“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
When I finished college, I started searching for some work, which caused me to travel for long periods in the metro, to avoid the boredom of long solo travel, I bought a phone one day that had a special feature, A PDF file could be downloaded on it… No smartphone-touch screen days for me yet! I downloaded three such PDFs one day; I used to read them while traveling in the metro. The title of one PDF was, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’. Can I call now the title of that PDF was PDG? F always comes after G…. G&F….F&G…Interesting? They sound like gyro-frequencies! A memory of my initial days of getting to the books! Orwell’s 1984 and PDG have special memories of ‘metro travel with PDFs’ in my case!
When I read this book in detail now, I can say, this book is an amazing expression of literary craft. I was reading other books also, but once I began this, it overpowered others in preference, because of the fluidic storytelling of Wilde. It went along amazingly well. I have read plays and stories of the author and this is probably the only full-length novel of the author I have ventured upon so far. ‘Good god! He has not written any other novel’, a ghost said in annoyance.
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
This story showed me a clear distinction that when a great playwright writes a novel what does it look like? For me, this book was nothing less than a theatrical enterprise that was executed brilliantly. I think, in the guise of a novel, this was another play through which I entered into the wondrous world of an extraordinary scribbler! Those dense, philosophical, psychological, and humorous dialogues among the characters, through which the author progressed the plot at an amazing pace were the most significant feature for me in this novel. It made my reading so exhilarating.
Characters, if you ask me there are only three characters in this novel for me, Basil, ‘the painter one’, Dorian Gray ‘the painted one’, and Lord Henry ‘the inciter one’. All other characters were minor and came and went, just to make the momentum and substance in the tale. As the story progressed, Basil, the painter disappeared from the plot at one point and there remained only two characters, Dorian Gray and Lord Henry!
In my opinion, ‘We’ all the Dorian Gray and Lord Henry is ‘society’!
The story is well known, It has art, friendship, love, insecurity, corruption, vengeance, humor, horror, and preaching also. Many commentaries on the book say it’s about hedonistic pleasure…
about morality, … about artistic pursuit… or about the pursuit of beauty… it’s a reflection of a corrupted soul.
For me, the story was nothing but a ‘psychosomatic study’ of the human mind.
Soul.
No.
The soul does not come into the picture.
‘An enigmatic young man remains young and his portrait decays!’
This is certainly a thought-provoking and intense novel. The author has wit, in his witty yet dense philosophical manner, this story has shown an amazing stretch in its scope, but its simplicity is
even more amazing from the reader’s perspective as its trouble-free prose slithers into the nerve fibers and enhances the level of sagacity of its reader.
I think, shrouded in the blanket of beauty, there remains hidden, the nakedness of a corrupted soul. For all of us.
But can the soul be corrupt?
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