Salut !
Je vous présente aujourd’hui cette même lettre ouverte mais en anglais (traduite par un des professeurs nous accompagnant). Je n’ai pu en lire qu’un morceau lors de la représentation mais vu que le professeur avait tout traduit, autant vous le montrer ! Je conçois que tous mes lecteurs peuvent ne pas parler anglais…mais en Irlande tout le monde parle anglais !
J’avais appris mon texte par cœur pour pouvoir apprécier le moment et tenter de me concentrer plus sur la respiration, le débit et l’intonation. De ce fait je n’ai pas eu à regarder ma copie (qui était quand même là au cas où) et j’ai pu observer l’assemblée. Il y avait environ 150 personnes et des personnalités que nous ne connaissions pas. Toutefois je crois qu’il aurait pu y avoir 200 personnes de plus cela ne m’aurait pas plus stressé. C’était vraiment la première rangée qui faisait monter en moi l’adrénaline : les deux souverains et leurs conjoints. Pas la peine de vous expliquer alors que les regarder plus d’une dizaine de secondes dans les yeux était impossible pour moi !
Voilà je vous laisse apprécier, je l’espère, le texte.
Bye et bonne lecture !
__________________________________________
Open letter to Oscar Wilde
To you who will never read these words,
This afternoon, isolated from regards, far from the crowd, I held your soul in my hand. Faceless and ageless, it seemed so frail, like paper fibres torn by the pen. This afternoon my imagination was riding over hilltops, brushing by plains, spreading its wings to reach your immaculate shelter. The mind has no other boundaries than those erected by nakes fear. Tonight I am not afraid to write to a stranger.
What do I really know about you ? Was that book only a work of beauty, an illusion or the depiction of a man’s heart ? I walked for what seemed hours, years through the alleys drawn by your lines, surrounded by words and letters. The writing sheet is nothing but an ideal of purity sullied by the black ink of our ideas. The pages of your book were yellow, more by the sin of the reader than by time. At each street corner, each turn of a page, each new paragraph, I expected someone. Yet no new protagonist could satisfy my thrist : behind the mask of Henry, Basil or Dorian, it was your face I was searching for, a message from you to guide me, hint at some yet unknown emotion. The reader is always digging for the gold of feelings.
Is reality so inhuman that it should be blamed and censored ? How does it feel to lay bare to a judgmental world a part of your soul ? I stop with my pen only millimetres away from the sheet : is it my mind full of doubts or my conscience full of apprehension ?
Why all those questions ? If I were facing you, looking you in the eye, would there be these blanks, like specks on a canvas ?
Questions should be directed at the mind, not the soul. The mind meditates, the heart feels then acts while the soul lifts and carries ; and when it cannot bear anymore, the sheet takes over before the pen etches shame and sorrow, all those emotions that are brought to light by books, those tortured faces of humanity.
With each reading of your tale, I kept losing my breath.
At first, I did not pay much attention and read your book as an assignment. Like an insidious voice whispering to my ear, you coaxed me into thinking and questioning myself. Now, because of you, I doubt and judge every act of mine. Because of you, I fear the motives of my acts, those emotions I cannot control. Because of that book of yours I have been given, I am no longer so pure. It does not show on my face, nor in my choices yet, however I can feel some change I must keep secret and can only share with you.
So unfortunate ! Because of you, I am less ignorant.
I remember that novel Henry had given to Dorian, the unforeseen effects, the growing obsession, the addiction…
A free spirit should never believe what is written in a book. Whether life or litterature is real, I do not know ; in any case, it all comes down to thrusting your chest at the gun of reality or finding refuge in a never-ending dream.
Reading is hazardous, it is not just facing a material object ; it means confronting your soul to someone else’s. Today I have lost the fight.
Little by little the sun went down on the horizon though I did not realise it. I light my desk lamp so as to read my words again. Why this instinctive familiarity ? It is not the first time I have considered writing to an author whose book made an impact on me, in the hope of receiving advice and recommendations. But desires are just aborted reality. I have never dared. Today however, I need not be polite ; this is not out of a feeling of superiority or contempt, on the contrary : we can only write to those we love and respect.
No matter how great man’s scientific accomplishments, no matter how powerful the machines he builds, no matter how vast the extent of his actions and influence, there always remains dreams, the inacessible. If it is enough to call someone by their first name to come imperceptibly closer to the elusive, then allow me…Oscar.
I’ll be honest, I did not always give your book my undivided attention. I skipped paragraphs, browsed through your lines, brandished your soul in a bus, in a railway station, at break time in school…
Yet that is not all you should know : This morning, just as Dorian barely escaped death and used his beauty as a weapon, I felt nauseous : my heart was pounding, my breath was short, as though it had been me falling to the ground while in my head sounded these two words « Pince Charming ». I felt caught in a tighteningvice-like grip.
I wanted to rescue Dorian, forgive him for his mistakes and see him start a new life, just as he had fleetingly hoped to.
You would not let me.
Without understanding why, I found myself behind Dorian, observing him, alone with his portrait in the attic.
You stunned me.
I witnesed his crime, his last one. Yet, even then, you did not set me free.
It feels strange to be writing this letter ; it is like talking to someone through a wall. You cannot see them react ; yet every word you write is meant for that person ; you speak and no one can stop you. Tonight you haunt me.
If you could see our world today ! Your book is its portrait. Today people are judged by their appearance, charm and grace are paramount. Today differences are pointed at. Today it is enough to have money to have it all : friends, confort, drugs, power…Today the eye of the beholder is the reflexion of our soul. Today we disfigure ourselves to look better, we pay to hide the portrait !
Oscar, please tell me that this is not real, that we do not always act out of self-interest, that true friendship can be, that we can protect ourselves from burning desire, that beauty is not the key to success, that life may go on for the disfigured. Let me just dream that there is still some purity in this world. Only you can make this wish come true tonight.
I put down your book, I lay down your soul? Had I not borrowed that book, it would have been all the same to you. Your piece of painting would have faithfully remained.
I was just passing through, like a dove through the clouds when the storm of your passion caught me unawares and left me stranded on the shore, a short letter soaked with blue ink.
And yet I feel that I have crept into your life. No one knows it but many pages are dog-eared., an anonymous mark of my admiration. At every sentence I wanted to remember I folded a corner of the page before writing it down. Of course I did try to remove any trace of my presence but here and there, the book is scared.
To you who will never reply to these lines,
Tonight I have just understood : writting means much more than just aiming at beauty in form and expression ; writing means drawing a soul, one’s own soul.
Tonight I have fancied myself as a writer, I put pen to paper as though my opinion mattered and I really had something to say.
Tonight Oscar I have discovered myself as a painter.
Thanks you.
