‘Subtle Instrument of Music’: Translating the Sound and Appearance of Decadence in Wilde’s Salomé

• Main Author: Erin Dunbar
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2017-11-01
• Series: Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
• Subjects: Wilde (Oscar); Salomé; decadence; aesthetics; French
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/cve/3382
• ISSN: 0220-5610; 2271-6149

Oscar Wilde’s Salomé was an adventure in decadence, decapitation, and the French language. Wilde called the play his ‘first venture to use for art that subtle instrument of music, the French tongue’ (Hart-Davis 331). Its initial performance in England was prohibited and it was not produced on stage until 1896; even then, it opened in Paris and not London. However, Wilde would not be thwarted; he insisted on publication, anyway. In fact, ‘outraged at this philistine censorship of his art, Wilde defiantly published his play in February 1893, bound in ‘Tyrian purple’ wrappers to go with Alfred Douglas’ gilt hair’ (Hoare 73). This endeavor, however, presented another set of problems. English-speaking readers could only gain an accurate comprehension of the text with an equally accurate translation of the original French. After two exhaustive attempts at translation, each by men who knew (and loved) him well, Wilde conceded, it appears, that these were the best possible while working within the constraints of Victorian censorship. Wilde’s personal objections to the translations were not the only issue. In Victorian England the French language, after all, was as unacceptably decadent as the play. In fact, the aesthetic passion in the French language lends itself to the extremism of the play; Salomé would not be Salomé without it. Through writing in French and, ‘In choosing to write his version of Salomé in the form of a play, Wilde rather archly extends the dynamics of the aestheticizing gaze and its struggle for perceptual authority out beyond the canvas of his art’ (Greger 50). The play’s overall concern here is not entirely the notion of passion, but decadence—that is, that fine line between the depraved and the indulgent. Examples of this exist and spring from the multilingual literary environment of Western Europe during the period. Wine, women, beauty, and sex were the bases for the hedonistic lifestyle led by those within the afore-mentioned places and eras, and these are communicated in both voice—or timbre—and meaning. Wilde would add another significant element to this definition through his portrayal of decadence in Salomé: death. Sex and death become symbolic of the ultimate self-indulgent acts as Salomé lusts after Iokanaan’s severed head. These actions alone might be enough to shock and inspire the masses, but Wilde had more in mind. For him, the only language poetic enough to support such excess was French. As it happened, it was also the only culture open enough to receive it on stage, as well. French decadence—the sensuous vocality, the varying connotations taken on in the polyglot literary environment during the period, and the bold outward presentations of said language on stage—rides on both voice and meaning as it interacts with the play’s subject matter, and results in the most depraved and indulgent of productions. The overall issue continued to be translation; the struggles in translating the play in terms of language were mirrored in translating the highly indulgent subject matter—made more so by the original language—for the English stage.