The House of Judgment
Oscar Wilde
Whole text
And there was silence in the House of Judgment, and the Man came naked before God.
And God opened the Book of the Life of the Man.
And God said to the Man, “Thy life hath been evil, and thou hast shown cruelty to those who were in need of succour, and to those who lacked help thou hast been bitter and hard of heart. The poor called to thee and thou didst not hearken, and thine ears were closed to the cry of My afflicted. The inheritance of the fatherless thou didst take unto thyself and thou didst send the foxes into the vineyard of thy neighbour's field. Thou didst take the bread of the children and give it to the dogs to eat, and My lepers who lived in the marshes, and were at peace and praised Me, thou didst drive forth on to the highways, and on Mine earth out of which I made thee thou didst spill innocent blood.”
And the Man made answer and said, “Even so did I.”
p.235And again God opened the Book of the Life of the Man.
And God said to the Man, “Thy life hath been evil, and the Beauty I have shown thou hast sought for, and the Good I have hidden thou didst pass by. The walls of thy chamber were painted with images, and from the bed of thine abominations thou didst rise up to the sound of flutes. Thou didst build seven altars to the sins I have suffered, and didst eat of the thing that may not be eaten, and the purple of thy raiment was broidered with the three signs of shame. Thine idols were neither of gold nor of silver that endure, but of flesh that dieth. Thou didst stain their hair with perfumes and put pomegranates in their hands. Thou didst stain their feet with saffron and spread carpets before them. With antimony thou didst stain their eyelids and their bodies thou didst smear with myrrh. Thou didst bow thyself to the ground before them, and the thrones of thine idols were set in the sun. Thou didst show to the sun thy shame and to the moon thy madness.”
And the Man made answer and said, “Even so did I.”
And a third time God opened the Book of the Life of the Man.
And God said to the Man, “Evil hath been thy life, and with evil didst thou requite good, p.236 and with wrongdoing kindness. The hands that fed thee thou didst wound, and the breasts that gave thee suck thou didst despise. He who came to thee with water went away thirsting, and the outlawed men who hid thee in their tents at night thou didst betray before dawn. Thine enemy who spared thee thou didst snare in an ambush and the friend who walked with thee thou didst sell for a price, and to those who brought thee Love thou didst ever give Lust in thy turn.”
And the Man made answer and said, “Even so did I.”
And God closed the Book of the Life of the Man, and said, “Surely I will send thee into Hell. Even into Hell will I send thee.”
And the Man cried out, “Thou canst not.”
And God said to the Man, “Wherefore can I not send thee to Hell, and for what reason?”
“Because in Hell have I always lived,” answered the Man.
And there was silence in the House of Judgment.
And after a space God spake, and said to the Man, “Seeing that I may not send thee into Hell, surely I will send thee unto Heaven. Even unto Heaven will I send thee.”
And the Man cried out, “Thou canst not.”
And God said to the Man, “Wherefore can I not send thee unto Heaven, and for what reason?”
p.237“Because never, and in no place, have I been able to imagine it,” answered the Man.
And there was silence in the House of Judgment.
Document details
The TEI Header
File description
Title statement
Title (uniform): Poems in Prose
Title (extended): The House of Judgment
Author: Oscar Wilde
Responsibility statement
Electronic edition compiled and proof-read by: Margaret Lantry
Funded by: University College, Cork
Edition statement
1. First draft, revised and corrected.
Extent: 1545 words
Publication statement
Publisher: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts: a project of University College, Cork
Address: College Road, Cork, Ireland—http://www.ucc.ie/celt
Date: 1997
Date: 2008
Distributor: CELT online at University College, Cork, Ireland.
CELT document ID: E850003-020
Availability: Available with prior consent of the CELT programme for purposes of academic research and teaching only.
Notes statement
There is not as yet an authoritative edition of Wilde's works.
Source description
Select editions
- The writings of Oscar Wilde (London; New York: A. R. Keller & Co. 1907) 15 vols.
- Robert Ross (ed), The First Collected Edition of the Works of Oscar Wilde (London: Methuen & Co. 1908). 15 vols. Reprinted Dawsons: Pall Mall 1969.
- Complete works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: HarperCollins, 1994).
Select bibliography
- 'Notes for a bibliography of Oscar Wilde', Books and book-plates (A quarterly for collectors) 5, no. 3 (April 1905), 170-183.
