《莎乐美》中的唯美主义与道德风尚

论文总字数：35649字

摘 要

奥斯卡·王尔德是19世纪最著名且最富争议的作家之一，他的生活以及作品完美地诠释了“唯美主义”这一理论。《莎乐美》是王尔德的一部举足轻重的作品，满含唯美主义的内涵与能量，是唯美主义的代表作。这部独幕剧也将唯美主义理论完整地描绘了出来。国内外学者往往从作者生活经历出发，解读文本，得出一些颇有深度的结论。本文则是从唯美主义与道德风尚的关系着手，从文本与作者两个层面分析《莎乐美》。首先介绍了 “唯美主义”这一理论的兴起及其发展，其次对《莎乐美》这部作品中唯美与道德的关系进行了更深入的研究，由王尔德本人的观点开始，继而引发人们的思考，并探索其观点对现实社会的影响，最后对此结论进行总结概括，并从社会，历史两个更深层次的角度揭露《莎乐美》成为唯美主义代表作的原因。

关键词：奥斯卡·王尔德；《莎乐美》；唯美主义；道德风尚

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

3. The Rising of Aestheticism 3

3.1The development of aestheticism 3

3.2 The embodiment of aestheticism in Salome 5

4. Morality and Aestheticism in Salome 7

4.1 Conflicts between morality and desire 7

4.2 Unity of opposites between morality and aestheticism 8

5. The Value of Wilde’s Aestheticism and Morality 10

5.1 Wilde’s opinions on aestheticism and morality 10

5.2 The revelation to current situation 11

6. Conclusion 13

Works Cited 14

1. Introduction

Oscar Wilde is one of the most famous aesthetes in the 19th century. He advocates the view “art for art’s sake” which put forward by Walter Pater.In fact, he wants to oppose the decadent morality, hypocrisy and dissembling using his own aesthetic theory at the late Victorian time to establish a new ethic full of vitality, freedom and glamour, loftiness and magnificence. He opposites to judge the merits of art by conventional moral criterion, placing great emphasis on individualism that can provoke self-development. Through an approach to create a perfect realm of art and artistic life, he advocates the artists to take a usage of the talented ability of selection and imagination. It makes the world of humanity which trapped in materialism of the industry and commerce sector, possible to find a promising way to subvert the mental states.

For the purpose of this paper, the discussion will be centered on Salome, the representative of aesthetic work by Oscar Wilde. From this perspective analyzing the drama in order to prove his point of view, the paper will reveal the inherent implication that Oscar Wilde who pursues contradictions would like to express, and lead people to think the current value, effect and significance of his aestheticism and morality.

1. Literature Review

Among a host of studies on Oscar Wilde in the west, the research on Salome takes up the main part. Researches about this play started from 1901 to 1950is the early stage of studies on Wilde, during which the focal point is his homosexual scandals and the lawsuits while studies on Salome are rather few. Some of the studies focus on its achievement as a genre of tragedy. As a drama, Salome was prevented performance in Britain for its religion theme and distorted concept of love.

In 1960s, owing to the influence of new criticism, studies on Wilde have a tendency to focus on the text and the artistic forms of his works. Scholars began to take a concentration on Wilde’s works rather than Wilde his own life.

Richard Ellmann is one of the most excellent figures in the circle of study on Oscar Wilde. He believes that Salome is the feature that Wilde is on the passage towards mature in his creation and is making absorption of the assertions raised by Ruskin and Walter Pater (Ellmann 134). He not only focused on the figure of Salome but extended to other figures, such as he points that Herod is also fatal, it is him who leads the death of Salome. These comments further the study of the drama to more than one dimension.

Norbert Kohl is a German Wildean scholar, he once used 18 pages to write his own idea about Wilde, in which he commented the structure of Salome “contains in compressed form of all the elements of the classical five-act tragedy.” He regarded Salome as the essential image of “femme fatale” (Kohl 182).

Because of Salome’s contorted sexual personality, some critics with psychological inspiration take a view of the play as a reflection to Wilde’s own personal psychological experience, and can also easily make a linkage of Salome’s androgynous image with Wilde’s homosexual orientation, that’s why some critics viewed Salome as a projection of Wilde himself.

In the opinion of Jerusha Mc Dormack, Salome is a piece of subversive work in face of British Empire, because Wilde subverts the oppressive power of a colonial regime through employing an authoritative voice or provided some outlooks in the interpretation and analysis on the characterization and thematic values of this play (Mc Dormack 101).

