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A review by blueyorkie
Salomé by Oscar Wilde, Pascal Aquien
5.0
Salome is the daughter of Herodiade, Herod's new wife, Galileo's tetrarch. She's beautiful; she dances well, and she charms. In a shaft well kept, she hears the voice of Iokanaan, imprisoned because he says very disgusting things. Some say he's the messiah. Salome wants to see him. And despite the soldiers' reluctance, despite the threats of Iokanaan himself, despite the horrors that he prophesies and which everyone says concern Herodiade, the mother of Salome, she wants to see him, talk to him, kiss him. He refuses. Herod and Herodiade then arrive. Herod devours his daughter-in-law with his eyes, which his wife has blamed him since. He then begs her to dance for him at any price.
The biblical episode is exceptionally well known. But Oscar Wilde concealed the identity of the prophet St. John the Baptist by giving him his Hebrew name. Therefore, The Catholic tradition is carefully distant, and the character appears almost ridiculous, disturbing, enlightened, and out of the world. But what surprised me most was the character of Salome, which surprisingly worked. We know Herod's lubricity; we see the cruelty of Herodiade, who wished for the prophet's death. It is even assumed that it is to go in the direction of his mother, and Salome will ask for his head. Now, she becomes manipulative. She tries to seduce the prophet, to subjugate him by charm as by insults, and it is because he refuses her kiss that condemns him. Finally, on her own, she decides to ask for the head of Jean-Baptiste in a relentless scene where Herod repeatedly lays all the world's riches at Salome's feet. Begging her to ask for something else, she replies, laconic and nagging: "I want the head of Iokanaan." Where she could still be the unwitting object of so much passion, Oscar Wilde makes her a femme fatale and dangerous of her own free will.
The biblical episode is exceptionally well known. But Oscar Wilde concealed the identity of the prophet St. John the Baptist by giving him his Hebrew name. Therefore, The Catholic tradition is carefully distant, and the character appears almost ridiculous, disturbing, enlightened, and out of the world. But what surprised me most was the character of Salome, which surprisingly worked. We know Herod's lubricity; we see the cruelty of Herodiade, who wished for the prophet's death. It is even assumed that it is to go in the direction of his mother, and Salome will ask for his head. Now, she becomes manipulative. She tries to seduce the prophet, to subjugate him by charm as by insults, and it is because he refuses her kiss that condemns him. Finally, on her own, she decides to ask for the head of Jean-Baptiste in a relentless scene where Herod repeatedly lays all the world's riches at Salome's feet. Begging her to ask for something else, she replies, laconic and nagging: "I want the head of Iokanaan." Where she could still be the unwitting object of so much passion, Oscar Wilde makes her a femme fatale and dangerous of her own free will.