“To define is to limit.”

Writing short reviews of the books that i have read has been the longest in plan project i have engaged with.

Well, I am an avid reader and I mainly read english classics. I have exhausted almost all the classics and so it is difficult for me to pick one which I have not read.

But, there it was, one of the finest books in one of the finest places: The Picture of Dorian Gray, bought at Rizzoli Milan.

I love this place. If I am ever to hide my Horcruxes (not that evil … only a metaphor ;)), one would definitely be in Milan and be in Rizzoli. Of all the books that i have got this time (which also includes one of the finest editions of Harry Potters with unbelievable illustrations, that i will review very soon), I got hold of the “The Picture of Dorian Gray”.

I got reminded of it when I was watching “Zindagi na mileage dobara” a few days ago and noticed Farhan Akhtar reading this one/ rather enacting to read. I don’t know what was happening in the scene as the book title had all my attention.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is an archetypal novel that depicts paradoxical facets of art, love, influence, vanity, morality, immorality, hedonistic selfishness, misogyny and what not. The novel is just ABSOLUTE PERFECTION! It a tale of art and sin.

“What of Art?

-It is a malady.

--Love?

-An Illusion.

--Religion?

-The fashionable substitute for Belief.

--You are a sceptic.

-Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.

--What are you?

-To define is to limit.”

Art:

“Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.“

Love:

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

Influence:

"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-"

Morality:

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

Misogyny:

“My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.”

Beauty:

“The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.”

"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. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learn professions. How perfectly hideous they are!

Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of 80 what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful".

Synopsis:

The story is set in Victorian London, where young, beautiful, pristine, and näive Dorian Gray is posing for a fairly moral and talented painter Basil Hallward.

As Wilde has rightly said:

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”

The portrait is Basil Hallward’s finest work. But, Basil is afraid that his obsession with the portrait’s subject, his muse Dorian Gray, can be seen in the work and is reluctant to exhibit his finest work.

“The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul."

On the very same day, Dorian meets Basil’s enchantingly cynical, witty, immoral, and misogynistic friend Lord Henry Wotton. Lord Henry is an imperious aristocrat and a decadent dandy who espouses a philosophy of self-indulgent hedonism. Dorian is fascinated by Henry’s belief that the only life worth living is one dedicated entirely to pleasure.

Dorian’s fragile and innocent mind is marred by Henry’s corrupt and immoral opinion that beauty ranks higher than genius because it is self evident and supreme: beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.

Lord Henry has a big influence on Dorian’s mind, which he does not realise himself. With his wit and aphorisms, Henry manipulates Dorian so much so that Dorian envies the figure in the painting, and in a flippant pledge says that he would give his soul to be young forever as the painting will be. Terrified of ageing, Dorian declares that he would give his soul if the portrait were to grow old and wrinkled and to bear the brunt of his sins, while he remained young and handsome.

Basil gives the painting to Dorian.

*Spoiler Alert*

The idolisation of Dorian Gray's youth and beauty, brings his downfall. Dorian is inspired by the immoral yellow book that Henry Wotton gave to him and the portrait. Dorian relates to the book and dissect every virtue and sin of his own doings.

On the other hand, the portrait grows older and vicious, bearing the sins of Dorian, while he kept his youth. Though Dorian kept his youth and beauty, the portrait reminded him of his inner sins and immoral deeds. Fanatical about the portrait, he is driven to murder and deception.

”He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.”

At the end Dorian brings about his own end, where he stabs the portrait with the hope that he could get rid of the portrait that reminded him of his sins but instead dies himself.

/*Spoiler Alert*

Facts:

The novel is, the only one written by Wilde. The book was reckoned homoerotic and suggestive with “corrupting influences”, owing to which, Wilde had to serve imprisonment for a couple of years.

Wilde says: “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be- in other ages perhaps.”

Conclusion:

The books ends as it starts: with the portrait. Dorian Gray kills himself trapped in the inner war between his soul and senses. The book is worth reading umpteenth number of times. It is indeed a romantic exposition of Wilde’s own inclinations. Certain Wildeism would take your breath away. A naive young man who purchases eternal youth at the expense of his soul, brings about the magical kick to it. It teaches that a life enthralled by selfish pleasure and vanity will always be disfigured by fear and a cruel ending.

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”