Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Stuttgart: Reclam, 1990.
Description
Drama. Fiction. HTML: Salome is a tragic play written by Oscar Wilde, which tells the biblical story of Salome. Salome dances the Dance of the Seven Veils so well that she receives a boon from her stepfather Herod Antipas. Much to his dismay and her mother's delight she requests the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter. Though John is a favorite of Herod and under his protection, Herod cannot rescind his boon. Wilde originally wrote the play in French, and it was translated three years later into English..
User reviews
LibraryThing member Stevil2001
Salome is my second-favorite play by Oscar Wilde, and it's a world apart from his other dramas. Recreating the death of John the Baptist, it's moody and fantastical, a far cry from the whimsy of The Importance of Being Earnest or even the melodrama of A Woman of No Importance. But it's easy to get
The real star of my edition, though, is Aubrey Beardsley's lavish illustrations. I had read Wilde's Salome before, but I had never seen it paired with the illustrations. Beardsley's illustrations are strikingly grotesque, especially his female figures-- though his male ones do not fair much better. The women's faces are harsh and unfriendly. The men's genitalia are small and shriveled yet projecting. Why, in the illustrations for a play about the seductive power of an intensely attractive woman, is Salome herself depicted so revoltingly? This is the question that the illustrations provoked in me this time around.
One of my favorite moments in John Berger's Ways of Seeing where he is discussing the depiction of female nudity in art. In commenting on the painting Vanity by Hans Memling in the 15th century, he says, "You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure." A strategy often used in art (in its most general sense) is to depict something ostensibly improper-- female nudity in this case-- and condemn the source of it even though the viewer is intended to take pleasure in it. I think you see this in movies a lot: many of the female characters in Mean Girls are depicted as shallow and obsessed with their appearances and condemned for this, yet the viewer still gets to watch them in short skirts and tight shirts. (Or you see it in comic books. When Supergirl is brainwashed by Darkseid in Jeph Loeb's excruciating Superman Batman: Supergirl, she dons this dominatrix-type outfit that really shows off her butt in tight leather pants. At the same time the viewer is repulsed by Darkseid's evil, he (obviously the viewer is a he) also gets to ogle Supergirl. Princess Leia's metal bikini might be a more mainstream example.)
But in Salome-- a story that definitely villainizes the title character for using her sexuality to get what she wants-- there is nothing like this. Her breasts bulge through her outfit in many of the pictures, but they are not alluring. At what should be her most attractive moment, the Dance of the Seven Veils, her face scowls and her body contorts unnaturally as a disgusting imp-figure plays fiercely in the corner. Her breasts once again protrude. Also grotesque are all the pictures where Salome interacts with the decapitated head of Iokanaan. The rest of Herod's court fares even worse.
This visual depiction, however, is consistent with the text, which displays the court of Herod as a place of sexual and moral grotesqueness. Herod breaks his solemn word for the sake of a dance, inviting condemnation from Iokanaan, who is decapitated for his pleasure. For the people here to be attractive-- and especially for the Dance of the Seven Veils to be genuinely seductive to the reader-- would have been morally hypocritical, as Berger identifies. How can we condemn Salome for her dance if we take pleasure in it?
What's really interesting, though, is that it's unlikely the dance would have been depicted this way in any other medium. The introduction to my edition says that Sarah Bernhardt would have played Salome; I doubt that this famous beauty would have been rendered unattractive, and I especially doubt that the Dance of the Seven Veils would have been anything other than captivating. In some ways, this renders Beardsley's illustrations for Salome more faithful to the meaning of Wilde's text than any performance could have been, even if it could never actually appear on stage this way.
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swept up in this strange other world, full of people talking about the beauty of the moon and prophets declaring doom and young women who captivate everyone who sees them. Like so many dramas, I want to see it performed: done right, it would be utterly captivating.The real star of my edition, though, is Aubrey Beardsley's lavish illustrations. I had read Wilde's Salome before, but I had never seen it paired with the illustrations. Beardsley's illustrations are strikingly grotesque, especially his female figures-- though his male ones do not fair much better. The women's faces are harsh and unfriendly. The men's genitalia are small and shriveled yet projecting. Why, in the illustrations for a play about the seductive power of an intensely attractive woman, is Salome herself depicted so revoltingly? This is the question that the illustrations provoked in me this time around.
