:32:40.710 for arrogance, vanity, and encouraging his reckless 00:32:40.710 --> 00:32:43.170 behavior. He recalls Douglass's stunning cruelty, 00:32:43.390 --> 00:32:45.940 citing the remark made when Wilde was ill. When 00:32:45.940 --> 00:32:47.960 you are not on your pedestal, you are not interesting. 00:32:48.119 --> 00:32:50.720 Chilling. This repudiation is necessary for Wilde 00:32:50.720 --> 00:32:53.259 to begin reconstructing his identity. He had 00:32:53.259 --> 00:32:55.339 to separate his genius from his destructive attachment 00:32:55.339 --> 00:32:57.880 to Bozy. But the letter shifts dramatically in 00:32:57.880 --> 00:33:00.039 the second half. It moves towards self -analysis 00:33:00.039 --> 00:33:02.420 and acceptance of his suffering. He comes to 00:33:02.420 --> 00:33:05.740 a profound philosophical conclusion. To regret 00:33:05.740 --> 00:33:08.059 one's own experiences is to arrest one's own 00:33:08.059 --> 00:33:10.579 development. He realized the experience of suffering 00:33:10.579 --> 00:33:12.740 was as essential to the artist as the experience 00:33:12.740 --> 00:33:15.670 of pleasure. He describes his mistake as confining 00:33:15.670 --> 00:33:19.029 himself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed 00:33:19.029 --> 00:33:21.569 to me the sunlit side of the garden and shunned 00:33:21.569 --> 00:33:23.569 the other side for its shadow and its gloom. 00:33:23.769 --> 00:33:25.890 He recognized that the ordeal had filled his 00:33:25.890 --> 00:33:28.549 soul with experience, the experience of the outcast, 00:33:28.809 --> 00:33:31.769 the criminal, the pariah. His art, he implies, 00:33:32.009 --> 00:33:34.230 would now be complete, incorporating both the 00:33:34.230 --> 00:33:36.789 light and the shadow. The full, correct transcription 00:33:36.789 --> 00:33:39.549 wasn't published until 1962, which is when we 00:33:39.549 --> 00:33:41.930 finally got the essential, uncensored psychological 00:33:41.930 --> 00:33:45.450 documentation of his time in prison. Wilde was 00:33:45.450 --> 00:33:48.829 released on May 19, 1897, financially and physically 00:33:48.829 --> 00:33:51.259 broken. He immediately sailed for Dieppe, France, 00:33:51.460 --> 00:33:53.119 fulfilling the promise that he would never return 00:33:53.119 --> 00:33:56.039 to Britain or Ireland. In exile, he adopted the 00:33:56.039 --> 00:33:58.640 name Sebastian Melmoth, a fascinating choice. 00:33:59.380 --> 00:34:01.539 Sebastian, the Christian martyr, often depicted 00:34:01.539 --> 00:34:04.019 in art suffering from arrows, symbolizing his 00:34:04.019 --> 00:34:06.599 own public martyrdom. And Melmoth was a character 00:34:06.599 --> 00:34:09.380 from a Gothic novel by his great uncle, representing 00:34:09.380 --> 00:34:12.139 darkness, suffering, and the cursed wanderer. 00:34:12.239 --> 00:34:14.739 The name itself is a synthesis of the tragic 00:34:14.739 --> 00:34:17.619 path he now walked. Despite his shattered health, 00:34:17.780 --> 00:34:20.420 he engaged in one final act of social conscience, 00:34:20.639 --> 00:34:23.320 a surprising return to the principles of Ruskin 00:34:23.320 --> 00:34:26.219 and social betterment. He wrote two long, powerful 00:34:26.219 --> 00:34:28.800 letters to The Daily Chronicle describing the 00:34:28.800 --> 00:34:31.539 brutal conditions of English prisons and arguing 00:34:31.539 --> 00:34:34.630 passionately for penal reform. These letters 00:34:34.630 --> 00:34:37.250 detailed specific horrors, like the dismissal 00:34:37.250 --> 00:34:39.409 of a warder for giving biscuits to an anemic 00:34:39.409 --> 00:34:42.389 child prisoner. This was a man using his famous 00:34:42.389 --> 00:34:45.110 name to advocate for the lowest and most vulnerable 00:34:45.110 --> 00:34:48.389 in society, driven by his own experience of degradation. 00:34:48.789 --> 00:34:50.690 A remarkable piece of counter -narrative to the 00:34:50.690 --> 00:34:53.489 selfish dandy. His final major literary work, 00:34:53.630 --> 00:34:55.690 The Ballad of Reading Jail, was published in 00:34:55.690 --> 00:34:59.389 1898. A long, powerful poem commemorating the 00:34:59.389 --> 00:35:02.010 execution of Charles Thomas Wooldridge, a trooper 00:35:02.010 --> 00:35:04.969 who murdered his wife. Wilde adopted the proletarian 00:35:04.969 --> 00:35:07.469 ballot form, a stark contrast to his earlier 00:35:07.469 --> 00:35:09.670 sophisticated comedies, to reach a broad audience. 