Task 7, pg 29: Symbolism and theatre: Oscar Wilde’s Salome

Salome: A Wildean Symbolist Drama

Attempting to categorize, analyze, or even describe Oscar Wilde's lyrical drama Salome
is a problematic issue and a source of contention amongst critics. To many, Wilde's
willingness to appropriate themes and treatments of the Salome legend from other authors
of the period is a shortcoming; Wilde's play is labeled as "derivative" or a mere imitation.
For others, it is precisely this fusion of different sources which gives strength to the
drama, and Wilde is hailed as creative, innovative, and modern. The fact is that the
Salome legend was a logical choice for Wilde: one writer acknowledges that "the
Salome/Herodias figure was almost as popular among nineteenth-century artists as the
Virgin Mary was among medieval artists." But seeking justification for Wilde's
'originality' in his creative use of sources is, I believe, misguided. Certainly Wilde
adapted his material, and drew on many different settings of the legend -- most of them,
however, stemmed from the school of Symbolism, with whose poetic tenets Wilde felt a
strong affinity. It is, then, vitally important to regard the Symbolist and Decadent aspects
of Salome as well as the drama's literary-historical background, since it is in the
subversive treatment of symbolic representation that Wilde's drama reveals itself to be
unique.

The Legend of Salome: Various Treatments in the 19th Century

An astounding number of settings of the Salome legend were produced in the nineteenth
century, both in literature as well as in painting. Wilde's literary background ensures that
he was aware of, if not intimately acquainted with the large majority of Salome
treatments, and he made obvious reference to some of them in his 1892 drama. He was
certainly familiar with the novels of Gustave Flaubert, and most particularly with the
short story "Hérodias," which had appeared in Trois Contes in 1877. Flaubert's setting of
the Salome legend, however, bears only a superficial resemblance to Wilde's own:
Schweik notes that the earlier tale is "devoid of such perverse irrationality" but depends
instead "upon the carefully researched and minutely realistic social detail that is one of
Flaubert's characteristic achievements in fiction." Nonetheless, Wilde admired Flaubert's
works and his treatment of the ancient legend with its erotic, even scandalous depictions.

Far more influential for the genesis of Wilde's Salome, though, were the paintings of
Gustave Moreau, whose strange and mystical themes laid the groundwork for later
expressionist art, as well as for the poetry and art of the Decadents. In particular,
Moreau's Salome Dancing Before Herod, from 1876, played a vital role for the
conception of the legend, for Wilde as well as for other writers of the period. Moreau's
setting of Salome's dance is not, by any means, a mere recreation of the Biblical legend:
fantastic and subversive, she cannot be confined to one medium, one time, one place, as
Conrad describes:

In space, Moreau abstracts her ... from Biblical tradition and removes her to the
theogonies of the Far East, placing in her hand a lotus blossom, the scepter of Isis
and the sacred flower of Egypt and India, a phallic emblem or the token of a sacrifice
of virginity. He removes her from time in declining to give precise indication of race,
country, or epoch ... making her inhabit indeed a museum ... comprising the art of all
times and places.
The resemblance to Wilde's own poetic drama is clear: not only does the depiction mix
legend with history, the temporal with the eternal, but it blends form and medium as well,
creating a complex rendition of sensual repulsion. Indeed, this paradoxical mixing of
emotions, so key to Wilde's own play, may have its source in the art of Moreau: another
critic finds that the entire composition of Moreau's Salome is infused with a "conflicting
symbolism", a "beauty of inertia" and a "necessary richness" which emphasizes the
"wholly arbitrary and irrational character" of Salome herself.

Wilde may have been directly familiar with Moreau's paintings, or he may have known of
them simply through the writings and descriptions of others. There is no question,
however, of his exposure to one of the most significant novels of the day, a tale in which
these paintings play an important role. Joris Karl Huysmans, a Dutchman writing in
French, gives a prominent description of the Salome painting, as well as its effect on the
viewer, in his decadent and influential novel A Rebours (1884). The novel's protagonist,
des Esseintes, has acquired Moreau's painting, considering it to incarnate the very spirit
of decadence; it is one of the few works of art which send him into raptures of delight.
Huysmans' lengthy description of the painting is notorious for its detail and sensuality:
his description of Salome's dance, for instance, reads in part:

With a withdrawn, solemn, almost august expression on her face, she begins the
lascivious dance which is to rouse the aged Herod's dormant senses; her breasts rise
and fall, the nipples hardening at the touch of her whirling necklaces; the strings of
diamonds glitter against her moist flesh; her bracelets, her belts, her rings all spit out
fiery sparks; and across her triumphal robe ... the jewelled cuirass, of which every
chain is a precious stone, seems to be ablaze with little snakes of fire, swarming over
the mat flesh, over the tea-rose skin, like gorgeous insects with dazzling shards ...

