Ever since I read and loved the "Namesake", I wondered about Nikolai Gogol. Recently i read his short stories collection and was intrigued by "the Portrait".
A fan of The Picture of Dorian Gray, I dont want to compare the two works. Each is unique of its own accord. Both deal with supernatural, and the concept of evil being stored in a picture, evil that sought to destroy all goodness around it. While Dorian loses his virtuousness and untarnished soul, the artist in Portrait loses his inspiration. He paints to gain money and worldly pleasures, and finally when he realizes he lost his art, he grows jealous and destroys other's masterpieces.
Society and its expectations influence not only art, but it tries to muffle science too. Dan Brown mentions that Leonardo da Vinci painted another version of his "Madonna of the rocks" after his work was termed un-christian, almost heretic. Copernicus's heliocentric theory was rebuffed too.
On a psychological note, the "Portrait's" painter realizes that his painting has captured evil. He tries and succeeds to amend his life and art. The painter, thus is the lone "survivor" of the painting's evil. The Portrait ends with a cliffhanger- when the portrait disappears and the readers wonder whose life will the portrait destroy next. (Had this been a Bollywood flick, we would have had a sequel to it :P)
A fan of The Picture of Dorian Gray, I dont want to compare the two works. Each is unique of its own accord. Both deal with supernatural, and the concept of evil being stored in a picture, evil that sought to destroy all goodness around it. While Dorian loses his virtuousness and untarnished soul, the artist in Portrait loses his inspiration. He paints to gain money and worldly pleasures, and finally when he realizes he lost his art, he grows jealous and destroys other's masterpieces.
Society and its expectations influence not only art, but it tries to muffle science too. Dan Brown mentions that Leonardo da Vinci painted another version of his "Madonna of the rocks" after his work was termed un-christian, almost heretic. Copernicus's heliocentric theory was rebuffed too.
On a psychological note, the "Portrait's" painter realizes that his painting has captured evil. He tries and succeeds to amend his life and art. The painter, thus is the lone "survivor" of the painting's evil. The Portrait ends with a cliffhanger- when the portrait disappears and the readers wonder whose life will the portrait destroy next. (Had this been a Bollywood flick, we would have had a sequel to it :P)
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