I vaguely remember reading this back in high school and to be honest, I don't know why it isn't on my list of favorite classics.. it's right in my wheelhouse. Probably slipped through the cracks or something.

Anyway, this is a spectacular read. Gothic, dark- a disturbing portrait of an individual coming face to face with the reality of his soul.

Great read on this gloomy, rainy, fall day.


“

n  There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.n

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n   “How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”n

Be careful what you wish for.


Oscar Wilde - image from Wikipedia

Man sells soul to the devil in return for…something, in this case a body encased in eternal youth, while a portrait takes on the outward manifestation of his aging and his sins. It ends badly, as deals with the devil usually do. This is hardly a unique tale. In fact, it is a bit of a trope, a Faustian bargain. There is a lovely listing here of examples new and old. Absent, of course, is the most famous, and least successful example of a soul-selling, really more of a soul-buying, from Matthew 4:1-11, when the devil made Jesus an offer he actually could refuse. Don Corleone would have been very disappointed.

But it is a bit more complicated than that, as these things often are. It is always a challenge and an adventure to read a classic. Books become regarded as a base part of our culture for reasons. They can establish motifs, or ways of seeing the world that resonate with their contemporary audiences (well, not always) and future generations. They can offer us a portrait of a time and place, a culture, a class, a social or political issue. They can illuminate moral questions, deal in universal themes, offer insight into human motivation, whether individually or en masse. And we come to see them in particular ways. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the prior re-pub in this Gravelight series, what one finds in the original is not quite what one might expect, given how popular culture has transformed the story by bleaching out important nuance. That is less the case with Dorian Gray, at least in part because there appears to have been fewer iterations of the tale in popular entertainments. But, nonetheless, our understanding of the story is generally of the bare bones sort. There is plenty of flesh to give those bones some added heft.


Jeffrey Keeten - they came to take his furniture, but the only way they will take his books is from his cold dead hands - image from his site

The history of a book matters. Keeten’s introduction offers an excellent take on how Dorian was received at publication. It generated quite a bit of attention on its release. There were many who were not amused. That may have contributed to the fact that The Picture of Dorian Gray is singular in being the sole novel published by Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde. The subject matter was considered a big no-no in 1890. The Dorian of the title is a man of many tastes, and apparently insatiable appetites. He manages to bring ruin to both men and women. It was not, in particular, the ruination of women that caused a storm. The periodical in which it was first published was withdrawn from bookshops due to the outrage.

Wilde was a very popular writer of the time, wearing his sexuality like a badge. A tough stance to assume in a culture that preferred to sate it appetites and interests discretely. His novel was a shocker for the time in portraying homosexuality in interest, if hardly in action. The painter of Dorian’s portrait is clearly smitten with him, dazzled by his physical beauty, which he sees also as representative of an underlying perfection.

For all the shock of its homosexual content, there is no physical contact of that sort in the pages. (an earlier version may have been more direct) All is insinuation, suggestion, hinting. It is the same technique that has worked quite well for ages in the horror genre. Shadows, rattling chains, creaky doors, unsourced moans. Sometimes we are offered the shocker scene in which the monster is revealed. The Opera Phantom’s mask is pulled off to reveal the horror of his face. Hyde’s deformity is revealed as the window into Jekyll’s soul. And so it is here. Dorian’s true nature is revealed. The “I’m shocked, shocked” reaction of contemporary critics suggests more about what they were projecting onto the novel than what was actually there.


The portrait, used in the 1945 film by Ivan Le Lorraine Albright - image from Wikipedia

So, what is the horror that is on display? It is the hedonism of the late 19th century English upper class, sashaying about in the interesting, entertaining, appealing drag of philosophy. Henry argues for the unashamedly sybaritic life. Art need have no meaning, no being other than itself. Apply to humans. Is art, is beauty the highest value? When beauty is left to dangle free, disconnected from any higher value, what is its impact on the world? Actions have no moral content. It is in fact a positive good to live a life dedicated to the primitive accumulation of sensation, through the arts, through physical pleasures, not just of sex, but of sight, smell, sound and touch, to experience beauty in all its forms. Try everything. Art for art’s sake in the guise of human experience. Some people have an amazing ability to come up with excuses for their excesses, explanations, some reason for why they shouldn’t be held accountable for their actions. Like the poor and taxes, we will always have the morally challenged, the malignant narcissists, the sociopaths with us.

n  beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won’t smile.... People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible....n

But if this was on the up and up, there would have been no need to keep one’s behavior secret. It is clearly a place where freedom crosses the line into license. The practitioners of such a “philosophy” knew they were up to no good. They merely wanted to hide from the responsibility. Dr Jekyll was quite happy to have an alter-ego he could let loose on the world, to have the sorts of fun he could not have as himself in public view. They knew, not just that their behavior was wrong, not just that it ran afoul of extant mores, but that their reasoned explanation was taffeta thick.


