As part of my continuing personal endeavour to create very readable digital versions of old books, I had placed my attention on books by and about Oscar Wilde. I came across this book, Oscar Wilde and Myself written by Lord Alfred Douglas. I thought of taking up this book for the conversion into a readable digital book.

The steps involved copying the text from certain scanned versions of the original book and recreating them as text in MS Word. It had its travails in that text had to be reformatted and the line-by-line (not sentence by sentence) arrangement of the copied text had to be made into connected sentences, from broken lines.

I am used to this kind of work, and I do know as to how to go about this.

As the work proceeded, invariably I started reading the text with a most cursory interest. I had not expected much in this book other than a lot of claims and refutations that can be expected considering the background to the book. However, suddenly it occurred to me that there is more to this book than might be detected by a native-Englishman. The insights are not what have been provided by Alfred Douglas, but rather what I could pierce out from the text, with my own background as an independent researcher on language codes, and the effect of feudal language codes on pristine-English and pristine-England.

This book, quite obviously, had been written on the spur of the moment, in a sporadic mood of extreme hate and vengeance. The book is dated 1914. However, it is seen mentioned unkindly elsewhere that this book had been ‘largely ghost-written by T. W. H. Crosland, the assistant editor of The Academy and later repudiated by Douglas.’ I cannot say anything about this, since I am not a scholar on Oscar Wilde books, writings and life. My scholarship is in the domain of my own realm of thoughts, mentioned above.

I have not read any other book by Alfred Douglas. Not even the books he is seen mentioned as having written about Oscar Wilde: Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up (1940); and two memoirs, The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas (1929) and Without Apology (1938). I do not know what they contain. And what he claims about his relationship with Oscar Wilde.

This is the first time I am coming across any lengthy writing attributed to Lord Alfred Douglas. Even if the text is ‘largely ghost-written’, it is possible that many of the themes, mood, and emotions that are in this book are directly from the mind of Alfred Douglas. If he has indeed refuted the contents of this book, it can be due to the fact that this book has been written in a most terrific mood for vengeance and hurting.

In this book, Alfred Douglas has attacked and decried both the man (Oscar Wilde) and his writings, in a most violent manner, in words that sparkle with originality. There is much to be mentioned about these words. However, I would only touch upon them in a most brief manner. For, my mind is focusing on certain things, which the totally befooled naive and gullible, native-Englishmen have no inkling about. But then, I would go about them in a stream-like manner, touching about the various items as they appear in view.

I have actually written a very brief commentary or foreword on the incomplete version of De Profundis. That commentary I am attaching at the end part of this book. Interested readers can peruse them from there. It may be noticed that I was writing from a background of total ignorance of the various issues mentioned in this book.

I have read this book (Oscar Wilde and Myself) again after completing the text formatting. I must admit that my perspective on many things connected to Oscar Wilde, and his relationship to Lord Alfred Douglas have changed dramatically. In fact, I did not have much information on Alfred Douglas other that what the ‘mean minds’ had repeatedly pasted into the world of literature. That he was the ‘lover of Oscar Wilde’. This is more or less a unilateral claim, which has not been admitted by Alfred Douglas.

I myself had the impression that Alfred Douglas was some kind of a weakling boy who leaned upon Oscar Wilde for social support. However, after reading this book, the total perspective has changed. Even if Alfred Douglas words are total lies, he emerges as a person of solid personal capacity and stolid resolve. And also calibre.

He has spoken degrading definitions about the writings of Oscar Wilde in a mood for explaining the man and his ways and manners. But then, Oscar Wilde still remains a great writer of words of supreme profundity, the depth of which even Wilde himself might not have been aware of. For, many of his words and ideas spring forth not from the planar verbal codes of pristine-English, but from the extremely complicated world of feudal languages, which are actually akin to beastly animal languages.

There is always the issue of the dichotomy when mentally connecting the biological human being with his writings, words, political affiliations, ideas &c. For instance, Oscar Wilde had remained a very favourite writer of mine for a long time. However, if this Oscar Wilde, the biological entity, was to come and sit inside my room, how would I react to him? The brain software that spurred his writings, and sprung forth his thoughts, and the terrific levels of verbally complicated tiny bits of exotic contemplations, is different from the biological being that is also Oscar Wilde. The former, even though it can express carvings, feelings, repulsions, anguish and such, does not have a physical form or biological requirements. For, it exists in a non-physical realm closely connected to the world of the supernatural software mechanism.

The biological being has to eat, and go through all the connected processes of metabolism. There would be periodic requirements for sexual gratification. He has to talk and react to the words of others. He has to bathe and keep himself neat and tidy. He is not a solitary human being, but connected to many others by family links, professional association, schooling &c.

He has to earn a living, and thus has to restrain his words to the limit that they do not hurt his means of livelihood. He has to express his readiness to compromise on his ideas so that he might be able to exist among other human beings, who might not be too amused by his antics.

Despite being of a saintly disposition, he might not be able to control his body’s and mind’s infatuation towards other human beings, from a sexual perspective or even from a platonic mood, even if they are not condonable as per accepted social conventions.

At the same time, the writings and ideas of this very same person can be detached from his own biological physical form. Even if they are connected, the reader of his works can keep his biological physical form in the outskirts of his mind. More so, if he was dead.