The Picture of Dorian Gray enamoured of him. The Roman goddess of love then offers him eternal life with her in the Venusberg, and he accepts; yet, Tannhäuser becomes dissatisfied with life in the Venusberg, and returns to the harsh reality of the mortal world. After participating in a singing contest, Tannhäuser is censured for the sensuality of his art; eventually, he dies searching for repentance and the love of a good woman. About the literary hero, the author Oscar Wilde said, "in every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust." As in the legend of "Faust", in "The Picture of
Wings (Kuzmin novel) to approve same-sex love in print: "Wilde in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890) only hinted that his hero's inner corruption resulted from his suppression of his true nature; Gide did not dare to name the attraction of his hero in "The Immoralist" (1902); Proust felt impelled to engage in all manner of subterfuge, and Forster wrote "Maurice" for the desk drawer." Vladimir Nabokov parodied Kuzmin's novel in his own short novel "The Eye", using "Smurov" as the name of a male protagonist and "Vanya" of a female one. Wings (Kuzmin novel) Wings () was the first Russian novel centred