In China, the study of Salome also has gone through several periods from praise to total oblivion. During May Forth Movement, Salome gained its fame from Chinese literary circle for its unconventional theme. In 1915, the prestigious Journal la Jeunesse posted a picture of Oscar Wilde, in which the chief editor Chen Duxiu took Oscar as one of the four most representative writers in modern times along with Ibsen, Turgenev and Maeterlinck. Chen once praised Salome as a work which “depicts death and love with superb vividness”. Thanks to Chen’s introduction, Chinese people started to be familiar with Wilde’s works. Tian Han even recomposed the drama and put it to the stage, which paved the way for China’s modern drama at first time. In his famous article artist and art’s attitude, Tian Han said that “Salome is an amazing work in history but is forbidden by British government, because the content is absolutely against the rule of Holy Bible”. But in France, the drama had taken a new revolution, from this point we can know he magnified the spirit of “freedom, anti-religion, and defiance”, which was a great impact toward China’s traditional thoughts and thus became the strong weapon against the idea of “art for ethics’ sake”. He tried his best to get rid of decadence at that time, and let the audience accept the idea of“aestheticism decadence”. The majority of Chinese scholars at that time mainly took the focus on the study of Salome’s rebellious spirit, and they wanted to encourage the young people to pursue freedom in love and marriage bravely. As one of these scholars Zhou Xiaoyi once commented, Salome, as the image of “anti-modernity”, confronts the task of “anti-feudalism”, which is an open rebellion against Confucian thoughts (Zhou 70). In China’s Cultural Revolution, the study of Salome stopped. However, the rejuvenation of Salome came during the 1980s with Wilde anniversaries. Wilde is one of the most eminent Irish writers, and thus a lot of works have been written about him. However, the available literature shows it’s still in the realm of background introduction and systematic research; especially the theories of Wilde’s aestheticism and his vital work Salome are scarcely combined. The present paper firstly introduces the rising of aestheticism and its embodiment in Salome. After that, it gives an overview of the relation between aestheticism and morality in Salome. Finally, the paper concludes a revelation to modern society via Wilde’s own opinions.

3. The Rising of Aestheticism

3.1The development of aestheticism

Aestheticism is a kind of literary thought belongs to the late 19th century with a short history. Its occurrence is not an occasional, isolated and separated phenomenon but with a historical origin. It is a product produced by the particular society and also has connections with the theory which emphasis the rule of arts and put art at first place. It’s the common fruit that produced by the inhesion and accumulation of culture.

There’s a thing we must make it clear that aestheticism is not a plain literary theory. It often connects with romanticism decadentism, and sentimentalism. But it is no doubt that aestheticism comes from German classic aesthetic.

Immanuel Kant first put forward the idea that later formed the aesthetic movement. Kant made the theoretical basis for the growth of aestheticism. The biggest contribution he made in the aesthetics was that he brought forward the systematic theory of “aesthetic judgement”. In the book Critique of Judgement, he intends to explain his own idea of aestheticism from different aspects. He also has a systematic summary of the former scholars’ study. He claimed that aesthetic feeling is not only about sensitivity experience, but also based on rationality. Human are the only judge who can distinguish beauty from evil (Kant 36). He also asserts that we must meditate beauty without regard for an object’s purpose. In contrast to logical judgement, aesthetic judgement doesn’t involve any concepts; they are based purely on feelings. Under these conditions, a beautiful object is wholly autonomous; we are free to appreciate it, unconstrained by traditional conceptions or our own desire (Kant 35). Kant has made a great contribution to aestheticism and has laid the theoretic basis for aestheticism. But the aestheticism in the 19th century only referred to Kant’s aesthetic theory, but was never applied it to a larger scale.

During the late 19th century,artists believed “art is their only reason for human’s survival, so the artists must shoulder the responsibility, just like aristocrats protected their people in the old days” (Gaunt 5). Wilde once commented like this, at the age of turbulence, only people hide in the pantheon of beauty, can we forget the evil of life and pursue happiness in the secular world (Wilde Works 27). Artists were eager for a spiritual flag to promote their cultural activities, that is, aestheticism.

In England, the representatives were Whistler, Ruskin and Pater. Ruskin emphasizes the importance of religious feelings, which is indivisible from morality and human ethics. He believes that fine art has the social function, such as spiritual revolution, which is unavailable in any other place but in works of art (Ruskin 140). Walter Pater is a real aesthete. He affirms that the actual use of beauty only exists in concrete personal perception instead of abstract concept (Pater 5).

