A Wilde Family

Reading “The Decay of Lying” through the point of view of Oscar Wilde’s children made me start to think about the role of family in some of the Decadent works we have read so far. The connection is hard to make in “The Decay of Lying” because it is unclear why Wilde chose his sons as the main characters or what the actual significance is. Looking back at The Picture of Dorian Gray and Against Nature the family theme is a little clearer.

In Against Nature, Des Esseintes’ family is described in the prologue before the book even really begins. Huysmans traces the Des Esseintes lineage through the family portraits. Huysmans writes, “It was obvious that the decline of this ancient house had followed an inevitable course; the males had grown progressively more effeminate; as if  to perfect the work of the time, for two centuries the Des Esseintes intermarried their children, thus exhausting, through inbreeding, what little strength they possessed,” (3). The Des Esseintes family has become weaker and sicker and the current Des Esseintes is no exception. Throughout the novel his weakness, illness, and neurosis are described. It seems that Des Esseintes is merely following a family trend.

Similarly, Dorian also traces through his ancestry in The Picture of Dorian Gray. As Dorian examines the portraits of his predecessors, he sees pieces of himself in the various members of his family. He ponders whether he was, “bequeathed… some inheritance of sin and shame,” or influenced by past infamies (107-108). Dorian notes that he “had got from [his mother] his beauty, and his passion for the beauty of others,” (108). Like Des Esseintes, it seems that Dorian is just another link in a chain of similar family members. Wilde even writes, “There were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history was merely the record of his own life… It seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had been his own,” (108).

How unique are Dorian and Des Esseintes? Are they truly revolutionary or are they just members of eccentric families? Are their stories predetermined and inevitable? Both characters never have children, so is the line is severed. But Oscar Wilde had his two sons. Where does he see himself in this line of thought? Perhaps casting his sons in one of his witty and more pointed works is his way of expressing the hope that his legacy will continue.

IPN

Des Esseintes’ Malady and the Tortoise

For this blog entry, I would like to come back on the chapter IV of À Rebours and, more particularly, on the anecdote of the tortoise. In this chapter, the reader learns that des Esseintes bought a tortoise near the Palais-Royal in Paris a couple of days before his departure for Fontenay. Indeed, while contemplating an Oriental carpet, des Esseintes thought that a magnificent moving object would embellish the carpet’s colours.

“[…] il serait bon de placer sur ce tapis quelque chose qui remuât et dont le ton foncé aiguisât la vivacité de ces teintes.” (118)

Unfortunately, when des Esseintes placed the tortoise on his Oriental carpet, the aesthetic effect he was aiming for was not achieved. The colours were still too dull, uniform, and brownish. Des Esseintes decided then to cover the tortoise’s carapace with gold. Still not perfectly satisfied, he decided then to encrust the carapace with various gems and precious stones. Turning the poor creature into a genuine work of art, des Esseintes adds more and more weight on the tortoise’s carapace. Des Esseintes gets his tortoise delivered to Fontenay and for once, he feels happy and good about himself: he eats with appetite and even decides to allow himself the luxury of drinking spirits, mixing them as they were various basic materials to compose complex perfumes (he uses what he calls his “orgue à bouche” that could clearly be compared with his “orgue à parfum.”) The taste of a whisky triggers an involuntary and quite unpleasant memory: that one time he got a tooth pulled out. By the time his daydream ends, des Esseintes notices that the tortoise is not moving anymore; the tortoise is dead because the extra-weight of the gems and precious stones crushed it.

It seems to me that the anecdote of the tortoise is quite similar to des Esseintes’ sad fate. In the case of des Esseintes, the gems and precious stones are the works of art (construed in a very broad sense) he loves so much: his authors (such as Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Balzac for instance) and his painters (such as Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon). In Fontenay, des Esseintes is too absorbed by contemplation and meditation and gets into a neurotic state of inertia and apathy. He cannot distinguish between the real and the fictional, and becomes mad. As the tortoise, des Esseintes is being crushed by those precious stones that constitute the ‘high-culture.’ Eventually des Esseintes needs to leave Fontenay and come back to Paris because his ascetic seclusion out of the world is literally killing him. – R.C.

Des Esseintes as a Catholic

Against Nature is an undeniably strange work of literature. It disregards a significant number of literary conventions of characterization. For example, Des Esseintes has no foils. There is little by way of plot development, so we don’t see his character develop over time of change in moments of crisis. Instead, we learn about Des Esseintes almost solely through his material possessions–we learn what kind of books he likes, what art he finds beautiful, what places he thinks are worth visiting, how he thinks turtles should be decorated, and so on and so forth. He rarely reflects on himself except in the context of material objects. Even some of his most internal characteristics–such as his various strains of crazy–are externalized and illuminated through his possessions and the attitude he has towards them. We spend all our time in his carefully constructed universe at Fontenay, but very little time actually in his head–except when he is discussing Catholicism. At the beginning of chapter 7, we are told he is living “on himself, feeding on his own substance” and that “The chaotic mass of readings and meditations on art that he had stored up during his solitude, like a dam to stem the flow of former memories, had been suddenly swept away , and the flood-tide was on the move, buffeting the present, the future, drowning everything beneath the waters of the past filling  his mind” (62). With all of his art drowning in the past, I expected him to reflect on his parents–not their portraits in the gallery, but his actual parents–and his childhood adventures. And he does–for about two paragraphs. The vast majority of this chapter, the self-substance on which he feeds, is about religion.