Hurd Hatfield as Dorian in the 1945 film - image from Wikipedia

It is not the barely latent bisexuality of the novel that marks Dorian as fallen, it is that he had ruined peoples’ lives, men and women, not by having sex with them, (which is suggested, but never acted out on the pages) but by corrupting them in various ways, by causing them to become as self-centered, as pleasure-seeking as he was. A person can get away with this if he or she is wealthy enough. Paying off porn stars to keep quiet about an extramarital fling certainly fits into such a scenario. Dorian manages to keep his scandals at bay with the use of his wealth.

It is as true today as it was when Wilde was writing this book, the selfishness, the hedonism, the amorality of the wealthy feeds on the blood and life forces of those they exploit, few of whom can afford to fight back directly. (You go, E. Jean!) I imagine this is a core of what Wilde was getting at, and the real reason his critics were so angry at him.

Dorian does not come to his corruption unaided. He arrives as a beautiful young man, who is seen as being as pristine inside as he is on the surface. The Victorians were very concerned with exteriors, believing that they served as personal screens displaying to the world a person’s character. But then he is introduced to Lord Henry Wotton. Henry proceeds to emit a torrent of nonsense, albeit amusing nonsense, mocking the morals of the time. Wilde, speaking through Henry, is cattier than my living room when I shake a container of treats. Henry offers a torrent of false, cynical aphorisms, suitable material to be printed on small pieces of paper and tucked inside poisoned fortune cookies. Were he opining today, Henry would be posting outrageous clickbait opinions on Twitter. Here are a few examples. They are legion, and will sound familiar in tone to characters from Wilde’s 1895 theatrical triumph, The Importance of Being Earnest

n  …beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid.

…the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. When we meet-we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together or go down to the Duke’s—we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces.

…as for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.n

It is the cynical Henry who finds in the gullible Dorian the raw material with which to cast the young man into a representative of his very hedonistic view of life. Dorian offers the plasticity of the young to the dubious molding of the amoral. The young man is all ears. He even takes time away from the painter, Basil Hallward, to learn at Wotton’s feet. .

n  To a large extent the lad was his own creation. He had made him premature. That was something. Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting. n

We are offered a bit of background on Dorian, to help explain his vulnerability to Lord Henry’s dark influence. And are even given a bit of theatrical brimstone to explain how the deal with the devil is achieved. Neither really matters much.


Angela Lansbury as Sibyl Vane in the 1945 film - image from Wikipedia

Early on, Dorian is smitten with a beautiful young actress, Sibyl Vane, who considers him her Prince Charming. It is Sibyl’s appearance, her elevated acting performances, in addition to her beauty, that attracts Dorian. But when her dazzling talent on stage suddenly vanishes, she can no longer offer Dorian the thing he most admired, and he dumps her, cruelly. It is the first crime to which we are witness, the first time his painting changes. The pursuit of beauty and sensation above all else has claimed its first victim. There will be many more, but most of those bad behaviors take place off screen.

Wilde put all of himself into this novel

n  “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be.”n

Unlike Lord Henry, and Basil Hallward, though, Wilde acted on his urges. Unlike Dorian, Wilde was imprisoned for his actions. Unlike Henry’s and Dorian’s depraved indifference to the harm they caused others, it is not clear that Wilde was a cruel person.

Dorian is clearly a corrupt individual. Whether he arrived there unaided or had a push is of secondary importance. Lord Henry is clearly corrupt as well, even though we do not see him engage in any physical acts of treachery. Perhaps the corruption of youth, pulling Luke Dorian to the dark side is enough. Henry and Dorian both represent the worst of the amorality of the Victorian age, the hypocrisy of the upper class. This seems the true target of Wilde’s effort. He is not celebrating amorality, but pointing an accusing finger at it, and letting us know who are its most damaging practitioners. At one point Dorian even shows enough residual humanity to want to turn over a new leaf, not appreciating that to succeed he would need to upend an entire forest. (don’t write. I know that the leaf in question was supposed to mean a book page.)

