The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

Often, on returning home from one of those mysterious and prolonged absences that gave rise to such strange conjectures among those who were his friends, or thought that they were so, he himself would creep upstairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left him now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him, look­ing now at the evil and aging face on the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from the polished glass. The very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken his sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more inter­ested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. He would place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture, and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs.

                There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own delicately-scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the little ill-famed tavern near the Docks, which, under an as­sumed name, and in disguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he had brought upon his soul, with a pity that was all the more poignant because it was purely selfish. But moments such as these were rare. That curiosity about life which Lord Henry had first stirred in him, as they sat together in the garden of their friend, seemed to increase with gratification. The more he knew, the more he desired to know. He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.

Notes and exercises:

1.     Mark that the digraph “ai” is pronounced as [i] in a final unstressed syllable: portrait, fountain, mountain, captain, bargain.

2.     Read paying attention to the spelling and pronunciation of the following words:

þ    box       sex       execution          reflexive           exile     xylophone

þ    extra     extract  executor            execrate            sexual   exaggerate

þ    examine            execute axe       Xerxes  except   existence

þ    exercise            existent anxious excess   anxiety  exhibition

þ    exact     excel     luxury   exhaust luxurious          complexion

þ    exert     excellent           example            mixture xenon   sexuality

þ    wax      obnoxious         exhibit  exigent  exceed  Xenophobe

þ    exist     exclaim axiom   exhort   excite    xylograph

3.     Verbs ending in “e” preserve this letter in the present participle form in cases where omission of it would lead to ambiguity. The preserved “e” shows what the pronunciation of the preceding letter should be. For example, if the “e” is omitted from the verb “to singe” in the formation of its present participle, the resulting form will coincide with the present participle of the verb “to sing”. The “e” is preserved in: singeing, cringeing, hingeing, impingeing, swingeing, tingeing. It is preferred in ageing, and is preserved, too, in the present participle forms of verbs ending in “–oe”: canoeing, hoeing, shoeing, tiptoeing, eyeing, dyeing.

4.     The word canvas (a noun meaning “strong coarse cloth used for large bags and for oil paintings”) should not be confused with the verb to canvass (to go from person to person and ask for votes, subscriptions, etc.).

5.     Learn the spelling of the following words in which the “g” is mute:

þ    poignant            sigh      gnash    resign   gnu       sovereign

þ    foreign  gnaw     reign     campaign           diaphragm         align

þ    gnome   feign     champagne        malign   gnostic  deign

þ    lorgnette           benign   gnarled  phlegm  physiognomy     gnat

6.            Spell the words given in phonetic transcription:

Ü      Did you [ri´si:v] the letter I sent you from London?

Ü      It suddenly [¶´k¶:(r)d] to Jane that she might try to become a [moudl].

Ü      We were [´konò¶s] of the fact that he had done it for [´konò¶ns] sake.

Ü      What’s the [hait] of that building over there?

Ü      Some aspects of the use of [moudl] verbs are difficult for [´forin] students of English.

Ü      [´ru:m¶tizm] is not an infectious [di´zi:z].

Ü      A [k¶´na:l] is an artificial water [´tòæn(¶)l] used for carrying water to the fields, for town supply, or for purposes of navigation.

7.            Word study:

conjecture                opinion formed on slight or defective evidence; a guess

sear                            to dry up; to scorch; to render callous and insensible; seared—dried, withered

poignant                   distressing to the feeling, deeply moving, keen

gratification            pleasing, indulging

ravenous                   hungry, greedy, intensely hungry; rapacious, voracious

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

a fair young face, the fair sex, a fair aim (a careful, deliberate aim), a fair copy, a fair deal, fair and square (just, openly honest), a fair-weather friend (a false friend), a fair name, fair water, fair handwriting, fair wind, fair play, it is only fair to say, it is all fair and above board, a fair share, all is fair in love and war, by fair means, a fair chance, a fair judge of, fair and softly, none but the brave deserve the fair, fair-dealing, vanity fair