domingo, 17 de octubre de 2010

Chapter I "The picture of Dorian Gray"


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 honeycoloured
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 sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way
through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence
round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling 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, clamped to an upright easel, stood the fulllength
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 comely form he had so skilfully
mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and
seemed about to linger 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 dreadful, 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, tossing 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 wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful
whorls 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."
"Dorian Gray? Is that his name?" asked Lord Henry, walking across the
studio towards Basil Hallward.
"Yes, that is his name. I didn't intend to tell it to you."
"But why not?"
"Oh, I can't explain. When I like people immensely, I never tell their names
to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love
secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life
mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one
only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am
going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say,
but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one's life. I
suppose you think me awfully foolish about it?"
"Not at all," answered Lord Henry, "not at all, my dear Basil. You seem to
forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes
a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I never know
where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. When we
meet--we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down
to the Duke's--we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most
serious faces. My wife is very good at it--much better, in fact, than I am.
She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But when she
does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she would;
but she merely laughs at me."
"I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry," said Basil
Hallward, strolling towards the door that led into the garden. "I believe
that you are really a very good husband, but that you are thoroughly
ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow. You never
say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is
simply a pose."
"Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know,"
cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went out into the
garden together and ensconced themselves on a long bamboo seat that
stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The sunlight slipped over the
polished leaves. In the grass, white daisies were tremulous.
After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. "I am afraid I must be
going, Basil," he murmured, "and before I go, I insist on your answering a
question I put to you some time ago."
"What is that?" said the painter, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground.
"You know quite well."
"I do not, Harry."
"Well, I will tell you what it is. I want you to explain to me why you won't
exhibit Dorian Gray's picture. I want the real reason."
"I told you the real reason."
"No, you did not. You said it was because there was too much of yourself
in it. Now, that is childish."
"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."
Lord Henry laughed. "And what is that?" he asked.
"I will tell you," said Hallward; but an expression of perplexity came over
his face.
"I am all expectation, Basil," continued his companion, glancing at him.
"Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry," answered the painter; "and I
am afraid you will hardly understand it. Perhaps you will hardly believe
it."
Lord Henry smiled, and leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from
the grass and examined it. "I am quite sure I shall understand it," he
replied, gazing intently at the little golden, white-feathered disk, "and as
for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is quite
incredible."
The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilacblooms,
with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A
grasshopper began to chirrup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long
thin dragon-fly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as
if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and wondered what was
coming.
"The story is simply this," said the painter after some time. "Two months
ago I went to a crush at Lady Brandon's. You know we poor artists have to
show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public
that we are not savages. With an evening coat and a white tie, as you told
me once, anybody, even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for being
civilized. Well, after I had been in the room about ten minutes, talking to
huge overdressed dowagers and tedious academicians, I suddenly
became conscious that some one was looking at me. I turned half-way
round and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt
that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I
knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality
was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole
nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. I did not want any external
influence in my life. You know yourself, Harry, how independent I am by
nature. I have always been my own master; had at least always been so,
till I met Dorian Gray. Then--but I don't know how to explain it to you.
Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in
my life. I had a strange feeling that fate had in store for me exquisite joys
and exquisite sorrows. I grew afraid and turned to quit the room. It was
not conscience that made me do so: it was a sort of cowardice. I take no
credit to myself for trying to escape."
"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience
is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."
"I don't believe that, Harry, and I don't believe you do either. However,
whatever was my motive--and it may have been pride, for I used to be
very proud--I certainly struggled to the door. There, of course, I
stumbled against Lady Brandon. 'You are not going to run away so soon,
Mr. Hallward?' she screamed out. You know her curiously shrill voice?"
"Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty," said Lord Henry, pulling
the daisy to bits with his long nervous fingers.
"I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to royalties, and people
with stars and garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras and parrot
noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only met her once
before, but she took it into her head to lionize me. I believe some picture
of mine had made a great success at the time, at least had been chattered
about in the penny newspapers, which is the nineteenth-century standard
of immortality. Suddenly I found myself face to face with the young man
whose personality had so strangely stirred me. We were quite close,
almost touching. Our eyes met again. It was reckless of me, but I asked
Lady Brandon to introduce me to him. Perhaps it was not so reckless,
after all. It was simply inevitable. We would have spoken to each other
without any introduction. I am sure of that. Dorian told me so afterwards.
