Salome is a representative work of Oscar Wilde. It shows strong irrationalism and body worship, and it is a masterpiece that reflects aestheticism at present and forever.
In Salome, Salome offered to have John's head because of her inner passion, her personal selfish desire and her crazy pursuit of love and beauty. Therefore, the image of Salome originally came from the Bible and was recreated by Wilde according to the aesthetic literary concept. He changed Salome, a passive murderer, into a self-conscious woman who actively seeks love, dares to pursue truth, dares to resist male authority. Although she contains a lot of aestheticism information, and although she has abnormal and paranoid psychology of "reconciling decadent tendency with wild hedonism and pursuing the beauty of sensory enjoyment and spiritual value", this fleshy and passionate image has attracted the favor of many artists.
Salome, who just appeared, is young and beautiful, and she is still a pure and holy girl. In the court life at that time, there were countless suitors, among them, the followers of inferior people, soldiers, and even the dissolute stepfather Herod also had a love affair with her. And she has long been tired of everything in the palace and has no feelings for these suitors. In order to avoid the greedy eyes of her father, she compares herself with the bright moon alone. "Look at the moon. She is like a small coin, and you will think that she is a silver flower. The moon is cold and quiet. I dare say that she is a virgin and has the beauty of a virgin. Yes, she is a virgin. She will never spoil herself. She will never willingly commit herself to those smelly men like other fairies. " It can be seen that her long-term loneliness in her heart made her desire depressed for a long time because she couldn't find a satisfactory man. When she heard John's voice in the dungeon, she was deeply moved at once. When she saw John's gaunt and pale body, she was agitated and fell in love with him at once. When John was not afraid of power and insisted on accusing the queen and Herod of incest, that kind of self-love temperament immediately made Salome have a desire for possession. The colder and firmer John's refusal, the stronger her desire. This psychological change is also reflected in Freud's psychology: "Psychoanalysis calls these love instincts sexual instincts and possession according to their origin." Finally, Salome's request was repeatedly rejected, and her love for John turned into hate, preferring to die and get a kiss from John. That is to say, when the original desire develops infinitely or is blocked by extreme depression, it inevitably goes to the other extreme. The pure maiden at the beginning has now been completely swallowed up by the flames of desire and revenge. Salome took the form of complete destruction to the one she couldn't get.
The incestuous love between Salome's biological mother and Herod, coupled with the image of Herod as a dissolute autocratic monarch, has a great influence on Salome's psychology. The mother remarried and her stepfather was dissolute, which easily made her feel loved by looking for an ideal "father" character in her heart. There is a proper term in psychology called Oedipuscomplex. Girls' psychology is just the opposite, and they regard their mother as an obstacle, which is what we usually call the Electracomplex. It is precisely because of this psychology that Salome immediately fell in love with John, and this father-loving complex played a very important role. The loss of her father's care and love in her early years, coupled with her extravagant and incestuous stepfather, compared with John's righteous words and the quality of self-love, the latter made Salome instantly find the kind of love she was searching for, and made her feel that John was the one she wanted to love. When she just got hope, John's rejection made her feel desperate. In the case of sadness and joy, she was unwilling to give up this hard-won love, preferring to have him completely at the cost of death, so as to satisfy her heart's desire.
In Salome's eyes, there is only John, and John is the key to Salome. It was not his existence that affected Salome's fate, but Salome broke John's faith. At the very least, Salome got what she wanted most-kissing John. The prophet John did not believe in this beautiful existence in front of him, but believed in those unrealized nihilistic beliefs. His faith didn't stop him from going to prison, let alone keeping him from death or coming back from the dead, so what did the "prophet" "know"?
Compared with John, Salome dares to face up to her feelings. Salome fell in love with John and compared John with her favorite "moonlight". She told herself to kiss John and used the word "must". Although Salome is a princess, she did not use the privilege of a princess to ask for anything, but won her wish by dancing for the king. Salome's love for John is pure, because she only has a trivial wish-to kiss John. If it is a sin, then she can ask for more-Herod promised her anything she wanted. Herod had an ulterior desire for Salome, so he obeyed her, which led to John's death. Salome itself has no sin, and those men who are eager for sin, such as Herod, are the symbols of real sin.