Huysmans does not confine himself to a simple reproduction of the painting's content;
indeed, his analysis of Moreau's work reads like that of an art history textbook. He notes
that the painting combines many different, even conflicting, spiritual and religious
elements, and believes that this makes Salome herself "one of the undying gods of nature
ritual," a creation that can be shared by all cults and beliefs. Huysmans' anthropological
musings were well-known to Wilde, although, as Conrad notes, they are relegated to near
insignificance in his play and in Strauss' opera:

The study of comparative religion in which Huysmans sees the origins of Salome is
incidental comedy in Wilde's play and Strauss' setting, with the polyphonic
squabbling of the Jews ... opposed to the grave certainty of the Nazarenes, and
Jokanaan's cryptically fanatical utterances from under the floor punctuating Herod's
nervous efforts to placate those of all persuasions above ground.

Wilde's love of Huysmans' novel was surpassed perhaps only by his admiration for the
reigning French Symbolist poet, Stephane Mallarmé. Although his writings are few in
number, Mallarmé was a driving force for the Symbolist movement throughout the
1890's, providing both a model for other poets and a springboard for new ideas, many of
them formulated at one of the salons or café meetings which he organized in Paris.
Mallarmé's theories of poetics and literature were to shape Wilde's outlook, as well, and it
is thus no surprise to find that his Hérodiade (1869), a lyrical drama telling the tale of
Herodias' marriage to Herod, bears certain similarities to Wilde's drama. Schweik notes,
in terms that could just as easily apply to Wilde, how Mallarmé's work exhibits a "poetic
style characterized by a remarkable discontinuousness, so that individual words and
images resonate against others in ways that leave the reader confronted with abrupt and
confusing shifts of sense." True to his own theoretical statements, Mallarmé's poetry is
suggestive, elliptical, often obscure; his words act as instruments within a symphony, and
his poems resemble music both in form and expression. Arthur Symons, a contemporary
literary critic, remarks:

Carry the theories of Mallarmé to a practical conclusion, multiply his powers in a

direct ratio, and you have Wagner ... it was "the work" that he dreamed of, the new
art, more than a new religion, whose precise form in the world he was never quite
able to settle.

Mallarmé may never have resolved or realized his ideals, but they provided impetus to
the next generation of poets who gathered to meet with him in Paris. A logical extension
to his ideas came in the writings of Maurice Maeterlinck, one of the first Symbolists to
produce and theorize drama as well as poetry. Maeterlinck's dramas, known more for
their style than their plots, emphasized a universal "mystery" and a sense of impending
doom, as well as an awareness of the transitory nature of reality and existence. As
Symons describes it, Maeterlinck's plays take on an almost existentialist quality:

His theatre of artificial beings, who are at once more ghostly and more mechanical
than the living actors whom we are accustomed to see, in so curious a parody of life,
moving with a certain freedom of action across the stage, may be taken as a itself a
symbol of the aspects under which what we fantastically term "real life" presents
itself to the mystic.

In accordance with this deliberate mysticism, Maeterlinck shaped the language of his
plays into an art form of its own. His characters speak with the mechanical precision of
marionettes: childish, simplistic, even absurd and reductionist, their utterings make
linguistic sense but are often lacking ties to any familiar concept of reality. Maeterlinck's
use of language, it can be seen, has much in common with Wilde's own: Praz claims that
"the childish prattle employed by the characters in his Salome ... reduces the voluptuous
Orient of Flaubert's Tentation to the level of a nursery tale," a statement which, although
polemical, is not far from the truth.

