Домашнее чтение по роману О. Уайльда «Портрет Дориана Грея». Homereading. "The Picture of Dorian Gray” by O. Wilde

О.Е. Данчевская

ДОМАШНЕЕ ЧТЕНИЕ

по роману О. Уайльда
«Портрет Дориана Грея»

HOMEREADING

“The Picture of Dorian Gray” by O. Wilde

Учебное пособие

Москва
Издательство «ФЛИНТА»
2018

2-е издание, стереотипное

УДК 811.111-26(076.6)
ББК 81.432.1я73
Д19

Данчевская О.Е.
Д19 
Домашнее чтение по роману О. Уайльда «Портрет Дориана

Грея». Homereading. “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by O. Wilde 
[Электронный ресурс] : учеб. пособие / О.Е. Данчевская. — 2-е 
изд., стер. —  М. : ФЛИНТА, 2018. — 340 с.
ISBN 978-5-9765-3738-5

Пособие по домашнему чтению на английском языке, разработанное к оригинальной неадаптированной версии романа О. Уайльда «Портрет Дориана Грея» с самыми полными и подробными культурологическими комментариями к тексту, которые сделают чтение 
этого увлекательного произведения ещё более интересным. Комплекс упражнений, вопросов для обсуждения и дополнительных заданий помогает формировать и развивать языковые навыки (лексические и грамматические) и речевые умения в таких видах речевой 
деятельности, как чтение, говорение и письмо.
Для студентов, аспирантов и преподавателей филологических 
факультетов вузов, а также всех изучающих английский язык самостоятельно.  

УДК 811.111-26(076.6)

ББК 81.432.1я73

ISBN 978-5-9765-3738-5 
© Данчевская О.Е., 2018
© Издательство «ФЛИНТА», 2018

CONTENTS

От составителя  ................................................................................................5

Preface  ..............................................................................................................7

Chapter I  ..........................................................................................................9

 
Commentary  .............................................................................................21
 
Exercises  ..................................................................................................22

Chapter II  ......................................................................................................26

 
Commentary  .............................................................................................40
 
Exercises  ..................................................................................................41

Chapter III  .....................................................................................................45

 
Commentary  .............................................................................................57
 
Exercises  ..................................................................................................59

Chapter IV  .....................................................................................................62

 
Commentary  .............................................................................................76
 
Exercises  ..................................................................................................78

Chapter V  .......................................................................................................81

 
Commentary  .............................................................................................92
 
Exercises  ..................................................................................................93

Chapter VI  .....................................................................................................96

 
Commentary  ...........................................................................................103
 
Exercises  ................................................................................................104

Chapter VII  .................................................................................................107

 
Commentary  ...........................................................................................118
 
Exercises  ................................................................................................119

Chapter VIII  ................................................................................................122

 
Commentary  ...........................................................................................135
 
Exercises  ................................................................................................136

Chapter IX  ...................................................................................................140

 
Commentary  ...........................................................................................150
 
Exercises  ................................................................................................150

Chapter X .....................................................................................................153

 
Commentary  ...........................................................................................161
 
Exercises  ................................................................................................162

Chapter XI  ...................................................................................................165

 
Commentary  ...........................................................................................183
 
Exercises  ................................................................................................196

Chapter XII  .................................................................................................199

 
Commentary  ...........................................................................................206
 
Exercises  ................................................................................................206
Chapter XIII  ................................................................................................209
 
Commentary  ...........................................................................................215
 
Exercises  ................................................................................................216
Chapter XIV  ................................................................................................218
 
Commentary  ...........................................................................................231
 
Exercises  ................................................................................................232
Chapter XV  ..................................................................................................234
 
Commentary  ...........................................................................................243
 
Exercises  ................................................................................................243
Chapter XVI  ................................................................................................246
 
Exercises  ................................................................................................254
Chapter XVII ...............................................................................................258
 
Commentary  ...........................................................................................264
 
Exercises  ................................................................................................264
Chapter XVIII  .............................................................................................267
 
Commentary  ...........................................................................................276
 
Exercises  ................................................................................................276
Chapter XIX  ................................................................................................279
 
Commentary  ...........................................................................................287
 
Exercises  ................................................................................................288
Chapter XX  ..................................................................................................292
 
Exercises  ................................................................................................297

Topics for Final Discussion  ..........................................................................300
Topics for Essays  ..........................................................................................301
Vocabulary  ....................................................................................................302

ОТ СОСТАВИТЕЛЯ

Настоящее пособие по домашнему чтению предназначено 
для людей, продолжающих изучать английский язык и совершенствующихся в нём, — студентов языковых и других гуманитарных факультетов вузов, слушателей курсов английского 
языка, учащихся старших классов английских спецшкол, осваивающих уровень Advanced.
Текст романа О. Уайльда «Портрет Дориана Грея» представлен в оригинале, без сокращений и адаптации. Захватывающий 
и необычный сюжет предоставляет богатый материал для обсуждения и не оставит студентов равнодушными. Каждая глава 
снабжена максимально подробным культурологическим комментарием, поясняющим встречающиеся в тексте понятия и расширяющим кругозор учащихся, а также комплексом упражнений, 
направленных на проверку понимания прочитанного, усвоение 
новой лексики, закрепление и отработку грамматического материала, развитие навыков художественного перевода. Пособие 
снабжено словарём, содержащим более 1300 лексических единиц. Предложенные в заданиях вопросы и темы для обсуждения 
позволяют студентам не только совершенствовать навыки чтения и говорения, но и учиться анализировать информацию, высказывать собственное мнение, аргументированно доказывать 
свою точку зрения, развивать воображение и критическое мышление.
В конце текста приведены темы для заключительного обсуждения романа, которые помогут учащимся обобщить всё прочитанное, составить психологический портрет героев, сопоставить 
различные взгляды на обсуждаемые проблемы и сделать собственные выводы.

