Salome

(voorbereiding op de opera)

Salomé is een opera in één akte van Richard Strauss uit 1905, gebaseerd op het gelijknamige toneelstuk Salomé van Oscar Wilde. De componist zelf schreef het libretto naar de Duitse vertaling van Hedwig Lachmann. Oscar Wilde schreef zijn toneelstuk in 1891, oorspronkelijk in het Frans. Toen Strauss de vertaalde versie van Hedwig Lachmann gezien had, zag hij er direct een opera in. Ook Wilde zelf had de structuur van zijn Salomé in muzikale termen beschreven. Al vanaf de première op 9 december 1905 in de Semperoper in Dresden, is een deel van het operapubliek geschokt geweest door de combinatie van christelijke Bijbelse thema's met erotiek en moord.   https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salom%C3%A9_(opera)

Synopsis A great terrace in the Palace of Herod, set above the banqueting hall. Some soldiers are leaning over the balcony. To the right there is a gigantic staircase, to the left, at the back, an old cistern surrounded by a wall of green bronze. The moon is shining very brightly. Narraboth, captain of the guard, gazes from a terrace in Herod's palace into the banquet hall at the beautiful Princess Salome; he is in love with her, and apotheosizes her, much to the disgusted fearfulness of the Page of Herodias. The voice of the Prophet Jochanaan is heard from his prison in the palace cistern; Herod fears him and has ordered that no one should contact him, including Jerusalem's High Priest. Tired of the feast and its guests, Salome flees to the terrace. When she hears Jochanaan cursing her mother (Herodias), Salome's curiosity is piqued. The palace guards will not honor her petulant orders to fetch Jochanaan for her, so she teasingly works on Narraboth to bring Jochanaan before her. Despite the orders he has received from Herod, Narraboth finally gives in after she promises to smile at him. Jochanaan emerges from the cistern and shouts prophecies regarding Herod and Herodias that no one understands, except Salome when the Prophet refers to her mother. Upon seeing Jochanaan, Salome is filled with an overwhelming desire for him, praising his white skin and asking to touch it, but he rejects her. She then praises his black hair, again asking to touch it, but is rejected once more. She finally begs for a kiss from Jochanaan's lips, and Narraboth, who cannot bear to hear this, kills himself. As Jochanaan is returned to the well, he preaches salvation through the Messiah. Herod enters, followed by his wife and court. He slips in Narraboth's blood and starts hallucinating. He hears the beating of wings. Despite Herodias' objections, Herod stares lustfully at Salome, who rejects him. Jochanaan harasses Herodias from the well, calling her incestuous marriage to Herod sinful. She demands that Herod silence him. Herod refuses, and she mocks his fear. Five Jews argue concerning the nature of God. Two Nazarenes tell of Christ's miracles; at one point they bring up the raising of Jairus' daughter from the dead, which Herod finds frightening. Herod asks for Salome to eat with him, drink with him; indolently, she twice refuses, saying she is not hungry or thirsty. Herod then begs Salome to dance for him, Tanz für mich, Salome, though her mother objects. He promises to reward her with her heart's desire – even if it were one half of his kingdom. After Salome inquires into his promise, and he swears to honor it, she prepares for the "Dance of the Seven Veils". This dance, very oriental in orchestration, has her slowly removing her seven veils, until she lies naked at his feet. Salome then demands the head of the prophet on a silver platter. Her mother cackles in pleasure. Herod tries to dissuade her with offers of jewels, peacocks, and the sacred veil of the Temple. Salome remains firm in her demand for Jochanaan's head, forcing Herod to accede to her demands. After a desperate monologue by Salome, an executioner emerges from the well and delivers the severed head as she requested. In a revolting display, Salome now declares her love for the severed head, caressing it and kissing the prophet's dead lips passionately. Horrified, Herod orders his soldiers, "Kill that woman!" They rush forward and crush Salome under their shields.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salome_%28opera%29

Tekst toneelstuk: http://www.archive.org/stream/salometragedyino00wilduoft/salometragedyino00wilduoft_djvu.txt libretto van opera: http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Lachmann,+Hedwig/Libretto/Salome

