Pagina 39 di 490

"Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a

good boy," said the painter, deep in his work and conscious only

that a look had come into the lad's face that he had never seen

there before.

"And yet," continued Lord Henry, in his low, musical voice, and

with that graceful wave of the hand that was always so

characteristic of him, and that he had even in his Eton days, "I

believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and

completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to

every thought, reality to every dream-I believe that the world

would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all

the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal-to

something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But

the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation

of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that

mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse

that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The

body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode

of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a

pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.