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Rating: "Now, wherever you go, you enchant the world. Will it always be like today?..."
Even the most cruel and ruthless of actions must be executed in an artful manner, so much so that it can almost be considered pleasing to the eye. If we can achieve, in our fiercer gestures, a certain grace, then we can be forgiven.
The evaluative canon of every fact, thought, or idea, even of every person, must be that of aesthetics; if something is beautiful to behold, it makes sense. Otherwise, no.
Beauty is the possibility of being able to do anything; being charming is the first step to having absolute freedom. But appearance is delicate and fragile like an autumn leaf; it is a flower that gradually fades, withers.
Few are (and know themselves to be) as graceful as you, Dorian Gray; few possess your exquisite manners and gentle tones; and since charm is such a rare gift, better to preserve it with care, better to do anything to defeat time, better not to see the features of your face fade. Anything...
Better to avoid letting a friend portray you (Basil), you might regret it; better to surround yourself with friends who admire you, almost venerate you, solely and exclusively for what you are, helping you to see the world for what it is, making you understand how rare you are (Lord Henry); better not to fall in love (Sybil): why share your comeliness and grace with someone? It would be a terrible waste! Better not to make dangerous enemies (James): you might worry, and worry digs into you like few things in the world. And, above all, it would be better to avoid letting yourself, your soul, slip away. Because yes, maybe after freeing yourself from that enormous burden that is the conscience, you can do whatever you want, even kill! And not once, but multiple times. But after killing, would you still feel pure?
It is a brilliant idea to be able to transfer the weight of your actions onto someone else, onto something else; an idea so brilliant it seems almost evil. But then the day will come when you will tear that cursed canvas and you will die because that object had too much of yourself; it endured everything you couldn't bear, like the passage of years.
Was it worth it, Dorian?
If it can console you, everyone in town said that in death you were beautiful.
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By panapp
The terrible allure of The Picture of Dorian Gray lies in the fact that, in telling an absurd and unbelievable story, it is actually telling the most common and everyday of experiences: death.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is truly a supreme masterpiece of the history of Western literature and a true, great, inimitable, shocking, immortal classic.