One of my favorite moments in John Berger's Ways of Seeing where he is discussing the depiction of female nudity in art. In commenting on the painting Vanity by Hans Memling in the 15th century, he says, "You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure." A strategy often used in art (in its most general sense) is to depict something ostensibly improper-- female nudity in this case-- and condemn the source of it even though the viewer is intended to take pleasure in it. I think you see this in movies a lot: many of the female characters in Mean Girls are depicted as shallow and obsessed with their appearances and condemned for this, yet the viewer still gets to watch them in short skirts and tight shirts. (Or you see it in comic books. When Supergirl is brainwashed by Darkseid in Jeph Loeb's excruciating Superman Batman: Supergirl, she dons this dominatrix-type outfit that really shows off her butt in tight leather pants. At the same time the viewer is repulsed by Darkseid's evil, he (obviously the viewer is a he) also gets to ogle Supergirl. Princess Leia's metal bikini might be a more mainstream example.)
But in Salome-- a story that definitely villainizes the title character for using her sexuality to get what she wants-- there is nothing like this. Her breasts bulge through her outfit in many of the pictures, but they are not alluring. At what should be her most attractive moment, the Dance of the Seven Veils, her face scowls and her body contorts unnaturally as a disgusting imp-figure plays fiercely in the corner. Her breasts once again protrude. Also grotesque are all the pictures where Salome interacts with the decapitated head of Iokanaan. The rest of Herod's court fares even worse.
This visual depiction, however, is consistent with the text, which displays the court of Herod as a place of sexual and moral grotesqueness. Herod breaks his solemn word for the sake of a dance, inviting condemnation from Iokanaan, who is decapitated for his pleasure. For the people here to be attractive-- and especially for the Dance of the Seven Veils to be genuinely seductive to the reader-- would have been morally hypocritical, as Berger identifies. How can we condemn Salome for her dance if we take pleasure in it?
What's really interesting, though, is that it's unlikely the dance would have been depicted this way in any other medium. The introduction to my edition says that Sarah Bernhardt would have played Salome; I doubt that this famous beauty would have been rendered unattractive, and I especially doubt that the Dance of the Seven Veils would have been anything other than captivating. In some ways, this renders Beardsley's illustrations for Salome more faithful to the meaning of Wilde's text than any performance could have been, even if it could never actually appear on stage this way.
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LibraryThing member crazyjerseygirl
This play is haunting. A romantic comedy for those of us who like our laughs dark.
LibraryThing member AliceAnna
Note to Oscar -- stick to the witty repartee and the mocking of society that is your trademark. I could not sit through this wordy, heavy piece if my life depended on it. The guy who was beheaded was the lucky one.
LibraryThing member gmillar
I suppose its actually better than this old, twentieth century, South Pacific native could ever appreciate. If it was, indeed, written by Oscar Wilde, it is so different from his Victorian English comedic dramas that I couldn't recognize any threads of sisterhood to them. I love those and I don't
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love this. Show Less
LibraryThing member BooksForDinner
Classic retelling of the story of The daughter of Herod and her wish of the Head of John the Baptist for dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils.
LibraryThing member Osbaldistone
Wilde's writing is the center piece of this play about Herod, Salome, and John the Baptist. A fine, quick read, with a very fine introduction by Holbrook Jackson.
LibraryThing member Versha.Bharat
Salome by Oscar Wilde was a very strange play. The usual witty, humorous dialogs which I expected in his play was totally absent. This actually turned out to be a very depressing book. I could not relate to the protagonist Salome one bit I felt she was an eccentric character. First of all Salome
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desiring a Baptist was something very odd and on top that she wanted him very badly and then when he rejected her at once she took a very drastic step to get him back which was horrible and disturbing. I am unable to understand what to make out of this play!! Show Less
LibraryThing member kakadoo202
A haunting story based on a few short bible versus this play was the base of the opera. Libretto is almost identical. Excellent preparation if u plan to see the opera
LibraryThing member pivic
Very well-edited, newly translated three-language edition (French, English, Swedish) of Wilde's quite short and very quickly banned play. The annotations are very good, placing the script in a biblical and historical context, even noting where Wilde, for example, uses phrases in his other works.
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Not my fave tome by Wilde, but still very readable. Show Less
LibraryThing member MarkLacy
Curious, more than anything else, what Wilde's play would be like. Thankfully it was a quick read. I can see why Wilde received a lot of notoriety about the play, but I don't understand why anyone would consider this good literature. Certain characters keep repeating the same lines, as if they
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can't remember what they were really supposed to say and there's no one to prompt them with the "real" line. The illustrations done for this work are truly bizarre, and did not add anything to the experience. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1893
ISBN
3150044979 / 9783150044971