Christa Giles

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beauty, possess the autonomy of art, moving beyond the
realm of good and evil.
There were many versions of Salomé available at the
time. The Bible, Flaubert’s Trois Contes, Renan’s Vie de Jesus,
but it was Heine’s ˝Atta Troll˝ which was Wilde’s main
source. The poem appeared in a French journal for the first
time in 1846 in a French translation by Heine himself. It is
not surprising that ˝Atta Troll˝ should have interested
Wilde. Heine knew Gautier well and followed him in the
separation of art from morality. The poem is satirical but
complex, often illogical and incoherent. Indeed the dream
within the poem, the enigmatic figure of Troll the bear, the
confusion of strange animals, all evoke the sense of a
bizarre vision. Significantly, the action is set in the dark
woods of the Pyrenees. And it is in the nighttime world
that the unconscious lets loose an admixture of historical
and mythological figures. Whores, nymphs, King Arthur,
Shakespeare and many more appear along with the figure of
Herodias (in Heine’s version it is she who is in love with
John the Baptist, and tells Salomé to demand his head) who
throws John the Baptist’s head in the air like a ball. The night
procession is viewed by the narrator Heine in a limbo-like
state between dreaming and consciousness. He sees and is
greeted three times by Herodias, and the next day longs for