[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
do so.
144
the title-page of the book. It was Gautier’s Emaux et Camees,
Charpentier’s Japanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart
etching. The binding was of citron-green leather, with a de-
sign of gilt trellis-work and dotted pomegranates. It had been
given to him by Adrian Singleton. As he turned over the
pages, his eye fell on the poem about the hand of Lacenaire,
the cold yellow hand “du supplice encore mal lavee,” with its
downy red hairs and its “doigts de faune.” He glanced at his
own white taper fingers, shuddering slightly in spite of him-
self, and passed on, till he came to those lovely stanzas upon
Venice:
Sur une gamme chromatique,
Le sein de peries ruisselant,
La Venus de l’Adriatique
Sort de l’eau son corps rose et blanc.
Les domes, sur l’azur des ondes
L’esquif aborde et me depose,
Jetant son amarre au pilier,
Devant une facade rose,
Sur le marbre d’un escalier.
How exquisite they were! As one read them, one seemed
to be floating down the green water-ways of the pink and
pearl city, seated in a black gondola with silver prow and
trailing curtains. The mere lines looked to him like those
straight lines of turquoise-blue that follow one as one pushes
out to the Lido. The sudden flashes of colour reminded him
of the gleam of the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter
round the tall honeycombed Campanile, or stalk, with such
stately grace, through the dim, dust-stained arcades. Lean-
ing back with half-closed eyes, he kept saying over and over
to himself:
Oscar Wilde
When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at
Que souleve un soupir d’amour.
Suivant la phrase au pur contour,
“Devant une facade rose,
S’enflent comme des gorges rondes
Sur le marbre d’un escalier.”
145
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The whole of Venice was in those two lines. He remem-
couches in the porphyry-room of the Louvre. But after a
bered the autumn that he had passed there, and a wonderful
time the book fell from his hand. He grew nervous, and a
love that had stirred him to mad delightful follies. There was
horrible fit of terror came over him. What if Alan Campbell
romance in every place. But Venice, like Oxford, had kept
should be out of England? Days would elapse before he could
the background for romance, and, to the true romantic, back-
come back. Perhaps he might refuse to come. What could he
ground was everything, or almost everything. Basil had been
do then? Every moment was of vital importance.
with him part of the time, and had gone wild over Tintoret.
They had been great friends once, five years before—al-
Poor Basil! What a horrible way for a man to die!
most inseparable, indeed. Then the intimacy had come sud-
He sighed, and took up the volume again, and tried to
denly to an end. When they met in society now, it was only
forget. He read of the swallows that fly in and out of the
Dorian Gray who smiled: Alan Campbell never did.
little cafe at Smyrna where the Hadjis sit counting their amber
He was an extremely clever young man, though he had no
beads and the turbaned merchants smoke their long tasselled
real appreciation of the visible arts, and whatever little sense
pipes and talk gravely to each other; he read of the Obelisk
of the beauty of poetry he possessed he had gained entirely
in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of granite in its
from Dorian. His dominant intellectual passion was for sci-
lonely sunless exile and longs to be back by the hot, lotus-
ence. At Cambridge he had spent a great deal of his time
covered Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red ibises,
working in the laboratory, and had taken a good class in the
and white vultures with gilded claws, and crocodiles with
Natural Science Tripos of his year. Indeed, he was still de-
small beryl eyes that crawl over the green steaming mud; he
voted to the study of chemistry, and had a laboratory of his
began to brood over those verses which, drawing music from
own in which he used to shut himself up all day long, greatly
kiss-stained marble, tell of that curious statue that Gautier
to the annoyance of his mother, who had set her heart on his
compares to a contralto voice, the “monstre charmant” that
standing for Parliament and had a vague idea that a chemist
146
Oscar Wilde
was a person who made up prescriptions. He was an excel-
science that he had no time left in which to practise. And
lent musician, however, as well, and played both the violin
this was certainly true. Every day he seemed to become more
and the piano better than most amateurs. In fact, it was music
interested in biology, and his name appeared once or twice
that had first brought him and Dorian Gray together—mu-
in some of the scientific reviews in connection with certain
sic and that indefinable attraction that Dorian seemed to be
curious experiments.
able to exercise whenever he wished—and, indeed, exercised
This was the man Dorian Gray was waiting for. Every sec-
often without being conscious of it. They had met at Lady
ond he kept glancing at the clock. As the minutes went by
Berkshire’s the night that Rubinstein played there, and after
he became horribly agitated. At last he got up and began to
that used to be always seen together at the opera and wher-
pace up and down the room, looking like a beautiful caged
ever good music was going on. For eighteen months their
thing. He took long stealthy strides. His hands were curi-
intimacy lasted. Campbell was always either at Selby Royal
ously cold.
or in Grosvenor Square. To him, as to many others, Dorian
The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to him to
Gray was the type of everything that is wonderful and fasci- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl akte20.pev.pl
do so.