Two other sources for Wilde's treatment of the Salome legend deserve to be mentioned.
Heinrich Heine, in his 1843 epic Atta Troll, invents a fantastic setting of the story: during
the vision of a witches' wild chase, the narrator describes how Herodias, laughing madly
with desire, kisses the head of John. She had loved him, Heine continues, and had
demanded his head in the heat of passion -- for, he asks, "why would a woman want the
head of any man she did not love?" This setting incorporates elements of the Biblical
legend, but is one of the first to attribute John's decapitation to a sexual desire on the part
of the woman. Surely, this was an important forerunner of Wilde; nonetheless, as
Ellmann points out, Wilde's Salome is not merely a retelling of Heine's tale, since the
German version makes the shocking kiss into the punishment of Herodias after, not
before, her death. Importantly, too, Heine's ever-present irony is nowhere to be found in
Wilde: Heine's "tone of caricature is quite unlike that of perverted horror which Wilde
evokes."

Perhaps the most direct and at the same time least famous setting of the Salome legend
comes from an American author, a contemporary of Wilde named J.C. Heywood. A
young Harvard graduate, his dramatic poem Salome was published in Massachusetts in
1862, and reprinted in London throughout the 1880's. Wilde reviewed the piece in 1888,
and seems to have drawn on it for some inspiration: Heywood's setting is full of erotic
nuances, and has a climactic scene of Herodias kissing John's head following his
execution. Nonetheless, as Ellmann stresses, Heywood's setting of the legend pales in
comparison to Wilde: "to read Heywood ... is to come to a greater admiration for Wilde's
ingenuity."

Indeed, Wilde's creativity is striking. Not only has he, as many critics have pointed out,
drawn on various legends and histories to expand the setting of his drama, but the
characters themselves take on a lively, even larger-than-life quality. Alan Bird claims:
"The fact is that Wilde actually created the characters of his play, rolling several
historical Herods into one and using the biblical narrative as the slenderest of bases for
his plot." It is important here to note that the figures of Salome and Herodias are, in
Wilde's setting, very distinct; in many legends, by contrast, there was confusion as to the
role of each woman. In most cases, Salome had played a rather minor part: usually shown
as a young girl, subservient to the wishes of her mother, she became a pawn in the
machinations between Herodias and Herod. In Wilde, on the other hand, Salome is
extremely self-aware and far more powerful, in the end, than her mother. So too has
Herodias, long the heroine of legend -- witness the titles of nearly all the previous literary
treatments -- both gained and lost in Wilde's play. She has lost her erotic attachment to
John, but gained in jealousy, anger, and stolid practicality: she is the antithesis of
symbolic mysticism, placed in direct opposition to Herod and Salome, who both
recognize and draw power from metaphorical representation.

The character of Salome is rightly chosen as the centerpiece of the drama: it is around her
that the action revolves, from her that the conflicts stems, and with her that the climax is
reached. But Salome is far more than a mere character in this play: she has become, for
Wilde as for Moreau and Huysmans, an incarnation of seductive purity and power. She,
like Moreau's painting, blurs the line between creation and creator, between form and
content, between image and word. She exists in legend far beyond the confines of drama
or poetry, and in art beyond the borders of the stage. Her ability to create, in words, a
painting of Jokanaan's body is but one example of the power of her speech and of her
being:

Painter and dancer, Salome herself approaches seduction pictorially. In her three
imploring addresses to Jochanaan, she turns his body into a series of landscapes ...
Having created these pictures, Salome at once asserts her aesthetic prerogative and
destroys them.

In these scenes, as well as throughout the opening lines of the play, the power of contrast
is invoked. Wilde's language, however childish and simplistic, is full of images and
metaphors of opposition, attempts to negate and to recreate, to prohibit and to encourage.
The quiet, dream-like statements of Narraboth, countered by the urgency of the Page's
replies, are contrasted with the loud and rough jokes from the soldiers, just as Salome's
high-pitched, passionate entreaties to Jokanaan meet with his solemn and deep rebukes.
The entirety of sounds, of language as well as intonations, calls to mind a musical
performance, even without the aid of Strauss' operatic setting. In fact, many critics find
the most striking feature of Wilde's play to be its musicality. Lord Alfred Douglas wrote,
shortly after reading the play:

One thing strikes one very forcibly in the treatment, the musical form of it. Again
and again it seems to one that in reading one is listening; listening, not to the author,
not to the direct unfolding of a plot, but to the tones of different instruments,
suggesting, suggesting always indirectly, till one feels that by shutting one's eyes one
can best catch the suggestion.

