The Picture of Dorian Gray (Reading & Training: Intermediate) - Softcover

Wilde, Oscar; Clemen, Gina D B

Softcover

ISBN 10: 8853005483 ISBN 13: 9788853005489

Publisher: Cideb, 2010

Synopsis

When the superbly handsome Dorian Gray sees his portrait he makes a terrible wish: that the portrait will grow older and that he will remain young forever. But what happens to the portrait that no one ever sees? A brilliant and disturbing story of a man who is willing to sell his soul for eternal youth, while he pursues pleasure and passion.

Quand le beau Dorian Gray voit son portrait il exprime un désir terrible : que le tableau vieillisse à sa place et qu’il puisse rester jeune à jamais. L’histoire troublante d’un homme poursuivant les passions et les plaisirs, prêt à perdre son âme pour l’éternelle jeunesse, racontée dans l’une des œuvres les plus célèbres d’Oscar Wilde.

About this title

Review

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."

Review

"Every line that Wilde ever wrote affected me so enormously." --Morrissey, musician "A heady late-Victorian tale of double-living, in which Dorian's fatal, corruptive influence over women and men alike is suggestively indistinct." --Sarah Waters, author, Fingersmith

Edition details

• Publisher: Cideb
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 8853005483
• ISBN 13: 9788853005489
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144