Keeten goes into some detail on the derivation of the name Dorian Gray. Why not Loki? There are reasons. In fact, there is a lot you will enjoy learning when you check out his introduction. It is rich with detail about the author, the book, and the controversy that surrounded its publication. It also looks at the lasting impact Wilde has had on modern culture. It will definitely increase your appreciation of this wonderful novel.

I suppose there might be a modern version in which Gray and his portrait are linked by quantum entanglement, or one should be made if it does not already exist. The battle between inner self and outer manifestation is certainly an eternal literary theme.

For the second time, a sojourn down the Gravelight illuminated alley of classic horror has proved stimulating and enlightening. From Keeten’s smart, incisive intro to the chance to see what the original of a household-name classic was really on about, The Picture of Dorian Gray offers a richly rewarding reading experience, clever, funny, dark, shocking, intelligent, satirical, and satisfying.

n  There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.n

Review posted - 02/23/24

Publication date – 11/6/23

I received copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray from Gravelight Press in return for a fair review.

n  nn  nn  nn  nn  nn  n

This review has been cross-posted on Coot’s Reviews

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to Keeten’s personal, FB, and Instagram pages

Prior reviews for books intro’d by J. Keeten
----- Exhumed: 13 Tales Too Terrifying to Stay Dead – edited by David Yurkovich
----- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – edited by David Yurkovich

Items of Interest
-----Les Cent Nouvelles - a book of coarse French stories referenced in Chapter 4
-----Margaret of Valois
-----Manon Lescaut - an 18th C. novel in which young lovers live a life of sexual and social freedom, while giving morality little thought – referenced in chapter 4
-----The St. James’s Gazette - referenced in chapter 10
-----Elephantis - author of a sex manual in Classical Greece – noted in Chapter 11
-----Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans – cited in the introduction – Dorian’s reading of this 1884 celebration of sensory gluttony contributes to his corruption
-----Wiki Deals with the devil in popular culture

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a hard book to review. After reading such eloquent, beautiful, and rich writing, I am at a loss for how to command my comparatively paltry ability to use words to express how I felt about this book.

Forgive me as I go back to AP English for a few moments. I asked myself what were the themes of this novel. Here is my list:

Identity
Experience
Beauty
The triumph on senses over reason
Accountability

I will attempt to build my review, in part, around the discussion of these themes.

Identity
Dorian Gray was a flawed man who was essentially empty inside. He was very young when this story began, seemingly full of potential. Sadly, he invested all his sense of worth in his external beauty, doing little to grow the inner man; unless you consider his descent into depravity, discovering more and more excesses for the meaningless value of those experiences (since his mentor Lord Henry taught him that experience has no value), yet he was strangely curious as to how they would affect the portrait of his soul. He was not quite a tragic figure, because I could not feel sorry for him. He had made this horrible decision (and I believe he had opportunities to repent of it, which he didn't take), but he chose never to take responsibility for himself. Which leads to the next theme.

Accountability
As I said above, I could feel no sympathy for Dorian Gray. Why? Because he never took responsibility for his actions. Being accountable for one's own actions is a crucial aspect of self-development, at least in my humble opinion. If a person cannot do that, they are doomed to eternal immaturity. This was Dorian's fate. It was Basil's fault for painting the picture. It was Sybil's fault for being a bad actress, and making him fall out of love with her. All the people he ruined in his relentless pursuit of pleasure and debauchery ruined themselves. He took no part in their ruination. Ultimately, he even blamed the picture, and sought to destroy it as the only true evidence of his black soul. I feel like this: If you're going to be a bad, selfish person, own up to it. Don't try to act like your sins should be laid at other people's feet. That was the route the Mr. Dorian Gray took.

Experience
Lord Henry was the man who opens Dorian's eyes to the fact that the only thing he has to his advantage is the beauty of his youth, that he should enjoy life while he is young enough to experience it fully. He states that experience is not a teacher, and that men don't learn from the mistakes they make as they live. Your experiences don't count for anything. It seemed to be a self-fulfilling prophecy for Dorian Gray. Instead of realizing how his selfish, shallow actions could hurt and destroy others, he never did do that. He merely went from one fixation to the other, marking the effects on the portrait that he guarded jealously. In the end, there was no value to what he experienced. He was just wasting time (in my opinion).