Although he insists that  his character is resistant to shaping, we learn that Catholicism has shaped the way he thinks and argues (65). He accepts Schopenhauer’s doctrine of pessimism, but not because Church doctrine is absolutely wrong. His view and the Church’s have a “common starting point,” but instead of justifying the evils of the world and holding the “vague hope” of an afterlife, he preaches the “nothingness of existence” and becomes a decadent hermit (69). He never questions the doctrine that human beings do have a soul and he acknowledges from his soul the Church’s “hereditary influence on humanity of centuries of time” (69). Is there a phenomenon in Catholicism of being “culturally Catholic” like there is in Judaism? Des Esseintes rejects original sin and considers God’s mercy extremely questionable, but he defines the substance of his soul as Catholic. He collects Catholic art and literature (which almost seems doubly significant, since he defines himself in such large part by the art on his walls and the books he reads), and he turns his bedroom into a luxurious monk’s cell. It’s not just fetishization of ritual. He fetishizes flowers, and when they die he throws them away. He doesn’t use Catholicism until it ceases to please his senses; he identifies in the most fundamental way as Catholic.

Which brings me to the ending. I don’t believe the conclusion is a standard conversion. He bristles at Catholicism in chapter 7 because he fears no longer being “absolute master” in his own house,  but at the end the doctor has already taken that agency from him (69). He is forced to leave his tiny, secluded, absolutely pure kingdom, surrender his absolute mastery, and return to the polluted world. He has to give up his strange proclivities and be normal, just like everybody else, which means he can no longer have an isolated half-Catholic, half-art cult religion of one. I don’t think he has suddenly begun believing in original sin and all the other dogma he disparages. He hasn’t suddenly begun trusting the Church as present in the world, which is corrupted and impure. I think the ending is his frustrated acceptance of the doctor’s command to stop being crazy, but he is still enough himself to want one of the few things left to him to be beautiful which–although this does not seem to be the case with flowers–seems to entail purity. Or at least purity of ritual. (No more potato starch!) And what more richly excessive and poetic way to purify a religion than to have a vengeful God rain fire from the sky (180)? And, if the pestilence must continue and he must be subject to it, at least he can pray for himself. He has such a low opinion of God’s mercy, I don’t think he believes God will give him faith or hope or guidance, but I think he’ll engage in the ritual anyway, because praying is what Catholic people do, and Des Esseintes has a Catholic soul. –LN

Life as an Illusion: Embracing Absurdity in Against Nature

Des Esseintes lives in a world of his own artifice, where he imagines his own adventures, takes his mind on literary odysseys, and enhances his created world with smells and sounds.  Why this withdrawal from reality, this retreat into his own creation of a fake reality, this feeling that his own fabrications are superior and more worth his time than the world beyond?  At first, it seems as though pessimism plays a key role in the answer to this question, but perhaps the reason that Des Esseintes lives in his world of artifice has less to do with his pessimistic attitude toward society, and more to do with his recognition and embrace of absurdity.

After lamenting that “nothing remains that is pure and authentic…and the liberty we proclaim are both adulterated and derisory,” Des Essientes concludes, “I do not…consider it either more ridiculous or more insane to ask of my fellow men a degree of illusion barely as great as that which he expends each day for absurd purposes, to imagine that the town of Pantin is an artificial Nice, an imitation Menton.”  His critique of society is harsh, yet ultimately it is not the impurity and derision of society that drives him to his lifestyle, but rather it is that others are able to live so easily in the messy, corrupted world.  He states clearly that while he may chase illusions, he is no different than other people, who must create illusions in order to accept life in the absurdities of society.

Indeed, in his argument that he lives in no more of an illusion than anyone else, he suggests quite strongly that his illusion is superior.  He can create something better – if we’re to live in an illusion anyway, why not live in one where we have the power to make it the best it can be.  Des Esseintes creates perfumes more powerful and beautiful than the flowers whose scent he imitates.  His life is built upon the idea that his own artifices are superior to reality.

Yet then reality becomes blurred.  He begins imagining his scents, and cannot get them out of his nostrils even when he opens the window.  His artifice is more real to him than the actuality of fresh air.  Des Esseintes decides not to travel to London, because he feels like his imagination can take him there well enough, and then he doesn’t have to deal with the hassle of travel.  What then, is London at all?  What is fresh air?  Simply Des Esseintes’ imagination and creation.  And if indeed his life is no more of an illusion than anyone else’s, then the air people breathe is likewise their invention, their belief, what they expect to find in smells, and what memories and dreams they associate with it.  And London is the creation of each individual; its absurdities are created by the viewers.

