The Picture of Dorian Gray : la passion du réel/la passion du semblant (original) (raw)

Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens

Abstract

Slavoj Zizek has recently argued that the XXth century is characterized by the "passion for the real," which is an exact inversion of the passion for semblances: beneath our modern passion for virtual reality there lurks a longing for "the experience of the real world of material decay." The Picture of Dorian Gray was written in a period of transition between the XIXth century and the XXth, and my point is that Wilde's aestheticism must be re-appraised in the light of Zizek's thought. A study of doors and windows in the novel shows that Dorian commits a major transgression which consists in mistaking the "window" of fantasy for a "door" that leads beyond the pleasure principle and provides "the thrill of the Real". Dorian's passion is not so much for beauty and art, but for the decomposing portrait, its grey and amorphous matter, the "palpitating life substance prior to symbolic mortification" from which he derives exquisite enjoyment.

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