Lilith

LILITH:
EROS AND EVIL

by
CASET CHARNESS, B.A.

A THESIS
IN
ENGLISH
Submitted to the Graduate Paculty
of Texas Tech Unlverslty in
Partlal Pulflllment of
the Requirements for
the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Approved
Accepted
August 1971
\ "
AU'
I wish to express my thanks to Dr. Robert G. Collmer,

the prlme mover of this study.
For his friendshlp, scholar-
shlp and leadershlp I am most grateful and appreclatlve.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGRKENT
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. EVOLUTION OF THE LILITH CHARACTER
THROUGH LEGEND ^
III. LILITH IN LITERATURE 39
IV. EULA VARNER: AN A.ER CAN LILITH 77
V. CONCLUSION 93
BIBLIOGRAPHY 95
11
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Ons afternoon ln the fall of 1969, I sat in Dr.
Robert G. Collmer's offlce, waltlng for our tv.o-person
Engllsh honors class to begln.
It was a course ln
seventeenth-century Engllsh literature, and we were

readlng the Klng James Blble as an example of prose style
from that era.
A supplementary text, Fulghumfs Dlctlonary_
of Blbllcal Alluslons ln Bn ltsh Llterature, caught my

eye on the good doctor*s cluttered shelves.
Turnlng
through its alphabetlcal llstings,that afternoon, I

chanced upon a brlef entry that would lnvolve me in the
year to come more than I could havc lmagined.
It was, of course, Fulghumfs cntry for Llllth, of
whom I had never heard any mentlon.
I vaguely recalled
a Jean Scberg movie of just a few years back called Llllth,

but I would not r__l_e the connectlon for some tlme to come.
It was the film verslon of what I eventually came to
reallze v;as the best plece of llterature on LillthJ. R.
Salamanca!s I96I novel, analyzed ln Chapter III of thls
thesls.
T o f>r.mn1ot tVi* n-nii ^romenf.s f n r D r . C o ^ D S r ' S r.o."i*-
I dld prellmlnary research on Llllth, delvlng into the two

best sources on Llllth:
Graves and Patal*s book Hebrew

1
Myths:
The Book of Genesls (though I would later look
upon the book as suppositlon rather than scholarshlp) and

Patal's own artlcle ln the Journal of Amerlcon Folkiore.
That prellminary study was only a flfteen-page essay,
yet I thought I had covered a lot of ground.
Not sot
For when I enrolled the fol owing summer in Dr. J. T.

McCullen^s graduate folklore class, I discoverod a number
of other sources, partlcularly Maxlmlllan Rudwln's chapter on Llllth in hls Devll ln Legend and Llterature.
Rudwin's work enlightened me to the fact that Llllth as
a character had been rather extensively treated in llterature.
I lncreased my paper to twonty-flve pages for Dr.
McCullen, using Rudwln.

Bn.t T wpwn't through yet,
Dr< Col-i.mer's own graduate
course in bibllography, in which I enrolled durlng fall,

1970, led me to search for sources I hadnt even known
existed, many In forelgn languages, even Yiddlsh.
With
his help I set about composing a bibllography and sendlng

out for books through the interllbrary loan system at
Texas Tech.
I contlnued to expand on my theme, whlch
finally developed into a masterfs thesis.

That first paper, whlch has followed me since the
senior
EngliGi- _>__.<>->. t lt> m o ft.e_nex v-_. -uapu.i
whlch I explore Llllth in folklore.
_._. x n
Chapter III ls a
spin-off frora Rudwlns descrlptlon of works ln whlch
3
Lllith appears as a
lterary character.
I do not presume
to include all the v.orks In which she ls featured; instead,

I offer a chronological sampling of hovj her figure has
been treated.
I am concerned in Chapter III wlth those
characters who are named Lillth; therefore, I do not inolude such works as Wllder's The Skln of Our Teeth, ln
whlch the ruald Sabina is treated as a Lillth flgure, for
the sitnple reason that she Is not named Lllith.
Chapter
IV focuses upon Faulkner's Snopes Trllogy, which has as a

central figure the Lilith character of Eula Varner,
The thesls, then, moves from a llteral examination
of Lllith in folklore to a portrait of her more figurative
character as seen in selected works of llterature, to a
spotlight upon a Llllth one step removed.
In combinlng
the pure rescarch of Chapter II wlth the origlnal work

