Lilith in the Nineteenth Century

   Lilith achieved considerable vogue in the nineteenth century, when the artistic mind was obsessed with the figure of the femme fatale. F.F. McGillis writes that to the Romantic writers, Lilith represents a source of evil, a siren who destroys those who fall under her spell. She is the unknown and mysterious, and to turn away from her enchantment is to preserve humanity. Men fear her and love her, both terrorized and fascinated by her power. She either destroys her lover or prompts him to a new awareness and a new life.

   In the Talmud Lilith was portrayed as a long-haired demon of the night. A woman's hair is considered to be one of her seductive adornments, and this is the reason why the hair of monastic women, such as the Brides of Christ and the Vestal Virgins, has traditionally been cut, bound, and covered. Men's fascination with Lilith's long, seductive hair is a theme in several nineteenth-century literary works.

   Lilith appears in Goethe's Faust, Part 1. In the midst of the revelry atop the Broken in the Walpurgis Night scene, Lilith appears, the supreme temptress who even frightens Mephistopheles. He warns Faust:

Beware of her fair hair, for she excels
All women in the magic of her locks;
And when she winds them around a young man's neck,
She will not ever set him free again.

   And in the Pre-Raphaelite artistic movement Dante Gabriell Rossetti portrays Lilith in the following poem.

Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)
That, ere the snake's her sweet tongue could deceive,
And her enchanted hair was the first gold.

And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
And, subtly of herself contemplative,
Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,
Till heart and body and life are in its hold.

The rose and the poppy are her flower; for where
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom she scent
And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
Lo! As that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
They spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
And round his heart one strangling golden hair.

   Taken from the book, Mysteries of the Dark Moon, Demetra George.

This page was last updated: December 10, 2009

Website comments? Contact our Webwizard.