The Picture Of Dorian Gray Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘the secret of [his] own soul’ he resolves not to exhibit it. Dorian’s response to works of art is similarly subjective. When he encounters the curious yellow book which Lord Henry lends him, he sees in its hero ‘a kind of prefiguring type of himself. And, indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it’ (Chapter XI). Similarly, when he attends a performance of Wagner’s opera
Tannhauser
, he sees ‘in the prelude to that great work of art apresentation of the tragedy of his own soul’ (Chapter XI). Dorian clearly demonstrates the maxim found in the Preface which Wilde wrote for the revised edition of the novel: ‘It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.’
    Works of art therefore act as subjective mirrors in Wilde’s novel. This is pre-eminently the case with Dorian’s relationship with his own portrait. On one level this is obvious and understandable. After all, there is more reason why Dorian’s extremely lifelike portrait should mirror him rather than its creator. However, the reflection here is more ‘moral’ than physical; it serves as a moral ‘ledger’, recording his transgressions according to the pseudo-scientific beliefs of the day. Dorian, who as we have seen is apt to read art subjectively, is first and foremost a ‘critic’ of his own portrait. When he first believes that the painting has altered in response to his actions he is once again reading his own life into a work of art: ‘Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them. And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in the mouth. Cruelty! Had he been cruel?’ (Chapter VII). Given Wilde’s professed views on art and nature, art and life, and art and morality, it is significant that Dorian’s ‘monstrous’ reading is detrimental to the painting. Some of these views help to illuminate the central incidents
of Dorian Gray.
    Wilde’s ‘The Decay of Lying’ (January 1889) is principally a ‘protest’ against realism in the aesthetic realm, disparaging ‘poor, probable, uninteresting human life’, while asserting that ‘All bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them to ideals.’ For Wilde, art should be ‘a veil, rather than a mirror’. 25 These strictures against bringing life to art find their ‘moral’ counterpart in Wilde’s portrait of the art critic and poisoner, Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, ‘Pen, Pencil and Poison’ (January 1889). Here he makes one of his first assaults on the tendency to bring ethics to aesthetics: ‘The fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose. The domestic virtues are not the true basis of art, though they may serve as an excellent advertisement for second-rate artists.’ 26 Such views would become central to Wilde’s thought, being the principal theme of his Preface to the revised edition of his novel, and in many of his works of criticism published subsequent to it. As he protested to the reviewerof the
St James’s Gazette:
‘The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.’ For Wilde, art is superior to nature and to life, and aesthetics are always higher than ethics. However, although his most forthright statements on this theme appeared as a consequence of his experience with the critics of his novel (especially those dealing with art and morality), the earlier works referred to above indicate that Wilde held these views prior to its publication. These views also inform his novel, which he called a reaction ‘against the crude brutality of plain realism’ (Mason, 74 ). This is found in Wilde’s depiction of Dorian and his ‘criticism’ of the painting, for Dorian brings his moral life to the portrait, confusing art with life, and ethics with aesthetics. The result is disastrous for the work of art; what should have been hailed as ‘one of the greatest things in modern