11Story

22 January 2010

A broken head

 

“It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done”, said Lord Henry, languidly. Paul Thiriat, artist, Eugène Delé, engraver (dates early 20th century). Paris, 1908 Photograph. Original book illustration: Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Charles Carrington, Paris, 1908 [1910] © British Library 069425

In The Picture of Dorian Gray (1908), Oscar Wilde presents one of the most strikingly ‘animist’ fictions in a modernist society. Not only does a normally inanimate object assume some attributes of life, but a living person also becomes more object-like. Instead of aging while his portrait preserves how he once looked, the sitter remains unblemished by age and dissolute living while the picture suffers in his place.   Presented in the genre of literary fiction, stories like these can be enjoyed and discussed by self-consciously rational modernists who might baulk at cuddling a doll or attacking a car.

 
 
 

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