Opinion

Dear Oscar,

Of course I know that what you chose to do – to stay and face the music, to own up to your approach to life and aim to justify the ways in which you chose to live – became a cause célèbre that has come to influence the ways in which more modern societies have developed. I know that by being steadfast you did uncover a side of your world’s mores that could be objected to, that probably needed reform – that in being addressed has put right some wrongs and opened up alternative ways of being. Nevertheless, I am being slowly persuaded that so much of what ‘hits the headlines’ and becomes the touchstone of an age is in actuality a lot of fuss about nothing. It just seems to take history for that to be the case, and the generation and popularisation of sets of ideals that go against whatever it was that caused the ultimate umbrage at the time.

You see Oscar, you did, in hindsight, sort of invite disaster, and a huge amount of pressure to be heaped upon you – so much, it might be argued, that it was impossible to behave in any way that might be deemed rational. You steadfastly held your position, and although that may be seen as laudable, the price you paid was so high as to deny you existence at all! Did that have to be the case? And did it have to be the case that your legacy of martyrdom still sticks like a mal odeur even around the modern depictions of the homosexual? I think of the century of suffering that has been enacted since your too early departure from the planet, the inevitable fight for freedom of expression, the fiery street protests, and the battles that were fought with words, and with rocks, and bricks, and cricket bats. It may have all been inevitable, but I do just wonder. I do just wonder if not inviting disaster might also have been an option; that you could have exited to Europe and used your mightiest of weapons, your pen, to argue for a more just society where there would not be persecution – which also had a ring of inevitability about it, as all societies were advancing in the greater sense, and still are around the globe, and ‘old’ ideas become replaced with ‘new’ ones, and democratisation, such as it is, for now, seems to hold some sway. Do you really believe that without your humiliation and suffering there would have bee no gay liberation? Somehow I think it would have been different. I worry that the taint of your treatment lingers even in the face of the most advanced developments. I worry that I need to worry, and that is both the point of this letter, and what I most ardently wish to subvert and deny.

All may not be so well with the world, and all of us carry some worldview where we know of instances where there are injustices and misdemeanours, but it is also true that all is also well with the world, because flowers do continue to grow and bloom – even green carnations! I know as well as you did that I can provoke disaster, that I can invite pressure into my life, that I can cause a stir, worry myself silly, pick and probe and prod and upset everyone who surrounds me, but I do wonder to what end? To get my own way? To be right about whatever it is that I wish to undertake? To try to mould the world in its entirety to my point of view? It all seems rather foolhardy, Oscar dear, when it is obvious that humanity loves humanity, and always will. The differences and the factions and the fights and the oppositions are so few and far between compared to the commonalities of being: the air that we all need to breathe; the water that we all need to drink; the sustenance that we can engender for ourselves, in all its forms, for our mutual well-being.

I am doing my utmost not to invite pressure into my life, Oscar, without compromise and with a sense of being true to myself and my world. I wonder what your life would have been if you had been able to do the same.

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Dear Oscar,

You undoubtedly could not see beyond your own sense of entitlement, your own pursuit of pleasure, and that is why you were unable to see how your lifestyle would impact upon the world around you. It is rather surprising, given that you were actually very astute at reading the mores of your day, as reflected in your writings; you could see very clearly that the world you inhabited was full of contradiction, was a place of secrets kept and secrets held and secrets sometimes made public in order to bring down others. I am sure that to some no small degree you actually participated in such activities, and that your ribald wit was ever ready to lampoon those whom you held in disrespect, or whom you saw as threatening your position of preeminence. I wonder if you have any regrets, Oscar, and suspect that your response would be that you have none. A strange blind spot, not seeing how things would unfold, when it was very obvious that the world was turning against you – and even you must have recognised that! I suppose this is why history has accorded to you the moniker of ‘victim’, of ‘martyr’, no less, as if the nomination of cultural sainthood somehow atones for the sins of your age – not your sins, but the sins of your age.

It is, as I have said before, much the same now. Now it is possible to get completely lost in the trivialities of the everyday, the pursuit of recognition, the need to make oneself important, the pursuit of endless diversion and the promise of unending pleasure, to satisfy the most basic of lusts and wants and perceived needs, and to miss entirely what is actually going on. In fact it is quite evident that such tactics can be used to hoodwink entire populations into regimes of control, where diktats are the order of the day, where the room for freedom of thought and freedom of expression are slowly eroded – because – we believe we can say what we want, but in actuality we are only saying what we are allowed to say! We live in an age of endless choice, but I have often thought to myself is there really any choice? Just because we can have a red car or a blue car does that mean that we can operate without a car at all? Is there really a choice, or are we all just slaves to whatever system is the order of the day? And if we are presented with real choices are we able to see them clearly, without our own stubbornness, our willfulness, standing in the way; or, more pointedly as is today’s experience, without the endless proliferation of ‘choices’, of ‘alternatives’, diverting us subtly, or not so subtly, away from any notion that real choice actually exists at all?

One would think, Oscar dear, with examples like your own to look back upon, that there would have been some sort of advance in thinking, but alas there is not. Oh, and I know that there is an argument that without your own ‘noble sacrifice’ there would have been no recognition of the plight of the homosexual, that the start of ‘gay liberation’ would not have occurred, and that there would still be persecution of sexual minorities, but really, is that valid? Is it the case that there have to be real levels of suffering before the world at large works out that persecution of anyone is not such a good idea? I am thinking of issues of race and religion, of caste systems, of slavery, of skin pigmentation, of difference however it may manifest itself. Does it really have to be that only after decades, centuries, lifetimes, millennia – that we as a human collective will realise that beating up on the other simply perpetuates the very suffering that in another breath we are all so adamantly against?

I leave you with that little poser, Oscar – from one poseur to another!

Best wishes,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Letters to Oscar Wilde

… long after his dearh

Inviting Pressure

The Bigger Picture