Christa Giles

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her, but observes that this desire is futile as his yearning for
dreams, death, and madness which Herodias embodies
cannot be satisfied as she has died long ago.
Given Wilde’s and Huysmans’ interest in the
unconscious and the irrational, it is not surprising that a
poem which reflects these concerns should in part inspire
Salomé. For the figure of Salomé, as we have seen,
symbolises both the narcissistic sterility of art and its
hermeticism as well as the animal, forces of destruction,
and evil. The aura of luxury, of paganism was juxtaposed
implicitly and explicitly with the idea of Christian sin, and
the sense of ambivalence generated through this
juxtaposition greatly enhanced Salomé’s complex
hypnotic power.
Salomé as an image of beauty and sexual
attractiveness is invested with great influence over man.
Rops, who frequently depicted woman as the instrument of
Satan, the repository of evil and vice, had great vogue at
the period. ˝Rops,˝ wrote Les Goncourts in their journal,
Nous parle de cet étonnement que produit
sur lui…l’enharnachement, le façonnage
presque fantastique de la Parisienne actuelle
(. . . ) Il nous parle du moderne qu’il veut faire
d’aprés nature, du caractère qu’il y trouve, de
l’aspect sinistre, presque macabre… 305