Tachtig: de beuk erin Tachtig heeft de naam dat ze de hele Nederlandse literatuur in één klap in de moderne tijd gebracht heeft. Het is een soort merknaam geworden voor literatuur die deugt. `De Tachtigers’ is een synoniem geworden voor De Grote Vernieuwers.    De Nieuwe Gids heeft een revolutie betekend in de Nederlandse literatuur. De literatuur die een moreel doel had werd afgedankt. Het ging nu alleen nog maar om de kunst zelf, die aan zichzelf genoeg had. De nieuwe literatuur moest ook nieuwe vormen vinden. De auctoriale (alwetende) verteller in de roman, die commentaar gaf op de verwikkelingen en die duidelijke voorkeuren had, werd afgeschaft. Een roman moest neutraal zijn, geen standpunten vooraf innemen. Ook in de taal zochten de schrijvers naar vernieuwing. Het introduceren van spreektaal en grove taal was niet voldoende. Er moest ook een taal gemaakt worden die de kleine nuances van impressies aankon. Als literatuur de allerindividueelste expressie van de allerindividueelste emotie is, zoals Kloos schreef, dan hoort daar ook een allerindividueelst woordgebruik bij. Dat werd de zogenaamde `woordkunst’ met veel nieuwvormingen (neologismen) en ongebruikelijke koppelingen, zoals in dit fragment uit Een liefde van Lodewijk van Deyssel. De hoofdpersoon Mathilde ondergaat de impressie van haar bloeiende tuin: De zwakkere kleuren weken nu wech; alleen het donkere paars van een perk rododendrons, het gelige en het sombere groen van het lichtelijk golvende gras en van de zoetjes wuivende bladeren-massaas, de blankheid van het huis, en de kleine plekjes van twee diep-purpere stamrozen, bleven, vergoud door de tussen het huis en de hut neêrvallende zon. En het goud, het vloeyende goud, bleef de grote kleur, en wazig golfde het heen naar Mathilde, haar ogen binnen. De tedere lauwe lucht drong tot in haar keul, verdroogde haar mond, de geur van jasmijnen, in een heesterbosje rechts van de hut, walmde op in haar neusgaten. Zoetjes wiemelden pakjes lucht over haar voorhoofd, haar wangen en door haar hals, neerhangende haarvlokjes in haar hals beefden stil heen en weêr. ... Kenmerkend voor de literatuur van de Tachtigers is niet alleen dit protest tegen de oude generatie en de breuk met de kunst die op de maatschappij gericht was. Kunst die om de kunst geschreven moet worden heeft een nieuwe beeldspraak nodig, die visueel gericht is en waarin de natuur de bron voor de inspiratie is. Ze is individueel, subjectief en antimoralistisch. Ze is verwant aan het impressionisme in de schilderkunst, gericht op de indruk en het moment. Een liefde (1887) van Lodewijk van Deyssel, Mei (1889) van Herman Gorter en Eline Vere (1889) van Louis Couperus gelden als hoogtepunten van deze stroming. Ze werden nog overtroffen door Verzen (1890) van Herman Gorter, waarin de dichter breekt met alle overgeleverde dichtvormen en kwam hij tot een sensitivistisch impressionistisch taalgebruik, gekenmerkt door ongrammaticaliteiten, ongebruikelijke woorden en stamelende zinnen:  De lente komt van ver, ik hoor hem komen en de boomen hooren, de hooge trilboomen, en de hooge luchten, de hemelluchten, de tintellichtluchten, de blauwenwitluchten, trilluchten. https://www.literatuurgeschiedenis.nl/19de/literatuurgeschiedenis/lg19013.html

Ze gingen nog net niet met bomen praten, maar wel zijn de kunstenaars aan het eind van de negentiende eeuw spiritueel geworden. Ze zochten iets Hogers Van Eeden trok zich terug en hij ging steeds meer de richting uit van een religieuze, mystieke kunst. https://www.literatuurgeschiedenis.nl/19de/literatuurgeschiedenis/lg19014.html

