Que c'est triste ! Je vais devenir vieux, horrible et épouvantable. Mais ce portrait, lui, demeurera toujours jeune. [...] Si seulement c'était moi qui devais rester éternellement jeune et le portrait qui devait vieillir ! Pour cela, je donnerais tout ! [...] Je donnerais mon âme ! Toute l'intrigue de l'unique roman d'Oscar Wilde est en germe dans ce vœu aux accents de pacte faustien. Dorénavant, Dorian Gray ne vieillira plus : c'est son portrait qui portera les stigmates de son âge, de ses vices et de ses crimes.En 1890, lorsque paraît Le Portrait de Dorian Gray, les adjectifs ruissellent sous la plume des critiques pour crier à l'immoralité : lascif, pernicieux, répugnant, empoisonné, le livre respire une atmosphère " chargée des odeurs méphitiques de la putréfaction morale et spirituelle ". Mais pour Wilde, la qualité du style est le seul critère pour juger d'une œuvre : " Il n'existe pas de livre moral ou immoral. Les livres sont bien ou mal écrits. Voilà tout. "

Le Portrait de Dorian Gray

«Installé ici dans cette sombre cellule, vêtu d'habits de forçat, ruiné, perdu de réputation, je m'adresse des reproches. Au cours de ces nuits inquiètes hachées par l'angoisse, au cours de ces interminables journées de souffrance, c'est à moi que j'adresse des reproches. Je me reproche d'avoir permis à une amitié dépourvue de toute dimension intellectuelle, à une amitié dont le but principal n'était pas la création et la contemplation de choses belles, de totalement dominer ma vie. Dès l'origine, un fossé bien trop large nous séparait. [...] Tu ne te rendais pas compte qu'un artiste, et particulièrement un artiste comme moi, c'est-à-dire un être dont la qualité de travail repose sur l'approfondissement de sa personnalité, a besoin pour que son art se développe d'une communauté d'idées, et d'une atmosphère intellectuelle faite de calme, de paix et de solitude.» Oscar Wilde.

De profundis : lettres sur la prison

"Per noi non c'è che una stagione: quella del dolore. Sembra che ci abbiano anche defraudato del sole e della luna. Fuori il cielo può essere d'azzurro e d'oro, ma la grossa vetrata del piccolo abbaino dalle sbarre di ferro sotto cui ci si accuccia non lascia filtrare appena che una povera luce sporca. Dentro le celle c'è sempre la semichiarìa del crepuscolo; e il crepuscolo invade pure il nostro cuore."Il 25 maggio del 1895 Oscar Wilde, drammaturgo ammirato da tutta Londra e amante del giovane Lord Alfred Douglas, viene condannato a due anni di lavori forzati per il reato di sodomia. All'inizio del 1897, distrutto nel corpo e nell'anima, lo scrittore ottenne finalmente, da parte del direttore delle carceri di Reading, il permesso di scrivere. La lunga lettera che scrisse a Douglas, accusandolo di averlo abbandonato, sarà pubblicata solo in parte, cinque anni dopo la sua morte, con il titolo De profundis (letteralmente, dal profondo [dell'abisso] in lingua latina). Meditazione autobiografica, testimonianza della sua evoluzione spirituale, e meditazione esistenziale sull'arte e sul dolore, De profundis è anche uno degli scritti più belli e intensi sulla passione. La presente edizione contiene, in aggiunta, la prefazione dell'editore milanese Delle Alpi e le lettere che Wilde scrisse dal carcere all'amico ed erede letterario Robert Ross.

De profundis

Alors qu'il rend visite à son ami peintre Basil Hallward, Lord Henry rencontre le jeune Dorian Gray. Emerveillé par sa jeune beauté et sa naïveté, il se lie rapidement d'amitié avec lui et dit, en plaisantant, qu'une fois le portrait terminé, seul celui-ci gardera à jamais cette beauté tandis que Dorian vieillira peu à peu. Le jeune homme déclare alors qu'il donnerait son âme pour que ce portrait vieillisse à sa place. A ces mots, tous rirent... sur le moment.

Effrayé par ce portrait si parfait, Dorian le laissera chez lui, protégé de la vue de tous, cachant honteusement le secret de son âme...

Le Portrait de Dorian Gray a été rédigé en 1890 puis complété en 1891. Ce roman fantastique est à la fois un manifeste esthétique et un récit moral. Bien qu'Oscar Wilde y développe l'idée d'un art dégagé de toute éthique, le jeune Dorian Gray va faire face à sa conscience morale à travers son portrait qui porte à sa place les traces de sa perversité et la décadence que le temps inflige aux esprits les plus purs.

Le portrait de Dorian Gray

This carefully crafted ebook is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents of the complete works of Oscar Wilde, containing more than 150 works.
Content:
The Plays: Vera, The duchess of Padua, Lady Windermere's fan, A Woman of no importance, Salomé, Selome (English Version), An ideal husband, The importance of being earnest.
The Poetry: more than 100 poems.
The Novel: The picture of Dorian Gray, including the revised 20 chapter version.
The Short Stories: The Portrait of Mr. W. H., The happy prince and other tales, A house of pomegranates, Lord Arthut Savile's crime and other stories.The non-fiction: The decay of lying, Pen, Pencil and poison - a study in green, The critic as artist, The truth of masks, The rise of historical criticism, The english renaissance of art, House decoration, Art and the handicraftsman, Lecture to art students, London models, Poems in prose, The soul of man under socialism, Phrases and philosophies for the use of the young, A few maxims for the instruction of the over-educated, De Profundis, Oscar Wilde's letter to Robert Browning, Personal impressions of America, The decorative arts, The house beautiful, The truth of masks.
The journalism: A handbook to marriage, A ride through morocco, Aristotle at afternoon tea, Balzac in english, Dinners and dishes, Hamlet at the lyceum, London models, Mr. Morris on tapestry, Mr. Whistler's ten o'clock, Mrs. Langtry as Hester Grazebrook, Olivia at the lyceum, The american invasion, Two biographies of Keats, Two letters to the Daily Chronicle, Woman's dress.
Apocrypha: Teleny.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854 - 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams and plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment which was followed by his early death. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a licence. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London. At the height of his fame and success, while his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel, a charge carrying a penalty of up to two years in prison. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with other men. After two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour. In 1897, in prison, he wrote De Profundis which was published in 1905, a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six.

