No More Learning

To
regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny
one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It
is no less than a denial of the soul.

For just as the body absorbs things of all kinds, things common and
unclean no less than those that the priest or a vision has cleansed, and
converts them into swiftness or strength, into the play of beautiful
muscles and the moulding of fair flesh, into the curves and colours of
the hair, the lips, the eye; so the soul in its turn has its nutritive
functions also, and can transform into noble moods of thought and
passions of high import what in itself is base, cruel and degrading; nay,
more, may find in these its most august modes of assertion, and can often
reveal itself most perfectly through what was intended to desecrate or
destroy.

The fact of my having been the common prisoner of a common gaol I must
frankly accept, and, curious as it may seem, one of the things I shall
have to teach myself is not to be ashamed of it. I must accept it as a
punishment, and if one is ashamed of having been punished, one might just
as well never have been punished at all. Of course there are many things
of which I was convicted that I had not done, but then there are many
things of which I was convicted that I had done, and a still greater
number of things in my life for which I was never indicted at all. And
as the gods are strange, and punish us for what is good and humane in us
as much as for what is evil and perverse, I must accept the fact that one
is punished for the good as well as for the evil that one does. I have
no doubt that it is quite right one should be. It helps one, or should
help one, to realise both, and not to be too conceited about either. And
if I then am not ashamed of my punishment, as I hope not to be, I shall
be able to think, and walk, and live with freedom.

Many men on their release carry their prison about with them into the
air, and hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, and at length,
like poor poisoned things, creep into some hole and die. It is wretched
that they should have to do so, and it is wrong, terribly wrong, of
society that it should force them to do so. Society takes upon itself
the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also
has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has
done. When the man's punishment is over, it leaves him to himself; that
is to say, it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty
towards him begins.
It is really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns
those whom it has punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they
cannot pay, or one on whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an
irremediable wrong. I can claim on my side that if I realise what I have
suffered, society should realise what it has inflicted on me; and that
there should be no bitterness or hate on either side.

Of course I know that from one point of view things will be made
different for me than for others; must indeed, by the very nature of the
case, be made so. The poor thieves and outcasts who are imprisoned here
with me are in many respects more fortunate than I am. The little way in
grey city or green field that saw their sin is small; to find those who
know nothing of what they have done they need go no further than a bird
might fly between the twilight and the dawn; but for me the world is
shrivelled to a handsbreadth, and everywhere I turn my name is written on
the rocks in lead. For I have come, not from obscurity into the
momentary notoriety of crime, but from a sort of eternity of fame to a
sort of eternity of infamy, and sometimes seem to myself to have shown,
if indeed it required showing, that between the famous and the infamous
there is but one step, if as much as one.

Still, in the very fact that people will recognise me wherever I go, and
know all about my life, as far as its follies go, I can discern something
good for me. It will force on me the necessity of again asserting myself
as an artist, and as soon as I possibly can. If I can produce only one
beautiful work of art I shall be able to rob malice of its venom, and
cowardice of its sneer, and to pluck out the tongue of scorn by the
roots.

And if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less a problem
to life. People must adopt some attitude towards me, and so pass
judgment, both on themselves and me. I need not say I am not talking of
particular individuals. The only people I would care to be with now are
artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and
those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me. Nor am I making
any demands on life. In all that I have said I am simply concerned with
my own mental attitude towards life as a whole; and I feel that not to be
ashamed of having been punished is one of the first points I must attain
to, for the sake of my own perfection, and because I am so imperfect.

Then I must learn how to be happy.