Equivocality

“Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about,” says Lord Henry, the subversive nobleman, and this sums exactly one half of the book – by far the larger half. Hedonism is the only worthy philosophy, and decadence can be an art form: that is the argument here. And oh, Wilde makes it so attractive to believe that. The book is sumptuous, high-fat, rich in language and situation, and tries to convince us that beauty and pleasure are the only things worth bothering about. Mostly this view is espoused by the witty and charming Lord Henry at the dinner parties of the aristocracy.

“Ah! Lord Henry, I wish you would tell me how to become young again.”

He thought for a moment. “Can you remember any great error that you committed in your early days, Duchess?” he asked, looking at her across the table.

“A great many, I fear,” she cried.

“Then commit them over again,” he said, gravely. “To get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies.”

“A delightful theory!” she exclaimed. “I must put it into practice.”

“A dangerous theory!” came from Sir Thomas’s tight lips. Lady Agatha shook her head, but could not help being amused. Mr. Erskine listened.

“Yes,” he continued, “that is one of the great secrets of life. Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”

A laugh ran around the table.

He played with the idea, and grew willful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of Pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red form over the vat’s black, dripping, sloping sides. It was an extraordinary improvisation. He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him, and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose temperament he wished to fascinate, seemed to give his wit keenness, and to lend colour to his imagination. He was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible. He charmed his listeners out of themselves, and they followed his pipe laughing. Dorian Gray never took his gaze off him, but sat like one under a spell, smiles chasing each other over his lips, and wonder growing grave in his darkening eyes.

Lord Henry – who is surely an alter-ego of Wilde – is too cynical to take himself truly seriously, but has no qualms about enchanting the young and extraordinarily beautiful Dorian Gray, trapping him in his own ego. But, explains Henry, beauty will fade, and that is why Dorian must live fully while he still has his youth.

“Beauty is a form of Genuis – is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won’t smile… People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but it is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances… Ah! realise your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing… A new Hedonism—that is what our century wants. You might be its visible symbol. With your personality there is nothing you could not do.”

Dorian looks at a beautiful portrait of himself, an understands for the first time both the potential of his beauty, and the fact that it will fade. In a fit of rage and despair he vows that he would give his soul to remain young and beautiful forever. His wish is granted, and while the portrait grows ever older, crueler, and uglier as Dorian’s integrity rots in pursuit of pleasure, the man himself remains eternally young and beautiful. The book is thus a morality play, an exploration of the perfect hedonism. It can be read as a cautionary tale, and that is the other major theme of the book. But how much more fun it is to indulge along with Dorian! Friends and lovers betrayed for Beauty, for Art, for Pleasure; for theatre, literature, fine wines and women, rare and beautiful objects, orchids and opium; and everything justified with sumptuous wit. No wonder the book was received with “outrage” upon its initial publication in London in 1890. But, as Wilde wrote in the preface:

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well or badly written. That is all.

This book is well written. It is a subversive delight to read, the double-chocolate truffle of literature. Whether or not these themes have any modern relevance is probably a worthy question, but, I suspect, so much less delightful than simply indulging.

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