of Chapters III and IV, I hope I have achleved the Horatian ideal:
a combinatlon of the dulce and the utlle,
the p easurable and the functional.
CHAPTER II
EVOLUTION OF THE LILTTH
CHARACTER THROUGH LEGEND
The legend of Llllth ls prlmarlly a tale of Jewish
folklore.
A complete account of her character, however
from the Jewlsh legend about her conceptlon ln the Garden

of Eden to the Christlan ldea of her doom at the tlme of
the Second Comlngraust encompass other lores as well.
Slnce Lillth as a figure appears ln the llteratures of a
number of cultures, an attempt at an extenslve portralt
of all her facets must extend beyond the Hebralc version.
Thls chapter syntheslzes materlal from many cultures into
large themes with smaller varlations, some of which wlll
contradict thelr parallels ln other lands.
Such varlatlons
are inescapable because Llllth undergoes physlcal and

nomenclatural changes ln every folk handllng.
Never-
theless, the chapter seeks a full plcture that ls the sum

of her characterlstlcs, unllmited by racLal, llngulstic,
and rellgious boundarles that would conflne the study to
a single literature.
ing studles:
The examlnatlon lncludes the follow-
the derlvation of Llllth's name; the flrst
chronicles of Lillth; her place in the Bible and her role

in the fall of man ln the Garden of Eden; her fundamental
motifs, lncluding her erotlc appeal, her evil, and her danger;
5
her ancestry and gulses ln other oountries; oounteroharms
V_I>*
1. Jl V_7 -k.
~,.,V"r'o',f..c-v-+-
f* *--** r* i$ y
O
_ - X V_i'_'.1.
-_> U. l_-J O ^
U. O
1-C
The flrst written
_> W
+" ^.
+-Wi__
V/llV/
._ n
1 - I X X |
Q W I . V /^T"
<-_.i.___
.->_._.
rsrji y\ f . n l
_/>>-._.
_. _____-.--
^. w
r~ r\r\m
s_r >--> .
reference to Li ith occurs ln the
Sumerlan king IIst, dated c. 2*. 00 B.C., identlfying her

as tho mothor of the hero Gllgamesh.
No copy of thls
klng 11 st ls extant, however, and we know of the lnclusion

of Lilith only by lndirect means; ancient documents refer
the scholar to the king list.
as a
Llllth ls descrlbed in lt
Llllu, one of a famlly of related demons, which folk-
lorist Raphael Patal partltions as follows:

!
Tne
Llllu, one of whom is Lillth.

2.
3.
k.
The Llllth, a class of succtibl-incubi,

not to be confused wlth the proper name
Lilith.
The Ardat Llll, Lillth's handmaidens.
2
The rdat Llll, her male counterpart.
Jewish scholar Ludwig Blau, on the other hand, llsts only

three grouplngs for extrahuman creatures:
spirlts, havlng
neither body nor forra; devils, appearing in complete human

shape; and lilln, havlng a winged human shape.-'
The first extant reference appears ln the Alphabet
of Ben Slra, and greater elaboratlons occur in the consl-
Raphael Patai, "Llllth," Journal of Amerlcan Folklore,

LXVII (Oct.-Dec, 1964). 295.
2
Ibid.
3 Ludwig Blau, "Lillth," Jeulsh^nqxôjjedla (ftew

York: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1925). VII,~~B&\
6
dcrobly lator T.lnud, T.-.rguus ani ^vVvl, ,L
B.vi "ira is r.l_o
ItiicoA as Jesroc, tho ncn co Slraoh, Ho outhor.ol hh-> ..pooryphoi
Aiihrvooc (a Go coll-.d T-:S:.:PJik\'^^}}--.) c.lrrt 180 B.C. A lcbro
:o:h, !t Is nc::j v.ldoly y:\.c:::n ..n ohe Grcoh tronolotlon thot B
Sira'o nrnhoo:" ::ou.e. As Ji.l.lan ho-'or:..:t .;rn 0.000, the lrh~

"ls jirllar lo contont nl cpcrit to thv. blblicah hooko Provorho
arid ooelosla,h:e.., aoo. llho tho- belorgo to tho so-called Je..ich
h'isc'or l.J.toro.ture.,15
Bon Zion hcsher idcntifles the T'lnuA as tho "ericyclopo.eclla
of Jeclsh trfhilon .uippi:,: .ontiris; ^hc hih e (O.T.) and s...;.t.

