Simon Callow Reads Oscar Wilde’s Famous Prison Gay Love Letter | Attitude Pride at Home
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- Опубліковано 27 чер 2020
- Simon Callow Reads Oscar Wilde’s Famous Prison Gay Love Letter | Attitude Pride at Home
Simon Callow does not stint on the drama with an intense reading of Oscar Wilde’s prison love letter to Lord Alfred Douglas.
Bringing Attitude’s Speaking of Pride, empowered by Bentley, to a close, the Four Weddings and a Funeral star dusts off Wilde’s ‘De Profundis.’
In 1895, Britain’s most famous writer at the time - best known for his works ‘Dorian Gray’ and ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ - was sentenced to two years’ hard labour for his homosexual relations or, legally speaking, gross indecency.
During his final few months of incarceration at Reading Gaol, Wilde was given pen and paper by a kindly governor and inked an emotional whirlwind of a letter to his young lover Douglas, or Bosie, which was then published a decade later.
“In that terrible world of the prison, with ghastly inedible food and uncomfortable beds, locked up most of the day, Wilde understandably reviewed the circumstances of his fall,” Callow, 71, explains.
“He chose to write this letter to, I suppose, make sense of his own life and to lay blame pretty squarely on Alfred Douglas’s shoulders,” he continues. “[But] Wilde reveals to himself and the reader, and I suppose Alfred Douglas, that despite his rage and resentment of Bosie, he still loves him at heart.”
The Bafta-nominated actor was joined by TV’s Dr Ranj, Judge Rob Rinder, Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, poet Dean Atta, Little Mix favourite Jade Thirlwall and actor Simon Callow for Attitude’s Speaking of Pride, empowered by Bentley.
Watch on attitude.co.uk and UA-cam.
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Sincere thanks to the wonderful Simon Callow for this superb rendition of De Profundis by Oscar Wilde - From Out of The Depths ..Wilde certainly did cry
May he rest in Peace ❤️
Can’t thank you enough for uploading this. Simon’s various works are consistently a pleasure to me. As I listen my heart, obviously, goes out to Oscar. Many of us have experience of love given freely to an utterly undeserving or unappreciative person and the misery that ensues. In this case HARD LABOUR, which really meant what it said back then. It was a miracle that Oscar survived that sentence ‘tho it undoubtedly cut his life short. As did over indulgence in drugs and alcohol - I’m trying to be honest here and not as overly romantic as their love affair and Oscars writings tempt me to be. However, my thoughts return time and again to Robbie. How hard it is for us as human beings to watch the person we love so dearly self sabotage. Be it with drugs, drink, gambling, destructive relationships - all the addictions. Most of us have watched a good friend or family member damaged by hooking up with an ill chosen partner, who neither loves or cares for them - a drain rather than a radiator. Yet, there is little we can do, once we have made our feelings clear and risked our friendship by our honesty, other than wait for the day when the relationship finally ends and we can be there to support our loved one and help them mend. However, in the interest of our survival and some positive selfishness, the long term addiction of a loved one is a damaging thing to endure, there is a thin line between supporting and enabling, sometimes we are forced to walk away for a while. Poor Robbie has an often thankless task as the man who was truly in love with Oscar and, therefore, wanted the best for him.
This is a very emotional topic and these are just some of my thoughts and feelings. Objectivity has been hard for me to grasp due to personal experience. However, once again, thank you for Simon’s reading of this portion of Oscar’s letter and the insight into the human condition it has brought.
Rea
I was so pleased that Simon had actually met and even worked with the Great Michael Maccliamor.
have been listening to Simon Callow's wonderful reading of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis and the Ballad of Reading Gaol. Oh what a wondrous Reading. What a superb actor is Simon Callow. thank you Mr Callow and I wish you further happiness in your life.
Magnífica interpretación. Gracias de todo corazón
Lo siento pero mi inglés es muy precario. Espero que le valga una traducción. Bravo.
Read The Return of the Century, the Death and Further Adventures of Oscar Wilde, a novel in which he lives another wonderful seven years.
Well Simon I love you as an actor and gay icon but when I saw you leave a taxi outside Rupert Street and look up and down to see if anyone had seen you kissing goodbye to your companion I have been a little bit sceptical.
I am fully aware of how Simon Callow used the word, "Engineer" at 00.39 to describe the combination of activities that Lord Alfred Douglas followed to bring about the downfall of Oscar Wilde, but being an engineer myself, I felt that the word sounded a little out of place, considering that at the time, engineering was basically in its infancy, and it was the other social professions and art that were regarded as being the influential road to follow. In fact, the letter which Callow read is rather artistic in nature, and all the mentioned places that Oscar Wilde frequented, and the style of clothes he wore and the champagne they drank and the symbolic poems they wrote to each other, were more of an emotional nature, than being logically reasoned and of a rational nature. Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred seemed to have preferred to live in their own mind state/space and spirits where their own souls floated on silver clouds in an unworldly space of high imagination, rather than the truth of reality that normal working men and women and engineers live with, usually being down to earth, closer to the tangible basic materials, making products which were beginning to bring tangible guaranteed comforts to the families, after the philosophers, religions, and artists and lawyers and politicians of the days, who failed disastrously and did not do much during the previous 10,000 years.
So to fit in with the spirit and language of Oscar Wilde, who fervently claimed to be an artist, Callow should have chosen words that fit in with the era of Oscar Wilde and where Oscar knew little of Engineering principles and surely he was not a logical and a reasoned practical man, but he was purely an imaginative artist, and producing something tangible and guaranteed to work, was not in Oscar's line of work. The closest that Oscar Wilde ever came to being an engineer is when he sired his children, and when he was imprisoned and required to serve three years of hard labor, where his body had to work harder than his emotional soul, spirit, and artistic mind. It seems meaningful that after an artist made a statue of an angel complete with balls (testis) to adorn Oscar Wilde's grave, someone decided to knock his balls off, which seems to be both significant and relevant. ua-cam.com/video/hpG32EOzLgI/v-deo.html
Perhaps under the circumstances rather than using the words," The young man who he believed was the engineer of his downfall.." Callow should have opted to respect Oscar Wilde with words that would have been closer to the spirit and soul of Oscar as an artist, like the following combinations,
* The poet who composed the rhythm of Oscar's sorrows
* The artist who sculpted the downhill path of Oscar's previous social and artistic reputation.
* The author, who articulated and instigated the plot and destruction with his attractive physical young looks.
* The doctor who mixed the emotional medicine to excite and cater to Oscar's carnal weakness and living with head in the air.
* The deviant young partner with whom, the emotional, artistic, impractical human weakness of Oscar Wilde, caused him to hurt his wife and two children, and for which the fair justice of destiny chose to punish him in practical engineering, guaranteed manner, to shake him out of his qualitative emotional wits and disorders which no practical engineering dimension and standardized units could ever measure.
When Oscar Wilde was made and forced to legally step down from his emotional clouds into the space of tangible, guaranteed engineering activities including his family responsibilities, that was too much for him and so, he preferred to die and live as a spirit for the rest of time.