The Picture of Dorian Gray

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The book itself is very good but the copy is not. I would recommend going to a different seller. The pages were rather large which made it quite awkward to hold. It looks as if someone at home put the book together them self rather than an actual publishing agency.

absolute beauty

Synopsis:Dorian Gray is a naive, unassuming young man before he comes into contact with Lord Henry Wotton. Henry, fondly called Harry, is a friend of Basil Hallward. Basil is an artist who is smitten with Dorian and considers him his muse. It so happens that Basil does a life-sized portrait of Dorian and puts his very essence into it, such is his art. But, what if it results in something sinister? And, is Dorian really that naive or is it his inherent nature that comes out as he ages? Was that evil already there, just waiting to be unleashed?Review:The story opens in Basil's studio, where Harry is sitting languidly - inhaling both the scent of roses and cigarette smoke. While in the centre sits the artist, with an unfinished painting of a very beautiful man. So beautiful that - anyone who so much as glances at him, cannot help but look for a second time, a bit longer, that was the marvel of his face. Basil unwillingly reveals that man's name to be Dorian Gray and refuses to display that creation extraordinaire of his anywhere as he believes that he has put too much of himself into it. But when Dorian comes to visit Basil in the presence of Harry, their meet up with each other is inevitable. Something which Basil didn't want, judging by his mannerisms. He's apprehensive of Harry ruining Dorian's 'innocence'.Sounds pretty simple, like your average goth story, no? Nah. What do you say when each and every line of The Preface is a quote in itself? In fact, throughout the text, the story is littered with brilliant and quotable quotes. Of course, you just read and be mesmerized, and be impressed by the sheer brilliance of the author's way with words. It is really sad that Wilde didn't write any more prose."There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."While Basil worships Dorian, Dorian doesn't feel their friendship has altered him, as much as Harry's did in the short time of knowing him. Harry, that man is so sure of himself. Influencing Dorian negatively, arousing unhealthy passions in him. He doesn't even believe Dorian when the latter shares that he's in love with the seventeen-year-old Sybil Vane, an actress. Though it is obvious later on that Gray seems to be in love with the idea of love. His twenty-year-old brain seems addled as far as the concept of love is concerned.As time passes, under Harry's influence, Dorian gives in to his decadent lifestyle. His mood swings are too much. Wilde has written such wicked characters, that you will love to hate them or hate yourself for loving them. Haha! I buddy read this book with a bunch of bookstagrammers and I remember one of the co-host - Ditsha - saying that she would love to suggest him a therapist. I believe so too."The more he knew, the more he desired to know. He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them."The eleventh chapter (out of a total of twenty) is a revelation, a hedonistic revelation. The passage of life has made him all of thirty-eight now. His aura is such that he destroys everyone who comes in his path. He has become the epitome of evil, and what a cruel fate Basil had been handed in the end. But there's one character who doesn't change, Harry has his wits and his quips with him right till the very end.And in the end, the same portrait that saves him destroys him too."There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful."The book has so many references to other written works and most importantly - music! But the text is something that I wouldn't call lyrical. It's rather lush, luxurious in meaning, rich in wordplay, oozing like chocolate out of a centre filled cake. I would recommend this book to everyone who wants to fall in love with the written word again.P.S. Published in 1890, The Picture of Dorian Gray is described as a gothic and a philosophical novel. And I haven't touched at all in this review about the philosophy part. I plan to do it soon, give me a month or two, maybe after my exams. I feel there is so much in the text that is just waiting to be unravelled.Books the Characters Read:1. Émaux et Camées by Théophile Gautier (Enamels and Cameos) – A collection of PoetryAvailable for free on Project Gutenberg2. À rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans (Against Nature or Against the Grain)3. Disciplina Clericalis by Petrus Alphonsi4. A Margarite of America by Thomas Lodge5. The Travels of Marco Polo by Marco Polo and Rustichello da Pisa6. Historical Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James by Francis OsborneOriginally posted on:My Blog @ Shaina's Musings

