ABSTRACT
Without any scheme, and following no principle of selection, I have jotted down the high lights, as it were, of the picture left on my mind by Mr. Wilde’s poem. In speaking of a picture, however, I am not surethat I use the happiest analogy. There is at least as much musical as pictorial quality in Salomé. It is by methods borrowed from music that Mr. Wilde, without sacrificing its suppleness, imparts to his prose the firm texture, so to speak, of verse. Borrowed from music-may I conjecture?—through the intermediation of Maeterlinck. Certain it is that the brief melodious phrases, the chiming repetitions, the fugal effects beloved by the Belgian poet, are no less characteristic of Mr. Wilde’s method. I am quite willing to believe, if necessary, that the two artists invented their similar devices independently, to meet a common need; but if, as a matter of fact, the one has taken a hint from the other, I do not see that his essential originality is thereby impaired. There is far more depth and body in Mr. Wilde’s work than in Maeterlinck’s. His characters are men and women, not filmy shapes of mist and moonshine. His properties, so to speak, are far more various and less conventional. His palette-I recur, in spite of myself, to the pictorial analogy-is infinitely richer. Maeterlinck paints in washes of water-colour; Mr. Wilde attains the depths and brilliancy of oils. Salomé has all the qualities of a great historical picture-pedantry and conventionality excepted.