Het symbolisme was een stroming in de beeldende kunst, muziek en literatuur die in het fin de siècle opgang maakte, in eerste instantie in Frankrijk, maar spoedig daarna ook elders in Europa. Het ontstaan van het symbolisme is te zien als een reactie op het rond 1850 dominante realisme en naturalisme in de kunst. Verbeeldingskracht, fantasie en intuïtie werden centraal gesteld. Het symbolisme kenmerkt zich door een sterke hang naar het verleden en een gerichtheid op het onderbewuste, het ongewone en het onverklaarbare. Het symbool stond daarbij centraal, en wordt een zintuiglijk waarneembaar teken dat verwijst naar een poort naar de niet-zintuiglijke wereld. De innerlijke, irrationele ervaringen worden belangrijk, met de nadruk op droombeelden en de dood. Vormen van machteloosheid, loomheid en decadentie roepen een sfeer op van onheilsverwachting en dreiging. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolisme

 

Decadentisme, ook wel décadence of decadentie genaamd, is een geestelijke stroming die in het laatste kwart van de negentiende eeuw vooral onder de ontwikkelden in West-Europa aanhang vond. Karakteristiek is de teleurstelling over de teloorgang van zekerheden, van verlies van duidelijkheid over de na te streven toekomst, maar ook van weerzin tegenover de blinde geldzucht van de burgerlijke maatschappij en tegenover het geloof dat de wetenschap en industrie alle problemen zullen oplossen. Kunst is een vrijplaats in die banale wereld. Uiterste schoonheid en zuiverheid moeten worden nagestreefd. Een programma of duidelijke uitgangspunten had deze in hoge mate uit zich bewust isolerende individuen bestaande stroming niet. Zij kenmerkt zich door negativiteit, Weltschmerz, 'spleen', het woord dat Baudelaire hiervoor introduceerde, existentiële verveling (ennui), vermoeidheid, stuurloosheid, maar ook een provocatief zoeken naar schoonheid als enige uitweg uit de banale burgerlijkheid. Exponenten van de stroming vindt men in sommige dandy's die zich door een extreem streven naar zuiverheid, naar estheticisme, van de massa willen onderscheiden. Volgens Charles Baudelaire was estheticisme een levende godsdienst. Vooral in de literatuur heeft het decadentisme een hoge vlucht genomen. Men vindt de 'decadenten' vaak onder symbolistische schrijvers. De Franse auteur Charles Baudelaire was er de voorloper van. De 50 jaar jongere Franse schrijver Joris-Karl Huysmans schreef de 'bijbel' van het decadentisme, À rebours (1884). De Iers-Engelse schrijver en dichter Oscar Wilde was de belichaming van de dandy, qua levenshouding, uiterlijk en literaire werken. Wilde was de woordvoerder van het estheticisme, de Engelse parallel van het decadentisme. Andere typische decadenten zijn de Franse auteurs Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Jules Laforgue, Octave Mirbeau, Robert de Montesquiou, Jean Lorrain, Tristan Corbière en Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, de Engelse kunstenaars Aubrey Beardsley, Ernest Dowson en Max Beerbohm, de Duitse dichter Stefan George, de Deen Herman Bang, de Rus Michail Koezmin en de Pool Stanislaw Przybyszewski en de Nederlandse kunstenaar Carel de Nerée tot Babberich. Toch is het vaak moeilijk om een auteur 'vast te pinnen' als decadentistisch, omdat het dikwijls een voorbijgaande fase is. Nederlandse schrijvers met zo'n langere of kortere decadente periode zijn bijvoorbeeld Louis Couperus, Lodewijk van Deyssel, Jacob Israël de Haan, J.L. Gregory en Eduard Veterman. De 20e-eeuwse schrijver Gerard Reve plaatste zichzelf ergens tussen de Romantiek en de decadentie. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decadentisme

