The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde must have felt about The Picture of Dorian Gray the same way Basil Hallward felt about his portrait of Dorian Gray when he said: "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. If I live, I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray." (Wilde, O. The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray. p. 68. United States of America: Harvard University Press, 2012). It felt like it was Oscar Wilde saying those words, not Basil Hallward. Maybe Oscar Wilde at some point thought people would see too much of him in his novel, as they (perhaps incorrectly) in fact do.

  This original version of the novel is immensely more beautiful than the 1891 version I had previously read. Mainly because Basil's romance for Dorian Gray becomes crystal clear, and Dorian's bisexual promiscuity becomes more crude. The story becomes more honest. But also because the novel is excised of dull and banal chapters and characters. Like James Vane, and the uninteresting chapter about his improbable death. In fact, I was extremely happy to see that the things I did not adore of the 1891 version of the novel were not in fact part of the original typescript. The result of going back to the original version is a more compact and more powerful narrative, short enough to be effortlessly read in just one day.

  I feel so grateful to be living in an age where The Picture of Dorian Gray has been published as Oscar Wilde wanted it in the first place. I will go as far as to say that now that we have this version widely available, no one should ever read neither the 1890 Lippincot's version, nor the 1891 version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. They are a completely different story that lost perfection the moment they tainted it with their censorship.

  So, if Oscar Wilde did feel what Basil Hallward felt upon finishing his portrait, why did he end up publishing the novel? Perhaps we can find the answer in Basil Hallward once again, when he later changes his mind and says: "[I]t seemed to me that I had been foolish in imagining that I had said anything in it, more than that you were extremely good-looking and that I could paint. Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates. Art is more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tell us of form and colour, that is all." (Wilde, O. The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray. p. 145. United States of America: Harvard University Press, 2012).