ANALYSIS

Life as the Greatest of the Arts

The extract belongs to the XI chapter of the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. It deals with Dorian Gray’s lifestyle and theories on beauty and life, influenced by Lord Henry Wotton.

In the first sequence the reader understands how the typical aesthetic atmosphere was. It is described the kind of life Dorian Gray usually has: he organized periodically elegant parties to his house for a selected group of people accurately choose. He is a figure of relevance in the society and he is admired especially by young people who consider him an example to follow both in style of dress and in his attitude.

In the second sequence the narrator reports some of the values followed by Dorian Gray: life is the greatest of the art and it has to be lived fully, and fashion and dandyism are element very fascinating for him. They are not simply attractive, they involved emotionally Dorian Gray. This is the dandy ideal of “art for art’s sake”

From the third sequence emerges that Dorian Gray wants to be something more than an example of elegance: he wants to create a new model of life around the cult of senses.

The following part reports Dorian Gray’s considerations about the past human History; “so much had been surrended” because man has always tried to deny the real nature of senses throughout deliberate rejections, forms of self-torture and self-denial instead of making them elements of new spirituality.

The last section presents Dorian and Lord Henry’s idea of life: they project a new Hedonism to save life from the Puritanism ideology which has to be replaced by the passionate experience. No more sacrifices or a system of denial, the aim to pursue is the experience itself and the estimation of every moment of life.