Lord Henry's Vulgarity
"We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to."
"The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer."
Ha ha, I thought that was a bit amusing.
"To get back one's youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies."
"Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play."
"In the present case, what is it that has really happened? Some one has killed herself for love of you. I wish that I had ever had such an experience. It would have made me in love with love for the rest of my life."
"No, she will never come to life. She has played her last part. But you must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply as a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful scene from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur. The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died. To you at least she was always a dream, a phantom that flitted through Shakespeare's plays and left them lovelier for its presence, a reed through which Shakespeare's music sounded richer and more full of joy. The moment she touched actual life, she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed away."
But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they are."
Lord Henry’s life-view was very much depicted in the things he said. Of course, he probably didn’t even believe all the things that came out of his mouth- it was only a wish for him to make it be so. For instance, his “realism” so to speak, was just a form of defense against reality’s cruelties. The fact that he advised Dorian so coldly that Sylvia’s death not only was a beautiful thing in the end, but that Dorian was “lucky” to have such a tragedy happen because of him. Lord Henry’s realism was a way for him to distance himself emotionally not only from the situation at hand but also everything in general. This allowed him to not be affected- note- outwardly. Inwardly he was dead, he didn’t have any joy left, because reason does not bring one joy but a fact. Why else would he say, “We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible."? A marvelous experience is to be kept in the past, not go back to it as a direct source of happiness, because that is unnatural and beats the purpose of a memory. Again, so sorry to bring Dostoevsky up again, but he referred to this specific thing: And in vain the dreamer rakes over his old dreams, as though seeking a spark among the embers, to fan them into flame, to warm his chilled heart by the rekindled fire, and to rouse up in it again all that was so sweet, that touched his heart, that set his blood boiling, drew tears from his eyes, and so luxuriously deceived him!"
And I call this a kind of vulgarity because as Lord Henry says, "It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian," because on the contrary- the sacred is to be left alone; not to be analyzed to death, to make it rise after it has died, and reduce it to a mere combination of accidental occurrences.
Lord Henry's Sincerity
"Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies."
"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. . ."
"There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love."
"But really, Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from all the women one meets! There is something to me quite beautiful about her death. I am glad I am living in a century when such wonders happen. They make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with, such as romance, passion, and love."
"Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it."
The process of it is love- not the object it is bestowed upon.
"Ah, Dorian, how happy you are! What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk deeply of everything. You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more than the sound of music. It has not marred you. You are still the same."
Even though he may not have done it on purpose, Lord Henry’s sincerity does come out a couple of times throughout the story. Unconsciously he tells the reader something about his past life that has changed him. He too had experienced the irrationality and chaos of love- which one cannot reason himself out of. He too, was innocent once, when he was capable of loving (for instance when he married his wife whom he misses). I think life disappointed him too often for him to keep his faith in the optimism of life, while Dorian in the beginning was full of faith and optimism.
Lord Henry’s Life-Lessons
"My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals."
"Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century."
So true. All ordinary people die with their century, for they never make themselves stand out in time. They are incapable. But that is not to say that the common man is worthless- on the contrary, he is quite essential. The common man brings us back to the essence of society- and he is undoubtedly more good than the intellectual with all of his knowledge. More humble at least.
"People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity."
Interesting, that they give the advice they themselves need.
“A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."
"Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them."
"Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly--that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race."
"(...) unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality."
I actually agree- I don't know, the noble type of person are quite annoying because they're doing what they're supposed to be doing.
"Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. It always means that they have a history." :)
Premonitions
"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."
"The picture, changed or unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience."
"A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration that was in store for the fair face on the canvas."
"If thought could exercise its influence upon a living organism, might not thought exercise an influence upon dead and inorganic things? Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity?"
"His own soul was looking out at him from the canvas and calling him to judgment."
"Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a moment."
Curious- that’s what society teaches us today.
"I thought of telling the prophet that art had a soul, but that man had not."
"There was purification in punishment."
The main concept/theme in this story is the vital connection between sin and its consequences on the physical. Dorian was exempt from the physical suffering that sin inevitably brings, “If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even.” Dorian experienced the “experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be.” He was exempt from the outer consequences. Of course, that didn’t really help him in the end, as Basil prophesized, “"One has to pay in other ways but money." "What sort of ways, Basil?" "Oh! I should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in . . . well, in the consciousness of degradation." This “consciousness” is so vivid for the “wretched man” that has to see himself degrade physically. And yet, even Dorian experienced the same process internally. First, he started being paranoid, then indifferent, and then entered into a cycle of reason and guilt. My question is, how did he benefit from this outward mask? Because honestly, I’m thinking these physical consequences are easier to bear, as he himself declares before he changes his mind, YET AGAIN. “There was purification in punishment.” I think that the “wretched man” is more lucky in this situation than Dorian with his outer mask. The sinner consciously sins, knowing what he’s in for. The sinner gets to the point where he accepts his physical consequences. That is why, when one looks at a prostitute- she isn’t happy but she isn’t in denial. They are more realistic than the average person, because the consciously deal with sin first-hand. This consciousness is essential for the survival of the sinner. Dorian did not survive because he avoided his consciousness. And this consciousness was consequently the portrait (a physical thing). Having his beauty made it easier for him to deny his reality, and that is what destroyed him. The fact that he murdered just out of impulse to “terminate the problem” added to his inevitable suicide. If he had done that consciously, (prepared for it and so on) he would have been okay with the murder. But, like Lord Henry said, he didn’t have the right personality to be a murder, his so-called innocence and nature recoiled from this act instinctively. His whole being rejected this action- and so- he could not have reasoned his way out. Lord Henry on the other hand- he reasoned about things before-hand, slowly killing his innocence. He became no more than a live dead man blabbering about this and that. Lord Henry killed his conscience by reason, while Dorian tried to kill it through denial.