The triumph of sensation over reason
Dorian Gray became a voluptuary, lost in sensations. He didn't focus on becoming a learned person, only experiencing what he encountered in his pursuits, wallowing in those sensations; until he grew bored, and moved onto the next one. Lord Henry seemed like a good mentor. A man who appeared so intelligent, with a saying for everything. A witty, entertaining man, who had a reputation for saying utterly wicked things. But he wasn't a deep man. He didn't believe what he said. It was an image that he projected for lack of anything else to do as an aristocrat who had no need to work for a living. Dorian Gray took this as gospel, and took it to the next level. As a result, it made his life utterly meaningless. Sadly, his friend Basil, who was a fairly wise person, was dismissed, and made fun of by Lord Henry. I almost felt like Basil and Lord Henry were the warring aspects of Dorian's conscience, at times.

Beauty
What is beauty? I tend to think it's a double-edged sword. We are all attracted to things that are beautiful, that have a physical appeal. But, should we be content with merely a comely appearance, while the inside is rotted? Dorian Gray was a man of such unearthly beauty that people could not believe he was capable of the debauchery he had committed. Those who didn't heed the warnings given to them, came to rue it. Basil, who painted the young Dorian's fateful picture, couldn't accept that Dorian had become such a horrible person. What a sad fate that was for Basil.


I felt several things as I read this book: interest, curiosity, disgust, sadness, and ultimately, a sense that justice had been done, in a very strange, but fitting way.

One thing that became very apparent to me as I read this novel, was Oscar Wilde's considerable wit. I imagine he was quite entertaining to be around.

In the preface, Oscar Wilde says that all art is meaningless. What was he trying to say with this story? Nothing?

I have trouble believing that. This was a novel I couldn't dismiss and treat as mere brain candy. There was some message there that hammered away at my brain. I do believe that Mr. Wilde hints at the subjective nature of art (which includes literature). I think that we could all read the same story and take away different things from it. Our brains are so very different, and the pathways are nurtured and developed by our various experiences, and our own values. So, that we will all come away from viewing a picture or reading a story with a hand-tailored message. Maybe that's what he means by saying that an artist strives not to be present in his work. Instead, it is a mirror reflecting the viewer. That makes sense to me, actually.

What message did I come away with?

At the end of the day, I believe that Dorian Gray led a worthless life. His eternal youth counted for nothing. He never grew as a person, and he used the bounteous gifts he'd been given selfishly. He did horrible things that made it even worse. He was lucky in that he didn't live long enough to count the full cost of those actions. He allowed the portrait to take the weight of those sins intead of letting them rest where they belonged. If anything really bothers me as a person, it's the thought of my time on this earth being wasted. Never having accomplished anything of value. For that reason, I found Dorian Gray to be a very sad man, but I could not feel sorry for him.

So, is this a horror novel, you might ask?

I think this is a thinking person's horror novel. It is a study of how the sins we commit cannot be hidden, even if we lie to ourselves about that. Interestingly enough, Mr. Wilde does not elaborate on what vile acts Dorian committed. We are left to our own expansive imaginations to surmise the bulk of what he'd done. Some people don't believe in such a thing as sin. If you don't believe in sin, how could it have a cost? It didn't matter that Dorian Gray didn't acknowledge his sins. They caught up with him in the end. The horror is how he confronted the consequences of his sins, yet turned away from them, locking that manifestation away in the attic to view with a detached sort of curiosity. The horror is the lives he destroyed, but never felt more than a moment's remorse. Fundamentally, Dorian Gray was an angelically beautiful monster. The horror is that we can look upon beauty, and we can be fooled into never asking what lies beneath it.

I finished reading this last night, and afterwards I spent an entire hour staring into space so I could contemplate over the majesty of this work. It left me speechless. This book is exquisite; it is an investigation into the human soul, the power of vanity and the problems of living a life with not a single consequence for your actions. It’s truly powerful stuff.

