(The Nationalist, 02 December 2005)
The Irish poet, novelist and playwright, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), went through a time in his life when he changed from being the darling of society, invited to all the important social and literary functions, to being an outcast no one wanted to know. He had been found guilty of a crime and sentenced. While in jail, his mother died. On his release, he was brought before another court for bankruptcy. His wife became seriously ill, and his children were taken from him.
Later, he wrote about his experience in Reading prison, in the poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and a spiritual essay called De Profundis, (Out of the Depths). In these, he showed that he experienced great suffering, but allowed himself to enter into it: ‘It is always twilight in one’s cell, as it is always twilight in one’s heart’. He learned to value suffering, and it became for him an experience of purification: ‘Sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things…. Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Some day people will realize what that means. They will know nothing of life till they do’. It strengthened him: ‘Nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all’. The man who could say that had come a long way from the dandy whose concern was only to amuse and impress: ‘Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and… what one has done in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop’.
Wilde is a good example of a person who experienced suffering and was changed through it for the better. He recognized that this as a work of grace:
‘Happy are they whose hearts can break
and peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
and cleanse his soul from sin?
How else but through a broken heart
may the Lord Christ enter in?’
Four years after his release, Wilde died. He was 46. Life had knocked him down, but he had risen up again. Reflecting on his experience, he wrote: ‘All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.’
For those in a hurry: ‘It is better to be silent and real, than to talk and be unreal’. (Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians, chap.15)