Toward the end of the novel Des Esseintes “realized that the arguments of pessimism were incapable of giving him comfort, that only the impossible belief in a future life would give him peace.”  The very belief that would give him peace is “impossible,” and so it is truly in the absurd that he finds a degree of comfort.  His pessimistic views, which he certainly dwells on, are ultimately secondary to his acceptance that life is absurd, and that the only way for him to move through it is by living his own absurdity. -YG

Hysteria in Huysmans

In Huysmans’ Against Nature, the protagonist, Des Esseintes suffers from an undiagnosed malady causing anxiety, among other things. At the end of the novel, his doctor, portrayed as amateurish at best, suggests he abandon his life at his country home of Fonteray and return to the bustling city of Paris. Although Des Esseintes malady is unclear, he appears to suffer from an inverted hysteria, the (often) woman’s illness popularly diagnosed in the late nineteenth century. Des Esseintes displays several of the hallmarks of hysteria: overstimulation of the mind, nervousness, paranoia. These symptoms emasculate him. The word “hysteria” itself derives from the same root as “uterus,” linking it clearly to women.

In many ways, Huysmans portrays Des Esseintes illness as an inverted hysteria. Des Esseintes leaves his busy life in Paris behind for a life of solitude at Fonteray, his family country home. It is at Fonteray that he encounters symptoms of hysteria. Most suffering from hysteria lives in cities and were prescribed extended visits to the country in order to calm their nerves. In the case of Des Esseintes, his prescription involves leaving behind his isolation in favor of the city. Des Esseintes mind is overstimulated simply by his own thoughts at Fonteray; perhaps his reimmersion in city life and interactions with others will calm his thoughts.

Hysteria, though diagnosed frequently during the period, has no basis on its own; it is an invented, catch-all illness for those suffering from anxiety disorders, generalized mental illness, and even stress. Des Esseintes does not ressemble the typical hysteria patient, though his behavior seems to point to underlying mental problems beyond sheer eccentricity. His distaste for social interactions, corruption of Auguste Langlois, and obsessive listing of knowledge and objects all point to greater issues. Nevertheless, the inversion of hysteria in the novel reinforces a femininity in Des Esseintes while underlining his peculiar, unique case.  -KJO

A Moral in The Picture of Dorian Gray

The presence or lack of a moral in Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray is a topic of uncertainty. In reading The Picture of Dorian Gray and in hearing conflicting thoughts about morality in the novel, I couldn’t help but create a mental division between two types of morals. One would be morals with direction, consisting of ones intended to lead the receiver of the moral to a particular action or inaction, and the other would be morals without direction, that are intended to demonstrate some element of life that might affect how a person formulates zir* own morals. I read The Picture of Dorian Gray as a novel that does indeed provide a moral, but of the second variety, without direction.

In one of our student presentations in class, the presenter showed us a quote by Oscar Wilde about the moral in The Picture of Dorian Gray. This quote was from a letter by Oscar Wilde to the editor of the St. James’s Gazette. Wilde wrote:

“And the moral is this: All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment. The painter, Basil Hallward, worshipping physical beauty far too much, as most painters do, dies by the hand of one in whose soul he has created a monstrous and absurd vanity. Dorian Gray, having led a life of mere sensation and pleasure, tries to kill conscience, and at that moment kills himself. Lord Henry Wotton seeks to be merely the spectator of life. He finds that those who reject the battle are more deeply wounded than those who take part in it.”

It is unwise to take this, or perhaps any quote by Wilde, as the absolute Truth, especially as, in the Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde writes, “No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.” However, I arrived to much the same conclusion as the first quote suggests, and so I think it is an interpretation with some support in the novel.

It is abundantly apparent that Basil Hallward reveres Dorian’s physical beauty to excess. When first describing Dorian to Lord Henry, Basil says almost nothing about Dorian as a complex person, though he repeatedly refers to Dorian’s “personality.” Rather, Basil describes how Dorian has become integral to his artistic expression, suggesting that Basil’s interest consists most essentially in Dorian’s physical beauty, since that can be represented in Basil’s art. As Basil is finishing the portrait and once he is done, almost everything that he says to Dorian is flattery of Dorian’s beauty. It is in this scene that Dorian becomes in love with the painting and with his own beauty. Basil is then killed by the person for whom he held this excessive admiration.

Dorian tries to renounce conscience by destroying the portrait after a life of hedonism in which the portrait was the only conscience he had. Dorian’s actions could be interpreted as excess in the amount of sensation and pleasure he sought, culminating in the final excess search for pleasure by destroying the one object in its way. His actions could also be interpreted as progressive renunciation of conscience, culminating in the destruction of the portrait. In either case, Dorian dies, and so experiences some punishment.

Both times that I read this novel I noted strange instances when Harry displays emotion that seem out of place with the image he creates of himself, such as a description of his “nervous fingers” during a conversation with Basil and the fear in Harry’s eye when he hears Dorian give a stifled groan and collapse in the next room. I had not before considered Lord Henry to be more deeply wounded than the others, as Wilde suggests he is. Regardless, Harry’s efforts to renounce an active role in his own life do not generate the carefree happiness one might expect from a character so bent escaping personal suffering.

The cases of these three characters seem, to me, strong demonstration that all excess and renunciation ultimately face their own punishment. However, I don’t see this demonstration as inviting any specific moral view. These characters have very different relationships with excess and renunciation, and all face punishment. Dorian’s actions could equally be interpreted as excess or renunciation and, in a way, so too could any of the characters’ actions. Excess can be a renunciation of the opposite idea, and vice versa. As a result, it’s difficult to extrapolate any directed moral from the story. It seems that no set of behavior is entirely safe. As a result, though I can’t help but be struck by the demonstrations of how characters suffer for their actions in The Picture of Dorian Gray and take this demonstration to be some kind of moral, I don’t think that it is a moral that compels a reader to any specific conclusion. Rather, it leaves us to decide for ourselves where to take our actions from here.