It begins with a simple realisation, and perhaps an obvious one. But, for Dorian it is completely life changing. He realises that beauty is finite. It won’t last forever. It’s like a flower, temporary and splendid. So if you’re a young man whose appearance is your singular quality, then this is some damn scary news. People only want to be with you because you’re attractive and charming; they want to be near you, and with you, for your looks only.

So when that goes what do you have left?

Nothing.

No friends.

No love.

Only age.

So what do you do? How do you retain your singular quality? Well, the answer is simple, you copy Doctor Faustus (The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus) and sell your soul to the devil!

"How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that -- for that -- I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!"

  

And this is where the real depravity begins. Dorian’s world has no consequences. Everything he does is attributed to the painting, everything. Any regret or malice leaves him quickly and is transferred to the canvas. So he can’t technically feel emotion for an extended period of time; thus, his attitude becomes one of nonchalance. He becomes a shell, an emotionless creature who can only seek his sin: vanity. He surrounds himself with beauty. His house is full of art, brilliant music and every luxury known to man. You name it. Dorian’s got it. Only through seeking new experiences, these pleasures, can Dorian’s being remain animated. I intentionally used the word “being” for Dorian’s body no longer harbours his soul; it’s in the painting. Everything he does is for his own indulgence; he just doesn’t care what affect his presence has on others. The prefect moment is all he lives for.

“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”

The character of Dorian Gray is an interesting study because he is representative of many things. He shows how a seemingly pure soul can be corrupted if it’s left in a sense of privation and given terrible guidance. Also he is suggestive of the Victorian ideal of the perfect societal image. One must be respectable at all times, and have all the appropriate airs and graces. But behind closed doors, or perhaps even a curtain, anything goes. He is suggestive of the hidden evils of Victorian society as behind the mask was many dark things. For example, the Empire and colonialism to the Victorians was a wonderful thing; it built wealth and structure, but in reality it destroyed culture and subjected peoples to slavery. The same things can be said of child labour, the exploitation of women and terrible working conditions. Everything exists behind a veil of grandeur, and this is no less true for Dorian.

The homosexual suggestions are practically ground-breaking. Wilde wasn’t the only Victorian author to suggest such things. Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde can be read in a similar vein, but Wilde was much more explicit. It’s not cryptic; it’s just plain homosexual lust for all to see on the part of Basil and (perhaps?) even Sir Henry later on. It’s still rather horrific that Wilde was actually arrested for homosexual acts. Silly Victorians. The novel also shows that despite being corrupted to such a degree, to commit murder in such a terrible sense, Dorian (the Victorian man?) isn’t beyond all redemption. He can still come back from his deeds and end it all. The ending was perfection. This has great allegorical meaning.



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➸ on pause at 10%
[i will get back to it someday.]

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my goal for this year is to read more classics so i decided to start with this one!! heard good things about it and i’m very excited, let’s see how it goes

Consequence
The Picture of Dorian Gray, apart from being a classic work of literature and written by one of the greatest writers of all time, is a book that has readers searching for meaning and it opens up a debate on the consequences of our actions. The consequence of remaining young and transferring the ageing process to a portrait was more than just the outward reflection of Dorian Gray, it also affected his internal soul and moral compass. Along with the painter Basil Hallward and his associate Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian's life takes a direction into hedonistic behaviour.

What price would you be willing to pay to remain young? It's one of those age-old fantasies, would you challenge nature? Would you challenge lawfulness? Would you challenge morality? Could your conscience remain clear? Like I said it opens up debate and poses questions that hypothetically we love to ponder.

Given those choices, Dorian Gray challenged them all, as their immediate consequences seemed to evade him, his character eroded over the years. When he wants to know the true nature of his character he only has to view the Portrait and he will see the transference of his soul manifested into physical appearance presented in its most horrific detail. Can there be any redemption?

It's Oscar Wilde, so expect literary genius as he fills each page with wonderful poetic prose and the delicate way he constructs characters and builds the interactions between them. I've watched the film adaptations of this story but the book far exceeds the intent and the challenge to our sense of morality.

A book I highly recommend and it may be surprising to know that it was Oscar Wilde's only novel.