Aesthetic movement only appears in the late of 19th century, but we can find the clues of aestheticism in a host of works. It has made a light for literary and aesthetic liberalism that would develop speedily in Victorian time.

3.2 The embodiment of aestheticism in Salome

The story of Salome can be traced back to the first century A.D.The Gospels of St.Mark and St.Matthew of New Testament are regarded as the earliest version of Salome, but in New Testament, Salome’s name is not mentioned. In 19th century, she became a symbol of aestheticism. Works about Salome are varies, such as painting, music and several literary works. One of the most important works is written by Oscar Wilde, telling the story about a dancing young girl who is driven by her desire which leads her to death at last.

G.W.F.Hegel once said that situation of play is concretization and specialization of the social background. Artist can find impetus to sharply drawn characters only when he turns the specific social background to artistic context.

The story happens in the Palace of Herod. Herod is a machinator like Claudis in Hamlet who killed elder brother for the tetrarch. Herod attempts to take over the throne, yet without any talent to govern the country. He seems like a buffoon who tries to ingratiate himself with Cesar. On the one hand, Cesar’s authority is irresistible, on the other hand, Herod is not willing to his subordinate status, his words and deeds are full of paradox. The drama also corresponds with classical unities—unity of time, the story happens within one night; unity of place, it happens in palace; unity of action, Salome kills Jokanaan to satisfy her own desire. Mr. Wilde is strictly in accordance with classical unities, at the same time, he overtly agrees but covertly opposes classicism. Classical unities were served for feudalism. But in Salome, Herod is a villain, it is Wilde’s subversion against feudalism and classicism, it’s also an aesthetic adventure. He borrows a shell from classism to achieve the goal that aestheticism must worship beauty.

“Look” is also a vital action in Salome. The tragedy is originated from “look”. The person who is being “look” is the figure of beauty. In the drama, those who take the action “look” all pay an expensive price. Salome feels repugnance for Herod’s “look”, but she could do nothing in that awkward and dangerous situation. She is awake but helpless. Salome turns a blind eye to the young Syrian, because he is just one of the admirers. Jokanaan feels extremely uneasy under Salome’s “look” simultaneously with her romantic words. This kind of “look” contains endless desire and makes Jokanaan feels afraid. He tries in vain to call her “daughter of Babylon, daughter of Sodom” (Wilde Salome 94) several times, Jokanaan prefers to go back to the prison rather than listen to Salome’s praise.

In this drama, all the main characters who want to get the “being looked one” will use those whom they want to get avoid of. Salome wants to see Jokanaan so she promises the young Syrian “I will look at thee through the muslin veils, I will look at thee, Narraboth, it may be I will smile at thee.” (Wilde Salome 87). Salome agrees with Herod dancing for him in exchange with Jokanaan’s head. The story is propelled by the action “look”, it’s also a beauty of adventure.

The dance of seven veils is also a dance of death, but Wilde says it simply: “Salome dances the dance of the Seven Veils.”(Wilde Salome 125). If he describes the dance extremely erotogenic, it will destroy Salome’s purity and will conflict with Wilde’s tenet-aestheticism. Seven veils symbolizes seven virtues of Christianity—justice, prudence, temperance, fortitude, faith, hope and charity. When Salome dancing with music, seven veils fall from her body, it means seven virtues are removed. Her nudity attracts people’s gaze which reflects primal desire.

Salome is a one-act play, the structure is dense and compact and it is just to the “three unities”. In Victorian era, it’s not a must to follow with classical unities, but Oscar Wilde prefer to “dance in fetters” which shows his talented creativity. Salome yearns for Jokanaan’s kiss and decides to kill him, it’s an instinctive desire which pushes forward the story.

Another spotlight is the beauty of pensee—the awakening of Salome’s desire. She admires Jokanaan for his deeds that she couldn’t imagine before. However, what Salome loves is not Jokanaan himself but his mouth, which means Salome only enjoys sense of beauty and treats Jokanaan’s feeling carelessly. For her, love means occupation. Salome’s view point of love is caused by that abnormal environment and this kind of love will lead to catastrophic results.

Libido for love is originally of beauty, but such love contains irrational factors. If the irrational factor is under oppression for a long time, it will break the bondage of rationality and in the form of vice to destroy humanity. Death is also an important literature theme. The young Syrian died of desperation, Jokanaan died of faith and Salome died of desire, but the libido for beauty only emphasizes on appearance without spiritual experience which corresponds to the main idea of aestheticism—form is everything.

