The Picture Of Dorian Gray by
Oscar Wilde (1891)
Recommended by Nicky
FOREVER YOUNG
FOREVER CURSED
Not the words of Oscar
Wilde, funnily enough, but the tagline to the 2009 flop Dorian Gray, starring Ben ‘Who?’ Chaplin.
I’ve been trying to source
my Two Readers books from Sheffield
libraries as far as possible. That’s why I read a large-print The End Of Mr. Y and lugged around the Rabbit Angstrom Tetralogy. We must borrow from them: it is one way of
standing up to the cultural desecration this government is wreaking. Fuck them and their assault on free and
accessible books for everyone.
So that's why I'm holding up the
already-dated film book jacket version of The
Picture Of Dorian Gray. Always makes one look serious about classic literature.
Still, in my case it felt appropriate. My introduction to The Picture Of Dorian Gray came at age
13. The 1945 film version (starring Hurd ‘Who?’
Hatfield) was the afternoon ITV matinee.
That film blew my tweenage
mind. I knew of Oscar Wilde – Morrissey went on about him, and he was always
the answer to quote questions on Going
For Gold – but I didn’t know much of The
Picture Of Dorian Gray. I found the story beguiling, and the one-liners
killer; plus the film itself seemed very inventive. It was in black and white,
but whenever it showed Dorian’s portrait, it switched to fantastic
technicolour. When I saw the final, degenerate painting, I gasped in horror.
(It’s here, but for the full effect I’d recommend not peeping and seeking out
the movie instead).
I read the book shortly
afterwards. Not much can compare with experiencing Oscar Wilde at that age.
Wow. Who were these waspish
sophisticates with an aphorism for every mood? I really thought I might become
Lord Henry Wotton as an adult. Never mind that I was in some crap area of
Norwich, and my day involved thinking up excuses to get out of cross-country running rather than flirting with duchesses and renaming orchids.
I was in the gutter but, yes, I was looking at the stars.
He was amazed at the sudden impression that his words
had produced, and, remembering a book that he had read when he was sixteen, a
book which had revealed to him much that he had not known before, he wondered
whether Dorian Gray was passing through a similar experience.
Nicky said that The Picture Of Dorian Gray meant a lot
to him when he was growing up. I think it’s one of those special texts: key in
forming a persona, or at least key in forming an ideal of what we’d like our persona
to be. And, in Nicky, I can definitely see its influence.
Exhibit one: wit. Every advent Nicky
counts down his ‘sexy boys’ chart. His type isn’t really my type (Jedward got
in there!) but his commentaries make me cry with laughter. Last year, when
talking about some actor no-one’s heard of (Ben Chaplin? Hurd Hatfield?), he
wrote ‘He always seems to get in the lower reaches of the chart. Much like All
About Eve singles in the late 80s.’
Exhibit two: sociability.
An absolute joy to be around. We’ve started a semi-regular cinema club!
Exhibit three: disinhibition.
Open and honest about all sorts of stuff – from sexual behaviour to Eurovision fan
politics – he’s prompted me to think about relationships, sex, identity, and
celebrity, in myriad different ways.
He’s far more
Lord Henry’s heir than I am. Damn it.
‘Believe
me, no civilised man ever regrets a pleasure.’
It’s interesting to
(re)read a book whose plot is so well-known in popular culture. The shorthand –
vain pretty boy makes a Faustian pact that his portrait, not he, will age, and
then goes on a massive debauchery binge – is pretty much what happens. But, as
with any distillation, it conceals as much as it reveals.
Reading The Picture Of Dorian Gray as an adult, I found it to be a very sad
novel. It is as much of an unapologetic ode to hedonism as Crime And Punishment is a sanction for the cracking wheeze of
murder. Dorian is a paradoxical character. He is, at once, amoral and virtuous;
a manipulator and a naïf; an anti-intellectual and a nerd. The lovely young
Dorian, at the start of the book, is somewhat laconic and petulant, but
absolutely magnetic. Hell, anyone would fall in love with him.
He does not stay so pure after
he meets Lord Henry. Henry is an endlessly quotable bon vivant, and Dorian seeks to be both what he thinks Henry will
desire (a young and beautiful man) and what he thinks Henry is (a pleasure-seeking wit). The pair
enter into a Henry Higgins-Eliza Doolittle relationship, the key dynamic of the
book; and it is Henry’s speech on how youth is the only thing worth possessing
that prompts Dorian to strike his fateful bargain.
Henry gives Dorian a present.
It was a novel without a plot, and with only one
character, being indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young
Parisian, who spent his life trying to realise in the nineteenth century all
the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his
own.
Ah! That’s
bloody well À Rebours! I can’t believe how that book
has followed me around this year. Although Wilde never names it, it’s such a unique
work and once read, it’s easy to recognise any allusion to it. Chapter Eleven
is almost completely given over to a parody (or an homage) to the narrative
style of À Rebours, as Dorian meditates on his
possessions and what they represent.
The King of Ceilan rode through the city with a large ruby in his
hand, at the ceremony of his coronation. The gates of the palace of John The
Priest were ‘made of sardius, with the horn of the horned snake inwrought.’
So yet another reason why
I’m glad to have read À Rebours; I’m sure I would have found this
chapter entirely head-scratching if not. Let’s have another picture of it, with its English title, to
remind you to read this incredible work.
As the Henry-Dorian
relationship progresses, its initial teacher-pupil aspect becomes far less
straightforward. Although he wants to emulate Henry, Dorian is simply unable to
do so. People love and indulge Henry, and when he is outrageous, it only serves
to enhance his standing. Dorian, though, is different; he can beguile like no
other, but once his initial charm impact wears off, he is seldom a popular
presence in a gathering. He doesn’t have the élan of Henry – he’s too brooding, too conflicted, and his secret
picture drags after him like a beached whale.
What is left to Dorian? Drugs.
Sex. Material goods. Cruelty for the sake of feeling momentarily powerful. Looking
into the mirror at his never-changing appearance. And all this makes society
dislike him further. I found it fascinating how Dorian’s behaviour becomes more delinquent the older he gets: the amoralist,
manipulator, and anti-intellectual win out, but in a very joyless way.
In life, this is rarely spoken of, but it rings true. While younger, we may be
afraid of consequence: age brings a new fuck-it-ness. Plus, if we do something
exhilarating once (perhaps without exactly intending to) then we learn we can,
and are far more likely to do it again. Yet, with each repetition, our
tolerance grows, and the taste of transgression becomes blander.
Dorian and Henry are the
headline acts in this novel, and I could see why each was so enticing to me at
a younger age. But, reading now, it is the portrait-painter, Basil Hallward, whose
tragedy struck me the most. In love with Dorian from the very start of the
book, Basil watches his beloved muse get sucked in to a new life, and you can feel
every jagged shard of his broken heart.
He drove off by himself, as had been arranged, and
watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in front of him. He felt
that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past.
Life had come between them… His eyes darkened, and the crowded, flaring streets
became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to
him that he had grown years older.
It is Basil Hallward who
is really Dorian’s picture. He is the one who bears the scars – as it says
above, even grows older – as a result of Dorian’s behaviour.
And that’s why I found this
book so poignant. Basil Hallward’s suffering is what happens in reality. When
we’re cold-blooded or thoughtless, deliberately nasty or uncaringly selfish,
the distorted mirror held up to ourselves is not a grotesque self-portrait. Rather,
it is painted on the flesh, on the memory, on the very soul, of each person
that we hurt.