* I use “zir” as a possessive form of the generic, gender-neutral subject pronoun “ze.” This is used in order to be more inclusive than the traditional “she” and “he” pronouns allow, encompassing people who fall outside of gender binary as well as those who identify as women and men.

-M.P.

Haunting and Madness in both The Picture of Dorian Gray and À Rebours

While reading À rebours and The Portrait of Dorian Gray side by side, I was struck by a sense of hysteric madness in both Dorian and des Esseintes. The psychological affects of des Esseintes are much more clearly plotted for us than those of Dorian as the words neurosis, hysteria, and psychology are repeated throughout the novel. Dorian’s condition is much more obscure.

It seems both men come from a childhood that have marked them negatively—Dorian is the child of “Love and Death” as Lord Henry calls him, and des Esseintes recalls his childhood with an acute morbid negativity. Des Esseintes refers to his childhood often “par haine, et par mépris” (À rebours 88), and later actually says that he develops almost sadomasochistic tendencies because of his upbringing: “un besoin de vengeance de tristesse endure, une rage de salir par des turpitudes de souvenirs de famille, un désir furieux de panteler sur des cousins de chair, d’épuiser jusqu’à leur dernière gouttes, les plus véhémentes et les plus acres des folies charnelles.” (ibid) Not only this, but des Esseintes seems to perpetrate and encourage the cycle “en garda[nt] les deux vieux domestiques qui avaient siogné sa mere […] un ménage habitué à un emploi de garde-malade.” (98) He treats himself as a sick man and therefore becomes one all the more. He has true symptoms of a Freudian hysteric—he has a “toux nerveuse” (À rebours 182), he is “torturé par d’inexplicables repulsions, par des frémissements qui lui glaçaient l’échine.” (À rebours 181), and “le doute ne pouvait exister; la névrose revenait, une fois de plus, sous l’apparence d’une nouvelle illusion des sens.” (À rebours 215).

Dorian’s childhood and his mother’s beauty certainly cast a shadow on his upbringing but the source of his darkness is not as clearly defined. Although it does shape him, it is des Esseintes who “became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself. And indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it.” (Dorian Gray 97) Dorian begins to question his own behavior, “had some strange poisonous germ crept from body to body till it had reached his own? […] Were his own actions merely the dreams that the dead man had not dared to realize?”(Dorian Gray 107). His neurosis seems to grow as his obsession with his own beauty does; he begins to act like des Esseintes, he collects, he obsesses, he hallucinates, corrupts the young souls of others, all the while thinking he is exempt from any type of reprobation.

Finally the last connection to make is that of forced solitude, paranoia, and the ability to “travel” from one’s own home. We are fully aware of des Esseintes’s solitude, he talks about it incessantly, and he even goes so far as to say that “la solitude avait agi sur son cerveau, de même qu’un narcotique.” (À rebours 169). He is so fond of this isolation that he begins to sympathize with monastic life as a doctrine for his own life (À rebours 159). Dorian too begins to desire this sense of forced confinement, he starts to collect like des Esseintes and begins to change: “For these treasures and everything that he collected in his lovely house, were to be to him means of forgetfulness, modes by which he could escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be almost too great to be borne” (Dorian Gray 152). Des Esseintes on his end demonstrates this by his innate ability to travel to the ocean from his own bathtub (À rebours 102-103) but also his fictional trip to London. Des Esseintes describes it as “il se procurait ainsi, en ne bougeant point, les sensations rapides, Presque instantanées, d’un voyage au long cours, et ce plaisir du déplacement […]” (À rebours 101).

Both men reach a point of no return, des Esseintes ends up by removing himself “[…] de plus en plus, de la réalité et surtout du monde contemporain.” (À rebours 296) while Dorian begins to become intensely paranoid: “The next day he did not leave the house, and indeed, spent most of the time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet indifferent to life itself.” (Dorian Gray 146). What started as a decadent pleasure, a love for collecting, indulging in the ugly beauty of solitude, quickly becomes a nightmare from which the two main characters can not disentangle themselves.

MCR

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lord Henry’s Role

Lord Henry’s character is very interesting in The Picture of Dorian Gray because he is ultimately the only major character that remains alive at the end of the story. Seeing the developments of the characters throughout the story, he is the only character who manages to not become overly obsessive. Dorian with his beauty, Basil with Dorian, Sibyl to Dorian, and James Vane with Dorian’s death are all obsessive tendencies where their lives are dependent on something else. Strangely enough, everything ties back to Dorian who is formed into the self-destructive person by Lord Henry.  As a result, one cannot help but think of him as a villainous character. However, Lord Henry is never presented in a negative manner. He is clever, charming, and eloquent.