Oscar Wilde pointed out that art aims at pursuing beauty, and beauty exists beyond all reality. He thinks all art is useless, so he strongly opposes using moral standards to measure the value of works of art. "He said, art for art's sake, you have everything you need, and he emphasized that beauty is super-utilitarian, subjective and enjoyable. This kind of beauty is transcendental beauty, sublime beauty, ethereal beauty and mysterious beauty. The happiness produced by this kind of beauty is not simply the happiness in the sense of senses, but the joy of being free from life, which is the longing for the paradise of beauty and the joy of being immersed in it. " The sharp conflict between soul and flesh revealed in Salome embodies Wilde's artistic ideas. The hero's view of love in Salome is inevitably related to Wilde himself and the literary trend of thought of the author's time, and it is also an important factor affecting his creation. It can be said that the aestheticism movement has given Wilde great creative inspiration and thus gave birth to the most influential and representative aestheticism work Salome in history.
in order to realize the artistic beauty of this artistic image, the writer must put aside the social reality and moral influence and create it according to the principle of artistic independence. Salome's image of "pure beauty" is different from the traditional image of beauty, because the traditional image of beauty, especially in novels, often forms beauty based on moral beauty, or beauty based on goodness. From Jane Eyre created by Charlotte Brontexq to Tess created by Hardy in Tess of the D 'Urbervilles, all of them contain descriptions of good characters and highlight their "beauty", which is exactly the element abandoned by Wilde's aesthetic ideal. According to Wilde's creative principle, Salome is obviously an "artistic" person, not a "moral" person. In order to enhance her artistry, Wilde used extreme means (or unique methods) to deal with it. It can even be said that her beauty is like the beauty in sculpture and painting art, and has a very strong visual aesthetic feeling. The beauty we feel is not because of her passionate pursuit and desire for love, nor because of her kindness and purity (which is different from the beauty based on goodness in the traditional sense), but through Wilde's unique treatment of art, which is a pure artistic beauty. Salome's love for John can be said to be abnormal love and love beyond any bondage, which has nothing to do with ethics and morality. She longed to pursue John's body, hair and lips. When all these efforts failed, she induced Herod to cut off John's head, and then kissed his mouth and blood. This prominence and reinforcement not only did not bring any cruel feeling, but it was this horror that strengthened the beauty expressed by art.
Although Wilde still tries to shape Salome into a so-called aesthetic artistic image, and she also embodies some features of the aesthetic artistic image to a certain extent, the strong moral characteristics of Salome make her gradually break away from the aesthetic image and become a moral image. This is because Salome has always been in a complex moral environment. She was condemned by the prophet and threatened by her stepfather's incest. She was unable and unable to break the inseparable connection with morality. She bears the responsibilities that should not be borne by her, which strengthens the moral characteristics of Salome. The aesthetic artistic image that Wilde wanted to create has gradually evolved into a moral image.
From Oscar Wilde's Salome, we can see that Salome's pursuit of love is sincere and pure, although her pursuit of love is a little radical. Salome's initial wish was single and pure, but she was pushed by evil people in an evil environment, which eventually led to a tragic ending. However, none of this can hide Salome's purity itself. Salome is as pure as her favorite moonlight, and so is her love. Wilde used the art form of drama to give full play to his linguistic advantages, or praised or satirized, and properly combined the fantasy in real life with the beauty of the illusory world in his performance. In fact, Wilde also has his own unique understanding of drama: "Drama can use all means at the same time, which is both pleasing to the ear and pleasing to the eye;" Form and color, tone and appearance, words and agile movements, and concentrated living reality that can be seen by the naked eye, drama can be used freely to make them obey. " In Wilde's view, "drama, which is the most objective art form, has become an expression of personal feelings like lyrics and sonnets in my hands, with a wider scope and richer characters." Wilde's drama creation is the practice and proof of this artistic proposition.
Wilde's aestheticism puts special emphasis on the art of lying, that is, telling beautiful things that are not true. Salome is based on the prototype of the Bible, and he opposes realistic imitation. As he said in the preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray, "the hatred of realism in the 19th century is like the rage of Caleb who sees his face in the mirror". It is Wilde's natural choice to transplant the "beautiful but unreal" story in the Bible into aestheticism works of art. Of course, Wilde made some bold changes, but this did not affect Wilde's artistic proposition in the least. Wilde boldly used artistic techniques such as imagination and symbolism to jointly improve the realization of aestheticism in Salome.