Salomé

Oscar Wilde

Important Quotations Explained

THE SYRIAN: How beautiful is the Princess Salomé tonight!

THE PAGE: Look at the moon! How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from the tomb. She is like a dead woman. You would fancy she was looking for dead things.

THE SYRIAN: She has a strange look. She is like a little princess who wears a yellow veil, and whose feet are of silver. You would fancy she was dancing.

THE PAGE: She is like a woman who is dead. She moves very slowly.

Explanation for Quotation #1

Oh! How strange the moon looks. You would think it was the hand of a dead woman who is seeking to cover herself with a shroud.

Explanation for Quotation #2

It is true, I have looked at you all this evening. Your beauty troubled me. Your beauty has grievously troubled me, and I have looked at you too much. But I will look at you no more. Neither at things, nor at people should one look. Only in mirrors should one look, for mirrors do but show us masks.

Explanation for Quotation #3

Salomé, you know my white peacocks, my beautiful white peacocks that walk in the garden between the myrtles and the tall cypress trees. Their beaks are gilded with gold, and the grains that they eat are gilded with gold also, and their feet are stained with purple. When they cry out the rain comes, and the moon shows herself in the heavens when they spread their tails I will give you fifty of my peacocks. They will follow you whithersoever you go, and in the midst of them you will be like the moon in the midst of a great white cloud.

Explanation for Quotation #4

But thou, thou wert beautiful! Thy body was a column of ivory set on a silver socket. It was a garden full of doves and of silver lilies. It was a tower of silver decked with shields of ivory. There was nothing in the world so white as thy body. There was nothing in the world so black as thy hair. In the whole world there was nothing so red as thy mouth. Thy voice was a censer that scattered strange perfumes, and when I looked on thee I heard a strange music. Ah! Wherefore didst thou not look at me, Jokanaan?

Explanation for Quotation #5