Life as the Greatest of the Arts

Comprehension

·      It is told that Dorian Gray’s lifestyle is very fashionable. He looks for the best and the most refined in what he does, from his guests to furniture: often he invites the most important musician to charm his guests in his house that is decorated “with exquisite taste”.

·      For Dorian Gray the greatest of arts is life.

·      Dorian Gray is an ideal for educated young man because he is the perfect realization of that kind of man which embodies the culture of a scholar and the manners of a citizen of the world. He is not satisfied of his role because he wants to develop a philosophy that has “in the spiritualising of senses its highest realization”

·      The common attitude is to criticize “the worship of senses” it follows that men is afraid of passions and sensations because they are associated to “less highly organized forms of existence”.

·      The principles of “new Hedonism” are to “re-create life” refusing any system of thought that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience, teaching man focusing on his life.

Interpretation

·      Oscar Wilde uses an omniscient narrator; I do not feel his presence because Dorian’s personality seems to be painted focusing on the most important details without giving judgments, but just trying to strike the reader.

·      It is expressed an idea of life that goes by in a moment therefore it has to be lived trying to make the most of it.

·      Oscar Wilde quotes Walter Pater saying “Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be”.