In blending the categories as she does, suffusing painting with the power of words, and
words, in turn, with the power of music, Salome becomes a transcendental figure, exactly
as the Symbolist agenda would have her. Conrad sees her as having been "released into
music, for the primary universal language whose existence Levi-Strauss postulates ... is
music, the international idiom." In addition, Salome becomes a figure free from
traditional constraints, able to convey the 'universal mystery' and establish a basic link
between all forms of expression.

Salome: The Renunciation of Language

And it is eroticism which Salome embodies so totally, and yet so ambiguously. On the
one hand, Wilde saw the figure of Salome as the epitome of sensuality; he is reported to
have asked a friend for advice: "Don't you think she would be better naked? Yes, totally
naked, but draped with heavy and ringing necklaces made of jewels of every colour,
warm with the fervour of her amber flesh ... Her lust must needs be infinite, and her
perversity without limits." On the other hand, however, she should be guided by "divine
inspiration," and be as chaste as a flower: in Wilde's conception of the dance, Salome
"undulates like a lily. There is nothing sensual in her beauty."
Above all, Salome is art. Born as she was out of a mixture of painting and literature, she
incarnates the essence of art, and proves this on several occasions in the drama. When she
dances and removes the seven veils, she is left not naked, but bejewelled, her body
turning into a living work of art. Herod's gaze is that of the spectator, the audience for
whom she then dances and performs. Her ambiguity, her placement between eroticism
and chastity, is that of the artwork itself: lifeless, yet infused with an artificial sensuality.
She is, as we have seen, an artist as well: she creates and destroys, but is in the end
herself a creation who meets with destruction.

Wilde's creation of Salome is, too, a work of art, but the question of his originality
remains. In nearly every critical assessment, an effort is made to come to terms with the
seemingly "derivative" quality of Wilde's play. Drawing on as many different sources and
mixing as many different styles and themes as he does, Wilde can surely avoid charges of
imitation -- but the line between originality and creative fusion of sources is quite
unclear. Ellmann, one of the drama's most vehement defenders, claims that Wilde is
"anticipatory rather than derivative," and finds his use of simple language to be a
precursor of later models, such as the absurd theater. Donahue sees Wilde's true creativity
in his "efforts to mix the styles and subjects of other writers," an endeavor which "takes
typically circuitous and recondite paths." There is something unsatisfying, though, in
claiming 'originality through creative imitation,' and Praz dutifully notes that, "as
generally happens with specious second-hand works, it was precisely Wilde's Salome
which became popular." Instead of seeking a defense of Wilde's originality in the external
events of his drama, then, I would like to suggest that it is the cautious modification of
Symbolist ideals -- Wilde's affirmation and at the same time questioning of his own
poetical mission -- which makes his Salome so unique.

Wilde and the Symbolist Movement in Literature

By 1892, when Salome was published in France and England, the tenets of the Symbolist
movement had been outlined by several different theorists, among them Mallarmé and
Maeterlinck. The unifying thread behind their agenda was a belief in the importance of
poetry: they held that literature should concern itself with creating links, through
symbolic language, to the ideals of a different, often transcendental reality. This stands in
marked contrast to the Naturalist school, against whose reality-based simplicity of
language the Symbolists were revolting; it is also quite different from the traditional
poetic realism of the nineteenth century, whose superficiality and tranquility the
Symbolists abhorred.

Arthur Symons, in his classic contemporary analysis The Symbolist Movement in

Literature, correctly stresses the Symbolists' view of language. Words, they recognized,
are quite simply symbols, and can be used to mirror, distort, or otherwise represent
whatever reality the poet chooses. Although words have no inherent superiority, they are
the only vehicle the poet has for the expression of his truth; thus language -- each
individual word itself -- is of primary importance to the Symbolist author.
Poetry must only suggest, never describe or explain. By doing so, it can hope to establish,
even to make the reader recognize those links which hold the world together: the
transcendental reality. Symons explains that this reality is "the affirmation of an eternal,
minute, intricate, almost invisible life" which is common to, and yet distinct from, all
creations; it is the task of the poet, then, for each individual moment of that
transcendence, to "find the symbol which is its most adequate expression."

Symbolist poetry, although dependent upon language, aimed to approach the abstraction
of music. Symbolists poets like Mallarmé were known for their 'orchestration,' and
interpretations of their poems often consider the different 'instruments,' 'melodies,' and
'harmonies' present in the composition. Wilde's Salome, as has been noted, also has a
musicality of form: as Quigley explains, not only is the language of the play full of tonal
opposition, but the dramatic structure depends "as much upon the development of certain
rhythmic contrasts and relationships as upon its linear narrative movement from love to
death." Although Wilde's is not a Gesamtkunstwerk in the Wagnerian sense, it does
combine varied elements into a visual, verbal, and musical whole -- the difference being,
perhaps, that Wilde was not trying to evoke totality for its own sake, but was guided a
more symbolic vision. "The tradition of total theatre is invoked not to create the
possibility for comprehensive statement but to provide access to new forms of partial
awareness," an indication, perhaps, of that transcendent reality which the poet attempts to
proclaim.

Wilde's affiliation with the Symbolist movement is clear; it should be noted, though, that
he had equally strong ties to another movement, itself closely allied with Symbolism: the
Decadent poets of the 1890's. Never an exclusive or well-defined school, the Decadents
drew their inspiration from many of the same sources as the Symbolists, such as the
poems of Baudelaire and the dramas of Maeterlinck. Their emphasis, though, was on the
importance of art for its own sake. Art must be independent of moral and social concerns,
they believed, and must concentrate on style above all else. "Style in decadent art
asphyxiates its subject," Conrad claims, and indeed, most of Wilde's other works, and
most certainly his lifestyle and biography, attest to his agreement. The inspiration for
Decadent art was to be found in aestheticism, the cultivation of an ideal art, a new form
of beauty -- leading to the extreme pole of Dandyism. Decadent poets, then, did not shy
away from shocking or scandalous themes: they took interest in all expressions of human
emotion, both the traditionally acceptable as well as the perverse and immoral. Clearly,
Salome continues Wilde's tradition of Decadent art; at the same time, though, it calls
certain aspects of Symbolism into being, leading to an interesting mixture of styles.

Symbolist and Decadent Moments in Salome

The Symbolist nature of Salome is an issue that sharply divides literary critics, leading to
some rather polemical debates. A number of writers claim that Wilde was genuinely
convinced of these poetic ideals, and that Salome is therefore a faithful "symbolist
drama" -- Quigley remarks, for example, on how Wilde seems interested "in exploring
the outer margins of human experience, the margins at which the continuum of human
experience makes contact at one end with religious transcendence and at the other with
raw animality." Other critics find that the tone and plot of the play undercut the
symbolism, leading to the conclusion that Salome is "a brilliant pastiche of turn-of-the-
century Decadent art," or that, in another analysis, the drama displays a "humour which
one can with difficulty believe to be unintentional, so much does Wilde's play resemble a
parody of the whole of the material used by the Decadents and of the stammering
mannerism of Maeterlinck's dramas." I cannot agree with either end of this spectrum:
after reading Salome, one is certainly left with strong doubts as to the "truth" of symbolist
ideals, but to call the entire play a parody or pastiche is certainly an exaggeration -- the
very nature of the conflict, the exquisite treatment of Salome herself, and the final events
of the drama prohibit such a conclusion. An analysis of certain symbolic moments in the
play should help to clarify Wilde's intention in this respect.

The moon, a recurring leitmotif in the drama, is one of the most important symbolical
referents for Wilde, and for the characters themselves. In the opening scene, the Page of
Herodias and the Young Syrian discuss its appearance in metaphorical, symbolic
language: the Page, in an ominous anticipation of events to come, fears that the moon
seems "like a woman rising from a tomb," "like a dead woman ... looking for dead
things," while the Young Syrian, ever captivated by Salome, sees the moon instead as "a
little princess who wears a yellow veil, and whose feet are of silver." Upon her entrance,
Salome is relieved to see the serene night and the moon, which she describes as "cold and
chaste," since "she has never defiled herself ... never abandoned herself to men." Then
Herod, in yet another premonition of disaster, is distressed by the moon's appearance and
claims that "she is like a mad woman .. seeking everywhere for lovers ... she reels
through the clouds like a drunken woman." All of these metaphorical descriptions -- the
legacy of Symbolist language -- serve to suggest, in images as well as words, the
emotional state of each character, but they also reinforce the power of symbolism, its
ability to connect and link the varied elements of the drama.