4. Morality and Aestheticism in Salome

4.1 Conflicts between morality and desire

Tortured by her mad desire, Salome is more bellicose and lethal. Her agitated fetish desire is so overwhelming that her description of Jokanaan goes very extremely. She avows her desire dauntlessly “I am amorous of thy body” (Wilde Salome 92). “Let me touch thy hair” (Wilde Salome 96), and at last her aggressive desire comes to the zenith “I will kiss thy mouth”, which stands for the physically occupation. Salome obviously emphasizes Jokanaan’s body is pure chaste and untrodden. She uses different kinds of extreme similes such as “Thy body is white like the lilies of a field that the mower hath never mowed…like the snows that lie on the mountains…and come down into the valleys” (Wilde Salome 92). Both lilies and snow are symbols of purity and chasteness, the lilies have never been touched and snow is on the mountains where cannot be accessible by human. Now Jokanaan looks like the white snow from the sky to human society“down into valleys” (Wilde Salome 92). Being given a rejection Salome turns to the most erotogenic place: Jokanaan’s mouth, which “is like a pomegranate cut in twain with a knife of ivory.” (Wilde Salome 93). To say the mouth is like“cut” pomegranate is a sensational comparison, revealing her ferocious temptation.

At last, Salome touches Jokanaan, and will bite his mouth like a ripe fruit. She regards herself as a farmer to harvest. She claims “I am athirst for thy beauty; I am hungry for thy body; and neither wine nor apples can appease my desire. Neither the floods nor the great waters can quench my passion.” (Wilde Salome 136). In this way, the rapturous words that has defined Salome’s very being and the nature of her sexual desire now makes her emotional, distraught and frantic. Holding the bloody head, she is exulting. Salome addresses the martyr in triumph “Well, I know that thou wouldst have loved me, and the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.” (Wilde Salome 136). Salome’s erotic desire is completely fulfilled, which is her moment of fanatical flame.

Salome’s physique has an appearance of elegance and preciousness, having an association with the femme fragile colors white and silver: she looks “like a silver flower” (Wilde Salome 81), her feet are “of silver”or like “white doves”, her hands, equally small, white and “are fluttering like doves that fly to their dove-cots. They are like white butterflies” (Wilde Salome 78). Similar to the young Syrian’s image, Salome is “like a marcissus trembling in the wind…she is like a silver flower” (Wilde Salome 78). Her body is depicted piece-by-piece, full of sensory temptations.Salome attempts to convince the Young Syria (Narraboth), whose craving for her is limited by fetishism,to bring Jokanaan to her: “Thou wilt do this thing for me, Narraboth, and tomorrow when I pass in my little beneath gateway of the idol-seller, I will let fall for you a little flower, a little green flower.”(Wilde Salome 86).

Manipulating his desire to fulfill her own appetence, Salome offers Narraboth a little green flower. This green flower, as a symbolization of male homo relationship, indicates Salome’s recognition of the friendship between Narraboth and the Page. Then she persuades Narraboth that his desire should go back to the Page. When Narraboth still refuses to bring Jokanaan out, she offers a more seductive suggestive that she will recognize his desire publically. Thou wilt do this thing for me…I will look at thee through the muslin veils, I will look at thee, Narraboth, it may be I will smile at thee. Look at me, Narraboth, look at me. (Wilde Salome 87). When the Page tells her that the Young Syrian “has just killed himself”, she appears no care about him.

Another aspect needs more attention is Herod’s desire. His desire is presented by two soldiers’ words. He has three different kinds of wines. The first one is “brought from the Island of Samothrace purple like the cloak of Caesar” (Wilde Salome 74), which indicates Herod’s identity and eagerness to be a purple.Another is “from town called Cyprus yellow like gold” (Wilde Salome 75), which is the symbol of wealth. The third is “a wine of Sicily red like blood” (Wilde Salome 75). Through the description of purple, gold and red wine, Herod’s characteristics are expressed in the play. He is a man who has a sense of greediness and brutalness, and he covets for the power, as Caesar owns.

4.2 Unity of opposites between morality and aestheticism

Wilde made the use of the gory story Salome to tell people that it is unspeakable for anyone who wants to do evil immortally. Beauty with horrification and monstrousness, whose biggest value is not to frighten people but to manoeuvre readers’ sensibility and contemplative faculty to acme by the use of a more consuming wallop, in order to precipitate the produce of a more profundity ideology. Where, it shows the originality by Oscar Wilde: through the incredible outside, the art’s bizarre glamour will be barely laid.