"Ningún hombre es lo suficientemente rico para comprar su pasado." Oscar Wilde

Siento por Oscar Wilde una profunda admiración. Es un referente literario imprescindible en mi vida y pocos autores (y personas) me han enseñado tanto acerca de la vida como él. Esta fue la única novela que escribió en su vida. Será recordado por sus hermosos poemas, sus aleccionadores cuentos de hadas y sus afamadísimas obras de teatro. Y también por su escandalosa e irreverente vida.
Wilde fue un bon vivant inolvidable, dandy absoluto, agitador social de su época y desafiante de toda la moralidad pacata y horrible que dominó a la sociedad victoriana en Inglaterra durante parte del siglo XIX.
Su juicio perdido por sodomía contra el padre de quien fuera el hombre que más amó y que se llamó Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas alcanzó para que lo condenaran a dos años de prisión forzada en la cárcel de Reading y posteriormente a la pobreza, el olvido, el dolor, la enfermedad y una solitaria e injusta muerte.
Esta obra es un verdadero legado de su propia vida, además de ser una soberbia y perfecta novela. Oscar Wilde escribía como los dioses. Su prosa era impecable. Uno va avanzando sus páginas con un interés que no decae, renovando las esperanzas de encontrarse con más y más situaciones interesantes.
La vida de Dorian Gray en la ficción actúa como un fiel reflejo de la suya y en cierta manera, Oscar Wilde es Dorian Gray, es Lord Henry Wotton y es Basil Hallward. Cada uno de ellos funciona como las distintas partes de su conciencia, que al final arrojan crudamente la verdad de las cosas que suceden y que se relacionan con lo real.
"El retrato de Dorian Gray" fue publicado en 1890 pero tiene sus predecesores inmediatos en la literatura. No es la primera vez que nos encontramos con una historia de esta naturaleza.
Ya Edgar Allan Poe había escrito un cuento llamado "El retrato oval" cuya historia tiene similitudes con esta novela a diferencia de que en el cuento de Poe, el artista, obsesionado con pintar el retrato de su esposa va matando lentamente a su mujer por la obsesión de este de lograr un acabado perfecto.
Por otro lado, también encontramos elementos familiares con dos obras de Robert Louis Stevenson. Por un lado, con el recordado "El extraño caso del Doctor Jekyll y Mr. Hyde", cuyo tratamiento de la temática del doble nos muestra todos los detalles de la doble vida que lleva ese científico y que se relaciona también con la doble vida tanto de Dorian Gray como de Oscar Wilde.
La única diferencia radica en que en el caso de Jekyll y Hyde todo se desdobla en la misma persona, mientras que en esta novela son dos personas o mejor dicho una persona y una entidad que es el cuadro, pero el efecto de doble funciona a la perfección ya que el cuadro soporta todos los pecados, desenfrenos y perversiones que Dorian comete en su vida.
También podemos leer un cuento de ribetes románticos de Stevenson que nos recuerdan a Dorian Gray y se llama "Olalla", casualmente con un cuadro y es a partir de ese retrato en el que el narrador ve colgado en una pared de la mansión con la poderosa imagen de una enigmática mujer y de el linaje se asemeja a ella. Ambas características, lo ominoso del cuadro y las dobles interpretaciones se relacionan con Dorian Gray.
Es que el retrato es el cuarto personaje principal del libro por poseer el elemento fantástico que es preponderante en toda la novela. Es la invitación que Dorian tiene para el pecado sin límites. A partir de que Basil lo termina y se lo muestra, su destino está sentenciado y él mismo lo pide cuando dice "¡Cuánto daría porque fuese al revés y fuera el cuadro el que envejeciera! Por eso lo daría todo... ¡Daría mi alma por eso!, para volver a confesar: "¡Ah, si pudiera ser al revés! ¡Si el cuadro pudiera cambiar y quedarme tal cual y como soy ahora!" Esto es también se conecta con otra obra literaria monumental: se corresponde con lo que anhela Fausto en la inmortal novela de Goethe.
El retrato que pinta Basil Hallward es el alter-ego de Dorian y lo mantiene joven, fresco, portador de una lozanía y juventud para culminar, luego de leer toda la novela, en la escena final de la manera que en otro cuento bien de temática de doble que también es de Poe y que se llama "William Wilson". Quien lo haya leído y lo recuerda sabrá a lo que me refiero.
