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Loading... The Picture of Dorian Gray (original 1891; edition 2010)| Recently added by | jtsams93, terrigena, Rpitt57, s3ththompson, Pigletto, alyslinn, bookwoman247, eliang9, Madamxtra, private library | | Legacy Libraries | William Gaddis, JeffBuckley, Donald and Mary Hyde, Astrid Lindgren, Lawrence Durrell, Theodore Dreiser, Samuel Roth, F. Scott Fitzgerald |
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 Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. » Add other authors (130 possible) | Author name | Role | Type of author | Work? | Status | | Wilde, Oscar | — | primary author | all editions | confirmed | | Ackroyd, Peter | Introduction | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Bristow, Joseph | Editor | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Callow, Simon | Introduction | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Cauti, Camille | Introduction | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Clark, Emma Chichester | Illustrator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Corcos, Lucille | Illustrator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Crossley, Steven | Narrator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Drew, John M L | Introduction | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Eugenides, Jeffrey | Introduction | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Gómez de la Serna, Julio | Translator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Kaila, Kai | Translator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Manso, Leo | Illustrator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Maurois, Andre | Introduction | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Mighall, Robert | Introduction | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Naugrette, Jean-Pierre | Introduction | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Page, Michael | Narrator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Sheen, Michael | Narrator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Shi, Yuan | Illustrator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Toledo, Ruben | Illustrator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Trugo, Lui | Illustrator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Vance, Simon | Narrator | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Welsh, Irvine | Introduction | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | White, Edmund | Introduction | secondary author | some editions | confirmed | | Winwar, Frances | Introduction | secondary author | some editions | confirmed |
▾Work-to-work relationships Is contained inIs retold inHas the adaptationIs abridged inIs an expanded version ofIs parodied inIs replied to inInspiredHas as a student's study guide
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The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amid the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink flowering thorn.  La fragancia de las rosas llenaba el estudio y, al soplar entre los árboles del jardín la suave brisa estival, entraba por la puerta abierta el fuerte olor de las lilas o el perfume más sutil del rosado espino en flor. | |
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'Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are -- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks -- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.' 'Harry,' said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, 'every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.' He played with the idea and grew willful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. It was an extraordinary improvisation. He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him, and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose temperament he wished to fascinate seemed to give his wit keenness and to lend colour to his imagination. He was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible. He charmed his listeners out of themselves, and they followed his pipe, laughing. Dorian Gray never took his gaze off him, but sat like one under a spell, smiles chasing each other over his lips and wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes. Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them. The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex. I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible. I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. I love acting. It is so much more real than life. Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes. One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected. The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself. The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful. Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that. He is some brainless beautiful creature who should be always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in the summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know. | |
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This is the main work for The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Please do not combine with any adaptation, abridgement, etc. | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English (3)
▾LibraryThing members' description
| Book description |
Dorian Gray has just had his portrait painted. It is a perfect likeness of the quite extraordinary beautiful young man, and it prompts him to make a mad wish for eternal youth. In the years to come, he devotes his public life to and aestheticism-and his private one to decadence and debauchery. AR7.7, 14 Pts | |
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▾Book descriptions Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0375751513, Paperback)
A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden." As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment." (retrieved from Amazon Tue, 12 Oct 2010 04:54:22 -0400) (see all 7 descriptions) ▾Library descriptions An exquisitely beautiful young man in Victorian England retains his youthful and innocent appearance over the years while his portrait reflects both his age and evil soul as he pursues a life of decadence and corruption. (summary from another edition) » see all 23 descriptions |
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Penguin Australia
Urban Romantics
14
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Another standard by which to judge other authors.
At the age of 43, I've finally gotten to Wilde (aside from his delightful children's tales) after many years of the "I'll get to him, I'll get to him, stop bothering me" stage. I wish you all hadn't stopped bothering me. Reading this at 23 might have helped me to understand some dark events and people better.
Not a novel to make one feel good, for sure. As a matter of fact, it left me feeling nauseous at a few points. Wilde is such a master of prose that he's able to describe perfectly the vacuous "new" hedonism he observed in late Victorian society with his characteristic wit yet show no signs of cynicism that might otherwise lead the reader to any dry conclusions. Rather than being an autopsy of the condition of morals, it is simply a body laid bare upon the table, complete with hair and scabs and scars and imperfections, leaving you mildly uncomfortable at the slight grin on its pale face. (