POETRY AND ART: LORELEY

Photo of Loreley from Wikipedia

When I looked for some information on the Loreley Rock in the Rhine Gorge for my last post, I was surprised by the amount of art that it has inspired. Here is a sampling:

LORELEI
by Sylvia Plath, American poet,1960
(Note: This poem seems to foreshadow Plath's death by suicide in 1963)

It is no night to drown in:

Lorelei by British painter John William Waterhouse, 1900

A full moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness. Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face
Of quiet. From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble. They sing
Of a world more full and clear

Than can be. Sisters, your song
Bears a burden too weighty
For the whorled ear's listening

Here, in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler.
Deranging by harmony

Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege. You lodge
On the pitched reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetude, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling --
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drifting

Deep in your flux of silver
Those great goddesses of peace.
Stone, stone, ferry me down there.

~1960

THE LORELEI

by Heinrich Heine, German poet, 1823

Eduard Jakob von Steinle, The Lorelei, 1864

I wish I knew the meaning,
A sadness has fallen on me.
The ghost of an ancient legend
That will not let me be.
The air is cool in the twilight
And gently flows the Rhine;
A mountain peak in the setting sun
Catches the faltering shine.

The highest peak still gleaming
Reveals enthroned in the air,
A Siren lost in her dreaming
Combing her golden hair.
With golden combs she caresses
Her hair as she sings her song;
Echoing through the gloaming
Filled with a magic so strong.

The boatman has heard, it has bound him
In throes of desire and love.
He's blind to the reefs that surround him,
He sees but the Maiden above.
And now the wild waters awaken
Then boat and the boatman are gone.
And this is what with her singing,
The Lorelei has done.

Loreley, J. M W. Turner,  English Romantic landscape painter, 1817

Another Loreley, J. M W. Turner, 1817