“Her Şeyi Tüketmek İçin Bir Saatin Dörtte Üçü”: Dorian Gray ve Metalaşan Estetik

Year 2024, Issue: 22, 148 - 166, 10.09.2024

Başak Çün

https://doi.org/10.46250/kulturder.1496580

Abstract

Bu makale, Oscar Wilde'ın tek romanı olan Dorian Gray'in Portresi’nde (1890) estetiğin metalaştırılmasını incelemektedir. Roman, mevcutta yaygın olarak Wilde'ın sanata, estetiğe ve güzelliğe yaklaşımının aşkın bir zeminde hayat bulduğu varsayımı çerçevesinde, baskın olan sanatsal bağlamı kapsamında araştırılmıştır. Gerçekte, 19. yüzyıl sonu Britanya’sından bir dekadan birey kimliğine ve orta ve işçi sınıfının materyale düşkünlüğüne yönelik değersizleştiren eleştirilerine rağmen Wilde, tüketimin kapitalist akıntısına kavramsal olarak yakınlaşır. Roman, ilk bakışta, özellikle Dorian Gray, Basil Hallward ve Lord Henry karakterleri aracılığıyla, Wilde’ın sanat ve edebiyat dünyasına kendini tanıtma biçimiyle aynı çizgide estetikçiliği ve dolayısıyla sanatın kendisi için var olması durumunu ön plana alır. Fakat ağırlıklı olarak Dorian tarafından sergilenen derin sanatsal haz ve güzellik deneyimi arzusu, İngiliz materyalist arayışla çok iyi anlaşmakta ve sonunda ona dönüşmektedir. Dorian’ın ilk etapta güzellik timsali olarak görünen konumu, sonunda kendini ve onu benimseyenleri metalaştıran aynı güzellik dinamiği sebebiyle yozlaşır. Estetik hazzın arandığı bu metalar, esteti de metaya dönüştürür. Wilde'ın süs ve dekoratif unsur kullanımı, Dorian’ın sonsuz gençlik arayışı ve romandaki tüm estetikçi yapılaştırma, eserin derinden temellendiği sömürgeci, materyalist ve modernist platformun farkındalığında, politik bir okuma gerektirir.

Keywords

Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray, estetikçilik, metalaşma, Fin de siècle

“Three-Quarters of an Hour to Consume Everything”: Dorian Gray and Commodified Aesthetics

Abstract

This paper examines the commodification of aesthetics in Oscar Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The novel is most extensively investigated within the artistic context employed, where Wilde’s approach to art, aesthetics and beauty is regarded as surviving on a transcendental ground. Indeed, despite his identity as a decadent of fin de siècle Britain, and his depreciating critique of the middle and working class for their material pursuits, Wilde gets conceptually closer to the capitalist stream of consumption. The novel ostensibly highlights aestheticism, and hence, art living for its sake on the lines of the manner Wilde launches himself to the world of artistry and literature, particularly through the characters of Dorian Gray, Basil Hallward, and Lord Henry. However, the deep desire to experience artistic pleasure and beauty, as illustrated mainly by Dorian, gets along very well with, and ends up as, the British materialist pursuit. Dorian’s initial position as the embodiment of beauty degenerates due to the same dynamic of beauty commodifying itself, and so, the others implementing it. The very commodities where aesthetic pleasure is sought commodify the aesthete. Wilde's use of ornamental and decorative elements, Dorian’s search for eternal youth, and the whole structuration of aestheticism in the novel necessitate a political reading of the text, calling for the recognition of colonial, material and modernist platform the narrative deeply bases itself on.

Keywords

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, aestheticism, commodification, Fin de siècle

References

• Christian Leader (1890, July). Ed. Karl Beckson (1997). Routledge.
• Clausson, Nils (2003). “‘Culture and Corruption’: Paterian Self Development versus Gothic Degeneration in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray”. Papers on Language and Literature, 39(4):339-364.
• Deane, Seamus (1995). "Imperialism/Nationalism". Critical Terms for Literary Study. Ed. Frank Lentricchia & Thomas McLaughlin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 354-368.
• Donghaile, Deaglán Ó (2020). Oscar Wilde and the Radical Politics of the Fin de Siècle. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Ellmann, Richard (1988). Oscar Wilde. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
• Etsy, Jed (2013). “Souls of Men under Capitalism: Wilde, Wells, and the Anti-Novel”. Unseasonable Youth: Modernism, Colonialism, and the Fiction of Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 101-126.
• Gagnier, Regenia (1986). Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Gagnier, Regenia (ed.) (1991). Critical Essays on Oscar Wilde. New York: G. K. Hall and Co.
• Gilmour, Robin (1993). The Victorian Period: The Intellectual and Cultural Context, 1830-1890. New York: Longman.
• Lukács, Georg (1988). The Theory of the Novel. Kent: Whitstable Litho Printers Ltd. First published 1920. Lukács, Georg (1989). The Historical Novel. Merlin Press. First published 1937.
• MacLeod, Kirsten (2006). Fictions of British Decadence: High Art, Popular Writing, and the Fin de Siècle. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
• Mao, Douglas (2008). Fateful Beauty: Aesthetic Environments, Juvenile Development, and Literature, 1860-1960. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Matsuoka, Mitsuharu (2003). “Aestheticism and Social Anxiety in The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Journal of Aesthetic Education, 29: 77-100.
• Notice in Scots Observer (1890, 5 July). Ed. Karl Beckson (1997). Routledge.
• Psomiades, Kathy (1997). Beauty’s Body: Femininity and Representation in British Aestheticism. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Review in Daily Chronicle (1890, 30 June). Ed. Karl Beckson (1997). Routledge.
• Riquelme, John Paul (2000). "Oscar Wilde's Aesthetic Gothic: Walter Pater, Dark Enlightenment, and The Picture of Dorian Gray”. Modern Fiction Studies, 46(3): 609-631.
• Said, Edward W. (1944). Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books.
• Scheible, Ellen (2014). “Imperialism, Aesthetics, and Gothic Confrontation in The Picture of Dorian Gray”. New Hibernia Review, 18(4): 131-150.
• Sedgwick, Eve K. (1986). The Coherence of Gothic Conventions. New York: Routledge.
• The Collected Oscar Wilde (2007). New York: Barnes and Noble Inc.
• The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde (2000). Ed. Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis. London: Fourth Estate Limited.
• Wilde, Oscar (2001). The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Penguin Books Ltd. First published 1891.
• Williams, Raymond (1989). “Metropolitan Perceptions and the Emergence of Modernism”. The Politics of New Modernism: Against the New Conformists. New York: Verso Books, 37-48.