Skip to content

Silent Eloquence

Silence. Eloquence. Everything in between.

Menu
  • About
  • Check-in
  • Contact
Menu

Excerpt: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Posted on May 26, 2010May 26, 2010 by Surya

It is not easy to find good travel writing – most of the time, they read like an itinerary of “I did this, and then that, and that” and you are left wondering whether you picked up a brochure rather than a travelogue. Sometimes, the writers go overboard and describe each little stone on the pavement and you feel the same impatience as when your car has a breakdown and you are waiting for the AA folks.

Even while I complain as a reader, I know as a writer, that it is hard to strike the right balance. But once in a while, a writer just gives you the perfect description – enough to make you feel as if you are standing right there with him, yet leaves out enough so that you can add your own flavour to the journey. And then you have to just read it over and over again, lapping up the beauty of the unique path they are leading us on.

I leave you with such a description of London’s Covent Garden from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, observed from Dorian’s perspective as he walks listlessly after being disappointed in his first love:

As the dawn was just breaking he found himself close to Covent Garden. The darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed itself into a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies rumbled slowly down the polished empty street. The air was heavy with the perfume of the flowers, and their beauty seemed to bring him an anodyne for his pain.

He followed into the market, and watched the men unloading their waggons. A white-smocked carter offered him some cherries. He thanked him, and wondered why he refused to accept any money for them, and began to eat them listlessly. They had been plucked at midnight, and the coldness of the moon had entered into them. A long line of boys carrying crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red roses, defiled in front of him, threading their way through the huge jade-green piles of vegetables.

Under the portico, with its grey sun-bleached pillars, loitered a troop of draggled bareheaded girls, waiting for the auction to be over. Others crowded round the swinging doors of the coffee-house in the Piazza. The heavy cart-horses slipped and stamped upon the rough stones, shaking their bells and trappings. Some of the drivers were lying asleep on a pile of sacks. Iris-necked, and pink-footed, the pigeons ran about picking up seeds

Are there any good travel books or blogs you recommend?

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

No related posts.

3 thoughts on “Excerpt: The Picture of Dorian Gray”

  1. Sherene says:
    May 28, 2010 at 8:21 pm

    Lovely, makes me want to visit Covent Garden at dawn, to see what picture it paints today :)

  2. Divya says:
    June 6, 2010 at 3:17 pm

    Wow, it does make me want to visit Covent Garden too!

    I do recall enjoying Vikram Seth’s From Heavenly Lake, and William Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain. And I vaguely remember liking the melancholy of the descriptions of Somerset Maugham’s short stories set in the SE Asia. Even though it is not “travel writing”, R K Narayan’s descriptions of Madras/Bangalore make me nostalgic!

  3. J. says:
    September 4, 2014 at 2:40 pm

    “Head over heel – seduced by southern Italy” by Chris Harrison. It’s great! You could also try “Hokkaido Highway Blues” by Will Ferguson :).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please answer: (required) Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.

Recent Comments

  • 10 years | Silent Eloquence on Remembering a journey
  • J. on Excerpt: The Picture of Dorian Gray
  • Surya on Mother
  • Siddhartha on Mother
  • Loxley on Review: The Reluctant Fundamentalist
  • Ajish on Me too..!
  • Punjabi on Languages or Dialects?
  • Alpha on Why do we appreciate art?
  • sameer on Me too..!
  • lol 7 years later on Languages or Dialects?

Archive

Categories

  • Asides
  • Blog related
  • Books
  • Catch-all
  • Culture & Languages
  • Entertainment
  • Favourites
  • Featured
  • Fiction
  • India
  • Links
  • Management
  • Musings
  • Personal
  • poetry
  • random
  • Science
  • Short Story Month
  • Society
  • Tech
  • Travel
  • Women
  • Writing

Twitter

  • 32 pages. 10975 words. 2.5 chapters. Progress. #writing #WritingCommunity about 6 days ago
  • Wordle 326 2/6 🟩🟨🟨⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 about 1 week ago
  • I never know what to do on the days when I get the word in under 2 mins. The day stretches ahead… Wordle 322 3/6… https://t.co/rjIVh5MrzX about 2 weeks ago
  • RT @ceciliaclyra: Sometimes it makes sense to put away a story that lives inside you ---- but please don't put away the storyteller. about 2 weeks ago
  • I sent out my first newsletter today. #happy about 3 weeks ago
  • #story by Yefim Zozulya about citizen’s right to life, decided arbitrarily by an elected authority. The story may… https://t.co/75CRJKg63t about 1 month ago
  • “Triumph—rare, lucky, dull, and brief—is an artifact of editing: failure, failure, failure, failure, a moment of ju… https://t.co/F5st6e1pwx about 1 month ago in reply to silenteloquence
  • “Flaubert observed, “Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when w… https://t.co/59aKu02lNF about 1 month ago
  • A problem that deserves urgent attention - how to ensure #ArtificialIntelligence objectives will align with a plur… https://t.co/7ivfCJ61yl about 2 months ago
  • Few beliefs shape our reality than our sense of self. Whether you believe you are powerful or powerless, you are ab… https://t.co/U1me5PNDEI about 2 months ago
@silenteloquence
©2022 Silent Eloquence | Built using WordPress and Responsive Blogily theme by Superb