The Picture of Dorian Gray biography, "Oscar Wilde" (1989), the literary critic Richard Ellmann said that: Wilde does not name the book, but at his trial he conceded that it was, or almost [was], Huysmans's "À rebours" ... to a correspondent, he wrote that he had played a 'fantastic variation' upon "À rebours", and someday must write it down. The references in "Dorian Gray" to specific chapters are deliberately inaccurate. Some commentators have suggested that "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was influenced by the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's (anonymously published) first novel "Vivian Grey" (1826) as, "a kind of homage from one outsider to
The Picture of Dorian Gray (opera) Dorian contemplates the degradation of his life and his evil influence on others. Thinking about the young girl with whom he broke off, he removes the cover from his portrait, hoping to find some diminution of his temporal corruption. To his dismay, he sees instead a new look of hypocrisy and corruption. Hoping to destroy the one visual proof of his evil, he stabs the portrait with the same knife used to kill Basil. A terrible scream is heard. The portrait has regained its original look of the young Dorian, whilst on the floor lies the horribly disfigured body of