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THE OSCHOLARS LIBRARY |
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Translation, Tenses and Progression in the Final Monologue of Wilde’s
Salomé.
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Peter Cogman |
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The study of Wilde’s Salomé as a play[1]
has often been sidetracked by a variety of issues. Its place in the vast
amount of fin-de-siècle literature and art in which the semi-Biblical
character figures has led it to being dismissed as unworthy of serious
attention: a ‘specious, second-hand work’[2]
whose derivative nature was stressed from the outset: ‘Salomé is a
mosaic […]. She is the daughter of too many fathers’;[3]
‘a poor thing, the ingrown child of a whole line of literature evoking
antiquity in its decadence.’[4]
The play that The Times found in 1893 ‘an arrangement in blood and ferocity,
morbid, bizarre, repulsive, and very offensive in its adaptation of
scriptural phraseology to situations the reverse of sacred’[5]
was in 1954 still ‘both repulsive and boring in about equal measure’.[6]
Like Pelléas et Mélisande, it is better known, not as a play in its
own right, but in its operatic adaptation by Richard Strauss (itself the
recipient of some abrasive criticism: ‘a huge pile of shit [coated] with a
thin layer of marzipan and icing-sugar’).[7]
Wilde’s own sexuality has prompted a further series of interpretations in
quest of a ‘secret or unspeakable subtext’,[8]
as have the suggestive potential for Freudians of the imagery.[9]
Moreover it is not clear in what context it should be discussed, being a work
in French by an Irish writer who wrote writing mainly in English (the
language of the English version is, as we shall see, highly problematic). |
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This paper would attempt to take the work seriously as a
coherent play in French which the protagonist is led to a moment of
realisation in her crucial final monologue which leads up to her kissing the
mouth of Iokanaan’s severed head: an act followed immediately by her death at
the hands of Hérode’s soldiers. Critics tend to react to this monologue in
two opposed ways. On the one hand it can be treated as a monolithic block
dominated by a single emotion, such as ‘unflinching remorselessness’[10],
an intense outpouring of emotion in which ‘the speaker is in a state of
self-abandonment’; it is ‘like an orgasmic utterance in that orgasmic
utterance has no rhetorical function’.[11]
On the other hand it is treated as ambivalent,[12]
conflicting, contradictory, when it is not just quoted (usually with omissions).[13]
But it can be read as a highly
structured monologue speech, where specific linguistic features – the
contrast of tenses,[14]
the positioning of the apostrophes to Iokanaan, the use of punctuation even –
indicate a rapid but coherent succession of emotions which are dominated by
two key moments of realisation: the first, a moment of lucidity about herself
akin (toutes proportions gardées, in that it has the same dramatic
function) to Phèdre’s at a key point in Racine’s tragedy (IV, vi), the second
(again, like Phèdre’s at the end of the same scene)
a moment of decision. For all the poetic elements of the language, and the
insistence of some critics that ‘it is not a drama but a long lyric poem’,[15] Salomé remains a play. |
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A key problem in evaluating both play and monologue is the
status of the English translation of a play written initially in French.
Three MSS exist, all in French.[16]
Wilde had submitted his draft to friends in Paris: first to Stuart Merrill
and Adolphe Retté, subsequently to Pierre Louÿs, who with Marcel Schwob and
the publisher, Édouard Bailly, also helped with the proofs;[17]
but in general the only input Wilde accepted was orthographical and
grammatical corrections, especially those concerning the subjunctive. The
extent of the corrections that might have been needed can be guessed from the
page from the third and final MS which includes the initial stage direction
reproduced in one critical work, which has “au font” for “au fond” and: “Il
fait un clair de lune.”[18]
It is not however this French work, published in 1893 and unambiguously by
Wilde, that is the starting-point for most of the critical discussion of the
play, but the in many ways very different English version, even when the
focus of the critic is on the language.[19]
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The play was translated by Lord Alfred Douglas, whose
grasp of French was inadequate; Wilde disliked the translation, referring to
‘the schoolboy faults of your attempted translation of Salomé’,[20]
but rather than retranslating it, he (or so it is generally assumed)
reworked Douglas’s translation: how much, however, we do not know. The
situation is the more complex, as Joost Daalder has pointed out, since
