[Music] the Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde published for the first time in a shortened version for an American magazine in 1890 and the following year as a standalone book the Picture of Dorian Gray is considered the manifesto of the poetics of Oscar Wilde and one of the most successful expression of the English decadent ISM and asceticism Dorian Gray a young man of extraordinary beauty had his portrait painted by a painter haunted by the fear of the old age he obtains with a spell that the traces of the years will not appear on his face but just in a picture the protagonist abandons himself to the world his excesses maintain an intact his beauty while his painted image gets older one day in front of the picture that highlights the deception of his own life Dorian Gray overwhelmed by anxiety rips up the canvas and then falls to the ground dead the servants will find the corpse of a wizened old man at the foot of a painting depicting Dorian Gray when he was young beautiful and pure written with a clear and refined style full of brilliant aphorisms witty dialogues description of environments the Picture of Dorian Gray was the wide resonance among her readers the novel represents a bold response to the Victorian era and it focuses on some of the typical subjects both of decadent ism such as the myth of eternal youth and the theme of depravity and of aesthetics yzma of which world is a representative the novel celebrates the research even exasperated of beauty and pleasure the top of the spiritual life for the static movement with this work well takes position against the Timmers Raja morality reaffirming the life itself as an individual or tasted creation and as a supreme art form cannot be subject to moral judgment the Picture of Dorian Gray the studio was filled with the rich odor of roses and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac or the more delicate perfume of the pink flowering thorn from the corner of the divan of persian saddle-bags on which he was lying smoking as was his custom innumerable cigarettes Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of Anna Burnham whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame like as there's and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long to saw silk curtains that was stretched in front of the huge window producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect and making him think of those pallid jade faced painters of Tokyo who through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion the sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unknown grass or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling Woodbine seemed to make the stillness more oppressive the dim roar of London was like the Bourdon note of a distant organ in the center of the room clamped to an upright easel stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty and in front of it some little distance away was sitting the artist himself basil Hallward whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused at the time such public excitement and gave rise to so many strange conjectures as the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skillfully mirrored in his art a smile of pleasure passed across his face and seemed about to linger there but he suddenly started up and closing his eyes placed his fingers upon the lids as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake