136

  • The Climax, from Salome

  • 1894
  • Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898)
  • Lithograph, Salome: A Tragedy in One Act by Oscar Wilde and Alfred Douglas, Plate 151
  • 27.9 x 21.6 cm., 11 x 8-1/2" sheet
  • Catherine Carter Goebel, Paul A. Anderson Chair in the Arts Purchase, Paul A. Anderson Art History Collection, Augustana College 2009.10

Essay by Larry E. Scott, Professor Emeritus of Scandinavian Studies

But the truly subversive element of the drawing, the element which made Victorian and modern spectators alike uneasy, is the effortless skill by which Beardsley has switched traditional gender roles for both characters. While Salome does wear a beautiful enveloping skirt and an elaborate peacock-feathered headdress traditionally worn by women, her features and posture are anything but feminine. She looms over the hapless Narraboth leering at him and commanding him to do her will. Narraboth-seen fully frontally in contrast to the limited profile view of Salome's face-is as beautiful as Leonardo's John the Baptist. He too wears an elaborate headdress, an elegant sheaf-like dress (with a startling axe-shaped belt and baldric). As Narraboth reels from the forceful overtures of his Princess, he defensively raises his left hand toward-three free-floating black candlesticks! These had quickly become well-known as Aubrey Beardsley's wryly phallic signature: compare it to Whistler's equally famous butterfly-with-stinger. The candlesticks cannot help Narraboth; he is helpless before the force of nature that is Salome. He will release Iokanaan to her and then, quite naturally, perish.

If Beardsley had not allowed us a peep at the unmistakably bony, hairy and knock-kneed legs peeping out from under the inexplicably frayed tunic, we would never dream to consider this character male-gendered at all. Yet that is precisely what Beardsley is doing here. The "perversity" or "decadence" of the drawing (contemporary attributions) lies in Beardsley's unexpected reversal, not merely of gender ATTRIBUTES, but identities as well. The true horror of Salome is the grotesque inversion of sexuality from lust to incest to necrophilia as the thwarted Judean princess-rejected by Iokanaan-enflames the forbidden passions of her stepfather by promising to dance for him if he will grant her a single wish. That desire of course is for the head of the Baptist on a silver charger so that she might finally kiss his lips, captured in The Climax: Salome with the Head of John the Baptist. "Ah! I have kissed thy mouth, Iokanaan, I have kissed thy mouth. There was a bitter taste on thy lips. Was it the taste of blood? Perchance it was the taste of love. They say that love hath a bitter taste. But what matter? What matter? I have kissed thy mouth, Iokanaan, I have kissed thy mouth." Herod's final command-"Kill that woman!"-ends the play on an enigmatic note. Wilde's Salome is a female monster ("femme fatale" writ large indeed!), but she is universally recognized (by her beauty, breeding and skills) as a woman. What is Beardsley's Salome? Perhaps we should not ask.