One can argue that he represents the devil, drawing a parallel to Faust by his beguiling manner. His first interactions with Dorian prove to bring about positive benefits for Dorian and those around him—Basil completes his portrait of Dorian, Dorian feels reinvigorated and curious, and Sibyl even finds herself mutually in love with Dorian. It is later when Dorian becomes too engrossed in his own beauty that every one of these characters ends up dead.

Furthermore, there is a manner in which he seems to be many steps ahead of the other characters. He emphasizes very heavily the importance of individuality stating, “’To be good is to be in harmony with one’s self,’ he replied, touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers. ‘Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One’s own life—that is the important thing.’” He is almost warning Dorian not to be influenced by him, making Dorian’s death even more tragic. This combined with undertones of gothic representations of death in “pale, fine-pointed fingers” makes it very clear that Lord Henry is far more contemplative and conniving than he is depicted.

-HJ

Paradoxical Femininity in The Picture of Dorian Gray

What I found to be quite interesting in The Picture of Dorian Gray was the attitude towards femininity, which I still feel unable to describe in a conclusive or definitive manner.  The novel as a whole is rather lacking in female characters, and yet I do not think we as readers mind much, because like Jacques in Rachilde’s Monsieur Venus, Dorian is described in an overwhelming feminine way- his rose-white boyhood and initial naïveté cast him as an effeminate character from the jumpstart.  However there are actual women in the novel- first and perhaps most importantly, there is Sybil Vane, an embodiment of aesthetic appeal, a living in-the-flesh Shakespearean heroine.  The young and the beautiful women in this novel, like in Shakespearean tragedies, are inescapably tragic and wretched in their beauties.  Just as Sybil’s death is conceived by Dorian a beautiful ending to a non-life, the death of a later romance, Hetty, is nonchalantly discussed between Dorian and Lord Henry, who asks, “How do you know that Hetty isn’t floating at the present moment in some star-lit mill pond, with lovely waterlillies round her, like Ophelia?” (151).  These women are portrayed like pretty pictures; they are lovely but discardable, and their appeal is sensual but not at all sexual.  For though Dorian appears to be passionately in love with Sybil, it is her artistic beauty that inspires him, and he considers her less as a lover and more as a saint- at one point he tells Lord Henry not to criticize her, for “Sybil Vane is sacred!”  This reminds me of Juliet’s quote during the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet, when Juliet calls Romeo the “god of my idolatry.”  Perhaps Wilde means for Dorian to lack sexual feeling for the female ingenues in order to emphasize the homoerotic tone of the novel.  Either way, the feminine figure is in this example an item that is weak, pathetic, and pretty much in the same way a flower is- lovely in bloom, but always on the brink of a withering death.
This is opposed, however, by the character of the Duchess in the ending of the novel, who is the first individual; male and female alike, in which Lord Henry meets his match.  The chapter between the Duchess and Lord Henry is a stream of quickened witticisms and paradoxes; it is clever and delightful, and it is the speediest part of the novel in terms of pace.  What does Wilde mean by including both Sybil Vane, the weakest and most helpless of women, and the Duchess, a silver-tongued coquette?  How do we reconcile these two contrasting images of femininity not to mention all of the others in the novel (Lord Henry’s intelligent but cold and adulterous wife, Sybil’s ambitious and dirt-poor mother, the old women who fall hopelessly in love with the young and beautiful Dorian Gray), and what does Oscar Wilde mean by all of it?

-J.S.W.

The Presence of Conscience and Influence in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”

In Oscar Wilde’s famous work The Picture of Dorian Gray, the overarching themes of aestheticism, influence, and societal decadence serve as important guides to the structure and meaning of the story as a whole. This alone definitely made the book both interesting and entertaining to me, but what seemed especially unique to me in the story were the characters and their respective developments over the course of the novel. I found that in The Picture of Dorian Gray, along with some of Wilde’s other works, there were no “all good” or “all bad” characters- there was no clear protagonist. Of course, some characters may have been more “moral” than others; consider the contrast between Basil and Dorian, but that’s not to say each character didn’t have his or her own weaknesses. In Dorian’s case, he still managed to appear as a sympathetic character despite his many questionable actions. In my opinion, the one thing that keeps Dorian a somewhat sympathetic character is the fact that he retains a conscience and sense of guilt throughout the novel, despite his obvious moral decay. Also important to note is that he is a victim of influence; most of his beliefs and actions stem from something he has read or heard. This becomes apparent in several scenes, one of the most prominent being after Dorian stabs Basil. The guilt catches up with him the next morning: “Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent blood-stained feet into his brain, and reconstructed themselves there with terrible distinctness…how horrible that was! Such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day”. This shows that Dorian hasn’t completely transformed; he still faces emotional consequences for his actions. He has been strongly influenced by several factors, and although he is obviously trying to submerge himself completely into this hedonistic lifestyle, he still holds on to a little bit of his old self.

Both the painting and the infamous “yellow book” have profound influences over Dorian, thus leading to his moral corruption and eventual demise. Though Wilde seems to promote the idea of a common beauty and youth at first, it becomes clear that individualism both in art and personality is very important, and failure to adhere to this can lead to the ultimate destruction. -MG

Life and Art, in all seriousness or not

Should life be taken seriously?  Should art?  There is an interplay and argument between life and art in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, as the characters mesh them, choose between them, and retreat from one to the other, leaning into an exploration of what is beautiful, what is good, and landing upon no satisfying answer.

