"love is fed by the imagination": art & surviving suffering
or: how oscar wilde rewired my brain in 2014 and what that means to me as an artist in 2025
in the spring of 2014, i had at least momentarily dug myself out of the hole of suicidal ideation that i’d been in for the past couple of years. the driving force behind those thoughts was simple: i couldn’t find a place in capitalism where i fit, and i didn’t see any way i could be of use anywhere or to anyone. being disabled without knowing it is quite a harrowing experience. the back half of 2013 i spent completely holed up in my small student apartment, scrolling tumblr to distract myself from the horror of life. that’s how i discovered fanfiction. this planted a seed: writing was perhaps something i could do, that might potentially serve some kind of purpose to another human being.
one day, i got the idea to take my savings “for the future” and use them to travel somewhere far away. this thought made me want to die less, so i thought it was a justifiable use of the money. it was intended to become a down payment for an apartment or some other responsible purpose. but i figured if i didn’t want to have a future, the money was no use to me anyway.
my first stop on this journey was new york, where i went to the strand bookstore and picked up a second hand copy of de profundis by oscar wilde for i think $3. it was a mass market paperback published by penguin, printed in 1976.
for those unfamiliar, de profundis is a letter (of over 100 pages) that oscar wrote from prison to his former toxic homoerotic bestie (we’ve all been there), bosie. even though my own suffering was vastly different to the one he writes about, the way he wrote it made me feel seen. suffering is one long moment. that rang true after having spent many depression days where life and time felt like foreign concepts to me.
Now I find hidden away in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all.
…
I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me.
i read these things, and my deeply lodged self-preservation instinct soared and exclaimed: see! here’s an idea to hold on to! i can make this suffering Mean Something, so that i can live with it. now, in 2025, i think that suffering in itself is actually pretty meaningless. but it inevitably happens to us all, and in order to continue living, we find ways to make it into something we are able to carry. suffering demands to be dealt with in one way or another.
i also took away from it a sense of non-shame for queer desire and for pleasure. “i don’t feel at all ashamed for having known them. they were intensely interesting.” is his comment on having ‘entertained at dinner’ male prostitutes. he goes on to say that what he does feel ashamed of, is having let bosie drag him into an ugly world of debt and solicitors. he similarly doesn’t fault bosie for desiring delicious and expensive food and drink—only for insisting that he, oscar, paid for it.
pleasure is not a sin.
Sins of the flesh are nothing./…/Sins of the soul alone are shameful.
pleasure may be obtained by harmful means, such as borrowing money, or at someone else’s expense, but in itself? pleasure is good. i needed to hear that. i still need to hear that, sometimes: i am allowed to enjoy life! in the ways that i can. despite my past mistakes, and despite how unfair the world is, in letting me have a beautiful moment while others suffer. i used to feel that i didn’t deserve it. and i don’t—no one “deserves” the life they’re handed. that’s not how it works. you just get a life and make of it what you can. it is wildly unfair. and self-flagellation doesn’t solve the problem.
but the most life-changing aspect of de profundis for me was the way oscar wrote about art. art and love, as inseparable concepts.
/…/the imagination is simply a manifestation of Love, and it is love, and the capacity for it, that distinguishes one human being from another.
this quote is from the section where he waxes poetic about jesus, which in hindsight is funny to me: i had completely forgotten that part until my reread today. clearly my mind glossed over what was not for me. he does write some beautiful things about art and sin with jesus as the vehicle, so the section is still good reading in my opinion. i just don’t take anything religious from it.
Love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are: by which we can see Life as a whole: by which, and which alone, we can understand others in their real as in their ideal relations.
when i started writing this post, i had misremembered the quote above as “the imagination is fed by love”. but i think that is also true. we can imagine others “in their ideal relations”, being their best selves to their fullest potential, when we look at them with love and curiosity and openness. art helps us do this. with our imagination, we step into the lives of people from hundreds of years ago or across the world, and we feel their sorrow and rejoice at their fortunes. so our inner world expands and our love for humanity in general is nourished.
oscar also shows the importance of art in a very direct way: by reproaching bosie for keeping him from his work. this really stuck with me. art is important work, and shouldn’t be hindered.
To the artist, expression is the only mode under which he can conceive life at all.
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./…/It is only by realising what I am that I have found comfort of any kind.
since i was little, i had always imagined myself becoming a writer one day. i drew a lot, i wrote verses, and stories. but i was of course told many times that it was impossible to make money from any kind of art, and so dismissed it as a plan for the future. reading oscar’s words reminded me of this—of what i am. and since i was useless to capitalism anyway, why not? why should i not let myself create?
making art is to me the unity of myself with myself; when i paint or write i feel whole. but “realising what i am” also applies to my disability: the world and my struggles with it became a lot more legible when i found out that i’m autistic. contrary to the idea that we limit ourselves by identifying with our disabilities, it’s only by recognising that i am limited that i’ve been able to do more. working with your brain instead of against it makes a world of difference. it is indeed only by knowing what i am that i’ve been able to ever be comfortable.
Do you really think that at any period in our friendship you were worthy of the love I showed you, or that for a single moment I thought you were? I knew you were not. But Love does not traffic in a marketplace, nor use a huckster’s scales. Its joy, like the joy of the intellect, is to feel itself alive. The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no less.
towards the very end of this 100+ pages long letter to his former friend, oscar expresses the exact sentiment that had made me want to die: being outcast and unwanted by society. but he did not make that rejection the end.
Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but nature, whose sweet rains fall on just and unjust alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.
this was a reminder i sorely needed: i have a place in the world, even if capitalism hates me. surplus value is not the value of a human life. the moon doesn’t care about my resumé (which is abysmal—an unrecognised disability is unfortunately still disabling).
when i was out with lanterns, looking for myself, as emily dickinson said, oscar wilde reassured me: i have a right to be here. queer love and pleasure are good and beautiful. and making art is a meaningful thing to do with one’s only life.
it was a case of the right book at the right time. rereading it in 2025 was still immensely enjoyable. of course it didn’t hit the same, because i’m not the same. you can never read the same book twice, to paraphrase herakleitos.
i’m grateful to past me for getting through the suffering and uncertainty, and giving me a chance to make art. i’m grateful that i had the means to go on that trip. i’m grateful that i’m still alive, and i feel it’s my duty to try and enjoy it while i can.
the reason i reread this book today is because
’s verse trap prompt of the day was to take a line from a classic and write from, and i took that as my opportunity to revisit de profundis. here’s how my “after” poem looks at the moment (subject to future revisions).the wallpaper dances in the mirror, slips in and out of focus. self-portrait. where is the cell that can house me? the wheel where i may be a cog? my abundance of shapes can't fit, but any apology to the aspen tree is met with apathy. i bring my grocery store receipt for the rosehip; it has zero interest in indicting me. job applications are pointless to the juniper. life or love cannot be earned— and that is how we bear them.
thank you for reading ♡
love & inspiration,
pixie
PS. i’m certain that oscar wilde would have loved this cap (even if he wouldn’t be caught dead wearing it, but that’s a different matter).
you can get it here if you want, and use code VERSETRAPPED for 10% off. proceeds go towards my goal to be financially independent. and the cap goes towards your goal to be the most fabulous person in any room you enter this summer. win-win.
A wonderful exploration of Wilde's De Profundis, and we are meant to discover these things exactly when we most need them. That is why we collect books we don't always read, because we need them to hand, but the moment is not yet come. Truly honoured, as always, to get a mention, and you're right, Oscar would definitely buy that hat but wouldn't wear it outside the house. Maybe it could be his thinking cap!