The merely visible presence of this lad—for he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty—his merely visible presence—ah! I wonder can you realise all that that means?
Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek.
The harmony of soul and body—how much that is!
We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void.
Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me!
You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge price, but which I would not part with?
It is one of the best things I have ever done.
And why is it so?
Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me.
Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for, and always missed."
"Basil, this is extraordinary!
I must see Dorian Gray."
Hallward got up from the seat, and walked up and down the garden.
After some time he came back.
"Harry," he said, "Dorian Gray is to me simply a motive in art.
You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him.
He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there.
He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner.
I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.
That is all."
"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?" asked Lord Henry.
"Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him.
He knows nothing about it.
He shall never know anything about it.
But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes.
My heart shall never be put under their microscope.
There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry—too much of myself!"
"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are.
They know how useful passion is for publication.
Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions."
"I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.
We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography.
We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.
Some day I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray."
"I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you.
It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.
Tell me, is Dorian Gray very fond of you?"
The painter considered for a few moments.
"He likes me," he answered, after a pause; "I know he likes me.
Of course I flatter him dreadfully.
I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said.
As a rule, he is charming to me, and we sit in the studio and talk of a thousand things.
Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain.
Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day."
"Days in summer, Basil, are apt to linger," murmured Lord Henry. "Perhaps you will tire sooner than he will.
It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty.
That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.
In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.
The thoroughly well-informed man—that is the modern ideal.
And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing.