Secular Allusions, Biblical Conclusions

For the first time in a long time, I've been able to read something other than material for school. That is not to say that I didn't enjoy my readings for the Master of Hispanic Studies program I've nearly finished, but it feels nice to have control of my literary choices again.

Back to the Classics

With my newfound freedom, I decided to take it back a couple of centuries and plunged into a novel written by a man more well-known for his plays, Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray. Reading of 19th century English aristocracy amuses me. The only way I can describe my fascination with it is that I love to disdain it. It was a time when languid, misogynistic "gentlemen" existed while women were seen as mere accessories. They had all the time in the world on their hands. A pack of indulged, cynical, world-weary, apathetic, erudite and usually quite decadent and unabashedly hedonistic young men engulfed in ennui populate the pages. Romanticism and Realism clashed. Orientalism ran rampant. As Paris was all the rage, pretentious French phrases were thrown about with abandon and the love of French literature was the height of culture. In this milieu, I discovered Dorian Gray.

The Word and Literature

God's Word is sacred, holy, and Truth. But the Bible has also left an indelible mark on Western secular literature. It never ceases to amaze me how much my Biblical formation is almost necessary to grasp the depth of motifs, symbols and allusions in literature that I've read for English as well as Spanish studies. The emergence of a post-Christian society has, to me, been no more obvious than in the fact that many of my colleagues, even in the heart of the Bible belt, lack awareness of Biblical basics and thus, the ability to see its significance in literature.

But back to Dorian Gray. While reading the novel, I did a bit of research on the author. Oscar Wilde in many ways lived along the same lines as some of the characters who populated his novel. Lord Henry Wotton, I feel, is an extension of his well-known wit and professed preoccupation with pleasure-seeking. The eponymous character is seduced by Lord Henry's words and lives the hedonist philosophy to the extreme. I won't give away the plot, but even as godless and condescending a character as Lord Henry quotes a scripture he heard in a "little crowd of shabby-looking people listening to some vulgar street preacher" which not only drives Dorian to his final act, but in sum, serves as what I feel is the theme of the entire novel—"What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

Literature as Parable

A friend of mine once said something that really made me think—"All truth is God's truth." If something is true, or demonstrates Truth, whether it comes from the Bible or elsewhere, it belongs to Him. He is Truth. I see Dorian Gray as a 19th century parable that shows the futility of living for oneself at the expense of others and the hypocrisy in maintaining appearances at the expense of all else. It is an exploration in novel form of the answer to that convicting question Jesus asked of the disciples in the gospels.