De Profundis

by Oscar Wilde
edited by Merlin Holland

You came to me to learn the pleasure of life and the pleasure of art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something more wonderful – the meaning of sorrow and its beauty.

During his sentence in Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde wrote a letter to his lover, agonising over the lack of contact. It is perhaps the greatest love letter ever written, filled with a torrent of accusation, passion and eventually reconciliation.

A century later De Profundis remains an astonishing tour-de-force of self analysis. Reviving his National Theatre performance from 2000, Corin Redgrave reads De Profundis.

De Profundis plays before The Year of Magical Thinking. 

 

photo of Corin Redgrave © Ivan Kyncl