Sibyl Vane’s story shows a character moving between art and her own life, with neither path appearing particularly more attractive than the other.  She begins as an artist, a stage actress.  Art overwhelmed her; she describes acting as “the one reality of my life.  It was only in the theater that I lived…The painted scenes were my world.”  She took art so seriously that she thought it real, her entire “world.”  But she leaves this art-dominated world.  When she stopped acting well, stopped taking her art seriously, “she was transfigured with joy.”  She left art and entered into her own life, where she believed that Dorian “had brought [her] something higher.”  Here, she dismisses art as “but a reflection,” and puts her newfound on a pedestal.  Immediately after switching from art to her own life, Dorian broke her heart, “she crouched on the floor like a wounded thing,” and committed suicide.  Her exit from the art-dominated world was brief.  She retreated back to art in order to die with all the drama and tragedy of Juliet.  One path, art or real life, did not seem particularly better than the other.  When she took art seriously she was used by her mother and the producer and did not “understand what love really is,” but when she took life seriously even though she began in an “ecstasy of happiness,” she was quickly broken-hearted.  Her suicide was perhaps a final mesh between her life and her art, an artful, dramatic tragedy provoked by the emotions and consequences of real life.

Dorian begins as a naïve man more involved with life than art.  In the beginning he doesn’t even “want a live-sized portrait of [himself],” suggesting he is not dominated by art.  He spins “round on the music-stool, in a willful, petulant manner,” and then blushes, showing that, like a child, he is immersed in the moments of his life, trying to enjoy himself, and thinking about the people around him in relation to himself.  He’s so concerned over having forgotten to go play duets with Lady Agatha that he is “far too frightened to call.”  His serious attention to trivial parts of his life suggests that he takes his life more seriously than art.

Of course, Dorian was headed to a life dominated by art; the reader first meets him in a painting.  And indeed, after only a few pages of Lord Henry’s influence, Dorian begins down a path that eventually leads to a life of art.  His callousness toward Sibyl Vane and ease at forgetting about her tragedy clearly reveals that he stopped taking seriously the reality of life – peoples’ emotions and travails.  He drowned himself in layers and layers of art, concocting perfumes, experimenting with music, and exploring new books.

Dorian does not merely move between life and art; he escapes from one to the next.  He does not want to grow old, did not want his soul to corrupt.  But more importantly, he does not want age and corruption to show.  Art allows him to escape from the responsibilities of reality.  He need not feel guilt over Sybil, confusion over his relationship with Lord Henry, sadness for the change in his friendship with Basil, or embarrassment over any critical whisperings that may go on around him.  He can indulge, and show no sign of indulgence.  His portrait bears that weight.  Dorian removes the seriousness of life and projects onto the portrait, onto art.  He then drowns himself in art, letting his senses indulge so that he might more fully escape from the emotions and consequences of his real life.

Lord Henry combines life and art and takes neither seriously.   He uses the lives of others as his medium.  He compares influencing Dorian to “playing upon an exquisite violin.”  He plays with real lives in order to fashion something he finds interesting, then ponders it and mocks it.

If Lord Henry combines real life and art and takes neither seriously, then perhaps Basil combines them and takes them both seriously.  Basil speaks “gravely” when he says, “I see things differently, I think of them differently.  I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before…The harmony of soul and body – how much that is!  We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void.”  This painter creates art inspired by life, he meshes them, and it means something to him personally.  Of course, this inspiration is derived from Dorian, which is intriguing given Dorian’s story and movement between art and life.

Where the characters place themselves, whether in art or in their own lives or in both, and where they place importance, if they place importance anywhere at all, shifts as the as the novel progresses.  I’ve only touched on a few motions and extremes, but the subtleties of these paths, and how one character’s path influences that of another’s perspective on life and art, could fill pages.  So far, however, in comparing the different strategies of seriousness, art, and life, no single character seems to have found the optimal combination, and perhaps there is none.       – YG

Self-censure.

There is a fascinating asymmetry in Dorian’s psychology: he discards Sybil Vane like a paper bag when he finds out that she can no longer embody the art of Shakespeare (the actor’s peculiar dilemma is that she is both artist and artwork, fulfilling both roles in the same breath), but has no qualms about reproaching Basil Hallward for liking his portrait more than he likes its original. “I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver faun,” cries Dorian, “You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose.” (33)