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: +150 Works in 1 eBook

It was the night before the day fixed for his coronation, and the young King was sitting alone in his beautiful chamber. His courtiers had all taken their leave of him, bowing their heads to the ground, according to the ceremonious usage of the day, and had retired to the Great Hall of the Palace, to receive a few last lessons from the Professor of Etiquette; there being some of them who had still quite natural manners, which in a courtier is, I need hardly say, a very grave offence.

The lad-for he was only a lad, being but sixteen years of age-was not sorry at their departure, and had flung himself back with a deep sigh of relief on the soft cushions of his embroidered couch, lying there, wild eyed and open mouthed, like a brown woodland Faun, or some young animal of the forest newly snared by the hunters.

And, indeed, it was the hunters who had found him, coming upon him almost by chance as, bare limbed and pipe in hand, he was following the flock of the poor goatherd who had brought him up, and whose son he had always fancied himself to be. The child of the old King?s only daughter by a secret marriage with one much beneath her in station-a stranger, some said, who, by the wonderful magic of his lute-playing, had made the young Princess love him; while others spoke of an artist from Rimini, to whom the Princess had shown much, perhaps too much honour, and who had suddenly disappeared from the city, leaving his work in the Cathedral unfinished-he had been, when but a week old, stolen away from his mother's side, as she slept, and given into the charge of a common peasant and his wife, who were without children of their own, and lived in a remote part of the forest, more than a day's ride from the town.

A House of Pomegranates

Oscar Wilde narra, en este afamado relato, la historia de una sofisticada familia norteamericana que compra el antiguo castillo inglés de los Canterville. El anterior propietario les advierte de que la casa está habitada por un fantasma, Lord Simon Canterville, quien mató a su esposa y cuyo cuerpo desapareció después misteriosamente. El fantasma, anacrónico, no logrará asustar a sus inquilinos, y acabará siendo juego y víctima de los más pequeños de la familia.

El fantasma de Canterville

Outraged by the sexual perversity of this one-act tragedy, Great Britain's Lord Chamberlain banned Salomé from the national stage. Symbolist poets and writers — Stéphane Mallarmé and Maurice Maeterlinck among them — defended the play's literary brilliance. Beyond its notoriety, the drama's haunting poetic imagery, biblical cadences, and febrile atmosphere have earned it a reputation as a masterpiece of the Aesthetic movement of fin de siècle England.Written originally in French in 1892, this sinister tale of a woman scorned and her vengeance was translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas. The play inspired some of Aubrey Beardsley's finest illustrations, and an abridged version served as the text for Strauss' renowned opera of the same name. This volume reprints the complete text of the first English edition, published in 1894, and also includes "A Note on Salomé" by Robert Ross, Wilde's lifelong friend and literary executor. Students, lovers of literature and drama, and admirers of Oscar Wilde and his remarkable literary gifts will rejoice in this inexpensive edition.

Salomé

Comment ne pas songer devant ces textes à la formation d’helléniste de Wilde, à la lecture passionnée de Platon qu’il fit au cours de ses années à Oxford, et à son goût pour les moralistes français ? Le rapprochement de leur publication, dans la Petite bibliothèque, avec celle des Maximes de La Rochefoucauld et d’un traité de saint Augustin, incite à les lire autrement que dans leur seul contexte fin de siècle, à « prendre Wilde au sérieux » - ce qui ne veut pas dire avec « l’esprit de sérieux » qui lui serait si contraire, mais enfin Wilde est plus proche d’Augustin que de Sacha Guitry...Ces essais et aphorismes forment non pas un traité d’esthétique - rien n’est plus opposé à l’art de Wilde que l’esprit de système -, du moins un ensemble très cohérent qui témoigne avec précision de la conception que Wilde se faisait de l’art : supériorité de l’art décoratif sur les autres arts plastiques ; de la musique et de la littérature sur tous les autres arts ; de l’art sur la vie - ou de la culture sur la nature ; du critique sur le créateur ; de la beauté sur la morale ; de la contemplation sur l’action. Cette position exclut qu’on juge l’art sur des critères de fidélité, de vraisemblance, de vérité, et encore moins sur des critères moraux : « L’art est voile plus que miroir. »Magnifiques témoignages de l’art de Wilde causeur, avec leur crépitement de paradoxes et leurs périodes musicales, les textes rassemblés ici ne sont pas seulement des textes sur l’art, ce sont surtout des oeuvres d’art parmi les plus achevées de Wilde, à mettre au même rang que ses grandes pièces ou le Portrait de Dorian Gray. *Ces textes, qui constituent une sorte de bréviaire d’Oscar Wilde critique, sont présentés dans la traduction historique de Jules Cantel, qu’avait autorisée Wilde lui- même, parue en 1894. ** François Dupuigrenet Desroussilles a travaillé sur la Pléiade de Wilde éditée en 1996 et a présenté et traduit Le Crime de lord Arthur Saville (1994) et Le fantôme des Canterville et autres contes (1998) de Oscar Wilde (Folio bilingue).

Le Portrait de Dorian Gray

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