Salome and John the Baptist. Symbolic Adaptations and Rewritings of a Myth in Literature and Art (1870-1914)

The publication, between 1870 and 1914, of numerous literary and pictorial works inspired by the Biblical story of the murder of John the Baptist by Salomé reflects a wider crisis that affected both the subject and the concept of representation at that time in Europe. The myth of Salomé permits us to pursue a literary, historical and aesthetic reflection concerning the progressive autonomy of art. From Biblical and ancient sources, in which Salome and John the Baptist respectively embodied the pagan world and its conflicting relationship with the Christian world, these two characters gradually entered the world of fiction. They are indeed at the heart of a transition from a transcendent reading – especially related to the Catholic tradition – to an immanent reading of the tragic episode that unites them, which turns them into two purely aesthetic objects. The dancer and the last of the prophets thus emerge in Western literature and art as two symbolic extremes, which can be linked to each other by different kinds of relationships, which can have new changeable meanings, and which are far away from all convention. If, in the first part of the nineteenth century, Salome and John the Baptist are still bound to their orthodox interpretation, at the turn of the century they eventually gain independence from the Scriptures, and this gives rise to multiple rewritings and unexpected adaptations. These adaptations, however, prove less blasphemous, as they symbolically provide the proof of the very transformation of the relationship between the artist and their work. The artist, who identifies himself with the prophet, is measured with his artwork, represented by Salome. The relationship between Salome and John the Baptist, throughout the various representations, thus expresses and reflects the very moment when art and literature began to think themselves as fiction.