We have already examined the role of Salome as art incarnate, and in fact she is the very
symbol of art in the drama: her dance, too, becomes a symbolic representation of her
power to seduce, a fascinating blend of chastity and erotic manipulation. But the outcome
of the drama leaves the reader in a state of confusion: if Salome, the embodiment of
symbolism, has succumbed to perversion and met with destruction, and if Herod, also a
strong proponent of metaphorical imagery, has been the agent of this destruction, we are
left with only Herodias, the down-to-earth realist. Yet her portrayal, throughout the
drama, is far from positive, and even her practicality is condemned by the sarcastic tone
of her pronouncements.
So too does the outcome of the drama exclude the possibility of a comic interpretation:
Salome ends in tragedy, a horrific image so scandalous as to prompt outrage among
French audiences -- and to have it banned from public performance in Britain. Indeed, the
underlying theme of the drama is at once a most weighty and yet intangible question of
human existence: the nature of aestheticism.

Certainly, though, there is an implied criticism of nearly every mode of thinking in

Wilde's portrayal. Herodias, the unsympathetic and harping wife, is as questionable as
Herod and Salome, who rely excessively on their belief in their own powers of
transcendence.

Above all, Wilde's drama is personal. He himself stressed the importance of this fact, and
saw it as his crowning achievement. In a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, he wrote: "I took
the drama, the most objective form known to art, and made it as personal a mode of
expression as the lyric or the sonnet, at the same time that I widened its range and
enriched its characterisation." Wilde's symbolism, like that of the French poets, relies on
indirect suggestion and evocation, but his dramatic technique, his ability to create stage
presence out of mere suggestion, mixes, in the figures of Salome and Jochanaan, the
"rawly physical with the richly visionary," empowering the audience and providing them
with "two different kinds of access" to that mystical truth behind the symbols.

Added to the personal nature of Salome is the typical Wildean wit and humor. In many
cases, as we have seen, this humor functions to question the power of symbolic
representation, but on the whole Wilde's wit is much farther-reaching: it calls any
authority into question, it negates the very truth of the drama itself. It is a humor based on
contrast, just as the structure of the play relies on opposition, and this constant
juxtaposition of conflicting practices seems to be a defining characteristic of the play.
Donahue, focusing on the elements of Wilde's Dandyism that appear in the play, comes
to the conclusion that, for Wilde, "the art of symbolist theatre is simultaneously symbolist
and dandiacal ... For the symbolist it is the truth that counts; for the dandy, the
appearance." Wilde's play moves, then, beyond traditional Symbolism, becoming almost
"metasymbolist" in its ability to offer access not only to a transcendent reality, but to the
reality of other art forms and other authors; this access arises, at least in part, from the
combination of the ancient Salome legend with a modern wit and a prophetic vision.

The unique achievement of Wilde's drama lies, then, I believe, in his weaving together an
implicit critique of Symbolism while at the same time using his drama to expose the vital
strengths and necessity of many Symbolist ideals. He appropriates the metaphorical
language, the reliance on symbols in order to suggest a higher reality and to create ties
between it and the events on stage, and the aesthetic beauty of Symbolist drama, but
subjects all of it to strict examination. "Symbolism in the play is not so much illustrated
as interrogated," Quigley claims, but I would go even farther, and say that Symbolism is
both illustrated, interrogated, and affirmed in the course of the drama. It is a unique,
Wildean Symbolism, one that combines elements of humor and solemnity, creation and
negation, the real and the symbolic -- mixing ordinary human experience with the voice
of prophetic transcendence, in order to expose, even create, the "links" proclaimed by
Mallarmé and his followers.
Bibliography:

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C. George Sandulescu. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe Ltd., 1994.
Conrad, Peter. Romantic Opera and Literary Form. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1977.
 Donahue, Joseph. "Salome and the Wildean Art of Symbolist Theatre," in: Modern
Drama 37, Spring 1994, pp. 104-119.
Ellmann, Richard. "Overtures to Wilde's Salome," in: Richard Strauss: Salome, ed.
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Puffett, Derrick, ed. Richard Strauss: Salome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
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