The Picture of Dorian Gray
The studio of painter Basil Hallward holds a full-length portrait of Dorian Gray, a young man of extraordinary beauty. Under the seductive influence of the witty hedonist Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian comes to prize his own youth and good looks above all else, and idly wishes that the portrait might age in his place. The wish is granted. As Dorian plunges into a life of pleasure, cruelty, and corruption, his face stays flawlessly young while the painted image withers, recording every sin. The hidden canvas becomes the ledger of his soul, and the secret he guards drives him toward ruin.
Wilde's only novel is a glittering fable about beauty, vanity, and moral consequence. It asks whether art carries a conscience, whether a life devoted to sensation can escape its costs, and what we owe the self we keep hidden. Sharpened by Wilde's dazzling epigrams and an atmosphere of Gothic dread, it endures as a haunting study of temptation and the price of an unexamined life.
How it begins
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain.