Wilde's Salome: Turning
liThe Monstrous Beast" into a·
Tragic Hero
V>Chris Snodgrass
In D, PmJjmdi,~ Oscar Wilde wrote that the tragedy of his personal life had
·been "foreshadowed and prefigured in my art," and as specific proof be
cited S"lolne (L 475), the play which hill friend Ada Leverson reported
most fully "expressed himself' (Leverson 149; Wyndham .110),' Yet despite its autobiographical importance, Salome continues to be regarded us
Wild~'s most "enigmatic" and "least understood play," an "anomalous"
hothouse "aberration among the complete works" (Zagona 129; Nassaar
80; Donohue '85; Tydeman and Price 1). Most scholars have read the play
as being In the spirit of Des Bsseintes' s famous reverie on Moreau s paintings In Huysmans's Agaitlst Nature (A Rebours, 1884), which describes
Salome as "the symbolic incarnation of undying Lust, ... the monstrous
Beast, indifferent, irresponsible, Insensible, poisoning" (66).2 Without.
question, Wilde's play Is about human desire and deadly obsession. However, if it ill also a tragedy-as Wilde Insisted it was-then, by dofinltion
and contrary to the common view, it must be about much more thun 11 depraved girl' Ii sexuul lust, In fact, Wilde goes to considerable lengths to turn
Huysmans's "monstrous Boast" Into u c1atltlicllllytragic victim, und in NO
doing the play becomes not an uberratlon urnong Wilde's works, but the
logical culmination and final drurnntizntlon of tho philosophlcal Impusse
Wilde had been wrestling with for several years-c-speciflcully, tho futul lmpoasibillty of wedding ideal art-like beauty and palpable human desire.
I
184
Oscar Wilde: The Man. His Writings. and His World
Turning "The Monstrous BeastN Into a Tragic Hero
Numerous commentators have observed that Salome, the play Wilde
subtitled "A Tragedy in One Act," is "n drnma In the Greek manner"
(Beerbohm :'1: Zagonu 128; Ellmann, OW 345), The play's mesmerizing,
ulmost rltuulistic, sonorous repetitions clearly reinforce II sense of "fata Ii1>tic lutenslty'' und relentless tragic necessity (Ruby 107; Worth 57)," But
what hll~ hC(,!1I altogether !ell:! clear INhow Salome, interpreted almost univn sully Uti u Ircrvorsc .lrm/ll(' fatal« Indulging her "bestial hunger," could
quul ii'y II!'! 1\ clusxicully trugtc protagonist. Aristotle, we recall, proscribed
thut l\ bona fide tYllgedy could not portruy "tho really wicked [person]
chunging from good fortune to bad"-iettlna
what she deserved, in effect-since thut structure would 1I0t evoke the requisite pity and feur (53u,
lines 1-6: Else 38). Ruther, the tragic protagonist had to be a person of
"good churucter" whose action "reveals the moral quality of some choice"
and who comes to ruin not "through any real badness or wickedness but because of some mistake" [the hmnarlitl] (54a, lines 16-20; 53a, lines 8-10;
Else 43,38). It is unlikely thut Wilde, who won IIFirst in the Classics at Oxford and who quoted Aristotle repeatedly in his critical essays, was employing a simplistic, pop-cultural definition of tragedy when he described
his play US an example of "tragic beauty" and its heroine as "that tragic
daughter of passion" (L 328, 333).4
.
On the contrary, in II. remarkable June 1892 interview with Tire Pall Mczll
Gt/zette. which mystified friend and foe alike, Wilde earnestly characterized his play us having u "great and ennobling" subject and explicitly defined it as "moral and elevating," in direct contrast to plays thut he said
dealt with "disgustlng.and revolting subjects" (947). In a similar vein even
while he acknowledged that for dramatic reasons Salome's "lust m~st be
an abyss, her corruptness, an ocean,' he nevertheless insisted that she was
"almost chaste," a "vision of blazing innocence" (Gomez Carrillo I: 193),
"1\ Sainte Therese" who worships the moon instead of the cross (Ricketts
51-52). So the central question remains: if Wilde believed, as he clearly
did, that Salome was truly a tragic figure In the classical sense, then how
exactly does she qualify as a "good" person worthy of pity, whose actions
reveal not depravity but a "moral quality" turned to ruin by a tragic mistuke?
Wilde clearly concelved of Salome as someone of rare value who illdestroyed IlS the direct result of an error tragic in nature, that i!'l, It personal errol' precipitated in purt by the very qualities that mnke her vulunble in Ihf'l
first place. Wilde expressed clear disdain for what he considered the drumutic inadequacy of the Biblical accounts of Salome. which made her only
a docile conduit for her scheming mother. As he told Gomez Carrillo, "I
cannot conceive of a SI11om6who is unconscious of whut she does, II
Salome who is but a silent and passive Instrument" (I: 193). As a consequence, oven though there is no suggestion in the Gospels that Salome had
even S~II the Baptist before her dance, much less fallen in love with him,
Wilde I sisted on making Iokanaan's death a function of Salome's romantic passi n for him. Even more tellingly, although no previous literary
treatment had over punished Salome for her extreme demand (Zagona
128), Wilde nonetheless makes a ruthless "corrective" justice the culmination of his drama.
Moreover, although Mario Praz is correct thut it was Oscar Wilde who
first imbued Salome with the "monstrous passion" we now equate with her
(298-99), Wilde clearly did not think of his capti vating princess UII primarily a lascivious sex object. It is noteworthy that Wilde minimizes that part
of the legend which In the popular imagination most defines Salome's
overwhelming carnal sexuality-her seductive dance. He gave no instructions whatsoever about how the dance was to be performed; indeed, he
even referred to it repeatedly as an "invis.ible dunce" whose value was independent of Ilny carnal realism, a point reinforced by the fact that, as Kerry
Powell and others have argued, he obviously intended early on to have
Salome acted by Sarah Bernhardt, who al the time was nearly fifty years
old and well past her physicul prime (Powell 40-54; Rlquelme 586).~
Charles Ricketts was not alone in insisting that the sensationalizing "music-hall tigress and blood lust of the Continental stage" constituted vulgar
misinterpretations of something thut Wilde intended to be "more metaphysical than physical" (Ricketts 53; Ellmann, OW 376).h
Equally noteworthy in this regard is Wilde's remarkable and unprecedented repositioning of the dance. In the Gospels and in works like
Flaubert's Herodlas, Salome's dance occurs before Herod's reckless offer
to grant her whatever she desires, which suggests that Herod is carried
away under the spell of her sensual physical display. Wilde, however,
places the dance after Herod has already made the fateful offer, making the
dance itself merely the culminating component of Herod's already-estabIished bribe rather than the determinant cause of Iokanuan's death, That is,
Herod mny well have been driven over the edge by lust. but it Is not the
dunce '/I carnal exhibitionism that dOClI It, Indeed, Wilde speciflcully IIIlml~H
Salomc'a
dunce "tilt! dance (~f' th~
,\'IIVt'1i
,,"'1.\," (S 'i4)
--UII
185
extruordinury
ldentlflcutlon no one hud clnlmed before Wllde'N piny (Becker-Leckrone
2'i4-'i'i), All Burburu Welker reminds 11K. the rltuul DUIICl' of till' SCIV(,!11
Veil« refers to the mythic rotrlevul of Ihe MlII'roKulc-k 1111& !'WIIl tho under-
world "by the Goddess, who removed 0110 of her seven K"rnll:mlls III «IIIL'h I,f
the seven underworld gates," the veils !lignifyIns "the layers of earthly Il(lpearunces or illusions falling away from those who approach the central
186
Oscar Wilde: The Man, His Writings. and His World
Mystery of the deeps" (885-86). By thus linking Salome's dance to the sacred Dance of the Seven Vell», Wilde suggests that her dance is less a
[emme fatale'» display of animal sexuality than some quest to grasp life's
"central Mystery,"
As Wilde had proclaimed repeatedly over the previous decade, it is the
roulrn of urt that fostera such heroic quests, that prizes divine Mysteries
OV~I hU1l1ll1I
vulgurity, But increasingly in the years prior to the writing of
SlI/Of/It'. Wilde had been preoccupied by a growing recognition of the limlunions of urt UII n self-sufficient mode of life. In 1885 he had publicly disagreed with the extreme aestheticism of Whistler's "Ten O'Clock Lecture"
(M 65-66); and In a March 1886 review of George Sand in th,ePall Mall
Gazette he even conceded that Sand was justified in rejecting "art for tbe
sake of itself" In favor of "art for the Makeof truth ... and good" (N 48).
Over the next few years, at the same time that Wilde's critical essays celebrated an artistic personality thlLtadmitted no "laws but its own laws; nor
any authority but its own authority" (/ 287), his stories like "The Remarkable Rockel," "The Devoted Friend," "The Birthday of the Infanta,1Iand
"The Fisherman and His Soul" critiqued the excesses of narcissistic abandonment.' In these and other fables, which Wilde characterized to E. F.
Benson al!;"moral tracts" (L 244-45), senMltivityto human pain and compassion for human imperfection war constantly with perfect beauty and the
self-absorbed quest for the ideal.
Wilde, who would later write that "imagination is simply a manifestation
of lov~" (L 484,486), longed for a way to reconcile needy human imperfection with the uncompromising demands of aesthetic purity. But he often interpreted the two as polarities, most obviously, of course, in The Picture oj'
Dorian Gray, which he called his "ethical parable," and which Richard
Ellmann has characterized as Wilde's "tragedy of aestheticism" (L 268;
Ellmann, OW 315). A major theme in the novel-that "All influence is immoral" (PDa 27)-reiterates the admonition Wilde had made earlier in
"The Portrait of Mr. W. H./' that "Influence is simply a transference of personality, a mode of giving away what III most precious to one's self" (expanded version, CW 1196; Lawler and Knott 395). Falling under an
entrancing Influence proves fatal, of course, not only for Dorian, but for the
artist Basil Hallward as well. It was a Wildean theme as prescient as it was
perslstem. in as much us In tho Hummer of 1891, his life imitatina his art,
Wildo met and fell In love with Alfred Douglas, who proceeded trlla1olllly,
Wilde wrote in De Profundls, "to entirely dominate my life" and "to stand
persistently between Art and myself" (L 425, 427).
By the time Wilde wrote Salome, hi!!personal experiences with Douglas
and others were leading him to link even more dramatically-to need psy-
Turning "The Monstrous Beastw Into a Troglc Hero
187
chologically to link more dramatically-art with sexual passion. Wilde had
proclaimed in "The Critic as Artist" that we must go to art "for everything"
because "Art docs not hurt us," and it is "through Art, and through Art only,
that we can shleld ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence" (/
174). But he came increasingly to believe that, for all its benefits, art could
Indeed hurt us. Salome, like Dorian Oray the year before, becomes Wilde's
crucible for testing the conflict he was increasingly feeling between the requirements of orderly human life and the impassioned dreams of art."
It has often been argued that Salome represents the figure of the artist.
But in Wilde's fin-de-steele allegory Salome represents less the artist than
the work of art itself. Not only does the play open with an exclamation of
Salome's beauty-"How beautiful is the Princess Salome to-night" (5
[ll)-butthe
transfixed Young Syrian captain Narraboth proceeds to describe Salome in highly metaphoric terms, as if she were not just a beautiful
girl, but a perfect and mysterious phantasm of Beauty. She is "so pale," resembling "the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver" (5 3). Wilde was
fond of saying that "it is the spectator ... that art really mirrors" (PDO xi),
and his Salome is specifically identified with the "strange" and mysterious
art-like moon, onto which all-too-human individual spectators project their
impassioned preoccupations-to the fearful Page, she is "a woman rising
from a tomb ... looking for dead things"; to Narraboth, she is "a little princess who wears a yellow vei I,and whose feet are of silver"; to Herod, she is
"a mad woman who is Meekingeverywhere for lovers" (5 [1], 28). As if to
confirm Wilde's decree that "Art never expresses anything but itself" (I
54), Salome's own description of the distant moon, her l1elf-image, is especially revealing: the moon is "11 little silver flower •.. cold and
chaste .... She has the beauty of a virgin .... She has never defiled herself.
She has never abandoned herself to men, like other goddesses" (5 II).
In the beginning of the play, right up to the moment when she first hears
the voice of Iokanaan, Salome does nothing to seduce or bewitch her admirers, except simply be; she is not portrayed as an intellect, or a wit. or a
charismatic personality, only a visually beautiful object. Significantly,
however, she is made militantly chaste and aloof, fiercely defensive of her
virginal integrity. She first appears on stage fleeing-so she "can
breathe"-from the "wild beasts" at the vulgar banquet, away from the
emotional violence of those "who are tenring each other In pieces" (S 2,
10). She stutes, "I will not stuy, I cannot stay," being "very troubled," particularly by the gaze of the lecherous Herod "with his mole' 5 eyes under his
shakinK eyelids" (S 9, 10). Nurraboth describes Salome as something otherworldly trying to escape worldly des ire: "so pule ... like a dove that has
strayed ... a narcissus trembling in the wind ... a silver flower" (S 9-10).
/88
Oscar Wilde: Th9 Man. His Writings, and His World
The word strayed [egaree in the original French version] not only suggests
the possibility of temptation, but prefigures a later, more pronounced "derangement.?" Indeed, as her own characterization of the moon indicates.
what Salome fearll Is defilement, being made to "abandon" herself to men.
Sho "cannot stay" under Herod' II intrusive gaze, In part because his dangerously "utilitarian" lust-he does not merely adore her, but wants to possess
her-s-threatens (and would eventually contaminate) her art-like self-sufficiency. In key respects Wilde's Salome owes much more to Mallarm6,
whom Wilde called the "Master" and whose extreme deification of art he
"reatly admired, than to Huysrnans." The protagonist of Mallanne's poem
"Herodiade" Is also a pale virgin-a "creature self-purified of humanity,
self-destined for artificial paradises" (Rose 174)~who shrinks from human contact, telling her nurse that even 11 kiss will kill her.
. Wilde hud repeatedly Insisted in his essays that art is by definition narcissistic, finding "her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself" (I
31), that "the highest art rejects the burden of the human spirit," developing
"purely on her own lines" (145). In this vein, the narcissistic Salome initially describes Iokanaan as if he were a work of art, paralleling In many reo
spects how she herself has been described: IIHe is like a thin ivory
statue ... an image of silver ..• chaste, as the moon is ... a shaft of silver.
His flesh must be very cold, cold as ivory" (S 19).
Far from being Des Bsseinres' s "incarnation of undying Lust." what distinguishes Wilde's Salome us a t,.agic figure Is precisely her plunging descent from art-like self-sufficiency to self-abandonment under the spell of
another. in short, u fall into uncontrollable desire. Wilde had decreed that
"the work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art" (1317); but the Salome who had praised the moon for
having "never abandoned herself to men." who at the beginning of the play
enthralls Herod, Narraboth, and others not intentionally but by the sheer
force of her art-like Beauty, becomes as the play progresses utterly obsessed and totally dominated by her desire for Iokanaan. She experiences
what Basil Hallward folt In coming face-to-face with Dorian Gray-the
dangers of a "fascination" that could "absorb my whole nature, my whole
soul, my very art Itself" (PDa 10). When Salome firllt looks Ilt Iokanaan,
she recoils [recultl In the original French version], all If awed and frightoned. Her first response to him reflects that she is about to be pulled Into.
and obliterated by. desire: "It INhis eYOHabove 1111 thnt are terrible, They ure
like black holes burned by torches in a tapestry of Tyro. They ure like tho
black caverns of Egypt In which the dragons make their lnirs. They are like
black lakes troubled by fantastic moons" (8 19). HIMbody seems to her "u
whitened sepulchre" and his hair "a knot of serpents" (822-23). Salome
. Turning "The Monstrous Beast ••Into a Tragic Hero
189
originally identifies herself with the "virginal," "undefiled" moon, but, as
Rodney Shewan notes, she never again looks at the moon once she has
looked at Iokunaan (OW 138). Almost immediately, she relinquishes her
autonomy, pleading with the prophet: "Speak again, Iokanaan, and toll mo
what I must do" (8 20). Narraboth seeks to remind Salome of her pure status-she is, after all, "a garden of myrrh •... the dove of all doves'v=but
she Ignores him, only reiterating her desire. "I will kis!! thy mouth,
Iokanaan" (S 24). Narraboth kills himself in despair, falling between
Salome and the Baptist, causing the Page to exclaim in pain and a Soldier to
alert the princess ofthe Young Syrian's death; but again Salome. ob Iivious
to them all, only repeats her mantra, "Suffer me to kiss thy mouth,
Iokanaan" (/25). The fnct that Iokanaan's repeated vitriolic rejections only
intensify and ultimately pervert Salome's passion merely reinforces the ruIncus power of his influence over her. Wilde underscores that what is happening is a catastrophic "fall": once Salome becomes unalterably obsessed
with Iokanaan, swearing repeatedly, "I will kiss thy mouth," Herod sees the
moon-which had previously been linked to Salome as "chaste"~runk·
enly reeling across the sky, the clouds "seeking to clothe her nakedness" (S
28). At the end 'of the play it is not carnal lust, but this captivation by another, Salome'S abandonment to an influence outside herself, that Wilde
references when he has her lament to Iokanaan's severed head, "I was a virgin, and thou didst take my virginity from me. Iwas chaste and thou didst
fill my veins with fire" (S 65).
...
In his treatise, A Vision, Yeuts imagines a coldly detached Salome "receiving the Prophet's head in her indifferent han~s" (273); but Wilde's
Salome is anything but "Indifferent." Indeed, her tragic mistake is that she
ceases to be indifferent to desire, nn indifference Wilde thought sacred art
must always sustain, perhaps precisely because human life never can.
Wilde had proclaimed that "as long as a thing is useful or necessary to us,
or affects us in any way. either for pain or for pleasure. or appeals strongly
to our sympathies •... It is outside the proper sphere of art" (119). As if to
underscore the lesson Wilde was learning in his own life, Salome loses
both the virtues and the protections of her art-like statua once she sub]ugatos herself to another. Moreover, once "he yields herself up to human desire and seeks to translate thnt desire into worldly action, we find thut she
becomes, like Herod. 11 manlpuluting utllltnrinn, Wilde had declared that
the art-like individuullit does not Meek to compel others (I ]27), yet hllvllli
yielded to the "strange" voice of the prophet, the previously dlsintorcated
Salome now butters with her beauty, taunting the Young Syrian ami bribing him with the promise first of "u little green flower." then of guzing and
smiling at him through her "muslin veils" (8 16). Here again, Wilde em-
Oscar Wilde: The Man. His Writings. and His World
Turning "The Monstrous BeastM Into a Tragic Hero
phasizes that the undertow of desire is deadly. As soon as Narraboth finally
relents and.orders the prophet brought forth, the Page, who loves the Syrian
captain, sees the moon become "like the hand of a dead woman who is
seeking to cover herself with 11 shroud" (S 17), an omen that foreshadows
not only Narraboth's lmminentdeath, but Salome's as well. Wilde would
look back In De Profundls to characterize himself, like his characters
Dorian Gray and Salome, as among those in whom "desire ... was a malady, or 11 madness, or both" (L 466) and who "fell" not because they were
too committed to the world of artistic beauty (still less because their imaglnatlon was somehow "decadent"), but, on the contrary, because they were
not committed enough, because they could not sustain themselves In the
world of art, free of undermining desire (L 425-29, 466-70).