TEMPTATION!From the moment the unfortunate Eve bit into the forbidden apple, to these current days, when we lesser-mortals are lured by the overpriced electronic 'Apples', Temptation has been shadowing us humans. A baneful prelude to our vices, very few amongst us can claim to have overcome temptation. While we are protected by various constraints that help us overcome our temptations - social stigma, fear of gods, fear of law and so on - once in a while even the most saintly amongst us 'blinks' and lets temptation cause mayhem.The corrupt lot never lets any constraints stop them, while the Holiest few never let temptations taint them. It is the ordinary beings in the middle that suffer the most at the hands of Temptation. Pulled by the pleasures on one side, barred from it by principles and penal codes on the other, this middle lot bears the onslaught of temptation grudgingly. How often have we craved to indulge in the vices to which we are lead – sometimes by becoming invisible, some other times by transforming ourselves into someone or something else! We have all wanted to relish the baser pleasures of life, without letting their effects stain our souls. This book then is the expression of such a desire on the part of Oscar Wilde.Yes. This is a book on temptation, manipulation and eventual corruption. Except that here the protagonist - or, is it the antagonist?! - is never tainted by his sins. The corruption of his soul is borne by his portrait instead of its carnal sheath.Dorian Gray is a charming young boy knocking on the doors of adulthood. Lord Henry is a wealthy, hedonistic idler whose only purpose in life is to seek pleasure and pleasurable sensations. Basil Hallward is a simple, righteous persona and a talented painter that 'adores' Dorian. A chance meeting of all these three - on the fateful day Basil puts his heart and soul into painting Dorian – designs the rest of the tale. Lord Henry 'teaches' innocent Dorian to take pride in his own physical beauty, which is temporary and urges him to indulge in the pleasures suited to his age. Manipulated by Henry thus, Dorian becomes aware of the flush of youth in his veins, as truthfully depicted by Basil in the portrait, but is also dejected at the prospect of growing old and haggard someday. In one god-forsaken moment, he loudly wishes that he would even exchange his soul to stay as beautiful as he is and let that wonderful portrait feel the passage of Time.Starting with the simple pleasures of life, Dorian once commits a serious injustice to the girl he falls in love with. Back at home, Dorian finds his portrait slightly changed to show signs of cruelty amidst all that boyish charm. Dorian realizes that his ‘wish’ has come true and all the sins of his soul will leave their stains on the portrait instead of his face or his youth. But just as he repents and tries to make amends for his grave error, Lord Henry, a mentor as vile as there could ever be, sets him again on the wicked ways. Tempted also by a book lent by Henry, and untouched by the effects of his ‘sins’, Dorian falls deep into the pits of life, all the while watching the portrait turn from ugly to ghastly with each ‘sin’ that he commits. Was Dorian able to mend his ways? Did he ever get to redeem his soul? This book is a tale that answers those questions.Oscar Wilde wrote this novel – his only one – while English society was reeling at the height of Victorian morality. Being a homosexual himself, Wilde was condemned, ostracized and left to die in penurious exile. It is quite an irony then that a book which brought its author all the infamy must be one of the best-selling books of our ‘modern’ times.Going through the book, I couldn’t help wondering whether Dorian Gray and Lord Henry were Wilde’s alter-egos. Remember, we writers have a knack of lending a part of our soul to the characters that we lovingly create. The sense of importance lent to the statements of Henry, the weakness with which the other characters contradict him and finally end up agreeing with him, the hold that this hedonistic idler wields on the whole tale are all evidence enough that Henry, more than even Gray, is the alter-ego of Oscar Wilde. Basil, the moral person that he is, sounds feebly like the other part of Wilde that regrets his ‘mistakes’.Not just for the author, but for us the readers too, this book holds a mirror. While stating the moral decadence that Dorian falls into, Wilde does not elaborate on the kind of sins Dorian takes pleasure committing. In that sense this feels akin to Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde’. There also, the protagonist leads a double life, being a noble gentleman as Dr.Jekyll while lurking in the darkness as Mr.Hyde sating his gore hungers. But what kind of immoral activities that Mr.Hyde indulges in is never articulated, leaving it to our guess. Here also, Dorian’s one sin is to indulge in narcotics, but the rest of the decadences are left unsaid, like a blank canvas on which we can paint the nature of those sins. Both these books are similar in letting us decide on the level of moral corruption, thus bringing out the inner demons that we have all been hiding inside us too.The literary fluency of Wilde, his ability to portray in words the England of the late 19th century - from flora to the banal - do all make it a pleasure to read this book. But, I couldn’t help noticing his egoistic English self, like most of the British of his days, which made him think of India as the land of snake-charmers – at least in the fleeting reference.A psychological thriller that stemmed from the unreliable ‘art’ of physiognomy, this book is a forbidden apple that we must all bite into!

