"Life is too much important a thing ever to talk seriously about it." by Oscar wilde

"All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life."

so.. I have to write something... go on a brief discussion about the book "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde.

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY: A JOINT OF THE DOUBLE


The first text of Western tradition, the Genesis, tells that the man starts being one. God cuts it in two, the split results in a weakness of the singularity and the life of certain form becomes a constant search for the other lost half. This conception becomes present in the traditional religions, with the separation between soul and body. Ahead of this, man has a double nature, structuralized through the union of two different elements.

In terms of imaginary elements such as: mirrors, doubles, and reflexes inhabit legends, popular histories of magic and traditions, articulating a deep feeling of individual, social or community. This thematic is part of the literary subjects with deep mythological roots. In a world where the difference is articulated through the sense and of the value, the notion of the double one, the rejoinder, disturbs and uneasy the identity because it testifies the insufficiency of the being.

The Europe of century XIX was worried about the search of the identity, having articulated radical changes in the social segments, religious and politicians. In 1890, Oscar Wilde publishes "The Picture of Dorian Gray", with a second edition in the following year, the one that the writer adds six new chapters and a preface, interesting book, at the time considered subversive and controversial, shocks the hypocritical Victorian society that saw in it a mirror of its defects, other people's those that considered to be its virtues. Wilde questions the existence in its paradoxical moral values, the myth of perpetual youth, in aesthetic and its conflicts and the dispensable desires, workmanship that collate the reader with the impossible perfection, conventions or inevitable mortality.

To duplicate is the generating principle of the narrative - the double one of Dorian and his picture. In this workmanship as in Frankstein it has a creator and its monstrous creation, however differently it subjects them to a new sapling, thus producing two creators - Henry Wotton and Basil Hallward, and two monsters, Dorian and his picture.

Blinded for the Dionysius beauty of the young Dorian Gray, that met in a party of the London high-society in house of Lady Agatha, Basil Hallward the painter makes of him, his model, creating what ended up being a monstrous work of art, in which he discloses a lot of his own life, and that therefore it must remain in secret. But the life for him painted it becomes independent of it the picture is figured as original and double of the own Dorian, the personage comes close to the narcissus myth or, of the Faustino myth where, in favor of the mundane pleasures and abdicates of his soul. In the house of the painter, Dorian meets ones of his bigger influences, Lord Henry, a cynical typical and hedonist aristocrat of the time and great friend of Basil, he seduces Dorian for his vision of the world, where the only intention that’s worth to be followed is of the beauty and the pleasure.

When Dorian admires his picture, he just thinks about an impossible desire: to be always young while his picture ages. This desire carries through without any effort, explanations, any supernatural atmosphere that explains the fact, thus firming the devilish pact: the picture would age and he would remain young. The relation detaches the double Dorian - picture dominated for the admiration relation and deadly rivalry. The picture decodes the world of Dorian, his thoughts, desires, and frustrations; the picture transfigured in a mirror, but only Dorian has the possibility of, as Alice, to discover what is there on the other side.

Dorian is a transfigured personage for the art; in determined moment he was falling in love for Sybil Vane, a young innocent actress who represents the great heroines of the world in a small theater of the suburb, full of mediocre actors. Before finding Dorian, representing was for Sybil, the only reality of her life. After understanding to be a profanation the act to represent being in love, her performance is fatal, in the same way that the confession of love made for Dorian leaves her incapable to act, the death of her art kills the love of Dorian. It is the fact that proves the domination of Lord Henry on Dorian, the choice of art and not of love. The art must be judged by the beauty, and the beauty of the art of the theater is in such superior way that the actress is annulled ahead of the personage she represents.

Sybil committed suicide through the hard words of Dorian, and he visualizes for the first time "the degradation of his soul", when observing the picture, perceives "a touch of cruelty in sings it of the mouth". A new double appears, a double of the book. One is about the book sent for Lord Henry, poisonous’ book that fascinates Dorian. It tells a history of a young Paris man that realized all the passions and fashions of each century less the own one. Dorian was poisoned by this book, and considers the evil a simply fashion through which could carry through its conception of the beauty.

Dorian initiates the process of "degradation of the soul" stimulated by the poisonous’ book. He kills Basil, blackmail a friend and he leads him, later, to commit suicide. He was felt pursued, is taken refuge in the drug, the opium: although the pardon was impossible, forgetfulness was still possible. Dorian Gray delivers himself to all the types of perversities, and feels pleasure in seeing the picture to transfigure his soul in "something" extremely revolting. The years pass, feels distrust of the death, asks for punishment, not pardon, feels disgust for the own beauty, perceives: total dither of the beauty, total destruction.

Becomes unbearable to see his soul transfigured in the picture. His fight against the conscience comes to an ending at the moment where Dorian stabs the picture, and finishes with his own life. More than a symbol of "declining" the intellectual youth of the time, this book written for Wilde, strengthens the necessity to think on the attitudes about reason of a consequence about the scope spiritual, and reaffirms the presence of the double in life of each one of us.

One more time... All because of you!!!!