Part 1: prospectus

So it Begins | Amber Freeman

A downward spiral at its spark,

I love you’s falling on deaf ears.

The theatre: a cave or coffin

for the girl who lost her art.

With her acting now so poor

“marvelous” is now “absurd;”*

“intellect” is “shallow, stupid;”*

“Imagination” is now “bored.”*

In herself and in her love

She’s freer than she’s ever been

The false world she’d been living in

has fallen away, been let go of.

There’s “Long drawn music in her voice,”*

“An ecstasy of happiness,”*

“It’s profanity for me to play,”* she says

“Take me away, I hate the stage.”*

Self-awareness, real life

stirs not curiosity.

Love of artist and her artistry

is shattered and reveals a knife.

No more kisses, only pain,

though enlightenment has come.

Her lover speaks “no more, don’t touch me,”*

and now she’ll never take his name.

“You had genius, you have thrown it all away.”*

“’You have killed my love,’ he muttered.”*

He left and she wept silently.

“His lips curled in exquisite disdain.”*

Dare to delve into Dorian’s soul,

his sudden, violent change of heart

that leads to death of innocence.

Was it ever, truly, love at all?

Or love, perhaps, not of the girl,

but rather of the works of greats

she merely happened to portray,

and pleasure in her shadowed world.

So primary a turning point

for an actress and a boy,

makes for quite a scholar’s toy

each detail, significant.

What meaning hides beneath these words?

What did Wilde mean to express

through artful language, the preface to death

seductive, enticing, in its allure?

Art and pleasure only for their own sake

may be what the writer says

but if things were really so 

would hidden pieces start to break?

It’s such a curiosity,

this tale and all it implies.

These moments penned with graceful words

hold depths of force and mystery.

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. S.I.: Public Domain, 1994. 81-83. Print.

            This poem, if it isn’t already clear, is about The Picture of Dorian Gray, and specifically the scene in which Dorian breaks off his engagement with Sibyl Vane. This scene is one that is pivotal in the lives of both characters, and thus the course of the entire novel. It is the moment that first starts the alterations of Dorian’s portrait, and that first touches his heart with coldness and impurity.

In the poem there is at least the gist of the scene, with actual quotes from the text added in; I did this first because the scene itself is already written in so poetic a tone that it seemed a shame not to highlight some of that language, and second because later on I mention the quality in the actual words used for the scene, and it seemed as though there should be examples. These lines in the work itself hold importance to the tone of the passage and how drastic the change is in countenance. Sibyl has discovered the world anew and is in love, thrilled that the theatre is not all she knows and determined that it is profane to imitate something that is so much more vibrant in real life. Dorian, on the other hand, is bitter and angry that she is no longer a magnificent actress, and where she sees herself as better after her transformation, he sees her as shallow and stupid for having thrown away her art for reality. The words “exquisite disdain” are used for how he’s feeling for a creature he had earlier been seemingly infatuated with; his heart is fickle and he becomes cruel when his delusions of her are shattered.

In the first stanza, the third line uses the words “cave” and “coffin” to describe the theater. Coffin is for fairly obvious reasons, as Sibyl later commits suicide there. Cave, however, is an allusion to Sibyl’s big speech on why she acted badly that night. She says that she thought of the theatre and her roles in plays as real life, but in actuality they were only shadows. After Dorian comes into her life and shows her what love actually is, she sees it for what it is: imitations of reality and ones moreover that she doesn’t care to be a part of. There is a beautiful parallel here to Plato’s allegory of the Caves, of coming from shadows to light and seeing that what seemed to be everything to her was actually false and inferior representation of the world as it actually is. I also make another reference to this in the line “and pleasure in her shadowed world.”

The fifth stanza ends with the word knife, which seems a little amiss since Sibyl Vane poisoned herself, not stabbed herself. However, this scene doesn’t just affect this scene; it holds consequences that stretch all the way to the very end, where the portrait, and therefore Dorian, are killed by a blade. So, that mention was more to reference the eventual death of Dorian rather than the more immediate demise of Sibyl. Along the same lines, the last word in the third line of the eleventh stanza is “death,” which is also meant to refer to both of these characters’ deaths.

In some of the later stanzas I ask some questions that talk more about what Oscar Wilde might have meant in the scene and in the contrast between moments like this and his preface to the novel. His preface, as well as in other moments in the novel, the concept that art and pleasure for their own sake is all they have to be; they need no purpose, and one should take in as many at whatever cost as one can. Scenes like this seem to question the morality in that: is it really okay to be so cruel just because your pleasure or your art is spoiled? Is that the only point of art? To please one and then be tossed aside when they’re done with it? Dorian's love of Sibyl and then total 360, is interesting in itself. He loves art and pleasurable things, and it seems like he likes her because she inhabits those moments of beauty. When she no longer does that, he loses interest.

I mentioned scholars as well, because even just skimming the surface of one small yet significant moment can draw up a number of questions and possible insights. It's obvious from the beginning that there are probably endless theories about merely these few pages of text, and I'm  sure more insights to be made.

This is a very juicy work to get to delve into at all. The poem hopefully gave a glimpse of the beautiful piece of literature that is The Picture of Dorian Gray and why there is so much, even just in a few pages, that begs for deeper understanding of the content and language. There are a lot of aspects that are open for further examination and interpretation, and I hope to get to do some of that.