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Life Worth Living is an initiative of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School.
How does a good life feel?
Oscar Wilde on Sorrow
Life Worth Living Team
"... there is no truth comparable to sorrow."
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While many dream of a painless life, a life of complete bliss remains unattainable. How, then, do we reconcile pain with our idea of the good life?
Quote + Question + Context
How does a good life feel?
While many dream of a painless life, a life of complete bliss remains unattainable. How, then, do we reconcile pain with our idea of the good life? When Oscar Wilde found himself imprisoned and bankrupt at the hands of his lover's father, he came to accept his suffering by appealing to truth and beauty in sorrow. In the following excerpt from De Profundis, Wilde meditates on sorrow's centrality to his life and work.
Quote
[.alt-blockquote]“I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art ... Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask ... Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit. For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow. There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain.”[.alt-blockquote]
[.alt-blockquote-attribution]—Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, 62[.alt-blockquote-attribution]
Questions
- How would your experience of sorrow change if you were to embrace its beauty?
- When, if ever, have you seen sorrow enhance art and life?
- How much does it matter to you that your emotions correspond to the truth about how things are?
- Should sorrow be valued above pleasure in your idea of the good life? How do the two interact in your experience?
- What does it mean to accept suffering? How do suffering and sorrow relate to one another?
- What has sorrow been able to teach you in your experience? Do you think the depths of your experience with sorrow would constitute a “new world?”
Context
- Oscar Wilde's De Profundis
- Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, Chapter 4: How does a good life feel?
Quote + Question + Context
How does a good life feel?
While many dream of a painless life, a life of complete bliss remains unattainable. How, then, do we reconcile pain with our idea of the good life? When Oscar Wilde found himself imprisoned and bankrupt at the hands of his lover's father, he came to accept his suffering by appealing to truth and beauty in sorrow. In the following excerpt from De Profundis, Wilde meditates on sorrow's centrality to his life and work.
Quote
[.alt-blockquote]“I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art ... Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask ... Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit. For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow. There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain.”[.alt-blockquote]
[.alt-blockquote-attribution]—Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, 62[.alt-blockquote-attribution]
Questions
- How would your experience of sorrow change if you were to embrace its beauty?
- When, if ever, have you seen sorrow enhance art and life?
- How much does it matter to you that your emotions correspond to the truth about how things are?
- Should sorrow be valued above pleasure in your idea of the good life? How do the two interact in your experience?
- What does it mean to accept suffering? How do suffering and sorrow relate to one another?
- What has sorrow been able to teach you in your experience? Do you think the depths of your experience with sorrow would constitute a “new world?”
Context
- Oscar Wilde's De Profundis
- Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, Chapter 4: How does a good life feel?
Pairings
Our responses to life's big questions are meant to form a coherent whole—a vision of life worth living. A response to one question will fit well with certain responses to other questions, but it will be incompatible with others. We've provided the "Pairs Well With" and "Pairs Poorly With" sections for this article to help you consider these questions of coherence.
Pairs Well With
- Some Christian ideals of suffering
- A high value on aesthetics and beauty
Pairs Poorly With
- The utilitarian idea that pain is simply bad
- Buddhist conceptions of suffering (dukkha) and how to overcome it
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was a 19th-century Irish poet and playwright.
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