This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.
A beautiful young man, Dorian Gray, sits for a portrait. In the garden of the artist's house he falls into conversation with Lord Wotton, who convinces him that only beauty is worth pursuing. Gray wishes that his portrait, and not himself, might age and show the effects of time. His wish comes true, and wild, hedonistic pursuits horribly disfigure the portrait. This Faustian story caused much controversy when it was first published, as it discusses decadent art and culture, and homosexuality. It is now considered one of the great pieces of modern Western literature.
JuliaMaria: Wie in Wikipedia zu 'Gegen den Strich' beschrieben: "Ein französischer Roman, der den Protagonisten in Oscar Wildes Roman Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray zu dekadenten Ausschweifungen inspiriert, wird häufig als Anspielung auf À rebours gedeutet. Wilde war - wie auch Stéphane Mallarmé - ein Bewunderer des Romans."… (more)
What if you had a portrait that aged while you could stay young and beautiful forever? Would you trade your soul for eternal youth and beauty? That is the deal that Dorian makes in this gothic horror novella.
This story packs quite a punch, and once it starts, it really keeps going. Dorian’s descent into debauchery, madness, and evil is hard to look away from. The more monstrous acts Dorian commits, the more his portrait reflect this. Oscar Wilde’s writing is a poetic and beautiful masterpiece. ( )
In the picture of Dorian gray we see a man not able to withstand the Beauty of being loved by the devil himself in human form- as such being consuled by Him yet that is the price westerners pay for painting the devil in such an ugly light and leaving their image as an immaculate young woman or man
Dr. Srí Srí Srí Enlightened Grandmaster Hari Edgar Palacio MEd BS BA Ayurvedic Doctor, Ivy Leaguer & nephew of the Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernández & the Dominican consulate. Harry has read 3,650 books in his lifetime. Top #49 reader globally and top #52 reviewer in the USA. He is a former WARY 88.1 DJ & rock music director. was an art teacher, ESL professor, ESL assistant teacher, & international yoga teacher training instructor. Model under contract with Dion Audriaa, OpenSea, & Shein; asked to model in the Dominican Republic, for Alma, & shortlisted to model under Empire. Maha Mudra: Tantra Sexual Alchemy (Kriya Yoga Iniate). He is a certified sex educator. He is a musician (Oregon Kool-aid) ALL platforms. He Performed at September Fest, Paramount Theater & with Ari Up of the Slits (godmothers of post-punk); members of The Raincoats. Harry’s Guruji is Sri Dharma Mittra. He is second generation Osho lineage. Hāri meditated 1,331 hours in his lifetime. Harry, a numerous award winning author, was a finalist for Fjords Review book competition, semi-finalist for Quartz Literary Fiction and Poetry, Grand Prix winner Hudson Valley MOCA & at St. George literary contest, & accepted to be published in Tule Review, Bellevue Literary, Apiary, etc. His books were published by Finishing Line Press: Ambrosia & Sutras of Tiny Jazz. An award winning fine artist he exhibited at School of Visual Arts, assistant director of Arts 10566, & director of Steel Imagination. He obtained his Master’s of Education from Manhattanville College. The New School University, Parsons, Stanford, Harvard student; accepted to Columbia with scholarship. Harry worked as an assistant director at Manhattanville College, Pride Coordinator (although a straight cis male), international yoga teacher 200 hours, music journalist & contributor for Popfadblog, Tom Tom Magazine & More Sugar. He is a BIPOC living with schizoaffective disorder. ( )
I cannot honestly say that I enjoyed this book, though it has a clever plot. The experience was a shudder of unpleasant sensations at every sitting. Dorian Gray is a monster. His story is a walk through the degradation of a soul. The book causes doubt about the actual goodness in humanity, trumpeting the dangers of a selfish nature and the importance of choosing one's friends with the utmost care. As Dorian Gray discovered, friends have a heavy hand in the molding of one's character. Following is one paragraph that stood out to me: "Ah! in what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep the unsullied splendor of eternal youth! All his failure had been due to that. Better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure swift penalty along with it. There was purification in punishment." Like Dorian Gray, every member of humanity is free to make choices in life. But for us, the consequences of those choices must be endured. Dorian appeared to sidestep the consequences of his sins, but in truth he bore them in invisible ways as he watched the soul of his portrait rot with corruption. I must now seek out a light-hearted book to lift my spirits and restore my faith in mankind once again. ( )
I read this while on a camping trip with my family. Maybe it was because I was surrounded by love and family fun. Maybe it was because we were grimy and dirty and sweaty from camping.
or maybe the story was just not for me.
I just didn't really full pulled in. The idea was interesting but not plausible. A photo taking the brunt of your sins. I know the message was a really good one (beauty..is it really worth it? or many other options there.) But sadly, I didn't like anyone in the book. I didn't identify with the plight and I found the writing style rather frustrating, even thought there were some great one-liners.
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.
[Preface] The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
Quotations
'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.
Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
Last words
It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.
A beautiful young man, Dorian Gray, sits for a portrait. In the garden of the artist's house he falls into conversation with Lord Wotton, who convinces him that only beauty is worth pursuing. Gray wishes that his portrait, and not himself, might age and show the effects of time. His wish comes true, and wild, hedonistic pursuits horribly disfigure the portrait. This Faustian story caused much controversy when it was first published, as it discusses decadent art and culture, and homosexuality. It is now considered one of the great pieces of modern Western literature.
.
▾Library descriptions
No library descriptions found.
▾LibraryThing members' description
Book description
Wilde’s only novel, first published in 1890, is a brilliantly designed puzzle, intended to tease conventional minds with its exploration of the myriad interrelationships between art, life and consequence. From its provocative Preface, challenging the reader to belief in ‘art for art’s sake’, to its sensational conclusion, the story self-consciously experiments with the notion of sin as an element of design. Yet Wilde himself underestimated the consequences of his experiment, and its capacity to outrage the Victorian establishment. Its words returned to haunt him in his court appearances in 1895, and he later recalled the ‘note of doom’ which runs like ‘a purple thread’ through its carefully crafted prose.
)
)
)
)
Google Books — Loading...
Dorian Gray: Influence
Wikipedia in English (3)
9
This story packs quite a punch, and once it starts, it really keeps going. Dorian’s descent into debauchery, madness, and evil is hard to look away from. The more monstrous acts Dorian commits, the more his portrait reflect this. Oscar Wilde’s writing is a poetic and beautiful masterpiece. (