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 finished on: 1 October 2008
