Christa Giles

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being suspended between two worlds without demanding
any logical comprehension. ˝True music,˝ wrote Baudelaire
in his essay on Richard Wagner and Tannhauser,
suggests analogous ideas in different
minds…what would be surprising would be
to find that sound could not suggest colour,
that colours could not evoke the idea of
melody; and that sound and colour were
unsuitable for the translation of ideas; things
have always been expressed by reciprocal
analogy… 270
Like the episode of the liqueur casks in A rebours in which
Des Esseintes listens ˝to the taste of music,˝ 271 Wilde’s
Salomé evinces an interest in Baudelaire’s theory of
correspondences.
The subject matter of Wilde’s Salomé was extremely
popular among the decadents, but it was almost certainly
Huysmans’ description of Moreau’s painting which most
influenced Wilde. Indeed Wilde intended that Moreau
should do the illustrations for the play rather than
Beardsley. In Salomé ˝L’homme est possedé de la femme, la
femme possedée du diable,˝ 272 and Wilde presents Salomé
as a kind of symbol onto whom each man projects his own
secret fears and desires. Thus, Herodias’ page sees the
moon (which is continuously identified with Salomé and