00:35:09.909 --> 00:35:13.070 It was initially credited only to C -33. The 00:35:13.070 --> 00:35:15.070 poem highlighted the brutality of punishment 00:35:15.070 --> 00:35:18.289 and the shared suffering of all convicts. And 00:35:18.289 --> 00:35:20.849 its central, enduring, and self -referential 00:35:20.849 --> 00:35:24.449 line is that haunting juxtaposition. Yet each 00:35:24.449 --> 00:35:27.320 man kills the thing he loves. A line that speaks 00:35:27.320 --> 00:35:29.179 volumes about his own destructive relationship 00:35:29.179 --> 00:35:31.820 with his life, his art, and Bozy. It's a commentary 00:35:31.820 --> 00:35:34.360 on human nature itself. And despite the nature 00:35:34.360 --> 00:35:36.519 of the author, or maybe because of the anonymity 00:35:36.519 --> 00:35:39.719 of C -33, the ballad was a commercial success. 00:35:40.179 --> 00:35:42.420 It went through seven editions before his name 00:35:42.420 --> 00:35:44.960 was finally added to the title page. His talent, 00:35:45.059 --> 00:35:48.000 even in this raw, brutal form, just could not 00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:50.219 be suppressed. His final years were marked by 00:35:50.219 --> 00:35:53.480 poverty and isolation. He briefly reunited with 00:35:53.480 --> 00:35:55.860 Douglas in Naples until their respective families 00:35:56.010 --> 00:35:57.889 threatened to cut off all financial support, 00:35:58.130 --> 00:36:00.929 forcing them apart. Wilde just could not escape 00:36:00.929 --> 00:36:03.449 the economic consequences of his choices. He 00:36:03.449 --> 00:36:06.170 spent his last years impoverished at the dingy 00:36:06.170 --> 00:36:08.349 Hotel del Sauce in Paris. Though he corrected 00:36:08.349 --> 00:36:10.409 proofs for an ideal husband and the importance 00:36:10.409 --> 00:36:12.909 of being earnest, he refused to undertake any 00:36:12.909 --> 00:36:16.050 new writing. He said, just heartbreakingly, I 00:36:16.050 --> 00:36:18.349 can write but have lost the joy of writing. The 00:36:18.349 --> 00:36:20.690 engine of his genius was broken by the trauma. 00:36:21.360 --> 00:36:24.280 It is during this final, painful period that 00:36:24.280 --> 00:36:27.099 he delivered perhaps his last great self -deprecating 00:36:27.099 --> 00:36:29.679 line, joking about his failing health and surroundings. 00:36:30.099 --> 00:36:32.880 My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the 00:36:32.880 --> 00:36:36.019 death. One of us has gotta go. A final, perfect 00:36:36.019 --> 00:36:39.019 piece of aesthetic drama, even when confronting 00:36:39.019 --> 00:36:42.409 death. Weil died on November 30th, 1900 at age 00:36:42.409 --> 00:36:45.429 46 of meningitis, likely following a mastoidectomy 00:36:45.429 --> 00:36:48.170 for that old ear suppuration stemming from his 00:36:48.170 --> 00:36:50.650 prison injury. And before his death, he was conditionally 00:36:50.650 --> 00:36:53.030 baptized into the Catholic Church by a passionist 00:36:53.030 --> 00:36:55.550 priest, Farr Cuthbert Dunn, finally fulfilling 00:36:55.550 --> 00:36:58.170 that lifelong interest he had resisted in his 00:36:58.170 --> 00:37:00.429 pursuit of individualism. The recognition of 00:37:00.429 --> 00:37:02.369 his significance has only grown since his death. 