The first major development in French decadence would come when writers Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire used the word proudly, to represent a rejection of what they considered banal "progress." Baudelaire referred to himself as decadent in his 1857 edition of Les Fleurs du Mal and exalted the Roman decline as a model for modern poets to express their passion. He would later use the term decadence to include the subversion of traditional categories in pursuit of full, sensual expression. In his lengthy introduction to Baudelaire in the front of the 1868 Les Fleurs du Mal, Gautier at first rejects the application of the term decadent, as meant by the critic, but then works his way to an admission of decadence on Baudelaire's own terms: a preference for what is beautiful and what is exotic, an ease with surrendering to fantasy, and a maturity of skill with manipulating language. Though he was Belgian, Félicien Rops was instrumental in the development of this early stage of the Decadent Movement. A friend of Baudelaire, he was also a frequent illustrator of Baudelaire's writing, at the request of the author himself. Rops delighted in breaking artistic convention and shocking the public with gruesome, fantastical horror. He was explicitly interested in the Satanic, and he frequently sought to portray the double-threat of Satan and Woman. At times, his only goal was the portrayal of a woman he'd observed debasing herself in the pursuit of her own pleasure. It has also been suggested that, no matter how horrific and perverse his images could be, Rops' invocation of supernatural elements was sufficient to keep Baudelaire situated in a spiritually-aware universe that maintained a cynical kind of hope, even if the poetry "requires a strong stomach." Their work was the worship of beauty disguised as the worship of evil. For both of them, mortality and all manner of corruptions were always on their mind. The ability of Rops to see and portray the same world as they did, made him a popular illustrator for other decadent authors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decadent_movement#French_Decadent_Movement

Salome: A Wildean Symbolist Drama ...."the Salome/Herodias figure was almost as popular among nineteenth-century artists as the Virgin Mary was among medieval artists.". 1) An astounding number of settings of the Salome legend were produced in the nineteenth century, both in literature as well as in painting. Wilde...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. 2) 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,  3) 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: ... 4) 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. ...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. ... 5) 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.   6) 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....   7) 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. ...his dramatic poem Salome was published in Massachusetts in 1862, and reprinted in London throughout the 1880's.... Indeed, Wilde's creativity is striking.  1) 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. ...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. 2) 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. Wilde wrote Salome while living in Paris in December of 1891. His allegiance to the French Symbolists and Decadents had been firmly established, and he had become friends with some of the more prominent poets in Paris. After an evening spent discussing the legend of Salome with some of these writers, Wilde retired to his room, opened a blank notebook which happened to be on the table, and began the play. A few hours later, with much of the text already written, he went out to a nearby café and, needing inspiration, asked the leader of the orchestra to play some music which might evoke "a woman dancing in her bare feet in the blood of a man she has craved for and slain." Salome was finished soon afterwards, and plans were made to produce it for the theater. Significantly, Wilde composed Salome, from the very beginning, in French. Some critics postulate that this fact may account for the simplistic, "phrase-book" language of the play; others vehemently defend Wilde's fluency in his adopted tongue and prefer to see a Maeterlinck influence. Bird strikes the middle ground in his assessment: "Wilde wrote French as he spoke it -- that is, charmingly, but simply and somewhat in the manner of the the phrasebook." Whether or not Wilde's command of French was truly a factor in the style of language he uses for the play, it is definitely a point of contention, and an oddity. Conrad notes: Wilde's choice of French places him in the interesting company of Beckford and Samuel Beckett, and in all three cases there is a correspondence between renunciation of the native language and the artist's subject ... All three write in French because to do so is to enlist the aid of language against nature ... Style becomes its own subject. The English edition of Salome was translated by Lord Alfred Douglas in 1893, although there was some contention at the time, as Wilde objected to the "schoolboy faults" of Douglas' attempt. The German version, used by Strauss for his libretto, was translated by Hedwig Lachmann; even if shortened substantially, Lachmann's translation is by all accounts a successful one. Conrad notes, in a surprisingly biased account, that Lachmann's edition "has the virtue of rescuing Wilde's play from itself ... German expunges the mannered refinement of the French and gives to the heroine's utterances a guttural, visceral avidity which is genuinely horrifying, where in Wilde's phrasing she is merely peevish." This may be so; his conclusion is far more satisfying, explaining that the summit of the phrase "Ich habe deinen Mund geküßt, Jochanaan" is, in the French, the noun, and thus the prize -- whereas the German stresses the verb, and thus the action, making the entire scene erotic rather than aesthetic. 3) 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."  (want:) 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. 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. Symons explains, in typical hyperbole, that: Words ... are of value only as a notation of the free breath of the spirit; words, therefore, must be employed with an extreme care, in their choice and adjustment, in setting them to reflect and chime upon one another; yet least of all for their own sake, for what they can never, except by suggestion, express. 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. 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. The unity is destroyed, however, by the next statement about the moon, uttered by Herodias, the antithesis of symbolic power: exasperated, she insists that "the moon is like the moon, that is all!" Conrad duly notes this difference amongst the characters: For all their differences, there is an aesthetic conspiracy between Herod and Salome, who are united in opposition to Herodias, the dull enemy of imagination for whom the moon is merely the moon, and nothing more, whereas her husband and daughter know it to be a disturbing metaphor. 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. The humorous exchanges between Herod and his wife illustrate the difficulty in trying to determine the play's agenda, and Herod admits a type of defeat, reprimanding himself for overemphasizing the "truth" of symbols: "You must not find symbols in everything you see. It make life impossible. It were better to say that stains of blood are as lovely as rose petals." Indeed, the underlying theme of the drama is at once a most weighty and yet intangible question of human existence: the nature of aestheticism. ... 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. http://www.nthuleen.com/papers/947paper.html