In roughly three weeks Dorian Gray starring Ben Barnes comes to DVD in the UK (and I intend to buy it. I have a region free DVD player and sadly there was never a US release of this film). I haven't seen this film version yet and I know it strays from the original novel but that's not the worst thing in the world. I've seen a version where Basil was a woman and it was set in the nineteen sixties with really bad acting. Now that was terrible. And there's also the 1944 version of The Canterville Ghost that turned it into World War 2 propaganda. So I don't mind what they've done with the Ben Barnes version of Dorian Gray. But since I am waiting for this adaptation I would like to write a review now for the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I LOVE the work of Oscar Wilde. Allow me to stress that. I absolutely love the work of Oscar Wilde. My two favourite works of his are The Canterville Ghost and The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Picture of Dorian Gray tells the story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. While he remains flawless, a portrait of himself grows uglier every time he sins. He cannot die unless you destroy the painting. Thanks to temptation and vice Dorian falls into hedonism and debauchery. As he externally remains pure and untainted his soul bears the burdens of his actions as reflected in the painting. Dorian learns the hard way that it's not physical beauty that matters but the inner beauty of one's own soul in qualities of kindness, mercy and compassion, things that he had lost along the way for selfishness, hedonism and greed. Dorian's fall from grace is a road lined with wit and humour. The story is riddled with clever epigrams (witty, short sayings) mostly said by the morally questionable character, Lord Henry. Lord Henry is a surprisingly naive character who plants bad ideas and temptations into Dorian's head while he, himself, doesn't seem to actually commit any sin he talks about. He even has the naive notion that people of their status don't do things like murder, as if such crimes are vices only of the lower classes. The picture of Dorian Gray is a very good and interesting read that talks about social conformity, morality, hedonism, and good and evil. The messages are not heavy handed and it's an intelligently written story. People of Oscar Wilde's era who called it an immoral book were made uncomfortable by Dorian's descent and lack of redemption but ultimately he was punished for his sins. Others noticed the subtle hints of homosexuality and bisexuality in the story but these things were kept subtle as this was a Gothic Victorian novel. Many people over-estimate how much homosexual content there is in this book or they don't see it at all but in fact it was actually very subtle and you only notice it if you are looking for it. However lines such as 'The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curve of your lips rewrite history.' - which was engraved in a cigarette case given to Dorian by Lord Henry make the relationships obvious to the astute reader. The sexuality of the characters isn't even an issue. Poor Oscar Wilde was far ahead of his time in this regard. It's Dorian's decadence, hedonism and selfishness that cause his downfall and prove the moral lesson of the story; the value of the soul and inner beauty over external eternal flawlessness. Dorian might have had eternal youth and beauty but it was at the price of the eternal beauty and youth that comes from a good natured and kind soul. And Dorian, being an aesthete could only see this transformation when his soul was physically manifested in a portrait that changed with the changing of his nature. The 1940s movie adaptation of the story (the first film adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray) held the hope of redemption in showing that in acts of compassion the portrait could change for the better. This was something the novel lacked though it is still a fine novel. Oscar Wilde was right when he said there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. There's only well written or poorly written books and The Picture of Dorian Gray is very well written. This isn't an action packed thriller (though there are some intense moments). This isn't a romance about an immortal with a teenage lover (though something of that does happen). This is NOT Twilight. This story actually has substance. This is more of an exploration of a character's nature and all of human nature in the process, the flaws of modern superficiality, selfishness and hedonism and the power the spiritual can still have over human consciousness. It's sad that for all of Dorian's shallowness he had to physically see it to feel the weight of his conscience instead of just knowing what he was doing was wrong but this is the flaw of the character and the reason behind his downfall. Dorian was a true aesthete to a dangerous extreme. Oscar Wilde was making a statement about society that many even today either don't get or don't want to get. The Picture of Dorian Gray is written in a nice flowing prose. It's written in a third person perspective novel, not first person perspective, not alternating, and certainly not epistolary (which was a very popular style of fiction writing in Oscar Wilde's time). I strongly recommend The Picture of Dorian Gray. It is a true classic.