- Karl E. Beckson, The Oscar Wilde encyclopedia (New York: AMS Press 1998). AMS Studies in the nineteenth century 18.
- Richard Ellmann; John Espey, Oscar Wilde: two approaches: papers read at a Clark Library seminar, April 17, 1976 (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California 1977).
- Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde at Oxford: a lecture delivered at the Library of Congress on March 1, 1983 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress 1984).
- Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde: a biography (London: Hamilton 1987).
- Juliet Gardiner, Oscar Wilde: a life in letters, writings and wit (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1995).
- Frank Harris, Oscar Wilde, including My memories of Oscar Wilde, by George Bernard Shaw and an introductory note by Lyle Blair (London: Robinson, 1992).
- Rupert Hart-Davis (ed), Selected letters of Oscar Wilde (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1979).
- Rupert Hart-Davis (ed), More letters of Oscar Wilde (London: Murray 1985).
- Vyvyan Beresford Holland, Oscar Wilde: a pictorial biography (London: Thames & Hudson 1960).
- H. Montgomery Hyde, Oscar Wilde: a biography (London: Methuen 1977).
- Andrew McDonnell, Oscar Wilde at Oxford: an annotated catalogue of Wilde manuscripts and related items at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, including many hitherto unpublished letters, photographs and illustrations (A. McDonnell 1996). Limited edition of 170 copies.
- Stuart Mason, Bibliography of Oscar Wilde (London: E. G. Richards 1907). Also pubd. New York 1908, London 1914 in 2 vols. Repr. of 1914 edition: New York: Haskell House 1972.
- E. H. Mikhail, Oscar Wilde: an annotated bibliography of criticism (London: Macmillan 1978). Also pubd. Totowa NJ: Rowman & Littlefield 1978.
- Thomas A. Mikolyzk, Oscar Wilde: an annotated bibliography (Westport CT: Greenwood Press 1993). Bibliographies and indexes in world literature, 38.
- Norman Page, An Oscar Wilde chronology (London: Macmillan 1991).
- Hesketh Pearson, A Life of Oscar Wilde (London 1946).
- Richard Pine, The thief of reason: Oscar Wilde and modern Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1996).
- Horst Schroeder, Additions and corrections to Richard Ellmann's Oscar Wilde (Braunschweig: H. Schroeder 1989).
The edition used in the digital edition
Wilde, Oscar (1913). ‘The House of Judgment’. In: Essays and Lectures. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., pp. 234–237.
You can add this reference to your bibliographic database by copying or downloading the following:
@incollection{E850003-020,
author = {Oscar Wilde},
title = {The House of Judgment},
booktitle = {Essays and Lectures},
address = {London},
publisher = {Methuen \& Co. Ltd.},
date = {1913},
pages = {234–237}
}
Encoding description
Project description: CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts
Sampling declarations
All the editorial text with the corrections of the editor has been retained.
Editorial declarations
Correction: Text has been checked, proof-read and parsed using SGMLS.
Normalization: The electronic text represents the edited text.
Quotation: Direct speech is marked q.
Hyphenation: The editorial practice of the hard-copy editor has been retained.
Segmentation: div0=the whole text.
Interpretation: Names of persons (given names), and places are not tagged. Terms for cultural and social roles are not tagged.
Reference declaration
The n attribute of each text in this corpus carries a unique identifying number for the whole text.
The title of the text is held as the first head element within each text.
div0 is reserved for the text (whether in one volume or many).
Profile description
Creation: By Oscar Wilde (1854–1900).
Date: 1894
Language usage
- The text is in English. (en)
Keywords: literary; prose; 19c; story
Revision description
(Most recent first)
- 2010-09-08: Conversion script run; new SGML and HTML files created. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
- 2008-07-31: Keywords added; file validated. Minor changes made to header; new wordcount made. (ed. Beatrix Färber)
- 2005-08-25: Normalised language codes and edited langUsage for XML conversion (ed. Julianne Nyhan)
- 2005-08-04T14:26:00+0100: Converted to XML (conversion Peter Flynn)
- 1997-10-23: Text parsed using SGMLS. (ed. Margaret Lantry)
- 1997-10-08: Text proofed; text spell-checked; structural mark-up inserted. (ed. Margaret Lantry)
- 1997-10-08: Header created. (ed. Margaret Lantry)
- 1997: Text captured. (ed. Donnchadh Ó Corráin)