Otro de los altos puntos de esta novela es el tratamiento que Oscar Wilde hace del Arte como ente regulador de toda Belleza. Wilde, portador de una idea estética que fue dominada por pocos y que se llamó "El Arte por el Arte mismo" puso en boga aquella teoría o concepto del Arte Puro que pregonaban los dandies como él y varias las irónicas y ácidas frases que aparecen en el libro dan prueba de ello.
La defensa del arte incluso en la literatura hace que Wilde critique ferozmente a otro movimiento literario del siglo XIX, el Realismo, justamente por ser altamente vulgar, según su óptica y por la forma en que Wilde enarbola su bandera sobre el Arte es a partir de todo ese desenfrenado dandismo y hedonismo que dominó su propia vida y que hizo extensiva a la de Dorian Gray en la ficción.
Existe otro punto altísimo eneste libro y lo forman ls frases que se dicen y que son tantas que me sorprende el hecho de que en un libro de poco más de trescientas páginas yo haya anotado casi el mismo número de frases que las de "Los hermanos Karamazov" o "Don Quijote de la Mancha".
Las que dice Lord Henry (que es el mismísimo Wilde inserto dentro de la novela) son impresionantes, únicas, maravillosas y oscilan entre el oxímoron y la paradoja.
Cito algunas porque se les atribuyen a Wilde, pero están proclamadas desde este libro, como por ejemplo:
"En los tiempos que corren la gente se sabe el precio de todo y no conoce el valor de nada."
"Un hombre puede ser feliz con cualquier mujer, siempre y cuando no la ame."
"Los libros que el mundo califica de inmorales son aquellos que muestran al mundo su vergüenza."
"Para ser popular es preciso ser mediocre."
"Cuando una mujer vuelve a casarse es porque detestaba a su primer marido. Cuando lo hace un hombre es porque adoraba a su primera mujer. Las mujeres prueban la suerte, los hombres la tientan."
Volviendo a la novela, Dorian es conocido por Lord Henry Wotton a principio de la novela en el estudio de Basil como un joven tímido y puro, pero es a partir del descubrimiento de su cuadro recién pintado que este irá transformándose en otro completamente distinto, con el mismo rostro jovial, pero con todos los vicios más bajos y depravados que por obra de su pedido fantástico van a parar a su propio retrato.
Nada elije Wilde al azar, ni siquiera su nombre, que proviene de los dorios, que fueron un pueblo que formó parte de la Grecia antigua y que eran propensos a la pederastia, una práctica tan aberrante como muchas de las acciones que Doria lleva a cabo en su vida.
A través de Dorian y especialmente de Lord Henry en quienes Wilde se disfrazará para lanzar sus dardos más envenenados sobre la hipocresía de la sociedad victoriana, a punto tal de que Lord Henry (o sea Wilde ya muy ofuscado con su propia sociedad) define a Inglaterra como "la patria de los hipócritas".
Esa sociedad que condenó a Wilde no soporta finalmente ni a Dorian ni a Lord Henry y ellos, junto a Basil forman un triángulo amoroso: Basil adora a Dorian, Lord Henry lo ama. Ambos lo celan.
A partir de este punto se comenzará a torcer la historia y aquí el autor pone toda la carne al asador. Se la juega por el Amor, el amor con mayúsculas y desnuda una historia que saca a la luz el tema de la homosexualidad como nunca en la Inglaterra de esos días, y esto se debe a que Wilde había conocido las dos cosas: fue un devoto marido pero también amó a más de un hombre, especialmente a 'Bosie' Douglas, que fue su condena y su perdición de la misma forma que Sybil Vane, la humilde actriz que en un momento generará en Dorian y en la novela el punto de inflexión más importante a nivel argumental. Es a partir de este punto en donde Dorian se envilece y comienza a deslizarse por un tobogán en descenso pronunciado.
Casi al final de la novela Lord Henry se pregunta "¿De qué le sirve a un hombre conquistar el mundo entero si pierde con ello el alma?" y con esa simple pregunta reflexiva desencadena toda una verdadera revolución en Dorian y anticipa el desmoronamiento.
En otro pasaje uno lee que "Conviene escoger con sumo cuidado a los enemigos." Increíblemente, Oscar Wilde desoye esta advertencia que él mismo pregona. En esos diez años de su vida le sucede casi lo mismo que a Dorian y es su propia vida la que se le irá en semejante torbellino.
En "De profundis", Oscar Wilde asegura que "Lo único que sé es que Dorian Gray es un clásico, y de modo merecido."
Nadie puede discutir eso ni la tampoco negar la grandeza inoxidable de este genio con mayúsculas de la literatura que se llamó Oscar Wilde, quien como sucede con el retrato de Dorian y a partir de esta novela, logró conseguir una inmortalidad indiscutida sobre las letras, la sociedad y los hombres.