In homage to the ancient Greeks he loved, Wilde made his Salome tragic
in the classical mode, a figure whose distinctive qualities are glorious when
judiciously balanced and ruinous when carried to excess. As an incarnated
Wildenn work of art, Salome is beautiful, irresistible, lltt~nding only to her
own development, and intent on revealing the 1I0ui only through the body.
But catastrophe befalls her as soon as she departs from her an-like self-sufficiency and seeks to have her soul-body's passion supersede the contingencies and consequences that govern ordin'ary human existence-to
introduce into human society an aellthetlc. purity and intensity antithetical
to prudent limits and reasoned compromise. What Wilde exposes in
Salome is that the art-like union of soul and body, spirit and flellh-far
from being a transcending force that "does not hu,rt us"--ends up collapsing any practical, real-world balance between those elements: the demands
of the spirit become the demands of the flesh, Salome discovers, 11K did
Dorian Gray, that when the projects of art are made to bend to the contingencies of life-as they inevitably must in II
world thut judges the
body by values the soul has created-life
will reimpose a separation of
body and soul and punish the one for the failings of the other,
In early 1886 Wilde wrote to a would-be young paramour that "there is
no such thing as a romantic experience," only "the desire of'romance," adding recklessly that he would gladly "sacrifice everything for a new experience" and "go to the stake for II sensation":
Some six years luter, after meeting the grand passion of his life and in a
work that may well have been his last revision of Dorian Gray, Wilde plays
out what he came to see as the inevitably tragic consequence of trying to
transport one's "dream" of "perfect" desire, that land of "strange flowers
and subtle perfumes," into life, outside the safe and sequestered borders of
art. In Salome, the play he most valued, Wilde postulates that to be willing
to "sacrifice everything" in the "desire for romance," to abandon oneself to
"be mastered" by "the mystery of moods" is not only poisonous, but suicidal in. ways that the ancient Greeks would have understood.
.
190
h"m""
Only one thing remains inflnitely t'llscinating to me, the mystery of moods. T() be
master of these moods is exquisite, to be mastered by them more exqulsltc
still.
Sometimes J think that the artistic life Is a long and lovely suicide
There is an unknown land full of strange flowers and subtle perfumes, a
land of which it is joy of nil joys 10 dream, a land where all things arc perfect and
poisonous. (I. 185)
191
NOTES
I. Wilde's close friend Adll Leverson has not been the only person to read
scif-lltutenumt. JaOlOSJoyce proclaimed It "a rev-
SCllome IIN Wilde'!! qulntcsscntiul
elution oflWilde'wl own psyche" (Joyce 205). Helen Grace Zagona said it served
fur Wilde much the same function as "H6rouiadc" served for Mullann6-a symbol
and cl·ystalli..,ationof hi!!"view ol'his own interior Uto" (48), Among more recent
L:ritics,Rodney Shewnn is only one of many who have called Salome "the most intensely sell'-cx.pressive "fWllde's plays" (OW 147),
Wilde's ()b!lCSlli~ln
with the Salome story may have dated from 1\11 early I K75,
when at a dinner homlring hill induction into the Apollo Lodge Wilde made a quip
ubout how members should imitate John the Baptist (Ellmann, OW 4(». Eveline
Nikkels telltifies Ihat Wilde "had been fascinated hy the daughter of Herodias"
over since his dllYIlut Ox.ford when Pllter "lent him a copy of Flauhert's TrtJ;S
Cmrtt'l' (l23 j). Oome~ Currlllu, uyoung Guatemalun diplomat and writer who became one of Wilde'll c(mndant!!, reports several episodes in which it WUII clear to
him thai Wilde "WIlS obsessed by the spirit (If Salome" well before the writing of
the play: "11 duy never went by when he didn't speak to me of SalamIS.SmllClillles
women [)ullllingby in the street made him dream (If the princess of Israel" (Mikhail
I: 192). Among the episodes Gomez Carrillo related wns one at the home of Jean
Lorrain, the Purisian poet. in which Wilde argued that II sculpture his host had of a
woman's decapluued heud was II representation of Salome, using us plausible
proofufhis theory 1\ story in a gospel from Nubia that had Il Hehrew princess sending her own head on a golden dish to her dl~Rnti8fiedbeloved (I: 192-95). Jean
Lorraln himself verified Gomez Carrillo's account In un article In Le Joumal and
went on to include other events Ihol proved thai Wilde seemed 10 love 8010016
more than any other creature (II February 1896; Nelson II I). Wilde WUN HO Intent
on Salome Ihal even before he H()UUhl
to have the play produced In Hnillulld. with
the tltlc role being played oy the tamous Suruh Bernhardt, he made arnlOKclJlcnla
10 have the pluy performed in PariN.Although the project ulunuucly did not como
off, /"0 Ba/(l/lle announced to Its readers on 9 Pchruary, 1892, Ihul Salom' would
he one of the plays presented d uring the next season by Paul Fort' ~ TMftlro d' Art
(Robichcz 127).
i
I,I
\I
I
I
193
Oscar Wilde: The Man. His Writings. and His World
Turning liThe Monstrous BeaW Into a Tragic Hero
Abbreviations for Wilde's works will be as follows: I •• imI!IItiOlI.I'; M:: Mi!u:eltastes: L Letters; PDa. The Picture 01 Dorian Om),: R :: Revlew.I'; S == Salome
[English version 1. Bxcept for the English version of Salome, the expanded version
of "The Portrait of'Mr, W, H.," and Limns, all cllllilonll ofWiidc's works are from
The First Collected Edltiou of the Works (JI Oscar Wilde, lS vols, London:
Methuen, 1908-22; rpr, London: DawfionM, 1969,
2. Christopher Nussaar characterlzcs thc play us "the cclcbratlon and dclflcutlon
of Salome and her terrible, sinfullUlIt" (104); IIltnllllrly, Bram Dijkstra ponrays it
as a roprosentatlon of "perniclous sexua! perversity" and "the bestial hunger of
woman" (396); and in several femlnlst constructions, It becomes in addition
Wilde'" personal fantasy of ','the triumph of sexual love over tho repressive forces·
or society" (Ouinlcr 169).
'
3. Several modern critlcll have endorsed this view, citing among other things the
speeches thut upurate "like the flrMtHtlltljmentll ef musical phras~II" (Runy 107),
"the Princess' 1\ HYlnphony of words" (Thomas 15'7), and "D repetition ot'dominant
chords. , , in u polyphonic manner" that weaves a "thread of fatality" (San Juan
117-18),
4. Some critics. most prominently Richard Ellmann. have sought to flnes~e the
problem of how the perverse Salome can he a classically tragic figure by making
Herod (or Iokanaan) the tragic protagonist (Bltmann, OW 345: "Overtures"
90-91 ); until Wilde prellumably persuaded her otherwise, even Sarah Bernhurdt
believed that Herod, not Salome, was the central figure in the play (Ross, letter to
S",urdtl,\' Rev/em', 27 May 1895), But making HerOd (much lesll the martyred
"prop" lokanaan) the "tragic hero" raises rather more problems thun solutions,
Herod ill hardly erodible UN a "noble" Ilgure: unlike Salome, who at least ls sinless
al the beginning of the play, Herod Is portrayed from the outset as inherently weak
und lustful, ulbolt ridden by guilt. Moreover, it ahm strains credulity II' maintain
that it I~ ~ef()d w~C1ls the play's tragic victlm, as opposed to those literally killed,
or that It III Herod II actions. rather than Salome' II, which arc primarily responsible
for precipitating Ihe destruction or ruin of many of the other key characters.
5. Upon seeing Aubrey Beardsley's striking drawing J'al Baise Ta Bouche
lokanaan, which depicts Salome ftslleemlngly suspended In air, Wilde sent
Benrdslcy a copy of tho French version of Saloma. Inscribed. "For Aubrey: for the
only arllst who, heHldeH myself knOWNwhnt the dance of the seven veils is. and can
~ce that invisible dunce" (I. 348 n. 3). Wilde later protested Beardsley's completed
illuatrutlons
III the EnllllHh translatlon
of Salom«, in part because he felt
Donrdalay'A renderings veered Into prurience and did not reflect the splritual dimenslon« of Wilde'" creation: "My Snlol11~IIIII mystic .. , : dear Aubrey's desl"nil
urc like the nlluahly scrlbblee II precoclous achoolboy mnkos 011 tho 11IurIJInaof hla
copybooks" (Rlckctts ~1-52). SliIlluler, in ttddroKHinythe INKueofreallsm on tho
sraae, all well as his own expressed view that puppets mlaht serve [lSbetter vehicles
than live actors, Wilde sought to separate meaning sllll farther from carnality. writ-
ingthal "the actable value of [lplay has nothing whatsoever to do with its vuluc us a
work ofnrt" (I. 310).
6, Many critics have argued that Wilde intended the dance to be-more on "inward" UCI for thIJ lmaglnatlon tlum II physiclIl display. F\1r exumple, Worth culls
"misleading" any "ldeu of the dance as totolly sensual and seductive" (66); Raby
argues thnt II dunce Ihnl WIlS"merely crotlc" would clearly be "boih Inadequate and
Inappropriate" (112); and Shewn" NtaIC1\."Wilde surely envisaged a dunce that
would have been spectacular in Its uesthetlc effect father than In the umount Ill'
flesh bared, an evocation not n striptcase" ("Sulomes" 124). See also Amy Korhz's
article "Salome: aX.lltic Womun LIIUJ ihe Transcendent Dunce."
7. That "The FI!lherman Ilnd His Sou]" wus a serious attempt tel uddress what
Wilde feared Williun unbridgeabh: polarity between life and Drt is sugyeliled by the
fact that the story wa~ the orighll\1 piece Wilde sem to J. P, Lippincott to fulfill II
commitment he made at a dinner with the publisher and Conan Doyle In Septemher 1889: when Llpplncou Wl\SnUlsulhlflcd with the story, Wilde substituted The
Pictlll'e ()lDoriall Gray (see Hilmnnn, OW 313-14).