At the time of Salome hearing Jokanaan beshrewing both her and her mother, she isn’t provoked with flames of fury, instead she falls in love with him profoundly, a prophet, who is faithful to morality. Salome wants to get rid of the intrigue from her stepfather, accordingly she endeavours to the love unswervingly. For an instant, she actualizes the perpetualness by fully combusting her youthful enthusiasm. Between the comparison of the untolerable moral sin imposed by parents and the daughter’s temerarious rebellion action, the author reveals his longing for the reasonable moral vision and a silent condemnation on the parents who treats morality with indifference. In the drama, Wilde doesn’t comment too much on the characters’ traits, he knows well about the defect of humanity, when he exposing the hideousness not to reveal the desperation of life but to spur people to think twice and create an ideal life mode.

Finally, Salome consecrates kiss to her lover——Jokanaan and makes the consummation. Surrounded by wickedness and hardly flee the control of Herod, Salome at last takes the risk to win a resplendent moment for her life. With the description of beauty and evil reflected by Salome and Herod, Wilde tests the readers’ esthetic extremity and triggers people to speculate that dissolute covetousness will lead to extermination.

Art was unintentionally endowed a responsibility of morality at emergence. Aristotle’s presentment about the tragedy contains the profound moral consideration: the tragic hero must possess the sense of goodness, congruency and the traits should share similarities and uniformity with common people. Morality will become a vital criterion to judge the art when the goodness is taken as the first ingredient of tragic hero. Oscar Wilde shapes his moral idea into an embodiment by the arrangement of the roles’ destinies and the dotted aesthetic elements in his works.

On the process of drama development, the chief ingredient which propels plot lines ebbs and flows is Wilde’s pondering about the paradox between morality and art. Morality without fault is a pure artistic image. Due to the abjective cognition, Wilde gradually deviated from morality in his creation and just for art’s sake.

However, he doesn’t entirely abandon morality, evilness,gloominess regularly occur in his works, without exception, they are rectified and beautified at last. Morality will be the only obstacle which impedes him to achieve the ultimate ideal as an aestheticism. But ideality and reality are syntheses. They are unity of opposites. The circumscription between morality and art can’t be entirely different. The discard of morality is a method to beautify the aspiration of art.

5. The Value of Wilde’s Aestheticism and Morality

5.1 Wilde’s opinions on aestheticism and morality

Oscar Wilde’s opinions on aestheticism are flickering with creative thoughts. For Wilde, he believes “all the arts are immoral”, because art is not for ethics’ sake and artists don’t concern themselves with their actions. The art’s purpose is to create mood, which is of great difference from traditional writers. In the essay “The Critic as Artist”, he claims that the universality of beauty is defined as, beauty has many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. His moral attitude in not merely deviate from any morality, but is opposite to the mainstream morals. In his article—The Decay of Lying, Wilde expresses his view point through Vivian’s words. He thinks that the decay of lying dues to the decay of lying. In literature we should require distinction, charm, beauty and imaginative power (Wilde Intentions 5). More importantly, the only beautiful things are the things that do not concern us (Wilde Intentions 5). When it turns to art’s subject-matter we should be more or less indifferent. We should at any rate, have no preferences, no prejudices, no partisan feeling of any kind (Wilde Intentions 5). When it terms to the relationship between art and life, he says that art begins with abstract decoration; with purely imaginative and pleasurable work dealing with what is unreal and non-existent. Art takes life as part of her rough material, recreates it, and refashions it in fresh forms, is absolutely indifferent to fact, invents, imagines, dreams, and keeps between herself and reality the impenetrable barrier of beautiful style, of decorative or ideal treatment. When life gets the upper hand, and drives art out into wildness. That is the true decadence (Wilde Intentions 6). The most important, what he mentions in this article is that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life” (Wilde Intentions 8). He also emphasizes that, the base of life, the energy of life, is simply the desire for expression, and Art is always presenting various forms through which this expressions can be attained (Wilde Intentions 9). When talking about his new aesthetics, he says: “Art never expresses anything but itself. This is the principle of my new aesthetics; and it is that, more than that vital connection between form and substance (Wilde Intentions 9). Then he gives his opinions towards lying and moral, he says lying for the sake of gaining some immediate personal advantage, for instance—lying with a moral purpose (Wilde Intentions 10). Many innovative thoughts directly affect his creation—all bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them into ideals. Life and Nature may sometimes be used as part of Art’s rough material, but before they are of any real service to art they must be translated into artistic conventions. At last, when he talks about lying, he doesn’t treat it as an immoral thing, on the contrary, he says “Lying, the telling of beautiful unture things, is the proper aim of Art” (Wilde Intentions 12).

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