00:37:02.800 --> 00:37:04.739 His remains were transferred to Père Lachaise 00:37:04.739 --> 00:37:07.880 Cemetery in 1909 to the famous tomb designed 00:37:07.880 --> 00:37:10.420 by Sir Jacob Epstein. It's still a site of pilgrimage 00:37:10.420 --> 00:37:13.260 today. And more recently, his legacy has intersected 00:37:13.260 --> 00:37:16.019 directly with legal history and justice. In 2017, 00:37:16.400 --> 00:37:19.579 Wilde was among an estimated 50 ,000 men posthumously 00:37:19.579 --> 00:37:22.440 pardoned for homosexual acts, no longer considered 00:37:22.440 --> 00:37:25.159 offenses under what is known informally as the 00:37:25.159 --> 00:37:27.780 Alan Turing Law. It took more than a century 00:37:27.780 --> 00:37:30.320 for the state to acknowledge the moral bankruptcy 00:37:30.320 --> 00:37:33.059 of its prosecution. And in a wonderful piece 00:37:33.059 --> 00:37:35.539 of symbolic restoration, the British Library 00:37:35.539 --> 00:37:40.019 restored Wilde's library card 130 years after 00:37:40.019 --> 00:37:43.039 it was revoked following his conviction. He is 00:37:43.039 --> 00:37:45.099 formally commemorated today with a stained glass 00:37:45.099 --> 00:37:47.719 window in Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey, 00:37:47.760 --> 00:37:51.230 unveiled in 1995. The establishment he fought 00:37:51.230 --> 00:37:53.829 against eventually claimed him as its own. So 00:37:53.829 --> 00:37:55.809 we've journeyed through the entire arc of Oscar 00:37:55.809 --> 00:37:58.429 Wilde, from his intellectual origins in that 00:37:58.429 --> 00:38:01.070 unique Dublin home, through his adoption of aesthetic 00:38:01.070 --> 00:38:03.869 philosophy at Oxford, to his dazzling million 00:38:03.869 --> 00:38:06.409 -pound success as a playwright, and finally, 00:38:06.409 --> 00:38:08.949 the brutal consequences of his trials under the 00:38:08.949 --> 00:38:10.909 Criminal Law Amendment Act. The narrative we've 00:38:10.909 --> 00:38:13.949 traced is one of escalating stakes. The persona 00:38:13.949 --> 00:38:16.250 he built, the one that allowed him to charm America 00:38:16.250 --> 00:38:19.269 and conquer London, was the very thing that made 00:38:19.269 --> 00:38:21.530 him vulnerable in court. He was too good at performing 00:38:21.530 --> 00:38:24.090 his own life. And when that life was put on trial, 00:38:24.269 --> 00:38:26.730 the mask was tripped away. The key takeaway for 00:38:26.730 --> 00:38:29.449 you, the learner, is how Wilde's life vividly 00:38:29.449 --> 00:38:31.909 demonstrates the extreme tension between art, 00:38:32.030 --> 00:38:34.710 morality, and social conformity in the Victorian 00:38:34.710 --> 00:38:37.320 era. He lived his core philosophy. that life 00:38:37.320 --> 00:38:39.760 should imitate art, to the fullest challenging 00:38:39.760 --> 00:38:42.320 social norms through his flamboyant persona, 00:38:42.579 --> 00:38:45.119 his literature like Dorian Gray, and ultimately 00:38:45.119 --> 00:38:47.940 his public actions. And this challenge to Victorian 00:38:47.940 --> 00:38:50.500 standards led directly to his destruction, but 00:38:50.500 --> 00:38:52.960 also to his immortality. His enduring relevance 00:38:52.960 --> 00:38:56.719 is undeniable. His literary output, the dazzling 00:38:56.719 --> 00:38:59.380 wit of the comedies, and the deep, penetrating 00:38:59.380 --> 00:39:01.900 despair of De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading 00:39:01.900 --> 00:39:05.320 Jail cemented his reputation. Moreover, his legal 00:39:05.320 --> 00:39:07.659 struggle is a landmark case in the history of 00:39:07.659 --> 00:39:10.619 LGBTQ rights and legal reform, echoing even today 00:39:10.619 --> 00:39:12.699 with those posthumous pardons under the Alan 00:39:12.699 --> 00:39:14.880 Turing law. You know, he often cited that early 00:39:14.880 --> 00:39:16.800 critical assessment of his poetry, where Punch 00:39:16.800 --> 00:39:19.179 claimed, the poet is wild, but his poetry is 00:39:19.179 --> 00:39:21.420 tame. So knowing the full scope of his genius, 00:39:21.619 --> 00:39:24.440 from the biting epigrams of Ernest to the deep 00:39:24.440 --> 00:39:27.500 spiritual despair of De Profundis, this raises 00:39:27.500 --> 00:39:30.440 an important question for you to consider. What 00:39:30.440 --> 00:39:33.460 aspect of his work, written or performed, truly 00:39:33.460 --> 00:39:36.300 constitutes the immortal genius that he once 00:39:36.300 --> 00:39:38.000 claimed to have been his only thing to declare 00:39:38.000 --> 00:39:40.920 at customs? Was the immortal genius found in 00:39:40.920 --> 00:39:43.519 the beautiful, frivolous art he created, or in 00:39:43.519 --> 00:39:45.619 the devastating, profound suffering that he finally 00:39:45.619 --> 00:39:45.980 embraced?