R. Bllrnann Is only one of sllveral critics who have observed a thematic link hetween l)oriml Gra.v and Salome. the fonnulation of both works being onc in whioh
Ruskinlan tnorulity wurs with Patenen aestheticillm ("Overture" 89). Rodney
Shew an hall pushed the case even furlher, arguing tbnt thematically the main characters in St4lome restatc those in i)orit4t1 Gra,\' fuirly explicitly: "Il)kunaan duplicates Hallward's outspoken moral standpoint and the self-protectiveness ot'the
artisl and visionary. Lord Henry's worldliness, amorality. and distaste for positive
aeuon arc mlrrored in Herod. In Salome we may see Dorian's ill-fated, Paterian,
questing egotism, here stripped of its dandiacal disguise Ilnd the clliflouflllge of a
supernuturul plot" (OW 145),
9. As Helen Orace Zagona has pointed out, in making clear Salome's disgust
for her hedonistic surroundings, Wildc signals Ihat her subsequent desire for
Iokanaan cannot be "common wantonness" (125).
10. Having first met Multurmc In 1883 on his first extended visit to Parill, Wilde
sustaiued his relntlonship with him into the early nineties through occasional Iettcrs, culls at Mall Ilrml!, s TuoHduy galheringli. and exchange of pre lIenlation coplell
and other IIterllry gifts. It is probably not accidental that Wilde employs the word
recule: lrecoil], the fin;l word (lfMallam\~'s Scelle (1871). at least three times in
his litage directions (Shewan, "Salome,S" 121).
192
III
WORKS CITED
Aristotle. Poetics. Trans., lntro. Gerald P. Else. 1967; rpt, Ann Arbor. MI: U of
Michigan P. 1970,
Beerbohm, Max. Letter to Reginald Turner. 25 February 1893. In Max
Beer/mil", 's Letters to Reggie Turner. Ed. Rupert Hart-Davis. Phlladelphla
and New York: Lipplncou, 1965. 32.
Oscar Wilde: The Man. His Writings. and His World
Turning "The Monstrous 8east~' Into a Tragic Hero
Becker-Leckrone, Megan. "Salome: The Felishi:lolion of a Tcx.luill Corpus." New
Literary HI.~to,.y26.2 (Spring 1995): 239-60.
Dijkstra, Bram, Idols of Perversity: Fantaste« of' Feminine Evil in Fill-de'~'je"'e
CU/II/re. New York and Oxford, UK: Ox.ford UP, 1989.
Donohue, Joseph. "Salom« and the Wildenn Art of Symbolist Theatre." Made",
Drama 37~1 (Spring 1994): 144-,103.
Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. New York: Knopf', 1988.
-. "Overtures to Salome." Oscar Wilde: A Collectioll <if Critical E.~,fays.
Ed. Richard Ellmann. Bnglcwood Clift's, NJ: Prenuec-Hall, 1969.73-91.
Originally appeared in The YeClrhook of Compclrttli\·«, and Genera! Literature 17 (1968): 17-28.
Gagnier, Regenia . .IcI."/l,yof the MtlrkfJlpl(ICf.· OUar Wiltle (md the Viewiall Puhllc, Stanford, CA: Slanford UP, 1986.
Gomez Carrillo, Enrique. "How Oscar Wilde Dreamed of Sl\lom~." OS('tll' Wiltle.·
Interviews and Recollectltllls. Ed. E. H. Mikhail, 2 Vois. New York: Barnes
& Noble, 1979. I: 192-95. Originally appeared as "Comment Oscar Wilde
raVl\ Salome," in LA Plume (Paris) 323 (I October 1902): 1147-52.
Huysman«, JoriN-Kar\. AgQ,·m·t Nature. Trans, Robert Baldlck. Harmondsworth,
UK: Penguin, 1959.
Joyce, James. "Oscar Wilde: The Poet of 'Salom6' "( 1909), The Critical Writi"8.~
of Jame« Josoe. Eds. Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellmann. New York:
Viking, 1959; rpt, Ithaca. NY: Cornell UP, 1989.201-05.
Korhz, Amy. "SIl\()me: Exotic Woman and the Tranllcendent Dance." Gellder and
Discourse I'll Victol'lalP Literature alld Art. Eds. Anthony H. Harrison and
Beverly Taylor. Dekalh, IL: Northern t\1in()ill P, 1992.251-73.
Lawler, Donald L. nnd Charles E. Knott. "Tho Contex.t of Invontion: Suggested
Origins of Dm'iall Gr(I),.·' M()(JlJrtI Philol(}g.y 7:\ (May 1976): 389-98.
Leverson, Ada. "The Last First Night." The New Criterio,. (London) 4 (Jan. 1926):
148-53.
•
Lorrain, Jean. "Salome et ses poetes." Le Journal (Paris), 11 Feb. 1896.
Mikhail, E. H .• cd, Oscar WI/de: Interview» and Re,'o/lectl'm/s. 2 vola, New York:
Barnell & Noble, 1979.