Wilde's Salomé and the Victorian Religious Landscape The chaos of conflicting religious opinions that dominated the Victorian era is distanced, exoticized and reproduced by Wilde in his symbolist one-act play Salomé. That some aspects of this play reflect appearances of Victorian life has been recognized by many critics. Salomé has been seen variously as the New Woman  and as Decadence personified , while Jokanaan has been interpreted as an embodiment of Victorian celibate Christianity.  The Cappadocian, for example, is an unmistakable echo of Nietzsche, whose fame had begun to spread throughout Europe by the time Wilde sat down to write his play. ... The chief representative of atheist rationalism in the play, however, is Herodias. Atheist rationalism, supported by new scientific discoveries, was a strong intellectual current in Victorian England, .., it not only dismissed religion but mocked and attacked it, as in the case of the Decadents.  A CHRISTIANITY weakened during the Victorian period, there was a proliferation of new religions on the scene. Carlyle, for example, lost his Christian faith but propounded a brand of pantheism in Sartor Resartus and The French Revolution. Arnold reduced God to a power outside ourselves that pushes in the direction of morality but did not eliminate Him altogether from the picture. Yeats and Conan Doyle, among others, became ardent spiritualists. Many post-Darwinists, from Butler to Shaw, adopted the idea of creative evolution in various forms. And Huxley coined the term "agnostic." This chaos of new, often strange religious beliefs is again distanced, exoticized and captured in Salomé. The Nubians, for instance, who used to inhabit areas of southern Egypt and northern Sudan, have their own bizarre religion, described by one of them as follows: Salomé (who is nominally Jewish but who, like Herod and Herodias, is presented by Wilde as thoroughly pagan) refers to the moon as a goddess who "has never abandoned herself to men, like the other goddesses" (p. 586). The young Syrian is entrapped siren-like by Salomé (the spiritual daughter of the moon-goddess Cybele) and worships her as a kind of deity, ultimately offering himself as a blood sacrifice to her, while the page of Herodias reacts to the princess with knowing terror. Many of the Caesars of Rome were regarded as part divine, and this is stressed by Wilde through Tigellinus and Herod when they unconsciously use the titles of Christ in describing Caesar: HEROD: What does that mean? The Saviour of the world. TIGELLINUS: It is a title that Caesar takes. HEROD: But Caesar is not coming into Judaea. Only yesterday I received letters from Rome. They contained nothing concerning this matter. And you, Tigellinus, who were at Rome during the winter, you heard nothing concerning this matter, did you? TIGELLINUS: Sire, I heard nothing concerning the matter. I was explaining the title. It is one of Caesar's titles. . . . HEROD: Wherefore should I not be happy? Caesar, who is lord of the world, who is lord of all things, loves me well. He has just sent me most precious gifts. Also he has promised me to summon to Rome the King of Cappadocia. who is my enemy. It may be that at Rome he will crucify him, for he is able to do all things that he wishes. Verily, Caesar is lord. [pp. 594-97] When Salomé emerges from Herod's feast, she escapes not only from his lustful gaze but from an atmosphere of religious debate and confusion which repels her: SALOMÉ: How sweet the air is here! I can breathe here! Within there are Jews from Jerusalem who are tearing each other in pieces over their foolish ceremonies, and barbarians who drink and drink, and spill their wine on the pavement, and Greeks from Smyrna with painted eyes and painted cheeks, and frizzed hair curled in twisted coils, and silent, subtle Egyptians, with long nails of Jade and russet cloaks, and Romans brutal and coarse, with their uncouth jargon. [p. 586] The Egyptians, Greeks, barbarians and Romans evoke images of strange religions, for they are associated with the quarrelling Jews and seem quite comfortable in the atmosphere of religious multiplicity and confusion which the Jews create as they argue over the details of Judaism. They are introduced, moreover, against a background of religious disorder. When Herod promises Salomé whatever she may ask for if she will dance for him, he cannot withdraw the oath because "I have sworn by my gods. I know it well" (p. 600). Wilde does not focus on new religions or give them prominence in Salomé, however, for in the Victorian period none of them managed to attract more than a small group of followers: the confrontation remained fundamentally between atheism and Christianity. Another pillar of Christian morality in Victorian England was John Ruskin, whom Ellmann associates with Jokanaan. Ruskin, whom everyone referred to as a prophet, believed and preached that art and morality are inseparable, indeed that the importance of any work of art should be measured by its moral and spiritual impact on the beholder.  http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/wilde/nassaar2.html

