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‘This Is a Historical Israeli Play’: Spectatorship, Ownership and the Israeli Localizations of Salomé1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2018
Abstract
This article traces the reception of Oscar Wilde's play Salomé in Israeli theatre by focusing on the engagement of two artists – writer and translator Pinchas Sadeh and theatre director Ofira Henig – with the play at two different periods. In Salomé, Wilde utilizes his perception of Judaism, as well as the Song of Songs, for the creation of a theatrical space in which spectatorship and ownership are subverted and displaced. At the same time, ironically, the biblical and ‘Jewish’ presence in the play was fundamental for claims of ownership made by some in Hebrew and Israeli culture, asserting that the play somehow belonged to Hebrew culture and the Land of Israel. Despite these claims, the actual reception of Salomé in Israeli theatre proved that the play's ‘belonging’ was far more tenuous. The article examines how the tensions between the seen and the unseen, between owning and disowning and between placement and displacement play out – in almost opposite directions – in Sadeh's ideological reasoning for translating Salomé and in Henig's production of it.
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Footnotes
1
The writer would like to thank Mira Balberg, Hizky Shoham and the anonymous readers of Theatre Research International for their comments that greatly improved this paper. Special thanks are in order to Paul Rae, for his patient and wise guidance through the paper's various (and quite radical) transformations.
References
NOTES
2 Brenner, Yosef Haim, The Complete Works of Y. H. Brenner, Vol. III (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hame'uhad, 1967), p. 282 Google Scholar (Hebrew, my translation). All translations from Hebrew are my own, unless otherwise noted.
3 On this translation and its cultural context see Pinsker, Shachar M., Literary Passports: The Making of Modernist Hebrew Fiction in Europe (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 147–55Google Scholar. On Brenner himself see Shapira, Anita, Yosef Haim Brenner: A Life, trans. Berris, Anthony (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 In this sense, Brenner's enthusiasm is more in line with the Continental reception of Salomé at the time. See Evangelista, Stefano, ‘Introduction: Oscar Wilde – European by Sympathy’, in Evangelista, Stefano, ed., The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe (London and New York: Continuum, 2010), pp. 1–19, here p. 7.Google Scholar
5 Brenner, Complete Works, Vol. III, n. 3.
6 Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, was in charge of the first translation, although Wilde was displeased by it and apparently made emendations to it prior to publication. The translation was published again in 1906 and 1912 with even further extensive revisions, made by Wilde's friend and literary executor, Robert Ross. On the history of the play's translations to English see Daalder, Joost, ‘Which Is the Most Authoritative Early Translation of Wilde's Salomé?’, English Studies, 85 (2004), pp. 47–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the current paper I will be referring to the English translation published in the Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (London: HarperCollins, 2003), pp. 583–605. On this matter see also Price, Steven, ‘A Short History of Salome ’, in Powell, Kerry and Raby, Peter, eds., Oscar Wilde in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 328–46, here pp. 328–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 On the transgression of linguistic and national boundaries see Richmond-Garza, Elizabeth, ‘The Double Life of Salomé: Sexuality, Nationalism, and Self-Translation in Oscar Wilde’, in Bennett, Michael Y., ed., Refiguring Oscar Wilde's Salome (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011), pp. 21–36.Google Scholar
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10 I put this word in quotation marks because I am suspicious of any essentialist or generalizing views regarding Judaism and its values. That being said, such views were most probably instructive in informing Wilde's own perceptions of Judaism – such as the binary distinction between ‘Hellenism’ and ‘Hebraism’ espoused by Matthew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy. On Arnold's influence on Wilde in this context see Ross, Iain, Oscar Wilde and Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 192 Google Scholar; Salamensky, S. I., The Modern Art of Influence and the Spectacle of Oscar Wilde (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 See, among others, Bucknell, Brad, ‘On “Seeing” Salome’, ELH, 60, 2 (1993), pp. 503–26Google Scholar; Marcovitch, Heather, ‘The Princess, Persona, and Subjective Desire: A Reading of Oscar Wilde's Salome ’, Papers on Language & Literature, 40, 1 (2004), pp. 88–101 Google Scholar; Tookey, Helen, ‘“The Fiend that Smites with a Look”: the Monstrous/Menstruous Woman and the Danger of the Gaze in Oscar Wilde's Salomé ’, Literature & Theology, 18, 1 (2004), pp. 23–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 Wilde, Salomé, pp. 583–4.