several modern editions used by critics reprint not the Douglas/Wilde
translation of 1894, but an anonymous 1906 reworking of this (probably by
Robert Ross) which brings the text closer to the original French than Douglas/Wilde
and is more idiomatic and slightly less archaising,[21]
while also unaccountably introducing the spellings ‘Salomé’ and ‘Jokanaan’,
the second of which (necessary in Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation on
which Strauss based his opera) is inappropriate in English. This reworking,
however, does not address the key problems posed by the Douglas/Wilde
version, problems that were perhaps unresolvable in English in the 1890s,
which go beyond the mistranslations, additions and changes noted by Aquien is
his bilingual edition[22]
and by Daalder. Douglas’s translation in effect preempted several strategic
decisions that compromised all subsequent adjustments to it. |
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It is perhaps worth noting where these problems spring
from, as their implications are far-reaching. Wilde, like most French of the
writers of the nineteenth century, drew on Lemaître de Sacy’s
seventeeth-century translation of the Bible.[23]
Consequently, as in Sacy, the characters of Salomé normally address
each other with the formal ‘vous’, whatever their status or closeness. (In
contrast Protestant translations – J.-F. Ostervald (1724), Louis
Segond (1874, 1880) – use ‘tu’ when addressing singular persons or
things, in the same way that the Vulgate uses the second person singular form
in Latin in such cases; this is the practice adopted by Flaubert in
‘Hérodias’.) There are two exceptions to this uniform use of ‘vous’. Wilde makes some concession to French usage
by switching to ‘tu’ for a few heightened moments of familiarity and
affection[24]
or of bickering and contempt,[25]
although the practice is intermittent and uncertain.[26]
Salomé thus always uses ‘tu’ when addressing Iokanaan from her first command:
‘Parle encore, Iokanaan. Ta voix m’enivre’ (p. 81). The other exception
occurs with Iokanaan, who consistently uses ‘tu’ in his prophetic utterances
(in Sacy these usually use ‘vous’,[27]
although there are some using ‘tu’).[28] |
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Several passages of the French play adapt, echo or even
directly quote the Bible, which the reader of the 1890s would know in the
Authorised Version (henceforth AV), which consistently uses now archaic
forms, notably ‘thou’ and ‘ye’ (for modern ‘you’) and second- and
third-person singular verbal forms in –st and –th (hast, hath).[29]
Such differences do not appear in Sacy’s French.[30]
So Hérode’s promise to Salomé in French
uses ‘vous’: |
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Si vous dansez pour moi vous pourrez me
demander tout ce que vous voudrez et je vous le donnerez. Oui, dansez pour
moi, Salomé, et je vous donnerez tout ce que vous me demanderez, fût-ce la
moitié de mon royaume. (p. 133) |
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Wilde is quoting almost verbatim Sacy’s translation: |
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[…] il lui dit: Demandez-moi ce que vous
voudrez, et je vous le donnerai. |
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[…] Oui, je vous donnerai tout ce que
vous me demanderez, quand ce serait la moitié de mon royaume. (Mark 6. 22-23) |
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The English version follows the AV, and the Tetrarch says: |
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If thou dancest for me thou mayest ask
of me what thou wilt, and I will give it thee. Yes, dance for me, Salome, and
whatsoever thou shalt ask of me I will give it thee, even unto the half of my
kingdom. (p. 132) |
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Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I
will give it thee. […] Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me I will give it thee,
unto the half of my kingdom. (Mark 6. 22-23) |
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Similarly the prophetic utterances of Iokanaan, echoing
notably Isaiah and Jeremiah,[31]
which use ‘tu’ in French, become ‘thou’ in English; and ‘thou’ brings the
archaic verbal forms (‘hast’, ‘hath’) in its wake. |
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But in addition to these Biblical (or AV) uses of ‘thou’,
the translation also uses ‘thou’when translating the French ‘tu’ in those
cases where Wilde uses it, following French usage, to convey affection[32]
or contempt. Salomé uses ‘tu’ to the Page (p. 157) when feigning affection to
win him over, Narraboth likewise in his last desperate plea to Salomé (p.
87), Hérode and Hérodias in rare moments of attempted reconciliation
(‘Verse-moi à boire, ma bien-aimée’ (p. 121)) or when bickering (Hérodias
mocks Hérode’s ancestry, he retorts angrily: ‘Tu mens’ (p. 103)).
Consequently the psychological shifts that Wilde seeks to convey (albeit
uncertainly) in French by the move to ‘tu’, for instance in Salomé’s
declarations of love to Iokanaan, become incongruous archaisms. The quest for
a Biblical flavour moreover leads to a constant preference of archaic
alternatives in vocabulary: ‘drave’ rather than ‘drove’ (p. 98), ‘thine
hands’ rather than ‘thy hands’ (e.g. p. 162), ‘slay’ (for ‘tuer’) not ‘kill’,[33]
although the modern alternatives all occur in the AV as well. |
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The result is incoherence in the tone: Iokanaan combines
‘spake’ and ‘has’ in one speech (p. 104). Characters move from ‘have’ to
‘hath’ for no obvious reason: Hérode says before the dance: ‘I will not go
within till she hath danced’, only to say immediately after the dance: ‘You
see that she has danced’ (p. 140). It sometimes seems that respect for the
divine triggers ‘hath’: the first Nazarene says: ‘He hath healed blind people
also’, but the sceptical Pharisee remarks: ‘Angels exist, but I do not
believe that this Man has talked with them’ (p. 112). Such bizarre
juxtapositions (‘How! He raises people from the dead?’ ‘Yea, sire; He raiseth
the dead’ (p. 114)) are accompanied by obvious errors: ‘Tu as été l’ami de
celui qui est mort, n’est-ce pas?’ becomes: ‘Thou wert the friend of him who
is dead, wert thou not?’ (pp. 157, 156), where ‘wast’, not the subjunctive,
is needed;[34]
‘If thou hadst seen me thou hadst loved me’ (p. 162) should have been: ‘[…]
thou wouldst have loved me’ (p. 162).[35] |
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The excessive archaism of the translation (if not its
incoherence and the use of Sacy) have been often noted.[36]
More seriously, the translation blunts a French original characterised, not
just by simplicity and a debt to Maeterlinck that has been frequently noted,[37]
but also by its directness, even abruptness, and at times humour.[38]
This is certainly not the effect created by the translation. Salomé’s
impatient ‘Vous me faites attendre’ (p. 69) becomes the formal: ‘You are
making me wait upon your pleasure’ (p. 68); her direct curiosity is weakened
: ‘Je veux le regarder de près’ / ‘I would look closer at him’ (pp. 77, 76).[39]
Abrupt orders: ‘Faites-le taire’ (p. 105, Hérodias) become polite: ‘Bid him
be silent’ (p. 104). The tendency to copy French constructions too closely
lands us sometimes in the world of Poirot rather than the Bible: ‘C’est de ma
mère qu’il parle’ / ‘It is of my mother that he is speaking’ (pp. 75, 74);
‘Ce n’est pas à elle que je veux parler’ / ‘It is not to her that I would
speak’ (pp. 77, 76). |
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Thirdly, the English frequently translates a first-person
simple future as ‘I will’ (some 22 times): ‘Je ne resterai pas’ / ‘I will not
stay’ (Salomé, pp. 61, 60); ‘Je ne danserai pas, tétrarque’ / ‘I will not
dance, Tetrarch’ (pp. 127, 126).
Strictly speaking this is incorrect as the form ‘I will’ (rather than
‘I shall’) should be used to indicate intention or volition.[40]
The English equally uses ‘I will’ where volition is intended: ‘je
veux’ / ‘I will’: ‘Je ne veux pas t’écouter’ / ‘I will not listen to you’
(Iokanaan, pp.83, 82); only on two occasions is ‘I shall’ used to express the
future.[41]
‘Shall’ is reserved by Wilde/Douglas (correctly, and in line with AV
practice)[42]
for use as a second- and third-person auxiliary when command, permission,
promise or threat are implied, notably Iokanaan’s declarations and prophecies
(six directly copied from the Bible, 14 imitated: simple futures in the
French). In Sacy, and consequently in Wilde’s French adaptations (and in
French Protestant translations, as there is no direct equivalent of the
‘coloured ‘shall’’ in French),[43]
these too are simple futures: ‘La terre déserte se réjouira’ / ‘The solitary
places shall be glad’ (pp. 55, 54; see Isaiah 35. 1). The overall consequence
is that in the Douglas/Wilde translation it is impossible to distinguish, in
the first person, the expression of volition from simple future, whereas
these are distinct in the French.[44] |
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Salomé’s final monologue, addressed to the severed head of
the prophet, is undisputably sincere, though it could be deluded or
self-deceiving. But it is not clear what we should make of it, or of her. Her
previous comments have been limited, sometimes provocative and apparently
contradictory (in her long speeches to Iokanaan), sometimes evasive (to
Hérode). Indeed the play highlights from the start the subjectivity of
interpretation: each of the characters interprets the moon differently, each
responds differently to the figure of Iokanaan. Religion is similarly the
subject of constant and unresolved dispute. The final monologue is the
longest direct expression of her feelings in the play: a monologue in that it
is a long speech by someone in company, it is also a soliloquy in that she
takes no regard of the presence of others (notably Hérode and Hérodias): as
Toepfer notes, ‘she speaks without any listener in mind but herself.’[45]
But unlike a true soliloquy it is not solely self-addressed, but addressed to
the head of Iokanaan, treated both as alive and as dead. Moreover her
attitude towards Iokanaan shifts in the course of the speech; this ‘tête-à-
tête’ (to borrow Jourde’s pun)[46]
is akin to an inner monologue in that it represents a journey to (partial)
self-discovery. What I propose is to sketch in rapidly Salomé’s evolution up
to this moment, and then suggest, not so much a new interpretation of the
monologue, but a new way of looking at it; looking at its structure to see
how its significance emerges from that structure, and to show how markedly it
differs from the other long speeches of the play, and to define its dramatic
function as the resolution of what has preceeded. |
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What is striking about Salomé’s development until this
moment is not, as some critics have asserted, that there is none;[47]
nor is her behaviour ‘an example of enigmatic, motiveless irrationality.’[48]
What is unusual, rather, is the rapidity and extreme nature of this
evolution. On her entry, Salomé, chaste and aloof, fleeing from the banquet and
Hérode, sets herself apart by her independence and obstinacy. She
responds to the offstage voice of Iokanaan first with a curiosity (she hears
contradictory information about him, she is struck by his ‘étrange voix’ (p.
67)) intensified by the fact that he is forbidden[49]
and by her obstinacy (‘Je veux lui parler’ (p. 67), ‘Je le veux’ (p. 69), ‘Je
veux le voir’, (p. 69)); then, when she sees him, she is ‘instantaneously
engulfed by sexual desire’.[50]
She is driven now by her response to an individual, not just by obstinate
disobedience. Her triple declaration of love: for his body, his hair, and his
mouth is met by three rejections, after the third of which she affirms: ‘Je
baiserai ta bouche, Iokanaan’, to be repeated twice again (p. 87). The
translation of the French future tense as ‘I will kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan’
(p. 86) seems misleading:: it is the insistent word-for-word repetition (save
for the omission of ‘Iokanaan’ the second time) of childlike obstinacy[51]
and confidence in something inevitable. Iokanaan’s parting response on returning to the cistern echoes this
certainty: ‘Je ne veux pas te regarder. Je ne te regarderai pas’ (p. 89).[52] |
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Hérode enters, and from this point until the dance there
is no development in Salomé, merely devices that build up tension while
suspending action (the domestic bickering between Hérode and his wife, the theological
arguments, the ominous offstage prophecies of Iokanaan), until Hérode’s final
plea to Salomé to dance leads to the rash offer which changes the situation
and power relationships: ‘[…] et je vous donnerai tout ce que vous me
demanderez, fût-ce la motié de mon royaume’ (p. 133). Salomé sees the
opportunity and traps Hérode in confirmation of his promise. After her dance,[53]
she makes her request for Iokanaan’s head. The repeated simple, direct and
unchanging phrases: ‘Je demande la tête d’Iokanaan’ (p. 149), ‘La tête
d’Iokanaan’ (p. 149), ‘Donnez-moi la tête d’Iokanaan’ (pp. 151, 153, 155)[54]
show her as now decisive, self-asserting, implacable in the face of Hérode’s
attempts to dissuade her, impatient and angry at the delays, and ultimately
ordering the execution herself. |
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Salomé’s monologue to the head of the Baptist may look at
first sight similar to the other long speeches of the play: Salomé’s speeches
of love/contempt to Iokanaan, Hérode’s attempts to make Salomé change her
request. These, though also unbroken paragraphs (up to 35 lines in Aquien’s
edition), were however characterised by their static nature: they are
enumerations of images and examples that intensify as the speech progresses,
or rather accumulates, but only to hammer home a single point in each speech
(or, in the case of Salomé’s speeches of love/contempt to Iokanaan, to switch
abruptly from one extreme to the other). In contrast, the continuity of the
single prose paragraph of the final monologue hides its fluid but progressive
structure, the articulations of an ongoing process, which my lineation and
sections are intended to clarify.[55]
With one exception it treats each sentence as a separate line. The obvious
musical side characteristic of the play as a whole (Wilde evokes in De
Profundis ‘the refrains whose recurring motifs make Salomé
so like a piece of music and bind it together as a ballad’)[56]
should not let us be hypnotised into not noticing change, progression and
abrupt changes of direction – which are possible, of course, in a
ballad as well. When a phrase is picked up again, as happens frequently here,
its sense is changed by the new context and it is usually varied in some way. |
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IA Ah!
