Wilde's "Salome" is based on a biblical story, and the narrative focus of the original story is completely different from Wilde's. The purpose of the Bible story is to convey such a message to people: the prophet John, the fearless and holy preacher, the leader and baptizer of Christ, was killed by the vicious Queen Herodias because he offended Queen Herodias. The woman was mutilated to death. Herodias took advantage of her husband's love for her daughter and used Salome as a blackmail tool--if John was not executed, his daughter would not be allowed to dance. Perhaps Salome's dance is too seductive - has anyone ever witnessed Salome's dance of seven veils? It was supposed to be a kind of "striptease", and King Herod had to agree to execute the great prophet. From the narrative of the Bible, what we read is a story about the sacrifice of the preacher. John died of the resentment of Herodias and the lust of King Herod. As for Salome, her faint beauty behind the seven veils The carcass just makes this tragic story more colorful. The beautiful Salome really had nothing to do with John's death.
John’s story did not change until the 19th century. The German poet Heine reinterpreted Queen Herodias' motive for killing John. In his poem "Atta Troll" (1841), he gave Herodias a secret love for the prophet John. The woman finally held John's dead and cold head and kissed it passionately. It was a fashion during the Romantic period to eroticize a serious religious story. More than thirty years later, the French romantic painter Gustave Moreau turned his attention to the young Salome. Moreau's magnificent Salome series of paintings were exhibited at the Salon in Paris in 1876 and the Paris World's Fair in 1878, which fascinated countless literati and poets - Salome's melancholy face and coquettish dancing. Her breasts trembled up and down, and the dangling necklace lightly rubbed her hardened nipples; diamonds sparkled on her moist skin, like bunches of flames. Salome's body, looming behind the seven veils, has now finally become the most evocative part of the story. Moreau provides people with a vivid visual style of Salome, just waiting for the visitor to inject new soul into this beautiful body. Thus, Oscar Wilde's "Salome" appeared.
Judging from the relationship between the characters in the play, Wilde only made two changes: one is to make Salome fall in love with the prophet, and the other is to add a character, the captain of the guard, and make him fall in love with Salome. Lome. But these two changes made this short play filled with too much love and death: the captain of the guard and Herod loved Salome, Salome loved John, and John loved God; the captain of the guard died of despair, and John Salome died of extreme love, and Salome died of punishment.
Although Wilde constructed different levels of love in his works, he did not give a richer display of the forms of love at any level. If the audience intends to explore the complexity of human emotions from the multi-faceted erotic relationships of the characters in "Salome", they are destined to be disappointed. To be precise, Wilde only sketched out a sketch of the erotic relationship between the characters in his works. He only told us: the captain of the guard and Herod loved Salome, Salome loved John, and John loved God, but love is in the work. It is more like a concept, and it lacks flesh and blood. Therefore, when several characters finally embraced death because of their respective loves, the audience did not feel too sad because of their endings. In fact, even if "Salome" has a triple death design, it does not make the play even a little bit tragic and heavy because of the "superposition of death" - the suicide of the young Syrian makes people feel a little bit sad. In a funny accident, John's head was chopped off and he completely lost the painful feeling brought by the great sacrifice. However, the death of Salome - the dying girl was still looking at the head in her hands infatuatedly. The picture is too weird.
The characters in "Salome" are silhouettes, and their deaths are just a few shadows falling on the stage. Wilde did not want the character's death to impact the audience's emotions and produce any sensational effect, nor did he want to use the character's death to induce the audience's rationality to think about the mysteries of life. The point of interest in Wilde's creation is not here.
In the work, the young Syrian gazes at the beautiful Salome infatuatedly, and beside him stands the attendant of Herodias. The attendant said something repeatedly: "You are always looking at her. You look too much. It is quite dangerous to look at someone so passionately. Terrible things will eventually happen." This attendant's behavior Lines are repeated over and over, forming a unique rhythm, like a melody that echoes gloomily in the work.
In addition, the moon is a very prominent image in the work. In the eyes of the young Syrian officer, the moon was "like a little princess with a yellow veil, and her feet were white and flawless"; in the eyes of Herodias' attendants, the moonlight was strange, and the moon was "like a dead woman." , reaching out to find her shroud." After that, the moon followed this weird trajectory, becoming more terrifying and crazy in the characters' rhetoric. King Herod said: "She was like a mad lady, a mad woman looking for a lover. She was naked. She was naked. The clouds tried to cover her, but she would not accept it. She hung high in the sky to reveal herself. .
Like a drunken woman, she staggers among the thin clouds..." And John sharply declared: "When that day comes, the sun will be like dark black linen threads, the moon will turn blood red, and all the people in the sky will be like a drunken woman. The stars will fall to the earth like ripe figs..."