This hypocrisy is striking, but it can be resolved by appealing to the resolution that Dorian makes at the end of Chapter 2. He declares that he would give up anything, even his soul, if only he could remain young and his portrait grow old: in effect, reversing the nature the artwork and its model. Normally, it is art that preserves a snapshot of the model for eternity, frozen and immutable, whereas the model that is thusly represented continues to develop, to grow, to exercise its subjecthood over itself and over other things. The portrait is object, the portrayed is subject. But Dorian is so enamored of the beauty of this material object (Basil’s portrait) that he sacrifices his subjectivity entirely: he gives up the human capacity to cultivate oneself, to learn from error, to be plagued by or conquer one’s own conscience: in short, to live out the full life cycle of a fluid, autonomous entity. He imagines that his resolution–to objectify himself–will only serve to preserve his youthful beauty, but in fact he does not realize what he is giving up in this bargain. Firstly, it is clear that Dorian can no longer love–an object can only be loved, it cannot impress up the world any genuine love of its own. Dorian claims to be impassioned by Sybil Vane, even going so far as to propose to her, but in fact what he admires is the beautiful way in which Sybil objectifies her true self–the way in which she skillfully re-shapes her own personality to fit into the jeweled character-costumes designed by Shakespeare. When he discovers that Sybil Vane is not actually Ophelia or Cordelia–that she is not in fact art but is in fact life, an individual with her own idiosyncratic yearnings and habits, he flings her aside in disgust. For Dorian no longer has the capacity to sympathize with other persons, in their full-blown subjecthood (and with the imperfection and fallibility that this implies). He is himself a one-dimensional being, and as such can only appreciate other things (Shakespearean heroines, rich brocades, social rôles, and Wagnerian arias) that are similarly constructed. Indeed, works of art are in themselves one-dimensional, inanimate. The text of Eugenie Grandet does not change, Desdesmona’s grief is written in formulaic iambic pentameter, and Chopin’s sensual ardor is perfectly schematized in demi-semi-quavers. It is only when they are infused with the thoughts and opinions of an audience–only when they are interpreted–that they become life-like and dynamic. An uninterpreted painting amounts to nothing more that daubs of paint smeared over a canvas, forming shapes that bear an incidental resemblance to certain things.

This brings me to a second observation regarding The Portrait of Dorian Gray, a work of art that tries to judge other works of art, seeking to answer the question of what art is, all the while confined by its status as art. A sort of “art on art” exposé. So it seems that this is exactly the sort of artwork that begs to be interpreted, and indeed there has been a rich tradition of commentary that turns over each page of the book as if it were a leaf concealing new fertile soil. However, before any of this could exist, the book had to defend itself against attempts at censorship. There were concerned citizens who decried the immorality of the book and claimed that it would corrupt its readers.

It may be rewarding, at this point, to suggest an interpretation of what Dorian Gray itself has to say about censorship. Dorian’s decision to lock the portrait away behind a shroud is undoubtedly a type of censorship. He is depriving the world access to this work of art, for reasons that may seem rather unconventional… But then again, perhaps Dorian’s reason for censorship may not be so different from the motivations of the aforementioned “concerned citizens”. Dorian wishes to hide the portrait because it betrays the social veneer that he presents to the world: it undermines the credibility of what the world sees of him. And perhaps that is what is behind many historical examples of censorship. In many cases, there are people who find that a certain novel or painting is too sordid (read: too candid, too close to life as it is actually experienced) and does not present noble ideals to which humanity should aspire. The censored artwork hits too close to a sensitive nerve; it is a too-clear mirror that reflects too honestly, and when people don’t like what they see in in the mirror they try to hide it away–precisely what Dorian does with his portrait! In addition to this revelation, the novel also discloses the consequences of censorship. It narrates what happens to Dorian (who represents the model, the world or community that is depicted in art) as a result of censoring his portrait. Specifically, when the artwork is hidden from the world, the dissociation between the snapshot and the world that it originally depicted becomes greater and greater, because there is no opportunity for the world to periodically check its reflection in the mirror and to readjust its course accordingly. Dorian’s portrait grows more and more grotesque, while Dorian himself remains pristine: this, of course, is a reversal of the snapshot/world dichotomy (as it is usually the art that remains constant while the world deviates from it), but it is precisely in this reversal that the novel’s power lies. By switching the place of man and art, their effects upon the other can be more keenly perceived. In other words, the folly of censorship is directly perceivable in the hideous visage of Dorian’s portrait–there is no need for abstract, pathos-ridden appeals to the social evils that plague the world, for the portrait speaks more eloquently than a thousand overwrought lines of rhetoric.

And so, despite Wilde’s stipulation that literature is not meant for edification, there can be a simple lesson gleaned from The Portrait of Dorian Gray after all.

-LH

The Fall of Nature and the Rise of the Artist: From Romanticism to Decadence

[Written by A.A.]

When Keats lamented the weakness of his spirit and dimness of his brain in his poem, “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” he lamented the plight of the artist. Indeed, many of the Romantics – Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge – grappled with a distinctive artistic problem: the problem of representation.

Confronted with Nature and tasked with the job of interpreting it, Romantic poets often resorted to producing poems about the very inexpressibility of Nature itself. You see it in Shelley’s “Mount Blanc,” Coleridge’s “Hymn Before Sunrise,” and many other Romantic works. Regardless of a poem’s subject matter, though, one thing was clear throughout the Romantic movement: the Poet occupied a role of translation. He was the bridge between the majestic sights of Nature and the resulting poem that would be read by the ordinary masses. When Poet’s role is to provide the interpretive framework for what already exists, however, he is not a creator in the strictest sense. The Poet, for instance, does not craft the mountain, only portrays it. He does not produce the landscape, only infuses it with meaning. The Romantic Poet, in other words, creates art in the service of Nature. He does not create the represented object itself.

