"Herode. Qu'est-ce que cela me fait qu'elle danse ou non? Cela ne me fait rien. Je suis heureux ce soir. Je suis très heureux. Jamais je n'ai été si heureux.
Le premier soldat. Il a l'air sombre, le tétrarque. N'est-ce pas qu'il a l'air sombre?
Le second soldat. Il a l'air sombre."
The effect of the play is won by the cumulative weight of these short contradictory sentences, that fall like continual drops of water on a stone, never argue, are never loud enough to be quarrelsome, and sometimes amuse themselves by reflecting, as if in a box of mirrors, a single object in a hundred ways. The moon is translated into many moods. For the page of Herodias she is a dead woman coming from the tomb to look for dead men. Salomé's lover sees her as a little dancing princess, with yellow veil and silver feet. For Salomé she is a little piece of money, cold, chaste, a virgin. The page of Herodias sees her again as a dead woman, covering herself with a winding-sheet, and when the young Syrian dies, laments that, knowing she was seeking a dead man, he had not hidden his friend in a cavern where she could not see him. Herod finds her an hysterical woman seeking lovers everywhere, naked, and refusing to be veiled by the clouds. Herodias finds that the moon resembles the moon, and that is all. Then in the eyes of Herod she becomes red in accordance with the prophecy, and Herodias replies, jeering, "And the Kings of the Earth have fear." And finally, when Salomé is speaking to the head, when all is over but her death, Herod cries aloud that the moon should be put out with the torches and the stars, because he begins to be afraid.
The drama, reflected in these images of the moon that show the changing colours of the minds that look at her, is thrown inward, and must be read between the lines. Rather than describe the strength of an emotion, or show it in immediate action, Wilde shows what it compels its possessor to disregard. Salomé answers the question of the young Syrian with irrelevant remarks, because she is obsessed by the mole's eyes of her stepfather. When Iokanaan speaks, and the young Syrian suggests that she should go into the garden in her litter, she replies simply, "Il dit des choses monstrueuses à propos de ma mère, n'est-ce pas?" When he kills himself, on account of her words to the prophet, and falls before her feet, she does not see him. The page laments, and a soldier tells her of what has happened before her eyes:—
"Le premier soldat. Princesse, le jeune capitaine vient de se tuer.
Salomé. Laisse-moi baiser ta bouche, Iokanaan."
This is potential as opposed to kinetic drama, and expresses itself not in action, but in being unmoved by action. It is an expression of the aspiration towards purely potential speech characteristic of the French symbolists, and of all who seek "a literature in which the visible world is no longer a reality, and the unseen world no longer a dream." It was, perhaps, the fear that such drama of the mind would be impossible on the stage that made Maeterlinck write as sub-title to a book of plays, "Little Dramas for Marionettes." For the speech maps out by avoidance what is really said, and whereas some plays would lose little by being acted in dumb show, these appeal less to the eye than to the ear.
In writing Salomé, however, Wilde did not neglect the wonderful visual sense of the theatre that was, later, to suggest to him the appearance on the stage of Jack in mourning for his non-existent brother. He was able to see the play from the point of view of the audience, and refused no means of intensifying its effect. When Salomé is leaning over the cistern, listening for the death of Iokanaan, he does not allow the executioner to come up with the head. The man would have shared the attention of the audience, and made the head a piece of meat. Instead: "Un grand bras noir, le bras du bourreau, sort de la citerne apportant sur un bouclier d'argent la tête d'Iokanaan. Salomé la saisit. Hérode se cache le visage avec son manteau. Hérodias sourit et s'évente. Les Nazaréens s'agenouillent et commencent à prier." The head, like a dramatic moment, isolated upon the stage, compels a group of characteristic actions. Its appearance is a significant speech. The strength of the emotion in the play blinds many to the beauty without which it would be worthless. Salomé's lust, wreaking itself on dead lips because it was denied them living, is, indeed, a powerful demon to subdue to the service of beauty. And the prurient, who are most intimately moved by it, make up most of those who cannot see beyond it. But this emotion is but part of a larger harmony, which, though still more powerful, is not allowed to confuse the delicate, careful fingering of the artist. Control is never lost, and, when the play is done, when we return to it in our waking dreams, we return to that elevation only given by the beautiful, undisturbed by the vividness, the clearness with which we realise the motive of passion playing its part in that deeper motive of doom, that fills the room in which we read, or the theatre in which we listen, with the beating of the wings of the angel of death.
VIII
DISASTER