tu n’as pas voulu me laisser baiser ta bouche, Iokanaan. |
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Eh bien! je la baiserai maintenant. |
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Je la mordrai avec mes dents comme on
mord un fruit mûr. |
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Oui, je baiserai ta bouche, Iokanaan. |
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Je te l’ai dit, n’est-ce pas? je te l’ai
dit. |
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Eh bien! je la baiserai maintenant… |
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IB Mais
pourquoi ne me regardes-tu pas, Iokanaan? |
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Tes yeux qui étaient si terribles, qui
étaient si pleins de colère et de mépris, ils sont fermés maintenant. |
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Pourquoi sont-ils fermés? |
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Ouvre tes yeux! |
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Soulève tes paupières, Iokanaan. |
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Pourquoi ne me regardes-tu pas? |
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As-tu peur de moi, Iokanaan, que tu ne
veux pas me regarder?….. |
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Et ta langue qui était comme un serpent
rouge dardant des poisons, elle ne remue plus, elle ne dit rien maintenant,
Iokanaan, cette vipère rouge qui a vomi son venin sur moi. |
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C’est étrange, n’est-ce pas? |
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Comment se fait-il que la vipère rouge
ne remue plus?….. |
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IC Tu
n’as pas voulu de moi, Iokanaan. |
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Tu m’as rejetée. |
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Tu m’as dit des choses infâmes. |
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Tu m’as traitée comme une courtisane,
comme une prostituée, moi, Salomé, fille d’Hérodias, princesse de Judée! |
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Eh bien, Iokanaan, moi je vis encore,
mais toi tu es mort et ta tête m’appartient. |
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Je puis en faire ce que je veux. |
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Je puis la jeter aux chiens et aux
oiseaux de l’air. |
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Ce que laisseront les chiens, les
oiseaux de l’air le mangeront….. |
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IIA Ah!
Iokanaan, Iokanaan, tu as été le seul homme que j’aie aimé. |
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Tous les autres hommes m’inspirent du
dégoût. |
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Mais toi, tu étais beau. |
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Ton corps était une colonne d’ivoire sur
un socle d’argent. |
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C’était un jardin plein de colombes et
de lis d’argent. |
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C’était une tour d’argent ornée de
boucliers d’ivoire. |
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Il n’y avait rien au monde d’aussi blanc
que ton corps. |
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Il n’y avait rien au monde d’aussi noir
que tes cheveux. |
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Dans le monde tout entier il n’y avait
rien d’aussi rouge que ta bouche. |
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Ta voix était un encensoir qui répandait
d’étranges parfums, et quand je te regardais j’entendais une musique étrange! |
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IIB Ah!
pourquoi ne m’as tu pas regardée, Iokanaan? |
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Derrière tes mains et tes blasphèmes tu
as cachée ton visage. |
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Tu as mis sur tes yeux le bandeau de
celui qui veut voir son Dieu. |
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Eh bien, tu l’as vu, ton Dieu, Iokanaan,
mais moi, moi… tu ne m’as jamais vue. |
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Si tu m’avais vue, tu m’aurais aimée. |
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Moi je t’ai vue, Iokanaan, et je t’ai
aimé. |
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Oh! comme je t’ai aimé. |
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Je t’aime encore, Iokanaan. |
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Je n’aime que toi… |
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J’ai soif de ta beauté. |
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J’ai faim de ton corps. |
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Et ni le vin, ni les fruits ne peuvent
apaiser mon désir. |
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IIC Que
ferai-je, Iokanaan, maintenant? |
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Ni les fleuves ni les grandes eaux, ne
pourraient éteindre ma passion. |
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J’étais une Princesse, tu m’as
dédaignée. |
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J’étais une vierge, tu m’as déflorée. |
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J’étais chaste, tu as rempli mes veines
de feu… |
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Ah! Ah! pourquoi ne m’as-tu pas
regardée, Iokanaan? |
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Si tu m’avais regardée, tu m’aurais
aimée. |
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Je sais bien que tu m’aurais aimée, |
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et le mystère de l’amour est plus grand
que le mystère de la mort. |
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Il ne faut regarder que l’amour. |
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[…] |
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III Ah!
j’ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan, j’ai baisé ta bouche. |
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Il y avait une âcre saveur sur tes
lèvres. |
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Était-ce la saveur du sang?… |
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Mais peut-être, est-ce la saveur de
l’amour. |
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On dit que l’amour a une âcre saveur… |
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Mais qu’importe? Qu’importe? |
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J’ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan, j’ai
baisé ta bouche.[57] |
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Overall the monologue can be divided into two sections (I
and II), each made up of three subsections and each culminating in two
crucial lines, followed by a coda (III) formed by the resumption of the
monologue after Salomé has kissed Iokanaan’s mouth. The tripartite internal
structure of the two main sections forms a final echo of the triple
patterning insistent throughout the play. The first section displays a purely
negative attitude to Iokanaan: Salomé expresses first her confidence that she
is about to achieve her revenge (IA), gloats vindictively on his impotence
(IB), then contrasts his past humiliation of her with her present power (IC).
