No More Learning

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. Once I knew it, or thought I knew it,
by instinct. It was always springtime once in my heart. My temperament
was akin to joy. I filled my life to the very brim with pleasure, as one
might fill a cup to the very brim with wine. Now I am approaching life
from a completely new standpoint, and even to conceive happiness is often
extremely difficult for me. I remember during my first term at Oxford
reading in Pater's _Renaissance_--that book which has had such strange
influence over my life--how Dante places low in the Inferno those who
wilfully live in sadness; and going to the college library and turning to
the passage in the _Divine Comedy_ where beneath the dreary marsh lie
those who were 'sullen in the sweet air,' saying for ever and ever
through their sighs--

'Tristi fummo
Nell aer dolce che dal sol s'allegra. '

I knew the church condemned _accidia_, but the whole idea seemed to me
quite fantastic, just the sort of sin, I fancied, a priest who knew
nothing about real life would invent. Nor could I understand how Dante,
who says that 'sorrow remarries us to God,' could have been so harsh to
those who were enamoured of melancholy, if any such there really were. I
had no idea that some day this would become to me one of the greatest
temptations of my life.

While I was in Wandsworth prison I longed to die.