144
the title-page of the book. It was Gautier’s Emaux et Camees,
Charpentier’s Japanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart
etching. The binding was of citron-green leather, with a de-
sign of gilt trellis-work and dotted pomegranates. It had been
given to him by Adrian Singleton. As he turned over the
pages, his eye fell on the poem about the hand of Lacenaire,
the cold yellow hand “du supplice encore mal lavee,” with its
downy red hairs and its “doigts de faune.” He glanced at his
own white taper fingers, shuddering slightly in spite of him-
self, and passed on, till he came to those lovely stanzas upon
Venice:
Sur une gamme chromatique,
Le sein de peries ruisselant,
La Venus de l’Adriatique
Sort de l’eau son corps rose et blanc.
Les domes, sur l’azur des ondes
L’esquif aborde et me depose,
Jetant son amarre au pilier,
Devant une facade rose,
Sur le marbre d’un escalier.
How exquisite they were! As one read them, one seemed
to be floating down the green water-ways of the pink and
pearl city, seated in a black gondola with silver prow and
trailing curtains. The mere lines looked to him like those
straight lines of turquoise-blue that follow one as one pushes
out to the Lido. The sudden flashes of colour reminded him
of the gleam of the opal-and-iris-throated birds that flutter
round the tall honeycombed Campanile, or stalk, with such
stately grace, through the dim, dust-stained arcades. Lean-
ing back with half-closed eyes, he kept saying over and over
to himself:
Oscar Wilde
When he had stretched himself on the sofa, he looked at
Que souleve un soupir d’amour.
Suivant la phrase au pur contour,
“Devant une facade rose,
S’enflent comme des gorges rondes
Sur le marbre d’un escalier.”
145
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The whole of Venice was in those two lines. He remem-
couches in the porphyry-room of the Louvre. But after a
bered the autumn that he had passed there, and a wonderful
time the book fell from his hand. He grew nervous, and a
love that had stirred him to mad delightful follies. There was
horrible fit of terror came over him. What if Alan Campbell
romance in every place. But Venice, like Oxford, had kept
should be out of England? Days would elapse before he could
the background for romance, and, to the true romantic, back-
come back. Perhaps he might refuse to come. What could he
ground was everything, or almost everything. Basil had been
do then? Every moment was of vital importance.
with him part of the time, and had gone wild over Tintoret.
They had been great friends once, five years before—al-
Poor Basil! What a horrible way for a man to die!
most inseparable, indeed. Then the intimacy had come sud-
He sighed, and took up the volume again, and tried to
denly to an end. When they met in society now, it was only
forget. He read of the swallows that fly in and out of the
Dorian Gray who smiled: Alan Campbell never did.
little cafe at Smyrna where the Hadjis sit counting their amber
He was an extremely clever young man, though he had no
beads and the turbaned merchants smoke their long tasselled
real appreciation of the visible arts, and whatever little sense
pipes and talk gravely to each other; he read of the Obelisk
of the beauty of poetry he possessed he had gained entirely
in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of granite in its
from Dorian. His dominant intellectual passion was for sci-
lonely sunless exile and longs to be back by the hot, lotus-
ence. At Cambridge he had spent a great deal of his time
covered Nile, where there are Sphinxes, and rose-red ibises,
working in the laboratory, and had taken a good class in the
and white vultures with gilded claws, and crocodiles with
Natural Science Tripos of his year. Indeed, he was still de-
small beryl eyes that crawl over the green steaming mud; he
voted to the study of chemistry, and had a laboratory of his
began to brood over those verses which, drawing music from
own in which he used to shut himself up all day long, greatly
kiss-stained marble, tell of that curious statue that Gautier
to the annoyance of his mother, who had set her heart on his
compares to a contralto voice, the “monstre charmant” that
standing for Parliament and had a vague idea that a chemist
146
Oscar Wilde
was a person who made up prescriptions. He was an excel-
science that he had no time left in which to practise. And
lent musician, however, as well, and played both the violin
this was certainly true. Every day he seemed to become more
and the piano better than most amateurs. In fact, it was music
interested in biology, and his name appeared once or twice
that had first brought him and Dorian Gray together—mu-
in some of the scientific reviews in connection with certain
sic and that indefinable attraction that Dorian seemed to be
curious experiments.
able to exercise whenever he wished—and, indeed, exercised
This was the man Dorian Gray was waiting for. Every sec-
often without being conscious of it. They had met at Lady
ond he kept glancing at the clock. As the minutes went by
Berkshire’s the night that Rubinstein played there, and after
he became horribly agitated. At last he got up and began to
that used to be always seen together at the opera and wher-
pace up and down the room, looking like a beautiful caged
ever good music was going on. For eighteen months their
thing. He took long stealthy strides. His hands were curi-
intimacy lasted. Campbell was always either at Selby Royal
ously cold.
or in Grosvenor Square. To him, as to many others, Dorian
The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to him to
Gray was the type of everything that is wonderful and fasci- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]