Book number: 24
The discovery of George Bernard Shaw was one of my biggest reading highlights of last year. Both reading about him and reading two of his plays, I was head over heals fascinated with the wit and insights of the late Englishman. Well, I'm surprised to have found yet another Englishman with an equally fascinating and piercing wit, that of Oscar Wilde. If G.B. Shaw is your revolutionary thought-leader who single-handedly broke free and progressed the English nation on to new horizons of thinking, Wilde, in comparison, is your softer and sensitive artist who uses his wit to charm and disillusionize people - albeit for the artistic reasons only.
The reason I use the word 'find' to talk about Wilde, even though I'm reading his only novel for the second time, is that the first time I read it, I was too young, that is in my 'reading age', to have understood, or withstood for that matter, Wilde's piercing, witty remarks about all sorts of things in life. I was too young to have become a rebel in thought. Five years on, I haven't only understood this book better, but have embraced it with my whole existence. The plot, the narrative, the characters, the dialogues (Oh! the dialogues!), the twists and turns - 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' is so irresistably brilliant that almost no serious reader could dismiss the effects it leaves on the one who reads this book. And in order to dive deeper into the book, I would need to lay out the plot first.
Basil Hallward is a capable painter, and as the novel opens, he is about to finish the best portriat he has ever painted - that of his perfectly beautiful friend Dorian Gray. Lord Henry, a hedonist, is also friends with Hallward, and happens to be with there with the painter when Dorian Gray arrives for his last sitting as the portrait is almost done. There Henry meets Gray at last, despite Hallward's jealous, or understandably cautious, attempts of keeping Gray away from Henry, given Henry's reputation of having strong influence on everyone he meets. As the portrait is finished, which a most perfect painting of a most perfect young man, Lord Henry speaks of how unfortunate it would be that one day Gray would turn old while the painting would remain a soring reminder of his lost youth and its charms. It is there that Dorian wishes for himself to remain ever so young and that his portrait should age for him instead.
And as Oscar Wilde himself says: 'There two kinds of tragedies in this world; one is not getting what you want, the other is getting it.' And our poor, beautiful Dorian Gray falls into the latter tragedy - which I find to be worse than the first. Dorian takes the portrait with himself to his palace, as a gift from Basil, and there it remains to absorb the frailties of Dorian's doings on his behalf.
Soon after, Dorian meets Sabil, a beautiful actress, and falls in love with her. Being of a poor family, Sabil cannot believe her luck of having a rich and handsome young man fall in love with him. But when one night, Dorian takes Basil and Henry to watch Sabil play Juliet in theatres, he is awfully ashamed to witness the poorest performance by Sabil on that particular night and is hurt that his friends of think badly upon his choices. Backstage, Dorian shouts at Sabil for performing so badly, to which Sabil replies that ever since she had found him, she couldn't find the reason to act, for her life has become a theatrical play itself. Despite such a sweet and tendering response, Dorian remains angry still and breaks with Sabil, even as she cries and falls at his feet.
The next morning, Dorian realizes his last night's mistakes and plans to meet Sabil and follow on their engagement to get married. But alas, before doing it, he finds the news that Sabil has killed herself. And that day, when Dorian sees the portrait, he is shocked to find that it has changed: his beautiful portrait is now smirking with evil intents. And so begins a series of Dorian's careless, impulsive, degrading, and worsening actions, yet he remains young and fresh through it all - his portrait absorbing all the evil.
The very idea of this plot, if spoken of with full intensity, fascination, and clarity that it demands, is absolutely haunting; let alone reading it the novel itself. To see Dorian revisit his portrait after every wrong deed he commits and find it to be more ugly, more evil looking, and more disgusting, is both nerve-wrecking and incredibly pitiful. And equally as disturbing is Dorian's moral decay throughout the years, as he commits one wrong act after another, but without ever having to bear the cruel yet essential consequences of those actions. Dorian spirals down into this hedonist and passion-driven lifestyle, catalysted of course by Lord Henry, and when upon his impulses, crosses the line to do horrific deeds that totally unimaginable by him. It's a case of moral corruption, of wanting something too great for oneself, of contradicting your own merits or at least the merits imposed on oneself. It is a hellish life, lived out in heaven.
Nevertheless, poor Dorian is worthy of every sympathy, for his story, however extravagant and intentionally unsetlling, echoes parts of ourselves as well. Besides, Dorian had to carry alone the whole burden of a wished-for-life that was nonetheless created by three people. It was Basil who painted the portrait, Henry who invoked the hedonistic desires of everlasting youth, and Dorian who only carried out the wish and was punishingly awarded with.
But to me, Dorian, despite being the protagonist of the novel and the carrying out the gothic story of Wilde all the way to its tragic end, remained a second favorite character - second only to the wit-master himself, Lord Henry.
Lord Henry isn't only my favorite character of this novel, but one of my favorite fictional beings ever. His ready wit along with his piercing insights into any and every topic, carried out by his charming and spellbinding speech, got my mind racing and blown every time he conversed with in the novel. What a man! with such uncommonly intelligent and striking views on the world and its affairs - I was totally, with whole of my consciousness, intoxicated with him and his ideas. Despite his unintentionaly, yet also unhelpably, dominating, damaging, and moraly corrupting or morally freeing (whichever way one looks at it) influence on the people around him, I found Lord Henry to be utterly admirable and found myself at my keenest to be in his company.
Too soon to call since I've reread only three of my favorite books so far, but Wilde's only and excellent novel is my most favorite book of all time. It is just irresistably good! I encourage, although with a caution of moral corruption, from mild to extreme depending on how much the book impacts you, every reader to read this book - and not only read it, but most importantly, read it again and again.
March 20, 2022_