Huysmans, in his work Against Nature, turns this idea on its head. He looks Romanticism in the face and declares:

“Nature has had her day; she is finally exhausted, through the nauseating uniformity of her landscapes and her skies, the sedulous patience of men of refined taste.” (p.20)

The rejection of Nature as not only tiresome but nauseatingly unattractive is a shocking and effective way of signaling the arrival of a new artistic agenda. For Huysmans and the Decadents, artifice, not Nature, will reign as the chief artistic concern of the day. Huysmans drives his point home most clearly in his assertion that any object or scene in nature can be reproduced, exactly and to the very last detail, by man. A waterfall can be imitated by hydraulics. A rock can be fashioned out of papier-mâché. A moonlit scene can be reproduced by a floodlit stage set. In short, the artificial matches everything that nature achieves with one crucial difference: artifice is the direct product of the human genius.

Herein lies the revelation of Decadence: human beings are capable of just as much creative agency and ability as the Nature that had been so revered by the Romantics not half a century earlier. The fact that man can construct these artificial waterfalls, landscapes, and objects forces a provocative question: “What good is the special value of Nature in the face of man’s perfect imitation?” It would seem that the two are at the very least equal.

Huysmans, however, goes beyond equality. He pushes the capabilities of the artificial above Nature. Take his descriptions of the locomotives as women more terrifying and beautiful than the women produced by nature:

“The Engerth is an enormous, gloomy brunette with a hoarse, harsh voice and thick-set hips squeezed into armour-plating of cast iron, a monstrous creature with a tousled mane of black smoke. . .” (p. 21)

By describing the locomotive as a woman, Huysmans places the grand and terrifying effect of this “manmade” woman far above what any natural women can achieve. Man, in other words, outdoes nature in his production of art. This move not only renders nature obsolete, it establishes the artificial as capable of things beyond the limits nature previously imposed.

If, then, man’s art turns from nature and wholly into the realm of artifice, and the artificial is by definition completely under man’s control, then man therefore becomes wholly in control of art.

This is the rise of the artist. Rather than serving as an interpretive medium through which an already-existing Nature may be expressed (as the Romantics did), Huysmans’ artist manipulates and creates on his own terms. He ascends to a position of creative agency that enables him to create rather than represent, manipulate rather than transcribe, and play God rather than pay homage to Him.

It is no wonder, then, that Huysmans declares man’s accomplishments as equal to those of the God in whom he believes (p. 21).

Eternal Youth & Momentary Pleasure

“Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.” – Dorian Gray, pg 34

Upon the first sight of his portrait after Lord Henry’s corruption, Dorian’s all-consuming jealousy of his portrait and desire for permanent youth and beauty drive him to Basil’s couch in tears. Citing every instance of lamentation at the eventual loss of his youth and beauty–and every moment of exultation once he discovers the portrait will do all his aging for him–would take hours. But, despite instigating this desire in Dorian, Lord Henry consistently expresses a horror of anything eternal. Only a page before Dorian’s portrait is revealed, Lord Henry scoffs: “Always! That is a dreadful word…[Women] spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.” (32) Later, after Sibyl’s suicide, he says: “Life has always poppies in her hands. Of course, now and then things linger. I once wore nothing but violets all through one season, as a form of artistic mourning for a romance that would die. Ultimately. however, it did die. I forgot what killed it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror of eternity.” (81) Not only is the prospect of eternity terrifying (easily terrifying enough to kill a romance), even attempting to relive a moment which has passed, granting our pasts with a kind of weak eternity through memory,  is forbidden. “The one charm of the past is that it is past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act…” (81). I doubt the flaw is limited to women, but if I were to expunge the sexist phrases from Lord Henry’s lines,  I’m not sure I could quote him at all. The point is that even our memories belong to a finished act; we’re on to a new act with new caprices, waiting with as much style as possible for the curtain to fall on this season of the world.

Later even Dorian develops a fine appreciation for the momentary. “…the aim [of the New Hedonism] was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be…it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a moment.” (99, italics mine.) If the moment is to be cherished, why is eternal youth desirable? Youth almost seems to be a state of being, embodying courage and beauty, more than a defined period of life. Besides, as Dorian decides after Sibyl’s suicide, death can be a stylistic action–almost a plot device–which actually makes life more beautiful. Instead of marrying her, being disappointed, and both of them whiling away their lives in quiet misery, she commits the perfect tragic suicide, enacts the poetry she channeled when she acted, and ties the story up in a neatly aesthetic conclusion which makes life seem elegant and artful.   If moments deserve concentration and death is beautiful his obsession with never aging–and perhaps never dying–becomes inconsistent with his professed philosophy. If the moments are unceasing he can’t appreciate them all and he can never be more beautiful by dying poetically appropriately.

The juxtaposition of the eternal and the momentary reminds me of “The Artist,” in which the symbol of “the love of man that dieth not, and a symbol of the sorrow of man that endureth forever” is dismantled and recast as “the image of The Pleasure that abideth for a Moment.” (900) Dorian is praising the idea of momentary pleasure, but he desires to experience momentary pleasures forever. But that doesn’t work. There isn’t enough bronze for both. Which might partly explain the end of the novel. He always remained the symbol of sorrow that endured forever, as much as he pretended to be pleasure for a moment. Moments have to pass and men have to die, and I think the decadents especially needed the idea of death so that they could more fully concentrate upon life.

–LN