I wanted to like this more than I did but I felt like it would have been a fantastic short story. Instead, it was filled with unnecessary description and dialogue (common for the time) to make it longer. The premise was unique, however, the characters were classist, sexist, and self-involved to a point of distraction. It dragged at times and struggled to get back on plot.

However, that being said I enjoyed the idea of the story and would be interested in one of the many screen adapted versions.

Some of u have never damned ur soul to remain forever young and it shows

"My dear Jordan!" said Lord Rayner expansively, as the butler discreetly closed the door behind his young visitor. "Really, it is too good to see you again! And what brings you to Cambridge?"

"Oh, this and that," said the lad, flinging himself casually onto a priceless Ikea divan. "By the way, has there been some mistake in the casting? I thought I was female?"

"Well, since we're doing Dorian Gray, I hoped you would have no objection to reversing your gender," said his host. "And besides, is there anything quite as female as an attractive young man?"

"How could one disagree?" murmured the lad, as a becoming blush suffused his ivory cheek. "So, aren't you glad I persuaded you to read it?"

The rest of this review is available elsewhere (the location cannot be given for Goodreads policy reasons)

Oh Dorian. Oh Dorian.

When I first read this book in the fruitless years of my youth I was excited, overwhelmed and a blank slate (as Dorian is, upon his first encounter with Lord Henry) easily molded, persuaded, influenced, etc.

Certain Wildisms (Wildeisms?) would take my breath away. Would become my mottos to believe in. To follow. To live.

Lines like:

"It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

"But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face."

"If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat."

"Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place."

"You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know."

Re-reading this masterpiece and coming upon these highlighted lines was possibly more interesting than the book this time. Why had I highlighted these lines? Do they still mean the same thing to me, as they did when I first took note of them, enough to highlight them? I still love all of those lines. But no longer feel so strongly for them.

Now these are lines that stick out still to me. Or were newly underlined on the second pass through. New Wildisms to mold me.

"Oh, I can't explain. When I like people immensely I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one's life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?"

"Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty."

"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one."

"I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects."

"Ah! this Morning! You have lived since then."

"what brings you out so early? I thought you dandies never got up till two, and were not visible till five." --A new personal favorite. That I follow very seriously.

"She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm."

'He thought for a moment. "Can you remember any great error that you committed in your early days, Duchess?" he asked, looking at her across the table.
"A great many, I fear," she cried.
"Then commit them over again," he said, gravely. "To get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies."
"A delightful theory!" she exclaimed. " I must put it into practice."

"Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion."

It turns out that all of these quotes occur in the first 45 pages, except that last one which is right near the end. And it seems most of my reviews end up being mostly quotes from the book itself, but I figure this is what shaped and informed my reading, so I want to share it with all of you. What do you think of it all?

That said, poor Sybil Vane! Poor James Vane! Poor Basil Hallward! Shit, even poor old Lord Henry Wotton! And Dorian! Oh Dorian! Lead the life you did and for what?

That's all I am going to say about the book. I don't think I shall read Against Nature, for fear of being seduced like Dorian.

If you're tired of this review or just tired in general, stop now and come back later. I am going to include two more quotes from the book that truly fucked me up. So much I had to read them at least 3 times in a row. And then transcribe them here for you. The last section, thats the one that did it. Beautiful.

Here goes:

"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral-immoral from the scientific point of view."
"Why?"
"Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly-that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry and cloth the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals; the terror of God, which is the secret of religion-these are the two things that govern us. And yet-"
"And yet," continues Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice,"I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream-I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal-to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man among us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sins, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame-"
"Stop!" faltered Dorian Gray, "stop! you bewilder me. I don't know what to say. There is some answer to you, but I cannot find it. Don't speak. Let me think, or, rather, let me try not to think."

Whew.
And:

"There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamored of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those who minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black, fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of the birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleeper, and yet must needs call forth Sleep from her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin, dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colors of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the letter we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colors, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain."

Yep.

This was beautiful and ugly. It doesn't shy away from revealing the hideousness, how vain and vulnerable human nature is.