Verbal repetition and punctuation mark out these subdivisions: the first
sentence of each subsection ends with the name of the apostrophised Iokanaan;
the first and third subsections frame the second by both beginning with the
phrase: “Tu n’as pas voulu […]”; each subsection is closed by suspension
points (three in current editions, but five in the case of IB and IC in the
original edition). Within each subsection a pair of contrasting tenses[58]
serves to reinforce the tensions that exist within it, and the development of
these pairs of tenses reinforces the gradual change of tone from one
subsection to the next.[59]
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Subsection IA is dominated by the tension between the
perfect (Iokanaan’s refusal, her prediction) and the future: as it did
towards the end of her first confrontation with Iokanaan where it was
repeated five times (‘Je baiserai ta bouche, Iokanaan’ (pp. 87, 87, 89, 91)),
the simple future expresses her total
confidence, and recalls her juvenile impatience and assertiveness in the face
of refusal, as if nothing could stop her. She repeats the same phrase she had
used then (p. 87): ‘Je baiserai ta bouche, Iokanaan’, framed with the
repeated: ‘Eh bien! je la baiserai maintenant’: she will kiss it not at some
indefinite moment (as the phrase had implied earlier), but as soon as she has
finished speaking (and as it did earlier, the translation here falls back on
the all-purpose ‘I will’). But the slide from ‘baiserai’ to ‘mordrai’ and the
needling repetition of ‘je te l’ai dit’ (‘I told you so’ rather than the ‘I
said it’ of Douglas/Wilde) introduces a streak of viciousness into this
moment of revenge, which unfolds itself in the second subsection (IB) in its
contrast between the past power of his eyes and tongue and their present
impotence. The dominant tenses in this second subsection shift to a contrast
between imperfect and present: if the perfect tenses in (IA) referred to the
moments of his refusal and her prediction, the tenses here refer to states:
he was powerful and showed his power, now he can do nothing. The ironic questions: ‘Mais pourquoi ne me
regardes-tu pas, Iokanaan?’ (repeated), ‘Pourquoi sont-ils fermés?’,
‘As-tu peur de moi, Iokanaan?’, and the imperative which orders him to do
what he cannot, both colour this subsection with sarcasm. But there is
perhaps an implicit frustration here which will lead to the intensification
of viciousness in the third subsection: in a sense she needs his eyes to see
her victory,[60]
needs his tongue to acknowledge her triumph, and the unseeing, immobile head
on one level constitutes an impassive defiance of her authoritative
imperatives, a defiance which intensifies rather than satisfies her thirst
for revenge. Thus the third subsection (IC) represents an ineluctable
escalation in her negative emotions towards Iokanaan: the contrast here is
between the perfect: his definitive rejection and humiliation of her, and the
present: his helplessness (he is no more than a thing) set against her life
and power: the phrase: ‘ta tête m’appartient’ recalls her final phrase to the
Page as she told him to order the soldiers to bring ‘ce que je demande, ce
que le tétrarque m’a promis, ce qui m’appartient’ (p. 161). She now evokes
the possibility, not just of humiliating him, but of a physical degradation
of the head that can adequately counterbalance his verbal vilifictation of
her (‘Tu m’as traitée comme une courtisane, comme une prostituée’). |
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This escalation, as she slides into the future tense,
envisaging (‘laisseront’, mangeront’) what lies in her power (the repeated
‘je puis’) prompts an abrupt change of direction in the monologue. After
progressing from revenge (IA) through vindictive sarcasm (IB) to an outburst
of power (IC), from the direct opening through two subsections whose detail
gives an edge to the negative emotion (the qualification of the eyes and the
tongue, the specifying of his insults and her possible defilement of the
head), there comes a simple exclamation in the perfect. The change in
direction is underlined by the fact that the apostrophe to Iokanaan now
begins, rather than closes, the initial line of the subsection, and is
repeated.[61]
Descent into an extreme of vindictiveness has lead to a sudden moment of
realisation. As Katharine Worth notes, ‘the savagery effects a kind of
catharsis.’[62] |
|
If we are looking for a theatrical parallel, there is one
in Racine’s Phèdre when Phèdre, learning from Thésée of Hippolyte’s
love for Aricie at the moment when she was about to try to save Hippolyte
from her husband’s anger, is plunged into a ‘jalouse rage’ (IV, vi, 1258)
that leads her to declare: ‘Le crime de la sœur passe celui des frères’
(1262), and to exclaim: ‘Il faut perdre Aricie’ (1259), before abruptly
standing back from her jealousy, which is spiralling out of control, to say:
‘Que fais-je?’ (1264), and to realise that her love for her step-son was
about to make her attempt to destroy the innocent object of Hippolyte’s love,
to realise the extent of her criminal intent: ‘Mes homicides mains, promptes
à me venger, / Dans le sang innocent brûlent de se plonger’ (1271-2). Phèdre
at this point is no longer addressing Œnone (she is seemingly unaware of her
presence until her nurse’s interruption some thirty lines later, l. 1295) as
she swings into a morbid abyss of guilt and self-accusation: the only person
she is aware of is Minos, whom she apostrophises (ll. 1285-1290). Similarly
the presence of Iokanaan is more real to Salomé than that of Hérode or her
mother. From the moment of Iokanaan’s rejection, Salomé’s obsession to kiss
the mouth and remorseless pursuit of revenge had as it were to blocked out
her original desire. Her visualisation of the degradation of his physical
head – the head that is before her – leads her suddenly to recapture that
initial moment of desire. |
|
The second, positive section of Salomé’s monologue
constitutes a complete reassessment of her attitude to Iokanaan. But it is
not the simple reversal of a previous position, as were the reversals in her
earlier speeches to the live Iokanaan, when his rejections made her switch
abruptly from declarations of love to assertions of detestation / loathing.