The music of Salome includes a system of leitmotifs, or short melodies with symbolic meanings. Some are clearly associated with people such as Salome and Jochanaan (John the Baptist). Others are more abstract in meaning.  In addition to the leitmotifs, there are many symbolic uses of musical color in the opera's music. For example, a tambourine sounds every time a reference to Salome's dance is made. The harmony of Salome makes use of extended tonality, chromaticism, a wide range of keys, unusual modulations, tonal ambiguity, and polytonality. Some of the major characters have keys associated with them, such as Salome and Jochanaan, as do some of the major psychological themes, such as desire and death. Strauss wrote the opera's libretto, in the process cutting almost half of Wilde's play, stripping it down and emphasizing its basic dramatic structure. The structural form of Strauss's libretto is highly patterned, notably in the use of symmetry and the hierarchical grouping of events, passages, and sections in threes. Examples of three-part structure include Salome's attempt to seduce Narraboth, in order to get him to let her see Jochanaan. She tries to seduce him three times, and he capitulates on the third. When Jochanaan is brought before Salome he issues three prophecies, after which Salome professes love for Jochanaan three times—love of his skin, his hair, and his lips, the last of which results in Jochanaan cursing her. In the following scene Herod three times asks Salome to be with him—to drink, eat, and sit with him. She refuses each time. Later Herod asks her to dance for him, again three times. Twice she refuses, but the third time Herod swears to give her whatever she wants in return and she accepts. After she dances and says she wants Jochanaan's head on a platter, Herod, not wanting to execute the Prophet, makes three offers—an emerald, peacocks, and finally, desperately, the Veil of the Sanctuary of the Holy of Holies. Salome rejects all three offers, each time more stridently insisting on Jochanaan's head. Three-part groupings occur elsewhere on both larger and smaller levels. Dissonant chord near the end of the opera, marked sfz in this reduced score In the final scene of the opera, after Salome kisses Jochanaan's severed head, the music builds to a dramatic climax, which ends with a cadence involving a very dissonant unorthodox chord one measure before rehearsal 361. This single chord has been widely commented on. It has been called "the most sickening chord in all opera", an "epoch-making dissonance with which Strauss takes Salome...to the depth of degradation", and "the quintessence of Decadence: here is ecstasy falling in upon itself, crumbling into the abyss". The chord is often described as polytonal, with a low A7 (a dominant seventh chord) merged with a higher F-sharp major chord. It forms part of a cadence in the key of C-sharp major and is approached and resolved from C–sharp major chords. Not only is the chord shockingly dissonant, especially in its musical context and rich orchestration, it has broader significance due in part to Strauss's careful use of keys and leitmotifs to symbolize the opera's characters, emotions such as desire, lust, revulsion, and horror, as well as doom and death. A great deal has been written about this single chord and its function within the large-scale formal structure of the entire opera. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salome_%28opera%29