Nassaar, Christopher S. lnto the Deli/Oil Uti/verse.' A Litel'tlr,l' Explaratioll olOs·
car Wilde. New Haven: Yale UP, 1974.
Nelson. Walter W. Oscar Wilde.' From Ravenna tel Salome. Dublin: n.p .• 1987,
Nikkel«, Bveline, "Entertaining the Tetrarch." English National Opera Program
for Salome, by Richard SlraUY8 and translated by Hedwig Lachmann,
Spring-Summer 1996 (25 May-3 July): [23-28J.
Powell, Kerry. Oscar Wilde and the Theatre of th« 1890~.. Cambridge, UK, New
York, and Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 1990.
Praz, Mario. The ROIIIQlltk Agon),. Trans. Angus Davidson, 1933; rpt, Cleveland
.and New York: World, 1956.
Raby, Peter. Oscar Wi/de. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988.
Ricketts, Charles and Jean Paul Raymond (Charles Ricketts]. Oscar Wilde: Recolle,'t;()//.I·. London: Nonesuch, 1932.
Riquelmc, "J. P. "Shalom/Solomon/Salome:
Modernism and Wilde's Aesthetic
Politic!!." Ct.'tltennial Review 39.3 (Pilil 1995): 575-610.
Robichez, Jacques, Le S.Wllhollsme au Thedtre. Paris, 1957.
Rose, Marilyn Gaddis. "The Daughters of Herodlas In Hemdiade, Salome, and A
"'1111 Moon ill March." Comparallve Drama 1.3 (Pall 1967): 172-81.
RUSIl, Robert, Leiter to Salltrdu}' Review, 27 May IR95.
Snn Juan, Jr., Epit'anlo. The Art of Oscar Wilde. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP,
1967.
Shownn, Rodnoy. "Tho Artist and the Dancer in Three Symbolist Salomis." Per.~per.ti\'f.V.·AI'l, Litermure, Pal'tldpatit>ll, Eds. Mark Neuman and Michael
Payne. London and Toronto: Associated UP, 1986. 102-30.
-.---..:.
osoar Wilde: Art "lid E8tltism. Now York: Barnes & Noble, 1977.
Thomas, Martine. "Oscar Wilde's Salonie: A Few 'Pin de Sieele' Aspects." Calliel's Victorjell,v tit Edouurdie"s 36 (1992): 153-69.
.
Tydeman, Willinm and Sleven Price, Wilde: Salome. Cambridge. UK, New York,
and Mulbournc: Cambrldgu UP, 1996.
Walker. Barbara O. "Salome." The Womall 's EII('y('/()peci;" (If Mytlrs mrci Secrets,
San Francillco: Harper and Row, 1983,885-86.
Wilde, Oscar. tnunttons alld Tire StllIl (lIMe",. V()1. 8 in The First Collected Edi·
tiOII o/tlle Works oj'Oscar Wilde. IS vols, London: Methuen, 1908-22: rpt.
London: Dawsons, 1969.
--.
Tire letter» of Oscar Wilde. Ed. Rupert Hurt-Davis. New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1962.
....:..- . Miscellcmies. Vol, I in The First Coller/ed Edition of the Work.v olO.vear
Wilde. IS vol!!. London: Methuen, 1908-22: rpl. London: Dawsons, 1969.
-. The Picture of Dorian Ora)', V(l\. 4 in The "'im Collecteci Eelililm <if the
Work.I't>!Oscar Wilde. IS vols, London: Methuen, 1908-22; rpt, London:
Dawsons, 1969.
--.
"The Portrait of Mr. W. H." Tile Complete Worb of Ostar Wilde. Ed. J.
B. Foreman. Intra. Vyvyan Holland. London. 1966.
. Review~·. Vol. 3 in Tile Ftrst Collected Editioll of the Works of Oscar
Wiltlt. 15 vols, London: Methuen, 1908-22; rpt, London: Dawsons, 1969.
-. Salome, A Florentine Tragedy, and Vera. Vol. 14 in The First Colltcted
Ecliti(m of the Work.\' olOs(.'ar Wi/de. IS vols, London; Methuen. 1908-22;
rpt. London: Dawsons, 1969.
~. S(Jitllllt!,' A Tragedy ill One Act.' Translated from the French of Oscar
Wilde.' Pictured by Aubrey Beardsley. London: Mathews and Lane; Boston:
Copeland and Day, 1894.
Worth. Katherine. Oscar Wilde. London: Macmillan. 1983.
Wyndham, Violet. Tile Sphillx and Her Circle,' A Memo/r of Ada Leverson by her
/JQlIRllter. New York: Vanguard, 19S3.
194
'96
196
Oscar Wilde: TheMan, HisWritings,and HisWorld
Yeats, W. B. A VioS·;OI1. London: Macmillan, 1937: rpt, New York: Collier, 1969.
Zagona, Helen Grace. The Lege"d of Sa/ollie and the Pri"dple of Art jt>r Art's
S(lke. Geneva: Droz, and Paris: Minard, )960.