После прочтения романа и выполнения всех упражнений 
студенты могут выбрать одну из предложенных в заключительной части пособия тем для написания сочинения, в котором им 
необходимо продемонстрировать хорошее знание лексики и самого текста, а также умение логично выстраивать свои рассуждения в письменной форме.
Темы для заключительного обсуждения романа и для сочинений могут быть использованы в качестве контроля.
Данное учебное пособие может быть также рекомендовано 
для индивидуальной и самостоятельной работы.

Preface

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and 
conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate 
into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful 
things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of 
autobiography. Those who fi nd ugly meanings in beautiful things are 
corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who fi nd beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the 
cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom 
beautiful things mean only beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. The 
nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban* seeing 
his own face in a glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of 
Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of 
the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an 
imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things 
that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist 
is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The 
artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist 
instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point 
of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. 
From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the 
surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their 
peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity 
of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, 
and vital.
When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We 
can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not 
admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one 
admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.

Chapter I

The studio was fi lled with the rich odour of roses, and when 
the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there 
came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more 
delicate perfume of the pink-fl owering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which 
he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, 
Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet 
and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous 
branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so 
fl ame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of 
birds in fl ight fl itted across the long tussore-silk curtains that 
were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of 
momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, 
jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art 
that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness 
and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way 
through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous 
insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, 
seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of 
London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the 
full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, 
and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist 
himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years 
ago caused, at the time, such public excitement and gave rise to so 
many strange conjectures.
As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had 
so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his 

face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, 
and closing his eyes, placed his fi ngers upon the lids, as though he 
sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which 
he feared he might awake.
“It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,” 
said Lord Henry languidly. “You must certainly send it next year to 
the Grosvenor*. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever 
I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have 
not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many 
pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was 
worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place.”
“I don’t think I shall send it anywhere,” he answered, tossing his 
head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him 
at Oxford. “No, I won’t send it anywhere.”
Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows and looked at him in 
amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in 
such fanciful whorls from his heavy, opium-tainted cigarette. “Not 
send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What 
odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a 
reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it 
away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse 
than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait 
like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and 
make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any 
emotion.”
“I know you will laugh at me,” he replied, “but I really can’t 
exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it.”
Lord Henry stretched himself out on the divan and laughed.
“Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same.”
“Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn’t know 
you were so vain; and I really can’t see any resemblance between 
you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and 
this young Adonis*, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and 
rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus*, and you — 
well, of course you have an intellectual expression and all that. 

But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression 
begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys 
the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one 
becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the 
successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly 
hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the 
Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of 
eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and 
as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful. Your 
mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but 
whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of 
that. He is some brainless beautiful creature who should be always 
here in winter when we have no fl owers to look at, and always here 
in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don’t 
fl atter yourself, Basil: you are not in the least like him.”
“You don’t understand me, Harry,” answered the artist. “Of course 
I am not like him. I know that perfectly well. Indeed, I should be 
sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the 
truth. There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, 
the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering 
steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one’s fellows. The 
ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit 
at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, 
they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all 
should live — undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They 
neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. 
Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are — my art, 
whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray’s good looks — we shall all 
suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.”
“Dorian Gray? Is that his name?” asked Lord Henry, walking 
across the studio towards Basil Hallward.
“Yes, that is his name. I didn’t intend to tell it to you.”
“But why not?”
“Oh, I can’t explain. When I like people immensely, I never tell 
their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have 

grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make 
modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing 
is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell 
my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It 
is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal 
of romance into one’s life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish 
about it?”
“Not at all,” answered Lord Henry, “not at all, my dear Basil. 
You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage 
is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both 
parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows 
what I am doing. When we meet — we do meet occasionally, when 
we dine out together, or go down to the Duke’s — we tell each other 
the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. My wife is very 
good at it — much better, in fact, than I am. She never gets confused 
over her dates, and I always do. But when she does fi nd me out, she 
makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she would; but she merely 
laughs at me.”
“I hate the way you talk about your married life, Harry,” said 
Basil Hallward, strolling towards the door that led into the garden. 
“I believe that you are really a very good husband, but that you are 
thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary 
fellow. You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. 
Your cynicism is simply a pose.”
“Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose 
I know,” cried Lord Henry, laughing; and the two young men went 
out into the garden together and ensconced themselves on a long 
bamboo seat that stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The sunlight 
slipped over the polished leaves. In the grass, white daisies were 
tremulous.
After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. “I am afraid 
I must be going, Basil,” he murmured, “and before I go, I insist on 
your answering a question I put to you some time ago.”
“What is that?” said the painter, keeping his eyes fi xed on the 
ground.