13 Ibid., pp. 589–90.
14 See also Puchner, Martin, The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 91 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marcus, Sharon, ‘Salomé!! Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and the Drama of Celebrity’, PMLA, 126, 4 (2011), pp. 1005–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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16 Song 4:1–5. Other similar descriptions appear in Song 5:10–16; 6:4–7; and 7:1–10.
17 Wilde, Salomé, p. 599. For further discussions of Wilde's treatment of the Song in Salomé see Kuryluk, Ewa, Salome and Judas in the Cave of Sex: The Grotesque – Origins, Iconography, Techniques (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1987), pp. 224–6Google Scholar; Riquelme, J. P., ‘Shalom/Solomon/Salomé: Modernism and Wilde's Aesthetic Politics’, Centennial Review, 39, 3 (1995), pp. 597–9Google Scholar; Brown Downey, Katherine, Perverse Midrash: Oscar Wilde, André Gide, and the Censorship of Biblical Drama (New York: Continuum, 2004), pp. 106–8.Google Scholar
18 William Tydeman and Steven Price, Wilde: Salome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 6.
19 Wilde, Salomé, p. 604.
20 Kaplan, Jonathan, My Perfect One: Typology and Early Rabbinic Interpretation of Song of Songs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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24 Bland, Kalman P., The Artless Jew: Medieval and Modern Affirmations and Denials of the Visual (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
25 Salamensky, The Modern Art of Influence, p. 50.
26 Wilde, Salomé, p. 594.
27 Ibid., pp. 60–1.
28 In the Jewish traditional imagination, according to Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, exile was ‘not understood as equivalent to lack of sovereignty or existence outside of the land – though these were certainly important aspects in images of redemption. It was instead regarded as evidence of the condition of the entire world. Exile refers to a state of absence, points to the imperfection of the world, and embodies the desire for its replacement. According to several authorities (mainly Kabbalists), it describes the state of the divine itself – that is to say, God's exile from “history,” or history as a manifestation of the cosmic state of exile.’ Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, ‘Jewish Memory between Exile and History’, JQR, 97, 4 (2007), pp. 532–3.
29 Holland, Merlin and Hart-Davis, Rupert, eds., The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), p. 348 Google Scholar. The dance is also connected to the Jews’ theological deliberations about their invisible God through the mention of the veil of the Sanctuary in the play. Wilde, Salomé, pp. 597, 603. See: Mirzoeff, ‘Disorientalism’, p. 64.
30 Granted, the Song of Songs can hardly be considered an exclusively Jewish text, yet it most definitely has been seen as such by modern Hebrew culture and has been part of the appeal that Salomé held for some of its members.
31 On this aspect of Sadeh's writing see Balaban, Avraham, ‘Secularity and Religiosity in Contemporary Hebrew Literature’, Middle Eastern Literatures, 5, 1 (2002), pp. 65–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Katz, Gideon, ‘Pinchas Sadeh's Religiosity’, Israel Studies, 20, 1 (2015), pp. 159–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
32 The transcript of the interview, conducted by Yuval Meskin in the radio station Reshet Alef on 8 September 1982, can be found in file 58.1.2 at the Israeli Center for the Documentation of the Performing Arts, Tel Aviv University.
33 Sadeh is referring here to the illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley that accompanied the play's first English edition and proved no less scandalous than Wilde's text. See Gilbert, Elliot L., ‘“Tumult of Images”: Wilde, Beardsley, and Salome ’, Victorian Studies, 26, 2 (1983), pp. 133–59Google Scholar; Susan Owens, ‘Aubrey Beardsley and Salome’, in Powell and Raby, Oscar Wilde in Context, pp. 110–24.
