Salome in Graz: About the cover

A
Literary Saloon
&
Site of Review.

Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.

Contents:
Main

the Best

the Rest

Review Index

Links

to e-mail us:

A Literary Saloon and Site of Review

Salome in Graz

Author M.A.Orthofer explains the choice of cover-design for Salome in Graz.

       A novel with 'Salome' in the title and there's no Salome on the cover ?

       As longtime readers of the complete review and its Literary Saloon know, I very much favor unadorned covers in general. In this case, the argument against having any cover-image or illustration is particularly strong.
       Any Salome would have been a specific Salome. The novel is about 'Salome' much more generally, not any specific depiction or performance.
       Any individual Salome-image -- or collection of them -- displayed on the cover would color the reader's mental picture of the figure. Even just choosing which of the obvious poses to depict -- Salome dancing, or facing the head of John the Baptist -- would be forcing too much on the reader, favoring one part of the story over another.

       Aren't readers likely to already have formed a mental picture of the figure, based on the images of her they have seen ?

       To some, or even to a great extent, inevitably. Regrettably.
       But Salome in Graz is also about both memory and interpretation. The blank-canvas cover at least doesn't provide a ready-made image to consult; in picturing Salome going in, readers have to fall back on their memories -- which presumably are made up of a large mix of images and poses they've seen. The hope is that that that indistinct picture floating in their mind's eye leaves them much more receptive to letting the text guide how they might envision Salome anew.

       What of the iconic Aubrey Beardsley illustrations ? Couldn't one of those have been adapted ?

       They're far too iconic, far too well-known -- and present a far too limited image of Salome.
       The only one that tempted me was this one:

       But obviously that is far too suggestive -- and misleadingly so as well.

       I do note that the frame of the cover of Salome in Graz is taken from the title-page template of (an ... unenhanced version) of that Beardsley illustration as it was used in the first English edition of Wilde's play, so there are the outlines of a connection:

       There was an actual 'Salome in Graz' -- Jenny Korb, who played the role in the 16 May 1906 performance that the title refers to. What about using a picture of her playing the part ?

       Again: far too specific and limiting. Salome in Graz is a much bigger story.

       What about an image of the Stadt-Theater, where the performance took place ?

       Tempting, but also too limiting. Again (and again and again): Salome in Graz leads up to but extends far beyond that one performance.

       A commercial publisher would surely have insisted on a picture. If you had had to choose ... ?

       I suppose Gustave Moreau's 'L'Apparition' -- the one which Wilde saw in 1877, and which Huysmans immortalized in À rebours (and which Ellmann misdescribes in his Wilde-biography ...) -- would be the obvious default choice. Though this particular one is not as colorful as some of Moreau's other variations on the same picture:

       But if it had to be a Salome-image I think the well-veiled Franciszek Siedlecki one, from the 1904 Polish translation, would bother me the least:

       Though it would probably not be colorful enough for a commercial publisher .....

       What about a more abstract image ?

       I did consider something like a colored version of one of the Marcus Behmer illustrations from the early German edition:

       Still, any image is leading, and misleading.
       Don't forget, also, that cover-illustration is a relatively new phenomenon, really only becoming widespread in the twentieth century, on modern dustjackets and paperbacks.
       The original French edition of Wilde's Salomé had nothing on the cover and the first English-language edition (1894) was only ... ornamented:

       At least there are some illustrations in the books itself, right?

       Yes, fifteen figures -- balanced by the text

       And the back cover also features an image:

       The final scene of the Strauss opera ?

       Indeed. While the beginnings of Salome in Graz are far more complex than the simple mention -- or image -- of 'Salome' should suggest, there's certainly no getting around this at its conclusion.

- Return to top of the page -

- More about: Salome in Graz -