Salome by Oscar Wilde (1894): A Review

Title: Salome

Author: Oscar Wilde

Publication Year: 1893 in French / 1894 in English

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Pages: 102

Source: audiobook

Genre: Drama, Historical Fiction, Symbolist Tragedy, Biblical Adaptation

I began Salomé as an audiobook, but within the first few minutes, I realised that listening alone would not be enough. The language was too striking, the imagery too rich, and the lines too insistent on being highlighted.

The audiobook performance [LATW] intensified everything: the desire, religious fervour, political tension, violence, and approaching disaster. The music [Original music by Djivan Gasparyan and Lian Ensemble] accompanying the Dance of the Seven Veils was especially powerful. “Divine” may be an unfortunate word for this particular court, but it is the right one.

Wilde takes a brief biblical episode and turns it into a psychologically intense tragedy. In the Gospels, Herodias’s daughter is unnamed and largely acts according to her mother’s wishes. Wilde gives her a name, a voice, a will, and a dangerous desire of her own. His Salomé is no longer a minor instrument in another woman’s revenge; she becomes the centre of the drama and the person who drives it towards catastrophe.

This does not necessarily make her admirable, but it makes her impossible to ignore.

The play is saturated with symbolism and recurring imagery. The moon, white skin, red lips, blood, jewels, and silver surfaces all accumulate meaning as desire becomes increasingly inseparable from violence and death. Even the repetition in the dialogue feels deliberate and musical, as though the characters are trapped inside their own obsessions and can only speak in circles around them.

Wilde also gives the biblical story greater political, religious, and psychological complexity. Herod’s court becomes a place where political authority, religious prophecy, sexual desire, and fear compete for control. Jokanaan’s absolute religious conviction collides with Salomé’s absolute desire, while Herod attempts to bargain his way out of a promise he should never have made. Everyone wants power over someone else, and almost nobody possesses power over themselves.

There are also flashes of dark humour and grotesque irony within the tragedy. What impressed me most was the strength of the language. Wilde does not simply retell the story; he transforms it into something lyrical, erotic, disturbing, and theatrical. Salomé’s desire is given beauty without being made harmless, and her agency does not protect her from becoming destructive.

It had been a long time since a literary text affected me this strongly. I often find this combination of emotional intensity, intellectual richness, and memorable language in classical literature, and Salomé reminded me why I continue returning to it.