The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray de Oscar Wilde es una novela controversial, aunque extremadamente interesante de leer. El libro se centra alrededor de un hermoso joven que quiere conservar su juventud incluso vendiendo su alma al diablo.

Más abajo hablamos sobre el uso de opio.

En vocabulario encontramos laburnum, gilt, woodbine, bourdon, easel.

 

The Smokers

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…

 

Generalidades

Al publicarse Dorian Gray en 1.890 se la criticó por decadente y por hacer alusiones a la homosexualidad. El Daily Chronicle, por ejemplo, la llamó sucia, venenosa y putrefacta. Oscar Wilde respondió “si el arte es rico y vital aquellos que tienen instintos artísticos verán su belleza…”

En los juicios de Wilde (fue enjuiciado por homosexual) en 1895, el libro fue llamado "novela pervertida" y se leyeron pasajes (de la versión de la revista) durante el interrogatorio.

Párrafos

… The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The irritating murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the irregular woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

In the centre of the room, closed to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.

As the painter looked at the gracious and attractive form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to remain there. But he suddenly started up, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.

"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," said Lord Henry languidly. "You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was terrible, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place."

"I don't think I shall send it anywhere," he answered, moving his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. "No, I won't send it anywhere."

Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue rings of smoke that curled up in such fanciful circles from his heavy, opium-tainted cigarette. "Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion."

"I know you will laugh at me," he replied, "but I really can't exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it.”

Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.

“Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same.”

“Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn’t know you were so vain; and I really can’t see any resemblance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you—well, of course you have an intellectual expression and all that. 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 summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don’t flatter yourself, Basil: you are not in the least like him.”

“You don’t understand me, Harry,” answered the artist. “Of course I am not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one’s fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live—undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. 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.”… (The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde.)

Vocabulary                                       

laburnum: poisonous trees with bright yellow flowers.

gilt: resembling gold.

woodbine: (español) madreselva.

bourdon: deep.

easel: A wooden frame for holding an artist’s work while it is being painted or drawn.

Uso y abuso

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822) de Thomas De Quincey, fue uno de los primeros relatos de la adicción al opio. En el libro no escribe sobre un adicto chino sino sobre un usuario inglés. De Quincey escribe sobre el poeta Samuel Taylor Coleridge, quién empezó a usar opio después de desarrollar ictericia y fiebre reumática.

El abuso de opio en los Estados Unidos comenzó a finales del siglo XIX y estuvo asociado en gran medida con los inmigrantes chinos. Durante esta época el uso de opio tenía poco estigma. La droga se usó libremente hasta 1882, cuando se aprobó una ley para limitar el consumo de opio a lugares específicos. Hasta que entró en vigor la prohibición total de los productos a base de opio, poco después de principios del siglo XX, los médicos estadounidenses consideraban el opio como una droga milagrosa que podía ayudar con muchas dolencias.

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