He, too, felt that we were destined to know each other."
"And how did Lady Brandon describe this wonderful young man?" asked
his companion. "I know she goes in for giving a rapid precis of all her
guests. I remember her bringing me up to a truculent and red-faced old
gentleman covered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my
ear, in a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to
everybody in the room, the most astounding details. I simply fled. I like to
find out people for myself. But Lady Brandon treats her guests exactly as
an auctioneer treats his goods. She either explains them entirely away, or
tells one everything about them except what one wants to know."
"Poor Lady Brandon! You are hard on her, Harry!" said Hallward listlessly.
"My dear fellow, she tried to found a salon, and only succeeded in
opening a restaurant. How could I admire her? But tell me, what did she
say about Mr. Dorian Gray?"
"Oh, something like, 'Charming boy--poor dear mother and I absolutely
inseparable. Quite forget what he does--afraid he-- doesn't do anything-
-oh, yes, plays the piano--or is it the violin, dear Mr. Gray?' Neither of us
could help laughing, and we became friends at once."
"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the
best ending for one," said the young lord, plucking another daisy.
Hallward shook his head. "You don't understand what friendship is,
Harry," he murmured--"or what enmity is, for that matter. You like every
one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one."
"How horribly unjust of you!" cried Lord Henry, tilting his hat back and
looking up at the little clouds that, like ravelled skeins of glossy white
silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer sky. "Yes;
horribly unjust of you. I make a great difference between people. I choose
my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good
characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be
too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool.
They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all
appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think it is rather vain."
"I should think it was, Harry. But according to your category I must be
merely an acquaintance."
"My dear old Basil, you are much more than an acquaintance."
"And much less than a friend. A sort of brother, I suppose?"
"Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and
my younger brothers seem never to do anything else."
"Harry!" exclaimed Hallward, frowning.
"My dear fellow, I am not quite serious. But I can't help detesting my
relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand
other people having the same faults as ourselves. I quite sympathize with
the rage of the English democracy against what they call the vices of the
upper orders. The masses feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and
immorality should be their own special property, and that if any one of us
makes an ass of himself, he is poaching on their preserves. When poor
Southwark got into the divorce court, their indignation was quite
magnificent. And yet I don't suppose that ten per cent of the proletariat
live correctly."
"I don't agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is more,
Harry, I feel sure you don't either."
Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard and tapped the toe of his
patent-leather boot with a tasselled ebony cane. "How English you are
Basil! That is the second time you have made that observation. If one puts
forward an idea to a true Englishman--always a rash thing to do--he
never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The only
thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it oneself.
Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity
of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more
insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in
that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his
prejudices. However, I don't propose to discuss politics, sociology, or
metaphysics with you. I like persons better than principles, and I like
persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. Tell me
more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How often do you see him?"
"Every day. I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day. He is
absolutely necessary to me."
"How extraordinary! I thought you would never care for anything but your
art."
"He is all my art to me now," said the painter gravely. "I sometimes think,
Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the world's
history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the
second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What the
invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous was
to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to
me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, sketch from
him. Of course, I have done all that. But he is much more to me than a
model or a sitter. I won't tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have
done of him, or that his beauty is such that art cannot express it. There is
nothing that art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done,
since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life. But in
some curious way--I wonder will you understand me?--his personality
has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode
of style. I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now
recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before. 'A dream of form
in days of thought'--who is it who says that? I forget; but it is what
Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible presence of this lad--for
he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty--
his merely visible presence--ah! I wonder can you realize all that that
means? Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a
school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the
perfection of the spirit that is Greek. 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. Harry! if you only
knew what Dorian Gray is to me! You remember that landscape of mine,
for which Agnew offered me such a huge price but which I would not part
with? It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why is it so?
Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me. Some subtle
influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in
the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for and always
missed."
"Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian Gray."
Hallward got up from the seat and walked up and down the garden. After
some time he came back. "Harry," he said, "Dorian Gray is to me simply a
motive in art. You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him. He is
never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. He is
a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the curves of
certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours. That is
all."
"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?" asked Lord Henry.
"Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of all
this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to
speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything
about it. But the world might guess it, and I will not bare my soul to their
shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope.
There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry--too much of myself!"
"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is
for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions."
"I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful
things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age
when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We
have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world
what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of
Dorian Gray."
"I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only the
intellectually lost who ever argue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very fond of
you?"
The painter considered for a few moments. "He likes me," he answered
after a pause; "I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I
find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry
for having said. As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio
and talk of a thousand things. Now and then, however, he is horribly
thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I
feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats
it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his
vanity, an ornament for a summer's day."
"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger," murmured Lord Henry.
"Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will. It is a sad thing to think of, but
there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for
the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild
struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so
we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our
place. The thoroughly well-informed man--that is the modern ideal. And
the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is
like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced
above its proper value. I think you will tire first, all the same. Some day
you will look at your friend, and he will seem to you to be a little out of
drawing, or you won't like his tone of colour, or something. You will
bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think that he has
behaved very badly to you. The next time he calls, you will be perfectly
cold and indifferent. It will be a great pity, for it will alter you. What you
have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and
the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so
unromantic."


"Harry, don't talk like that. As long as I live, the personality of Dorian Gray
will dominate me. You can't feel what I feel. You change too often."
"Ah, my dear Basil, that is exactly why I can feel it. Those who are faithful
know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's
tragedies." And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty silver case and
began to smoke a cigarette with a self-conscious and satisfied air, as if
he had summed up the world in a phrase. There was a rustle of
chirruping sparrows in the green lacquer leaves of the ivy, and the blue
cloud-shadows chased themselves across the grass like swallows. How
pleasant it was in the garden! And how delightful other people's emotions
were!-- much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him. One's
own soul, and the passions of one's friends--those were the fascinating
things in life. He pictured to himself with silent amusement the tedious
luncheon that he had missed by staying so long with Basil Hallward. Had
he gone to his aunt's, he would have been sure to have met Lord
Goodbody there, and the whole conversation would have been about the
feeding of the poor and the necessity for model lodging-houses. Each
class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for whose
exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. The rich would have
spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the
dignity of labour. It was charming to have escaped all that! As he thought
of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him. He turned to Hallward and said,
"My dear fellow, I have just remembered."
"Remembered what, Harry?"
"Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray."
"Where was it?" asked Hallward, with a slight frown.
"Don't look so angry, Basil. It was at my aunt, Lady Agatha's. She told me
she had discovered a wonderful young man who was going to help her in
the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray. I am bound to state that
she never told me he was good-looking. Women have no appreciation of
good looks; at least, good women have not. She said that he was very
earnest and had a beautiful nature. I at once pictured to myself a creature
with spectacles and lank hair, horribly freckled, and tramping about on
huge feet. I wish I had known it was your friend."
"I am very glad you didn't, Harry."
"Why?"
"I don't want you to meet him."
"You don't want me to meet him?"
"No."
"Mr. Dorian Gray is in the studio, sir," said the butler, coming into the
garden.
"You must introduce me now," cried Lord Henry, laughing.
The painter turned to his servant, who stood blinking in the sunlight.
"Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker: I shall be in in a few moments." The man
bowed and went up the walk.
Then he looked at Lord Henry. "Dorian Gray is my dearest friend," he said.
"He has a simple and a beautiful nature. Your aunt was quite right in what
she said of him. Don't spoil him. Don't try to influence him. Your
influence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many marvellous
people in it. Don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art
whatever charm it possesses: my life as an artist depends on him. Mind,
Harry, I trust you." He spoke very slowly, and the words seemed wrung
out of him almost against his will.
"What nonsense you talk!" said Lord Henry, smiling, and taking Hallward
by the arm, he almost led him into the house.