De Profundis

English

Alternative forms

• De profundis
• de profundis

Etymology

From Middle English De Profundis, De profundis, deprofundis, deprovundis, from Latin dē profundīs (“out of the depths”), the first two words of the Latin version of the 130th Psalm.

Proper noun

De Profundis

1. The 130th psalm, one of the seven penitential psalms of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches.
   • 1881, Louis Gaston A. de Ségur, Familiar instructions and evening lectures on all the truths of religion, page 102:

     The De Profundis is therefore a cry of hope, a prayer of love coming forth from the Sacred Heart to be re-echoed by our own; and whilst hoping for ourselves, we must hope also for our suffering brethren in purgatory, and we have confidence that if we pray with our whole hearts, our merciful Lord will soon deliver these souls, still dearer to Him than ourselves, and will admit them perfectly purified into peace and eternal rest.

   • 1968, Patrick Gallagher, The Life and Works of Garci Sánchez de Badajoz, →ISBN, page 180:

     But the De profundis has only eight verses and so it is not surprising that all of it should have been adapted.

   • 2005, Geoff Wood, Living the Lectionary, Year B: Links to Life and Literature, →ISBN, page 33:

     At 7:30 PM, back in my seminary days, the bell of St. Francis Chapel at Graymoor would toll, summoning us to recite the De Profundis on behalf of the dead.

2. A letter to Lord Alfred Douglas written by Oscar Wilde while he was imprisoned for gross indecency (homosexual acts). The title is a reference to the 130th psalm.
   • 2000, Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, →ISBN:

     Some years later, in his Autobiography, Douglas gave a significantly different version of events: My own evidence on this point is obscured by the fact that, as I did not know of the existence of the De Profundis MS.

   • 2004, F. Roden, Palgrave Advances in Oscar Wilde Studies, →ISBN, page 176:

     Max Beerbohm, in a remarkably insightful review in Vanity Fair, specifically took on the "De Profundis is radically different" reading of Wilde: "Some of the critics, wishing to reconcile present enthusiasm with past indifference. . . have been suggesting that De Profundis is quite unlike any previous work of Oscar Wilde - a quite sudden and unrelated phenomenon.

   • 2017, Annette M. Magid, Quintessential Wilde, →ISBN:

     One of the most lyrical and powerful passages of the De Profundis can be heard towards its very conclusion.

3. The name of various other works of art inspired by the feelings expressed in the 130th psalm. (see De Profundis)