The first version of The Toilet of Salome was produced in 1894 (although an alternate version was featured in Salome). Notice the sharp black lines. Beardsley’s attempt to “violate arts grammar” in his depictions of Salome demonstrate how the form of his art (print illustrations) shaped how Beardsley would challenge conventional artistic practices (188). Beardsley "experimented enthusiastically with the properties of this new “line block” printing" of his era" (188). Through the limitations of print, Beardsley focused on mashing Japanese, Renaissance, and decadent styles (191). Machen also played around with the formal choices that contained his writing, and this in turn had a great impact of the type of writing produced by Machen. In his essay “The Literature of Occultism”, Machen claims that what makes good writing is when it “belongs to the region of things mysterious and occult” (276). Machen's shorter fiction like “Psychology” exhibits this desired mysteriousness because of the story's formal limitation (brevity) and abandonment of logical narrative structures. Machen in these stories refuses to abide by strict adherence to genre boundaries, like Beardsley, and instead produces accounts of “the secret thoughts of the day, the crazy lusts, the senseless furies” that do not resolve themselves narratively (27).
Works Cited
Beardsley, Aubrey. The Toilette of Salome (first version). 1894. https://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/beardsley/10.html. Accessed 6 December, 2024.
Machen Arthur. “Psychology.” Ornaments in Jade, Cove Studio ENGL 499, 1924, pp. 24-27. https://studio.covecollective.org/en/annotate/4aeea456-4e67-41f0-b77d-30..., Accessed on 8 October 2024.
Machen, Arthur. “The Literature of Occultism.” Aurthur Machen Decadent and Occult Works, edited by Dennis Denisoff, Modern Humanities Research Association, 2018, pp. 276-282.
King, Frederick. "4 Collaboration and Conflict: Queer Space in Salome". Queer Books of Late Victorian Print Culture, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024, pp. 175-222. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/10.1515/9781399525961-008