Introduzione. Itinerarium mentis in Herodiadem

Abstract

The biblical story of Salome has long been a favorite of poets and painters, especially during the nineteenth century (2800 titles from 1870 to 1914). In most cases the figure of Salome is emblematic of the femme fatale, the icon of dangerous female seductiveness (notably in regard to her dancing before Herod). But there is a most interesting interpretation, proposed by Heine and developed by Mallarmé: Salome as symbol of poetry, of pure beauty. This is a study on the aesthetic transfiguration of the figure of Salome starting whit a few poems by Heinrich Heine and Théodore de Banville, and ending with Stéphane Mallarmé’s theatrical project, whose fragments would have made up the poem Hérodiade.