Salome/ Under the Hill: Oscar Wilde/Aubrey Beardsley (Creation Classics) [Paperback]

Oscar Wilde (Author), Aubrey Beardsley (Author)

Book Description

Series: Creation Classics | Publication Date: April 1996

This joint centennial edition of Salome and Under the Hill, united by seventeen of Beardsley's unsurpassable drawings, is a timely rehabilitation of these two all-too-often ignored fin-de-siecle texts, and constitues a volume of unadulterated Decadent Erotica which must surely stand as the apogee of its kind.

Censored, banned, and ridiculed upon publication, Oscar Wilde's Salome, written in 1892 in the French language, must now be viewed as one of the greatest of all Decadent texts; an aesthetic masterwork which has seldom been accorded due respect.

Salome is an evocation of biblical horror in which blasphemies abound. More than this, its atmosphere seethes with a dangerous erotic charge from the very outset. Relentless, hypnotic repetitions in the words, arranged in fugue candences, the tale unfolds with the inexorable acceleration of an orgasmic nightmare.

Aubrey Beardsley's Under the Hill, a short work commenced in 1894, but left unfinished at the time of Beardsley's premature demise, nonetheless achieves the quintessence of Decadence, an evocation of a synaesthetic pleasure dome. A unique and indispensable text for any who seek the uttermost extremes of the manifest imagination.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Creation Books (April 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1871592127
• ISBN-13: 978-1871592122
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,305,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beardsley's best work?, March 24, 2000

By 

Stephen Barber "falconer" (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Salome/ Under the Hill: Oscar Wilde/Aubrey Beardsley (Creation Classics) (Paperback)

Along with his superb illustrations for Malory's Morte Darthur, still very much in the style of Burne-Jones, Salome is surely Beardsley's masterpiece. Stylized to an extreme degree, his illustrations also manage to be both erotic and strangely touching. He is more than a cold stylist, but a master of the extreme emotions which lie behind Wilde's strange text. This, though repreatedly dismissed as absurd, has turned out to be one of the toughest works of the late nineteenth century decadent movement. Although rarely performed as a play, it lives on as the libretto for Richard Strauss's great opera, a work that has continued to fascinate and horrify audiences for nearly a century. The unfinished fantasy Under the Hill is worth collecting too, and this economical volume is a bargain.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The decadence of Wilde and Beardsley, August 19, 2004

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Salome/ Under the Hill: Oscar Wilde/Aubrey Beardsley (Creation Classics) (Paperback)

Beardsley's illustrations for Wilde's "Salome" are quite well known. I enjoyed seeing them, in unexpurgated forms, in the context of the script they were meant to adorn. I think I can see wonderful possibilities in staging that play, where modern sensibilities could show and accept what England of 1892 could not. Even so, I found the script itself somewhat repetitive, with more in it to startle than to explain. Perhaps there's a knack to reading this script that I haven't mastered.

The second piece, Beardsley's own "Under the Hill," is a mortal's visit to the kingdom of Venus, the goddess of love. Although the story has revolting moments, it's easy to become drugged by the thick perfume of his flowery language. The elegant circumlocutions sometimes narrate, other times only suggest effete debauches. The brief story sustains an oddly split mood, comical for its excesses and affectations, darkly fascinating for its content. Beardsley's life was cut short in his 20s, leaving this story unfinished. I have to wonder whether I would actually have wanted to read its entirety.

Neither story will suit polite company, nor was meant to. Both, however, give little insights into artists that are still appreciated today. These particular insights may not be 'fun' or 'likeable', but add real information to any view of Wilde or Beardsley.

//wiredweird

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and Fantastic Compilation!, April 18, 2010

By 

Art Lover "Art Lover" (California, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Salome/ Under the Hill: Oscar Wilde/Aubrey Beardsley (Creation Classics) (Paperback)

This excellent volume contains both Wilde's famous play "Salome" (and the illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley which accompanied its original publication) and Beardsley's own literary offering, "Under the Hill," accompanied by Beardsley's illustrations for this work. "Salome" is a masterfully-written landmark of fin-de-siecle literature which helped to craft our modern conception of the femme fatale. It is arguably one of Oscar Wilde's most interesting (and underrated) works. The illustrations by Beardsley created a scandal when they accompanied "Salome" in its first publication. They created a firestorm in the press, and they completely upstaged Wilde's work, straining relations between Beardsley and Wilde from then onward. Approaching "Salome" and its illustrations as a modern reader, one is struck by the relative tameness of the illustrations, and the enduring power of Wilde's play.

"Under the Hill" is definitely the stranger and more obscure of the two offerings. Although Beardsley considered himself a man of letters as much as a visual artist, it is his only literary offering. Although it remained incomplete at the time of his early death, even in its unfinished state it makes quite an impression! It is absolutely, wildly filthy (it chronicles the sexual escapades of Venus and her lovers, and even includes one scene in which Venus gets very friendly with her pet unicorn), yet is written in the most delicate, refined, and highly perfumed language. All in all, it is witty, bizarre, and highly unique. It is a wonderful hidden gem of the fin-de-siecle period, in all its decadence and dandyism.

My only (very minor) complaint with this book is that the illustrations would have benefitted from being slightly larger.