I want to use a very interesting example that I have thought of before- sort of like an example of the anti-Dorian, if that makes any sense. Jesus Christ, as some of you have heard, took the others’ sins on himself. You see, sin or vice, as it is focused on in this book, does come with pleasure (which is only what Dorian wanted). And of course, it also comes with consequences. Jesus Christ experienced the consequences of sin (physical and in the end spiritual) but did not experience the pleasure of it. So in an affair, instead of going through the wonderful play of “oh should we, and yes we should because we are made to love each other” delightful reasoning, and just SKIPPING all of the marvelous satisfaction this person can offer and so on, and landing right into the “Oh you love your wife more than me, and I don’t ever want to see you again!” (or however these things end up). I mean, that is very unpleasant isn’t it? Well that is sort of what DID NOT happen to Dorian. He wanted just the “satisfaction” part but not the consequences. And yet, the consequences are essential to vice, because it makes one get over them. Dorian could not get over his sin, because it was stuck inside of him- and only he knew what hell he was living with. That must be terribly lonely.
Dorian's Character
"He had dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he had thought her great. Then she had disappointed him. She had been shallow and unworthy."
His love changed so suddenly. So bipolar. He only loved her for her art. Without it she was nothing. Maybe he was in love with the idea she was trying to portray.
"His unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher influence, would be transformed into some nobler passion, and the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the fear of God to us all."
Wanted to force himself to be good.
"You don't know the danger I am in, and there is nothing to keep me straight. She would have done that for me. She had no right to kill herself. It was selfish of her."
Even after she died! What an egoist!
"He would not think any more of what she had made him go through, on that horrible night at the theatre. When he thought of her, it would be as a wonderful tragic figure sent on to the world's stage to show the supreme reality of love."
"The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that was all."
"Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul?"
"He would place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture, and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs."
As if it wasn’t himself.
"It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood."
The main idea of this story.
"She knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost."
He loved her for her innocence.
"Then he loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel. It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery."
So if he did have the consequences physically he would've abstained?
"For curiosity's sake he had tried the denial of self."
One cannot repent rationally.
Dorian’s character is of course portrayed as very fickle. I think Wilde is trying to show that one cannot repent without the help of consequences. If a child is never to be told “no” and “go to the corner” (or whatever the up-to-date child punishment is)- then he will never learn. Just as Dorian kept running and running farther into desperation, because he was not being corrected. In this case, I think correction would be the things that people would have seen if his sin would have marked him physically. He would have experienced shame and rejection FROM SOCIETY- which is what would have turned him. A sinner is rarely so devoted to his sin that he would excommunicate himself consciously. Someone would have looked at him one day and say “Dorian, what have you done? Who have you become?” Coincidentally- that is what Basil basically told him- unfortunately. I think the significance of Basil is that he, as an artist, looked at the person’s soul and not the outward appearance. That is why Basil painted Dorian so beautifully, because at the time, Dorian’s soul really was beautiful.
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Kindle Edition
And so after this very long post, I would like to end with a wonderful poem my very good friend, Lisa Petersson wrote:
Dorian Gray,
Is dead.
It was not until they examined the rings,
That they could proclaim,
And in so doing myself inform,
that Dorian Gray is dead.
I ran my hands over the fragile loom.
Felt the threads,
Tried to discern the meaning of the tapestry
Inversed.
With framework faded,
In dusty, dank air,
The strings rest suspended in infinite lozenges.
Each thread drips from the looms
Twisting, slightly, from tiny, curling breezes
That drift and meander through the empty room.
My fingers glide over the bumps and twists,
Sometimes pressing deep
Into the fabric, pulling,
Looking for a thread.
A thread that will reveal to me the intricate picture, a thread that needs only to be pushed aside to bring me great clarity.
I brush across fine gold
And glide along soft wool
But no.
For the smallest glimmer is not less crucial than the strongest tendon, the very life-giving tendon, of art.
And so,
none will give way.
I must return,
And try my luck with this fickle portrait another day.
I avoid a mirror as I leave;
I shall never see one again, I think.
But the implications of dear Henry are possibly correct:
I may view myself in a mirror,
Providing I do not fall into the pool.
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