Konson, G. R. Dorian Gray as an Intellectual Murder in Oscar Wilde’s Novel ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’

Abstract: The subject under research is the process of degradation of Dorian Gray from an angel-like person to a devillike criminal. According to the author, this process is related to transcendence as an indicator of moral principles of the main hero. When these moral principles are destroyed, transcendence in Dorian Gray’s mind takes a concrete shape and expresses a catastrophic expectation of moral punishment. In this regard, the author of the article focuses on Dorian’s transformation into a devil. Such a metamorphosis is possible due to a typical European phenomenon of doppelganger that is based on the binary archetype. In his research Konson has used the integrated approach which includes ethic-philosophic, psychological, literary and musicological analysis. The scientific novelty of the research is in creation of a new research framework when Dorian Gray is interpreted as a source of the binary archetype of human-devil when human is turning into a monster and appears to be even a greater threat than his doppelganger (twin) and his pan estheticism is turning into esthetics of cruelty. Moreover, the novelty of the article is also shown in the musicological interpretation of the development of Dorian’s image which, according to the author’s intent, reveals the external ‘unchanged’ image of the hero (the content plane) and the internal image that has gone through cardinal transformations (the expression plane). As a result of his analysis, Konson comes to the conclusion that Dorian is a complete ahrimanic personality, a killer-loner with the ‘false bottom’, esthete fulfilling himself in vice while being known as a dandy in a society (a form of a superman) who was first shown as a neglect criminal and then a ‘professional’ murderer and a cruel extrapunitive person.

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