Scandal and the Dance: Salome in the Gospel of Mark

Abstract

O F ALL the arts, only dance is mentioned in the gospels, and then in only two of them, Mark and Matthew, which relate the story of the beheading of John the Baptist. Mark's is the richer text. He tells us that, in the course of a banquet given by Herod, the daughter of the tetrarch's wife, came in, and danced, and pleased Herod and his There is nothing further on the dance itself. It is not described in our two gospels, nor is the dancer's name mentioned. Our direct information is minimal, and yet the dancer and her dance have always fired the erotic and aesthetic imagination of the West. danced upon the capitals of Romanesque churches and has kept on dancing ever since. Closer to us in time are Flaubert's Herodias, Mallarme's Herodiade, Oscar Wilde's Salome, and the Salome of Richard Strauss and of Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Why this fascination? Mark's narrative (Mark 6:14-29) is not lengthy and deals exclusively with the relations of desire and hatred which separate and join the characters. Herod wanted to take the wife of his own brother, as his second wife. John the Baptist condemned this action, and with resentment in her heart, demanded his head. Herod did not want to comply and had John imprisoned, not so much to punish him for his insolence, it appears, as to protect him from who, however, prevailed, as a result of having her daughter dance in the presence of Herod and his guests. It all begins as in myth, with a story of rival brothers. Real brothers may be driven to rivalry by their very proximity; they dispute the same paternal heritage, the same crown, the same woman. But this alone does not explain the proliferation of enemy brothers in myth. Do they have the same desires because they resemble one another, or do they resemble one another because they have the same desires? Is it kinship that determines the duplication of desires, or is it the duplication of desires that is expressed in the theme of the rival brothers, often the rival twins? In our text both statements must be true. Herod and his brother constitute both a symbol and a real his-