34 See, for example, Lipshitz, Yair, ‘Biblical Shakespeare: King Lear as Job on the Hebrew Stage’, New Theatre Quarterly, 31, 4 (2015), pp. 359–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 Wilde, Salomé, p. 583.
36 Sadeh's translation was published as part of the production's programme, which can be found in file 58.1.2 at the Israeli Center for the Documentation of the Performing Arts, Tel Aviv University.
37 Zerubavel, Yael, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).Google Scholar
38 Wilde, Salomé, pp. 589–90.
39 Oscar Wilde, ‘The Decay of Lying’, in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, pp. 1071–92, here p. 1071.
40 For further discussion of body and verbal ornament in the play see Bennett, ‘Oscar Wilde's Salome’.
41 See also Erzberger, Joanna, ‘“I sought him, but found him not” (Song 5:6): Public Space in the Song of Songs’, Old Testament Essays, 24, 2 (2011), pp. 346–62.Google Scholar
42 Abramson, Glenda, Drama and Ideology in Modern Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 36–56.Google Scholar
43 Michael Handelsalz, ‘They Lost Their Heads’, Haaretz, 31 August 1982 (Hebrew); Elyakim Yaron, ‘Turning the Beautiful into the Ugly’, Maariv, 2 September 1982 (Hebrew); Radio review by Shosh Weitz, broadcast in Reshet Bet radio station, 30 August 1982 (Hebrew). The newspaper reviews and the transcript of the radio broadcast can be found in file 58.1.2 at the Israeli Center for the Documentation of the Performing Arts, Tel Aviv University.
44 Boaz Evron, ‘Negligence in the Role’, Yediot akharonot, 1 September 1982 (Hebrew), which can be found in file 58.1.2 at the Israeli Center for the Documentation of the Performing Arts, Tel Aviv University.
45 Weitz review; Evron, ‘Negligence in the Role’.
46 Chaver, Yael, What Must Be Forgotten: The Survival of Yiddish in Zionist Palestine (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2004), pp. 1–44.Google Scholar
47 Rotman, Diego, ‘Yiddish Theatre in Israel, 1948–1988’, Zmanim, 99 (2007), pp. 44–5 (Hebrew).Google Scholar
48 Kaynar, Gad, ‘Engagement to Disengagement: Privatization and Morality in Israeli Drama after Rabin's Assassination’, Zmanim, 99 (2007), pp. 106–18 (Hebrew).Google Scholar
49 A video of the entire production can be found at www.ofirahenig.com/he/node/106, accessed 16 May 2016. Since fringe theatre is rarely covered by critics in the press, there is little evidence for the performance's critical reception.
50 Wilde, Salomé, p. 604.
51 ‘Fire Water Burn’ was part of the Bloodhound Gang's 1996 album One Fierce Beer Coaster, Geffen Records.
52 This can be read in line with Yeeyon Im's discussion of Salomé as an orientalist play, but one ‘that questions the very premises of Oriental discourse’. See Im, Yeeyon, ‘Oscar Wilde's Salomé: Disorienting Orientalism’, Comparative Drama, 45, 4 (2011), pp. 361–80, here p. 362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
53 Wilde, Salomé, p. 600. On Wilde's ‘irresponsible’ stage directions see Richard Allen Cave, ‘Staging Salome's Dance in Wilde's Play and Strauss's Opera’, in Bennett, Refiguring Oscar Wilde's Salome, pp. 145–66, here p. 145. Price, ‘A Short History of Salome’, p. 332 notes the contrast between this moment and the ekphrastic writing dominating the play.
54 Bennett, ‘Oscar Wilde's Salome’, pp. 317–19. See also Cave, ‘Staging Salome's Dance’, pp. 145–66.
55 Richmond-Garza, ‘The Double Life of Salomé’, p. 36. Notably, both she and Mirzoeff suggest reading the play in the context of Deleuze and Guattari's concept of ‘minor literature’ and its deterritorializing effect (ibid., pp. 25–7; Mirzoeff, ‘Disorientalism’, p. 54). In our context, Salomé’s deterritorialization has almost literal implications in the context of Zionist national landscape.