De Bartokomous
@debartokomous.bsky.social
De Profundis, a heartfelt letter on the nature of love and forgiveness, written in 1897 by Oscar Wilde, with images from Perfect Strangers, which ran for eight seasons on ABC.
It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain.
August 3, 2025 at 6:41 PM
It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain.
The thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse.
August 3, 2025 at 6:36 PM
The thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse.
There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation.
August 3, 2025 at 6:34 PM
There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation.
Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things.
August 3, 2025 at 6:32 PM
Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things.
The calendar of my daily conduct and labour that hangs on the outside of my cell door, with my name and sentence written upon it, tells me that it is May. . . .
August 3, 2025 at 6:31 PM
The calendar of my daily conduct and labour that hangs on the outside of my cell door, with my name and sentence written upon it, tells me that it is May. . . .
Three months go over.
August 3, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Three months go over.
Even people who had not known me personally, hearing that a new sorrow had broken into my life, wrote to ask that some expression of their condolence should be conveyed to me. . . .
August 3, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Even people who had not known me personally, hearing that a new sorrow had broken into my life, wrote to ask that some expression of their condolence should be conveyed to me. . . .
Messages of sympathy reached me from all who had still affection for me.
August 3, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Messages of sympathy reached me from all who had still affection for me.
My wife, always kind and gentle to me, rather than that I should hear the news from indifferent lips, travelled, ill as she was, all the way from Genoa to England to break to me herself the tidings of so irreparable, so irremediable, a loss.
July 31, 2025 at 11:48 PM
My wife, always kind and gentle to me, rather than that I should hear the news from indifferent lips, travelled, ill as she was, all the way from Genoa to England to break to me herself the tidings of so irreparable, so irremediable, a loss.
What I suffered then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write or paper to record.
July 31, 2025 at 11:46 PM
What I suffered then, and still suffer, is not for pen to write or paper to record.
I had given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into a synonym for folly.
July 31, 2025 at 11:45 PM
I had given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into a synonym for folly.
I had dragged it through the very mire.
July 31, 2025 at 11:42 PM
I had dragged it through the very mire.
I had made it a low by-word among low people.
July 31, 2025 at 11:41 PM
I had made it a low by-word among low people.
I had disgraced that name eternally.
July 31, 2025 at 11:27 PM
I had disgraced that name eternally.
She and my father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured, not merely in literature, art, archaeology, and science, but in the public history of my own country, in its evolution as a nation.
July 31, 2025 at 11:26 PM
She and my father had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured, not merely in literature, art, archaeology, and science, but in the public history of my own country, in its evolution as a nation.
A week later, I am transferred here. Three more months go over and my mother dies. No one knew how deeply I loved and honoured her. Her death was terrible to me; but I, once a lord of language, have no words in which to express my anguish and my shame.
July 31, 2025 at 11:25 PM
A week later, I am transferred here. Three more months go over and my mother dies. No one knew how deeply I loved and honoured her. Her death was terrible to me; but I, once a lord of language, have no words in which to express my anguish and my shame.
Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why I am writing, and in this manner writing. . . .
July 31, 2025 at 11:24 PM
Remember this, and you will be able to understand a little of why I am writing, and in this manner writing. . . .
The thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again to-morrow.
July 31, 2025 at 11:22 PM
The thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again to-morrow.
And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more.
July 31, 2025 at 11:21 PM
And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more.
It is always twilight in one’s cell, as it is always twilight in one’s heart.
July 31, 2025 at 9:58 PM
It is always twilight in one’s cell, as it is always twilight in one’s heart.
For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey.
July 31, 2025 at 9:56 PM
For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey.
Of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms or strewn with fallen fruit: of these we know nothing and can know nothing.
July 31, 2025 at 9:34 PM
Of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms or strewn with fallen fruit: of these we know nothing and can know nothing.
this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence is ceaseless change.
July 31, 2025 at 9:33 PM
this immobile quality, that makes each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to communicate itself to those external forces the very essence of whose existence is ceaseless change.
The paralysing immobility of a life every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that we eat and drink and lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula
July 31, 2025 at 9:31 PM
The paralysing immobility of a life every circumstance of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that we eat and drink and lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula
With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain.
July 31, 2025 at 9:28 PM
With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain.