Christa Giles

98
Jokanaan, ˝and thou didst fill my veins with fire.˝ 294 It is
interesting that Mallarmé (who rejects love and praises
sterility in his poetry) presents us in his poem Hérodiade
(1867) (which Des Esseintes would read aloud before
Moreau’s portrait of Salomé) with a combination of ice and
snow, suggestive of sterility and destructive sexuality in a
way which reminds us of Wilde’s Salomé:
I love the awe of being virgin and I wish to
live amid the dread my hair fills me with, so
that at night, alone in my bed, inviolate
reptile, I may feel in my unavailing flesh the
cold sparkle of your pale light, you who die,
you who burn with chastity, night aglow with
ice and cruel snow. 295
For Wilde not only has Herodias accuse Herod of sterility;
he similarly juxtaposes hot and cold, snow with fire in the
passage prior to Salomé’s dance:
The breath of the wind of its wings is terrible.
It is a chill wind. Nay, but it is not cold, it is
hot. I am choking. Pour water on my hands.
Give me snow to eat. Loosen my mantle.
Quick, quick! Loosen my mantle. Nay, but
leave it. It is my garland that hurts me, my
garland of roses. The flowers are like fire.
They have burned my forehead. 296