Salomé, Psychotic, Neurotic, Perverse

SALOME, AN OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE MYTH

FROM OSCAR WILDE TO RICHARD STRAUSS

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne

Oscar Wilde signed this play as an English author exiled from Great Britain to France on sexual charges, after a spell in prison for his liaison with the young Lord Alfred Douglas. This play was written for Sarah Bernhardt. It was created in Paris, in French, in 1892.

The French text is easily available since it is in the public domain. But not so for the English translation attributed to Lord Alfred Douglas, I luckily had in an old edition of Oscar Wilde’s complete works. Another translation, which is essentially a corrected version of Lord Alfred Douglas’s exists under the sole name of Oscar Wilde. The differences are essential and we will use them to show the conscious work of Oscar Wilde on his text in English as compared to Lord Alfred Douglas’s, and with a reference back to the French text when the two English versions show clear and significant differences.

Then the opera by Richard Strauss (created on December 9, 1915) appears essential because Richard Strauss knew the original play he supposedly discovered in French. He had it…