LIFE AS THE GREATEST OF THE ARTS

From The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Comprehension

- Dorian has a great life: he organizes parties, dinners, concerts in a very careful way. He likes wearing fine clothes and young men take him as a model.

- The greatest of art, for him, is life: the other arts are nothing but a preparation.

- Dorian is a model for young men because he has a particular style and an accidental charm in his graceful affectation. However, such admiration isn't enough for him. He doesn't want to be an adviser, a mere "arbiter elegantiarum": he is actually trying to create a new lifestyle.

- The common attitude to "the worship of senses" is criticism. This attitude comes from the natural fear of men of experiencing powerful passions and feelings shared with animals and leads to "monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial".

- The principles of Dorian's "new Hedonism" are: the loss of the present Puritanism and the abolition of asceticism that kills the senses and of the "vulgar profligacy that dulls them".

Interpretation

- Wilde uses a third person omniscient narrator. The narrator is not intrusive, so the reader doesn't perceive his presence in the text.

- In the final sentence of the passage, life is described as something that is not long-lasting: it is only a moment, for us. Time passes and everyone is destined to die, so it is necessary to live every moment and not to waste time.

-Wilde quotes Pater at line 65 of the passage. He makes use of such quotation to underline Dorian Gray's attitude to life.