The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

H

is eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him. What was it, he wondered. He went towards the little pearl-coloured octagonal stand, that had always looked to him like the work of some strange Egyptian bees that wrought in silver, and taking up the volume, flung himself into an armchair, and began to turn over the leaves. After a few minutes he became absorbed. It was the strangest book he had ever read. It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world, were passing in dumb show before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed.

      It was a novel without a plot, and with only one character, being indeed, simply a psychologi­cal study of a certain young Parisian, who spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through which the world spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The style in which it was written was that curi­ous jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once full of argot and of archaisms, of technical expres­sions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work of some of the finest artists of the French school of Symbolistes. There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in colour. The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of rev­erie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and creeping shadows.

Notes and exercises:

1.   The sound [i] is transcribed by the letter “a” in the adjective-forming suffix “–ate”: separate, elaborate, affectionate, etc.

2.   Memorize the spelling of the following words which have a silent “p”:

psychology         psyche        coup             psychic         psalm psychological     raspberry    coup d’état    pseudonym    Sappho psychoanalysis   cupboard    pneumonia    sapphire        Ptolemy psychiatry           pseudo-      pneumatic     receipt           Hampstead

3.   The long [i:] in the following words is spelt “ae”: mediaeval, encyclopaedia, formulae, paeon, Aesop, Caesar, aegis, aeon, aesthete, anaemia, anaesthetize, anapaest, larvae, antennae.

4.   Mark that the following words of French origin are spelt with an “ie” in the end: reverie, bourgeoisie, bonhomie, gaucherie, sortie.

5.   Read paying attention to the pronunciation of the digraph “ch”: archaism, orchid, technique, technical, technician, characterize.

6.   Word study:

raiment      clothing

dumb show           the communication of ideas by means of acting but without words, a pantomime

incense      smoke of a substance producing a sweet smell when burning

cadence     rhythm in sound; the rise and fall of the voice in speaking

7.   Translate the following expressions and use them in sentences of your own:

he took up the volume, to take after, to take advantage of, to take chances, to take effect, to take hold of, to take pains, to take offence, to take it out of, to take pride in, to take to, to take the rough with the smooth (to accept philosophically both pleasant and unpleasant things: If one becomes a soldier, one must be ready to take the rough with the smooth.), to take in tow;

to turn over the leaves, to turn a new leaf, beautiful enough to turn any man’s head, success turned his head, to turn one’s back on an old friend, to turn a deaf ear to, he kept turning the matter over in his mind, to turn failure to account, to turn up one’s nose at, to take turns, by turns, one good turn deserves another, he was waiting for the turn of the tide, to turn up, the turn of events, to turn tail (to turn and run away: When the thief heard the police he turned tail and fled.), a turncoat