Name: O Retrato de Dorian Gray
Rating: 4.090909090909091 (22 reviews)
ISBN: 9788563560438

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O Retrato de Dorian Gray

soap

I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. 

…had set himself to the serious study of the great aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing.

…we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities;

bellirio

Oscar Wilde sabe usar muito bem as palavras e entrar na sua mente de uma forma incrivelmente satisfatória e agoniante ao mesmo tempo. Você reflete junto ao personagem e percebe os absurdos que faríamos pela juventude eterna. É impressionante como somos facilmente manipuláveis por aqueles que sabem, ou fingem, saber muito mais do que nós.

Este é um dos meus livros favoritos, sem dúvidas.

Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray

What surprised me most about The Picture of Dorian Gray was how entertaining it was while still having so much underneath it. I initially understood it as a warning against vanity and hedonism, but I think it's more interesting than that. Lord Henry's philosophy isn't that obviously wrong... beauty, love, art, pleasure and experience really are valuable parts of life. The problem is what happens when they become the only values. Dorian increasingly judges experiences by whether they're beautiful or pleasurable rather than whether they're good, and eventually other people become little more than experiences for him to consume.

The portrait doesn't make Dorian evil so much as allow him to separate his actions from their visible consequences. Everyone continues to see his beautiful young face and assume innocence while the portrait becomes the only honest representation of who he is. Basil's tragedy comes from making that same mistake: he sees Dorian's beauty and assumes there must be goodness underneath it.

That also made me immediately connect the novel to The Secret History. Both books explore the danger of confusing beauty with goodness, but from opposite perspectives. Richard is seduced by beautiful people and assumes they're profound; Dorian is the beautiful person everyone else mistakenly assumes must be good.

And the ending finally made sense to me once I understood the portrait as Dorian's conscience. When he tries to destroy it, he's essentially trying to destroy the truth about himself without changing himself. Instead, the separation between appearance and reality collapses: the portrait becomes beautiful again, and Dorian's body finally reveals what his life actually made him.

10/10 bro much more entertaining than I expected, genuinely interesting philosophically, and probably my favorite novel I've read so far.

Arhant Srivastava

What surprised me most about The Picture of Dorian Gray was how entertaining it was while still having so much underneath it. I initially understood it as a warning against vanity and hedonism, but I think it's more interesting than that. Lord Henry's philosophy isn't that obviously wrong... beauty, love, art, pleasure and experience really are valuable parts of life. The problem is what happens when they become the only values. Dorian increasingly judges experiences by whether they're beautiful or pleasurable rather than whether they're good, and eventually other people become little more than experiences for him to consume.

The portrait doesn't make Dorian evil so much as allow him to separate his actions from their visible consequences. Everyone continues to see his beautiful young face and assume innocence while the portrait becomes the only honest representation of who he is. Basil's tragedy comes from making that same mistake: he sees Dorian's beauty and assumes there must be goodness underneath it.

That also made me immediately connect the novel to The Secret History. Both books explore the danger of confusing beauty with goodness, but from opposite perspectives. Richard is seduced by beautiful people and assumes they're profound; Dorian is the beautiful person everyone else mistakenly assumes must be good.

And the ending finally made sense to me once I understood the portrait as Dorian's conscience. When he tries to destroy it, he's essentially trying to destroy the truth about himself without changing himself. Instead, the separation between appearance and reality collapses: the portrait becomes beautiful again, and Dorian's body finally reveals what his life actually made him.

10/10 bro much more entertaining than I expected, genuinely interesting philosophically, and probably my favorite novel I've read so far.

Oscar Wilde sabe usar muito bem as palavras e entrar na sua mente de uma forma incrivelmente satisfatória e agoniante ao mesmo tempo. Você reflete junto ao personagem e percebe os absurdos que faríamos pela juventude eterna. É impressionante como somos facilmente manipuláveis por aqueles que sabem, ou fingem, saber muito mais do que nós.
Este é um dos meus livros favoritos, sem dúvidas.

they all love ranting and yapping about NOTHING goddamn

Serik H.

  Basil Hallward picteaza intr-o buna zi portretul tulburator al lui Dorian Gray. Doar ca, odata cu trecerea timpului, tanarul din tablou imbatraneste, pe cand modelul lui, Dorian, ramane neschimbat. Fiecare fapta, fiecare an trecut lasa pe chipul pictat inca un semn, fara ca acest amanunt sa fie cunoscut de ceilalti; doar creatorul lui, Basil Hallward, stie, iar pentru aceasta e ucis de Dorian Gray. Acesta din urma va ajunge si el la confruntarea fatala cu reflexia sa pictata si va sfarsi, imbatranit fara veste, victima misterioasa a imaginii din tabloul pe care atat l-a pretuit.

O Retrato de Dorian Gray

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