Liberty - Saturday, July 13, 1895

Oscar Wilde's Imprisonment
[Octave Mirbeau in Le Journal]

A few days ago "Le Gaulois" described the frightful daily torture which the unfortunate Oscar Wilde is forced to undergo in his prison. This account, not written to excite sympathy and having all the swift and impersonal abruptness of a legal document, haunts one like a tale of Edgar Poe; it inspires the same terror, aggravated by the knowledge that it is not a piece of literary fiction, but a statement of truth. Never did any crime, however atrocious, cause me to shudder with horror as does this punishment. This account carries one back beyond the century, to a distant and barbarous time, — to those gloomy middle-ages whose masterpieces have not been able to wipe out the red stain of torture or dissipate the odour of flesh roasting at the stake. The vision of this unfortunate, and of a thousand other martyrs more obscure, turning the wheel of torture in constant terror of the death that will be theirs if, at the end of their strength and courage, they stop turning for a moment, obsesses me like a frightful nightmare. And nothing is lacking, not even the shaven face of the clergyman replacing the hooded monk, who comes every day to talk to these suffering beings of the justice of men and the goodness of God. Oh, this clergyman! He is to be found wherever there are blood and tears. He is the same personage who in the colonies presides over massacres, Bible in hand, sanctifies tortures, legalizes depredations, covers with his crapulous coat the work of grim destruction and abominable conquest that will later be the shame of this time. The monks of Cortés and Pizzaro have not altered. They have simply taken off their woolen gowns and put on shining coats.

How can it be that physical torture, such as that of which Oscar Wilde is a victim, is still tolerated in the judicial customs of today? When one reflects a little one is frightened at the thought that this dark corner of social life has not yet been penetrated by the progress which has changed so many things less necessary to human enfranchisement. In England especially this is astonishing. In walking the streets of London you are impressed more than anywhere else with the real existence of progress. There the modern trend towards individual liberty is most apparent. Authority hides itself. All the more striking, then, is the contrast between this liberty and the violent barbarism practiced in the prisons. One day, when I was philosophizing upon these questions with an Englishman, he said to me:

"You wonder at our civilization, and at the sentiment of individual liberty so deeply rooted in us. Yes, that is the general impression which visitors carry away from London, of which they see but the surface. These qualities, which strike you so forcibly, are rather race characteristics than the products of a more rational social order. The laws go for nothing in this matter. You must not see, in that which you admire in us, anything more than a manifestation of our egoism. For we are no better than other peoples, and our political institutions are not, in essence, superior to yours. All states are equally good at bottom — that is, good for nothing, — and all weigh upon man with that same crushing weight north, south, east, and west. In the matter of Oscar Wilde and his sentence, — yes, for a moment, we were astounded. We had almost forgotten what the words ‘hard labour,' meant. There has been but one opinion expressed, which may be summed up thus: ‘It is abominable!It is a remnant of old barbaric customs; it must be changed at any price, for the honor of civilization.' And then, this tribute paid to the city, the matter was forgotten, and will not again be thought of until some new event shall come again to remind us that ‘hard labour’ really exists and must be changed. Alas! it exists everywhere, as well in Russia as in Germany, France, and Italy. The form of torture differs with the country, but, believe me, human suffering does not lose a single cry or a single drop of blood. And the curious thing is that progress has made itself felt everywhere save in the department of justice. All the social organs have been more or less improved, with the exception of the judicial organ, in which the soul of barbarous days and the madness of the ancient violences practised upon the human personality remain intact and respected. See, for instance, in France, your examining magistrate, with his sovereign powers, his formidable authority, counterbalanced by no check, by no responsibility! Is he not a monstrosity, a permanent defiance of the very Justice which he incarnates? Are not the methods which he employs to wring confession from those whom he supposes or wishes to be guilty almost always clear offences or even crimes? Do they not remind one of the old-time tortures, and are they not in reality an application, moral at any rate and often physical, of the abolished rites of the Inquisition? We must have the courage to say it, and to repeat it. Judge though he be, a judge is a man, like the rest of us. Perhaps even more so than the rest of us, more liable, through his calling, to the temptations and follies, that make of him a deformed creature, a maniac, a delinquent, as the philosophers say. One of my friends, a very famous physician, had once an opportunity to study the brain of a judge who, during his life, had passed for a man admirable in his art, of superior integrity, of lucid intelligence. Well, in that brain he discovered profound lesions, such as are observed only in the most hardened criminals; he found unquestionable traces of terrible mania. Think of all the crimes that this man was able to commit with impunity! And it may yet be centuries and centuries before the reforms deemed necessary will be attempted and our judicial system be brought into conformity with the new conditions of life."

And as I asked him more particularly his opinion as to Oscar Wilde, the Englishman simply answered:

"Oscar Wilde will serve his term, the whole of it. For what he has committed is not a crime, or even an offence; it is a sin."