I had wanted to write a post about this book for quite a long time, but didn’t manage to. I usually got sidetracked or disturbed or whatsoever or just didn’t have enough time.

 

For the first time I heard about it very long ago. From year to year I met more and more people fascinated and totally charmed by this book. I got the idea to read it this summer - so I did. Suppose, I shouldn’t say that the book was in English, ‘cause since recently I dont’t trust any translation much. They always go too far with own vision and for that reason they too frequently lose the original sense, idea and style. From these three style suffers the most: it undergoes so many controversial interpretations and is eventually transformed into the translator’s style, which is completely different. That’s a pity, ’cause to get a real pleasure from a book means to read it in its original form with the author’s favourite words, with his sentence’s construction, his word’s tricks and jokes, which usually don’t make any sense in any other language or do lose one while being translated. Talking about Wilde’s style, which I really adore, I can’t go past his favourites, ‘cause he likes it - playing with words! They are: exquisite (as all his images and ideas are described), listlessly (you would never read his books in such a manner), mellow (his explanations full of some mysterious and tempting light of complex and at the same time mere ideas seam to be surrounded with such an adjective), tedious, mere (the subject of the book is really not).

 

Wilde always finds such precise words for every feeling, every thought, every idea! All of them are thought through so unbelievably thoroughly, all of them have such a logical explanation: even if you don’t agree, you would never be able to find a logical mistake or give a controversial argument. He always gives interesting and weird expressions to all the thoughts: you just want to believe in it only due to the beauty of sound and the experiment of connecting something that doesn’t agree with each other, at least should not.

 

What is more, I do love that sort of books which deal with the dialog of vice and virtue, good and evil, purity and sin, temptations and attempts to resist, passions inside one‘s soul. And Dorian’s soul is the stage for acting. Another Faust and devil’s story - the one giving away his soul for being eternally young and attractive, the one being stuck between his at least two natures, the one making choice of his life. If that is not involving, nothing would ever be!

 

I swallowed the book in three or four days, got completely absorbed - it has touched something inside me, something very deep and very strong - that is the book I shall never be able to forget! Not in this life!

 

 

Quotes:

 

‘There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.’

 

‘Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.’

 

‘To be in love is to surpass oneself.’

 

‘Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.’

 

‘Experience has no ethical sense. It is just how men name their mistakes.’ 

(Well, I don’t agree much, but the phrase sounds too attractive!)

 

‘There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.’ 

(Got the point.)

 

‘Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.’ 

(Have tried on myself. Does work.)

 

‘There is no such thing as good influence. All influence is immoral - immoral from the scientific point of view. Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realise one’s nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.’ 

(That is my favourite one!!!!! Agree hundred per cent!)

 

‘It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.’

 

‘You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.’

 

‘The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.’ 

(The funniest one. Makes a lot of sense.)

P.S.

The most amusing thing I’ve just noticed is that all my quotes are the words of just one hero - Lord Henry Wotton, a complete cynic with a caustic manner of speech, which makes him so attractive! I adore cynics for being able to give absolutely meaningless forms to the most painful things, for being capable to control emotions or not show any slight presence of those, for their ability to influence and to enjoy while watching the results of the experiments with other people‘s lives with completely calm heart!