Tuesday, November 29
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Tuesday, November 29

“After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked for a long time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture, biting the end of one of his huge brushes and frowning. ‘It is quite finished,’ he cried at last, and...

Todd Marshall
3 min
2
0

A little bit of literature

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“After about a quarter of an hour Hallward stopped painting, looked for a long time at Dorian Gray, and then for a long time at the picture, biting the end of one of his huge brushes and frowning. ‘It is quite finished,’ he cried at last, and stooping down he wrote his name in long vermilion letters on the left-hand corner of the canvas. 

[...]

‘I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could always be what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me someday - mock me horribly!’ The hot tears welled into his eyes; he tore his hand away and, flinging himself on the divan, he buried his face in the cushions, as though he was praying.

[...]

He threw himself into a chair and began to think. Suddenly there flashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward's studio the day the picture had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood.”

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Vocabulary build-up

The intransitive verb frown means “to make a facial expression indicating thought or displeasure, as by wrinkling the brow and drawing down the corners of the mouth.”

The transitive verb utter means “to articulate (words); pronounce or speak something.”

The adjective untarnished means “not dulled or damaged; free from physical or moral spots or stains.”

Comments

Oscar Wilde was one of the most famous British celebrities of the late 19th century. His only novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” published in 1890, incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty. The underlying premise of the book depicts an hedonistic side of the society, in the main character of the book, who was willing to sell his soul to avoid getting old. In his stead, it is his picture that feels the passing of time, while he enjoys a libertine and often amoral way of life. However, his portrait also incorporates all the gruesome things that corrupt his soul. One thing that most people ignore is that Oscar Wilde removed some homoerotic passages from his novel. A fragment of the book, for instance, is an explicit homossexual dialogue: “It is quite true that I have worshiped you with far more romance than a man should ever give to a friend,” said the painter Basil to Dorian Gray… “Somehow I had never loved a woman. I suppose I never had time. … I quite admit that I adore you madly, extravagantly, absurdly.” A homossexual himself, Wilde was standing up for his right as an artist to write about whatever he pleased. This might explain why the reviews were dreadful, the sales poor, and it was not until years after his passing that this remarkable novel was recognized as a classic.