道林.格雷的画像 英文版 The Picture of Dorian Gray
奥斯卡.王尔德 Oscar Wilde
CHAPTER III Page 2
Lord Henry watched him with a subtle sense of pleasure. Howdifferent he was now from the shy, frightened boy he had met in BasilHallward's studio! His nature had developed like a flower, had borneblossoms of scarlet flame. Out of its secret hiding-place had crepthis Soul, and Desire had come to meet it on the way.
"And what do you propose to do?" said Lord Henry, at last.
"I want you and Basil to come with me some night and see her act. Ihave not the slightest fear of the result. You won't be able torefuse to recognize her genius. Then we must get her out of theJew's hands. She is bound to him for three years--at least for twoyears and eight months--from the present time. I will have to payhim something, of course. When all that is settled, I will take aWest-End theatre and bring her out properly. She will make the worldas mad as she has made me. "
"Impossible, my dear boy!"
"Yes, she will. She has not merely art, consummate art-instinct, inher, but she has personality also; and you have often told me that itis personalities, not principles, that move the age. "
"Well, what night shall we go?"
"Let me see. To-day is Tuesday. Let us fix to-morrow. She playsJuliet to-morrow. "
"All right. The Bristol at eight o'clock; and I will get Basil. "
"Not eight, Harry, please. Half-past six. We must be there beforethe curtain rises. You must see her in the first act, where shemeets Romeo. "
"Half-past six! What an hour! It will be like having a meat-tea.However, just as you wish. Shall you see Basil between this andthen? Or shall I write to him?"
into scarlet gold the upper windows of the housesopposite. The panes glowed .
"Dear Basil! I have not laid eyes on him for a week. It is ratherhorrid of me, as he has sent me my portrait in the most wonderfulframe, designed by himself, and, though I am a little jealous of itfor being a whole month younger than I am, I must admit that Idelight in it. Perhaps you had better write to him. I don't want tosee him alone. He says things that annoy me. "
Lord Henry smiled. "He gives you good advice, I suppose. People arevery fond of giving away what they need most themselves. "
"You don't mean to say that Basil has got any passion or any romancein him?"
"I don't know whether he has any passion, but he certainly hasromance, " said Lord Henry, with an amused look in his eyes. "Has henever let you know that?"
"Never. I must ask him about it. I am rather surprised to hear it.He is the best of fellows, but he seems to me to be just a bit of aPhilistine. Since I have known you, Harry, I have discovered that. "
"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him intohis work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for lifebut his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The onlyartists I have ever known who are personally delightful are badartists. Good artists give everything to their art, and consequentlyare perfectly uninteresting in themselves. A great poet, a reallygreat poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferiorpoets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, themore picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a bookof second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives thepoetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that theydare not realize. "
"I wonder is that really so, Harry?" said Dorian Gray, putting someperfume on his handkerchief out of a large gold-topped bottle thatstood on the table. "It must be, if you say so. And now I must beoff. Imogen is waiting for me. Don't forget about to-morrow. Good-by. "
As he left the room, Lord Henry's heavy eyelids drooped, and he beganto think. Certainly few people had ever interested him so much asDorian Gray, and yet the lad's mad adoration of some one else causedhim not the slightest pang of annoyance or jealousy. He was pleasedby it. It made him a more interesting study. He had been alwaysenthralled by the methods of science, but the ordinary subject-matterof science had seemed to him trivial and of no import. And so he hadbegun by vivisecting himself, as he had ended by vivisecting others.Human life, --that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating.There was nothing else of any value, compared to it. It was truethat as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain andpleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, or keepthe sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making theimagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had tosicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to passthrough them if one sought to understand their nature. And, yet,what a great reward one received! How wonderful the whole worldbecame to one! To note the curious hard logic of passion, and theemotional colored life of the intellect, --to observe where they met,and where they separated, at what point they became one, and at whatpoint they were at discord, --there was a delight in that! Whatmatter what the cost was? One could never pay too high a price forany sensation.
He was conscious--and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure intohis brown agate eyes--that it was through certain words of his,musical words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soulhad turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To alarge extent, the lad was his own creation. He had made himpremature. That was something. Ordinary people waited till lifedisclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, themysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away.Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art ofliterature, which dealt immediately with the passions and theintellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place andassumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real workof art, Life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has,or sculpture, or painting.
Yes, the lad was premature. He was gathering his harvest while itwas yet spring. The pulse and passion of youth were in him, but hewas becoming self-conscious. It was delightful to watch him. Withhis beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonderat. It was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end. Hewas like one of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whosejoys seem to be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one's senseof beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses.
Soul and body, body and soul--how mysterious they were! There wasanimalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality.The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who couldsay where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began?How shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists!And yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the variousschools! Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or wasthe body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? Theseparation of spirit from matter was a mystery, and the union ofspirit with matter was a mystery also.
He began to wonder whether we should ever make psychology so absolutea science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us.As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understoodothers. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the namewe gave to our mistakes. Men had, as a rule, regarded it as a modeof warning, had claimed for it a certain moral efficacy in theformation of character, had praised it as something that taught uswhat to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motivepower in experience. It was as little of an active cause asconscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that ourfuture would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had doneonce, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.
It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only methodby which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions;and certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemedto promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love for SibylVane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There wasno doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and thedesire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a verycomplex passion. What there was in it of the purely sensuousinstinct of boyhood had been transformed by the workings of theimagination, changed into something that seemed to the boy himself tobe remote from sense, and was for that very reason all the moredangerous. It was the passions about whose origin we deceivedourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motiveswere those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened thatwhen we thought we were experimenting on others we were reallyexperimenting on ourselves.
While Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to thedoor, and his valet entered, and reminded him it was time to dressfor dinner. He got up and looked out into the street. Thesunset had smitten into scarlet gold the upper windows of the housesopposite. The panes glowed like plates of heated metal. The skyabove was like a faded rose. He thought of Dorian Gray's youngfiery-colored life, and wondered how it was all going to end.
When he arrived home, about half-past twelve o'clock, he saw atelegram lying on the hall-table. He opened it and found it was fromDorian. It was to tell him that he was engaged to be married toSibyl Vane.