Портрет Дориана Грея

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ93
          У 13

© КАРО, 2006
ISBN 9785992503692

Уайльд О.

У 13
Портрет Дориана Грея: Книга для чтения на английском языке. — СПб.: КАРО, 2012. — 400 с.

ISBN 9785992503692.

Оскар Уайльд (1854–1900) — всемирно известный писатель, классик английской литературы.
Философский роман «Портрет Дориана Грея» (1891) —
единственное крупное прозаическое произведение Уайльда.
Роман посвящен бессмертным темам морали и нравственности, любви и ненависти, физической и духовной красоты,
поэтому и в наши дни он не теряет своей актуальности.
Неадаптированный текст на языке оригинала снабжен
комментариями и словарем.
Книга предназначена для широкого круга читателей,
владеющих английским языком, для старшеклассников, студентов вузов, слушателей курсов иностранных языков и тех,
кто изучает английский язык самостоятельно.

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2 Англ93

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another
manner or a new material his impression of beautiful
things.
The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a
mode of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things
are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful
things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean
only Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral
book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the
rage of Caliban1 seeing his own face in a glass.

1 Caliban — Êàëèáàí, ïåðñîíàæ ïüåñû Øåêñïèðà «Áóðÿ»
(The Tempest), âîïëîùåíèå óðîäñòâà è æåñòîêîñòè

OSCAR WILDE

The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is
the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subjectmatter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in
the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist
desires to prove anything. Even things that are true
can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of
style.
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express
everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments
of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an
art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all
the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of
view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their
peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really
mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows
that the work is new, complex, and vital.

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with
himself.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing
as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse
for making a useless thing is that one admires it
intensely.
All art is quite useless.

The studio was filled with the rich odour 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 saddlebags 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 a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and
then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted
across the long tussore-silk curtains that were 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 Tokio 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 unmown grass, or circling

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

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 centre 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 skilfully 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.
“It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you
have ever done,” said Lord Henry, languidly. “You
must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor1.
The Academy2 is too large and too vulgar. Whenever
I have gone there, there have been either so many

1 the Grosvenor — Ãðîâåíîð, êàðòèííàÿ ãàëåðåÿ â Ëîíäîíå
2 The Academy = The Royal Academy of Arts — Êîðîëåâñêàÿ Àêàäåìèÿ õóäîæåñòâ

OSCAR WILDE

people that I have not been able to see the pictures,
which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have
not been able to see the people, which was worse.
The Grosvenor is really the only place.”
“I don’t think I shall send it anywhere,” he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that
used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. “No:
I won’t send it anywhere.”
Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at
him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of
smoke that curled up in such fanciful whirls from his
heavy opium-tainted cigarette. “Not send it anywhere?
My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What
odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the
world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one,
you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you,
for there is only one thing in the world worse than
being talked about, and that is not being talked
about. A portrait like this would set you far above
all the young men in England, and make the old
men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of
any emotion.”
“I know you will laugh at me,” he replied, “but
I really can’t exhibit it. I have put too much of myself
into it.”
Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan
and laughed.

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

“Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all
the same.”
“Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn’t know you were so vain; and I really can’t
see any resemblance between you, with your rugged
strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young
Adonis1, who looks as if he was made out of ivory
and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus2, and you — well, of course you have an intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty,
ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys
the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down
to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or
something horrid. Look at the successful men in any
of the learned professions3. How perfectly hideous
they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then
in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on
saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say
when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful. Your

1 Adonis — Àäîíèñ, â äðåâíåãðå÷åñêîé ìèôîëîãèè ïðåêðàñíûé þíîøà, âîçëþáëåííûé Àôðîäèòû
2 Narcissus — Íàðöèññ, â äðåâíåãðå÷åñêîé ìèôîëîãèè
ïðåêðàñíûé þíîøà, âëþáèâøèéñÿ â ñîáñòâåííîå îòðàæåíèå
3 the learned professions = theology, law, medicine

OSCAR WILDE

mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me,
never thinks. I feel quite sure of that. He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should be always here in
winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we want something to
chill our intelligence. Don’t flatter yourself, Basil: you
are not in the least like him.”
“You don’t understand me, Harry,” answered the
artist. “O course I am not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him.
You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth.
There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual
distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog
through history the faltering steps1 of kings. It is better not to be different from one’s fellows. The ugly
and the stupid have the best of it in this world2. They
can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know
nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from
alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains,

1 faltering steps — íåâåðíûå øàãè
2 The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this
world. — Óðîäû è äóðàêè â ýòîì ìèðå âñåãäà îñòàþòñÿ â âûèãðûøå.