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A review by screamdogreads
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
4.5
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
It has been many years since I last read any Oscar Wilde. Back then, I was in school, and could never fully appreciate the sheer beauty of his work. Now, all these years later, and having finished this rather seductive little novel, I find myself in awe. It's an exquisite tale, an exploration of a hearts darkest recesses, a lamenting of a soul desecrated by youthful vanity. Books such as this, make reading the classics so very rewarding. As readers, as lovers of stories, I think we shall never outgrow the need for such tales. How very tragic, how dreadfully romantic, that one of the finest and most enchanting of gothic novels lead to the downfall of it's author.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is a delightful and depraved novel. It's picturesque and elegant, yet sour and grotesque. It acts very much, as a character study, allowing us to watch on in horror at the corruption of a soul. And, what better character to examine than Dorian? After all, he represents the Victorian ideal so well. A beautiful, eloquent and charming gentleman. However, behind closed doors, he also represents the world hidden amongst the shadows - The things deemed immoral by Victorian society.
It has been many years since I last read any Oscar Wilde. Back then, I was in school, and could never fully appreciate the sheer beauty of his work. Now, all these years later, and having finished this rather seductive little novel, I find myself in awe. It's an exquisite tale, an exploration of a hearts darkest recesses, a lamenting of a soul desecrated by youthful vanity. Books such as this, make reading the classics so very rewarding. As readers, as lovers of stories, I think we shall never outgrow the need for such tales. How very tragic, how dreadfully romantic, that one of the finest and most enchanting of gothic novels lead to the downfall of it's author.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is a delightful and depraved novel. It's picturesque and elegant, yet sour and grotesque. It acts very much, as a character study, allowing us to watch on in horror at the corruption of a soul. And, what better character to examine than Dorian? After all, he represents the Victorian ideal so well. A beautiful, eloquent and charming gentleman. However, behind closed doors, he also represents the world hidden amongst the shadows - The things deemed immoral by Victorian society.
"Yet it was watching him, with its beautiful marred face and its cruel smile. Its bright hair gleamed in the early sunlight. Its blue eyes met his own. A sense of infinite pity, not for himself, but for the painted image of himself, came over him. It had altered already, and would alter more. Its gold would wither into grey. Its red and white roses would die. For every sin he committed, a stain would fleck and wreck its fairness."
There's something so very sad and haunting about this tale of art and lust, of beauty and sin. It has a history so captivating, so enrapturing, a true succès de scandale. What an enthralling work of art, a novel of such speculating and legend. We may never know the true tale behind the novel. It is said that, it's inspired by Wilde's secret gay lovers who now lay immortalized forever between these pages. It's said to represent the life that Wilde desired for himself, it's even said to be an account of his many private escapades. Whatever theory we choose to believe, it remains a story colored by the lens of Wilde's life, and I think, I rather like that.
The renaissance know of strange manners of poisoning - poisoning by a helmet and a lighted torch, by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander and by an amber chain. Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.