The second section has the same shifts of tone and sense of progression that
characterised the first section of the monologue. |
|
The first two lines form the transition: the perfect
tenses (indicative and subjunctive) of the first line (‘Ah! Iokanaan,
Iokanaan, tu as été le seul homme que j'aie aimé’) contrast with the present
tense of the second (‘Tous les autres hommes m'inspirent du dégout’),
underlining in advance the definitive loss that hangs over all section II
until its final lines. ‘Tu étais’ would have been less absolute (a
distinction impossible to capture in English, but the translation here (‘Thou
wert the man that I loved alone among men!’) is not merely awkward in its use
of “thou” but inappropriate: “wert” in the AV is always subjunctive, “wast”
is the correct form needed).[63] |
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This first subsection (IIA) is one of astonished
admiration, reprising the three aspects of Iokanaan that she praised in her
speeches to him during their first confrontation: body, hair, mouth, with the
same colours (white, black, red),[64]
but now adding a fourth (voice). She
evokes them moreover not with the original imagery but with new
images, using repeated imperfects (his beauty, her response), as she is
absorbed in rapt contemplation of an unchanging, timeless moment. The
beginning of the second subsection (IIB), again marked by the use of
Iokanaan’s name at the end of the sentence, reprises the opening line of IB,
but changing the tenses: ‘Mais pourquoi ne me regardes-tu pas, Iokanaan?’
becomes ‘Ah! pourquoi ne m’as tu pas regardée, Iokanaan?’ Instead of the
mocking ‘pourquoi’ and ironic questions of subsection IB, and its
characterisation of his eyes in terms of anger and contempt, the tone is now
one of regret, then of achievement: initially regret at Iokanaan’s mistake
(hiding his face, covering his eyes, seeing his God but not her), then her
achievement (seeing him, loving him). Again there is a clear contrast of tenses:
the perfect expresses his error and
her contrasting achievement, the desperate series of presents stresses the
continuity and survival of her love as she switches in successive lines from
‘Oh! comme je t’ai aimé’ to the assertion: ‘Je t’aime encore, Iokanaan.’ |
|
One line of IIB stands out with two different tenses: the
pluperfect and past conditional of: ‘Si tu m’avais vue, tu m’aurais aimée’.
These encapsulate what she nows sees as what might have been, and anticipate
the disarray of the following subsection (IIC), which shifts the emphasis to
the irrevocability of her loss. In this final subsection of II, every tense
used so far reappears, as if to underline her emotional chaos: future then
conditional to sum up her disarray, a triple series of imperfect and perfect
to sum up what he has done, initially from a negative point of view
(disdain), finally (but ambiguously) positively (the passion he has aroused
in her). Blame shifts into gratitude, but we are left uncertain as to which
way we should interpret the emotional ‘defloration’, as something real or
self-deluding.[65]
The irrevocability of the perfects is reinforced by the helplessness embodied
in the conditional and past conditional: nothing can be done about it,[66]
the only possibility of love lies in
the might-have-been. Salomé here picks up two separate lines of IIB,
reinforcing them with an extra initial ‘Ah! and ‘Je sais bien que […]’: |
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Ah! Ah! pourquoi ne m’as-tu pas
regardée, Iokanaan? |
|
Si tu m’avais regardée, tu m’aurais
aimée. |
|
Je sais bien que tu m’aurais aimée [.] |
|
As it did at the close of the first section, the
intensification of emotion (here anguish rather than vindictiveness) leads to
a sudden change: |
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et le mystère de l’amour est plus grand
que le mystère de la mort. |
|
Il ne faut regarder que l’amour. |
|
The emphasis on love (‘l’amour’ twice repeated in
successive lines) and the present tense suggest a sudden release from the
tension and anguish that had built up throughout section II, which opened
with the realisation of her past love and progressed through ecstatic
admiration through regret, and an assrtion of the continuity of her love (‘Je
t’aime encore, Iokanaan’), to an insistence on what might have been. The
moment before the kiss thus shifts to the present and what is, and can
be read as a rejection of reality (the death of Iokanaan, the lost
opportunity), now overcome by a love that is located now purely in the
imagination. The final line before the kiss (unaccountably absent from the
Douglas/Wilde translation,[67]
although clearly awkward to translate) may seem rather lame, but it embodies
her final resolve, her conscious choice of love over death, with the key word
‘regarder’. Again one can see a parallel with Phèdre, IV, vi. Phèdre
is absorbed in grief and self-accusation when Œnone intervenes to comfort her
with the trite ‘on ne peut vaincre sa destinée’ (1297) and the weak argument
that ‘everyone does it’: even the gods have sometimes ‘brûlé […] de feux
illégitimes’ (1306)). Phèdre is
spurred by this intervention to dismiss her nurse and accept control of her
life: ‘Va, laisse-moi le soin de mon sort déplorable’ (1318). Awareness is
followed by decision: Salomé’s reassessment of her relationship to Iokanaan
has likewise led to a definitive establishment of her priorities.[68] |
|
After the kiss, the coda (III) is framed by two identical
lines in which the future tenses of IA: ‘je baiserai ta bouche, Iokanaan,’
become perfect: ‘J’ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan, j’ai baisé ta bouche.’ It is
easy to see, after the development of section II, that the achievement
embodied in the perfect tense is not simply that of revenge. She has done
what she has wanted, and what she said she would, but has also in the course
of so doing made a discovery, and this is as important as the achieved
ambition. She was initially, as Donohoe notes, ‘a protagonist with a critical
lack of self-knowledge’.[69]
She now attains, albeit uncertainly, that final moment of awareness (anagnorisis)
essential for the tragic protagonist. If, as Donohoe notes, the first
confrontation with Iokanaan was a rapid sexual awakening where the
‘self-knowledge’ attained was merely ‘knowledge of physical passion, of
bodily desire’ rather than ‘wisdom’,[70]
here she moves beyond the self-centredness of her desire then
(‘masturbatory’, says Donohoe) to an awareness of (lost) potential
reciprocity. The bitter taste that was on Iokanaan’s lips (‘Il y avait
[…]’) gives way to two verbs in the present: ‘Mais peut-être, est-ce
la saveur de l’amour. On dit que
l’amour a une âcre saveur…’ (My emphasis. The Douglas/Wilde
translation unaccountably puts the first in the past: ‘perchance it was
the taste of love’). ‘Perhaps that is what love tastes like.’ But these
‘reflections on the nature of love’[71]
are unresolvable. Salomé knows she cannot know it fully, hence the repeated
‘qu’importe?’: the only remaining but more limited certainty for her is the
kiss that she has achieved. This is perhaps now not so much ‘the ineffable
pleasure of being granted her fondest desire’ that Donhoe notes;[72]
it is not just the achievement of finally enjoying the kiss denied by
the prophet while he lived, not just self-assertion;[73]
her emotions are now coloured by the regret of section II, by an awareness of
love as a priority, but also of its problems and its limitations, and of her
definitive loss. The ray of moonlight[74]
that falls on her at this point fulfils several functions. It underlines this
key moment of achievement; at the same time it recalls the opening of the
play and the dialogue of the Page and Narraboth that drew a parallel between
Salomé and the moon, seen as a ‘femme morte’ who ‘cherche des morts’; it
recalls the way that the moon remains ambiguous, differently interpreted by
all the characters; and dramatically, it calls the attention of the departing
Hérode to Salomé and prompts him to reassert male authority and re-establish
order with his command that she be killed: ‘Tuez cette femme’: for that is
what she has become (whereas she was “ta fille”, Hérodias’s daughter, on the previous page).[75] |
|
Such a view may not resolve all ambiguities of character or play – which, as a Symbolist work, leaves much open; as Quigley remarks, the play invites us ‘to ponder what Salomé exactly she sees when she looks at Jokanaan.’[76] But arguably we can see how its significance emerges from its structure, how it differs from the other long speeches of the play, and how it functions dramatically as the resolution of what has preceded. |
