Part 2: The art project

          

  This scene is overall formed like that of a romantic tragedy; it’s beautiful and potent, even when it turns painful. The words that are used to describe it reflect that tone from beginning to end. When reading over this scene, there were certain lines that are so tantalizing and seductive that they stick out from the rest:

-“Her eyes were lit with an exquisite fire.”

-“ lingering over his name with long-drawn music in her voice”

-“Transfigured with joy. An ecstasy of happiness dominated her.”

-“You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even stir my curiosity.”

-“Dorian Gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiseled lips curled in exquisite disdain.”

            (Wilde, 81-83)

They carry words that have similar a similar feel in your mouth when you say them. “exquisite,” “lingering,” “transfigured,” “ecstasy,” “curiosity,” “chiseled,” “exquisite disdain.” The line “lingering over his name with long-drawn music in her voice,” doesn’t so much have to do with the way the scene reads, but rather states outright the way the scene reads and the beauty of it in its entirety.

There is also a linear way that the scene reads, slowly twisting a word that begins the scene with such happiness to one that chills you at the end- exquisite. It seems as though it’s possible this was deliberate, to put this word at the beginning and the end, and so was the flourished language used throughout it. Sybil all her life had been immersed in these tragic situations in her acting, and Dorian always wants to experience true art. Each one of them envisions their life in a kind of unreal veil, yet even when they’re broken from it when real life steps in, they still manage to emulate it; they become the art they have so long envisioned their lives to be like.

In my piece, like I said, I latched onto the word exquisite, because it seemed to hold a thread that lead throughout the scene. The beginning is the fire, also mentioned in the scene, of Sibyl’s overwhelming happiness, but then Dorian speaks. She doesn’t quite believe him, but the tone of the scene begins to darken, and then makes an abrupt change as soon as the second “You have killed my love,” hits. Then it fades to black (with a moment of gray in there, because it’s his name and seems fitting) but even then isn’t just made of a dark matte.

In my picture, right in the juncture of the q and u is where I see that abrupt change happening. The red, other than being next color in the color wheel after the white-yellow and orange, is also the color of blood, and of the most captivating romances. The love is “killed,” but maybe that just makes their story more potent. Dorian later tries to brush his tryst with Sibyl off as one of the many sensations of his life, but the fact is that she was one of the only things that could have saved him from what he later becomes, and that moment was a turning point of his life, the first thing that disfigures his portrait. So, the picture I made is meant to follow the way the scene reads in tone and the sort of romantic way the characters are portrayed/ portray themselves.

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