/
zlnc. i..ore thon ? oenturier. of culorral &:co' 'vh."0
It v/as bogui.
aoovj^ tho yc-or 90 A.'., a; tho OIOGO O' tho 0,T. canon, .nd .;cs
not finishcd unlil tho fifth ce__.ury -'.D.7 T.:.rsur.!S, the hebrov.
..oro for tr nslo.tlc:i, lc ?.. spoo.Vf !c .rovh cc v/ell, rhich hoshe

dcscrlccs ao '"anotior GrrA: - ro.nol.'tion . . crocutcd ln tho 2nd
cznl-i-y A.D. b.v the Groeh proooiyio, Aquiho, fro.._ Font-u. Ho
coorre 00 frrons i'or his tr.n .ol ation that hc .vos also crcdltcd in
later tlno v:lth the Arnnalc txniolatio.i ..hich v?as uscd as an offi-
cla__ text in Fo.bylonia and s _."bo _ oiojntiy alco ln Pa estinc. HVl
** i"?.ximlllan Rud.ln, " hc Looênd of Llllth," T. . hevll ln

Lesond aoT I.'toratrTe (Chicvoo: pon Court, 1 9 3 D T p . 97K
5 Jullan .or-enstern, "Jcous, the son of Slrach," An
^:i?^\o^.r*dla jDf^P/ hj^vloo;, cd. Vorylliuo Fern (Ih.j York:
PhilooopnTc^l'Llb'raryr"'l9j:'5). P. 39--.
The
Bcn Zlon Boohor, "Tol my*.f '* >n Encyclopcdio. c_ P0i igj. pn,
p. 760.
*'
~*
7 Ibld.
7
weekly Scrlptura
lessons in the synagogues.
The technlcal
name of this trflnslatlnn 1? rrv_.-rr..m nniroi r.o nf .+ . _ oio/-.
referred to by the more general designation, Targum."8

Abba Ben Hillel traces the Caba a (also Kabala, Babba ah)
by stating:
The esoteric mystic lore of Judaism [is[ based
upon an occult Interpretation of the Blble and
handed down as secret doctrine to the inltiated.
The origin is obscure. Evidences of Kabbalistic
themes . . . are found ln Apocryph
and Apocalyptic literature and abundantly in Talmudic
and Mldrashlc llterature. In the course of its
long development, many streams from allen sources
flowed lnto itGnosticlsin, Neo-Platonlsm, NeoPythagoreanlsm, posslbly also Zoroastrianism and
Sufflsm. Its blrthplace was Palestlne, but It
was ln Babylonla durlng the Geonic period (5501000 A.D.) that it experienced lts first substantlal systeraatic develop)._ent . . . . From
Babylonla the center of Kabb'.lah moved. in th<?
nlnth and tenth centurles, to Italy, Spain, the
Provence and Gernany. . . . The most slgnlflcant
book of this perlcd, however, and the one whlch
came to be regardcd as the hollest of all Kabbalistlc wrltings, and the vcry epitome of Jev/ish
The migration
of the
Cabala
into Europe
ls lmportant,
as
mysticism,
was
the Zohar,
made known
to the public by Hoses de Leon In 1300.9
will become evldent later in thls chapter, for lts presence helps explain the emergence of the Lillth flgure in
dlsparate folk-literatures. The Cabala ls the mediura for
Bosker, "Targum," An Encycloped la of RelUion. pp.

761-62.
"
~~
9
Abba Hlllel Sllver, "Kabbala," An Encyclopedla of

ReliÎon, p. M 2 .
8
wlde diffuslon of the kernel of the myth.
Though these four sources refer to Lilith speolfically
by name, the derivatlon of her name constitutes a bit of a
oontroversy.
Rudwin and Patai, for example, agree that
^' the word lillth, as it described one dlstlnctlve flgure,

V
comes from the Hebrew lilith, a feminlne derlvative of the

noun lay'la (ln Assyrian leila), whlch ls the noun for
' "nlght."
The name was not originally a proper name, but
a coraraon noun signlfying "any monster ln the form of^woman

who exerclsed her_power for evil during darkness."-"
This
conception was lnfluenced by the Babylonlan-Assyrian word

lilitu, meaning a female demon or wlnd spirlt.*1
In the
folklore of the Babylonians, such a denotation became

natural and obvious; for ln the Gilgamesh epic, she is
Lillake, who built her house in a treethus, wlnd-spirlt
under which a dragon later lalred.
The Idea of Lilith's
belng assoclated with wlnd is not only Babylonlan, but also

Jewish, Llthuanisn, Estonian, Icelandlc and Indlan. fc
Further, the wlnd-splrlt became deifled, for the Jewish
exlles in Babylon (eighth century B.C.) are thought to have
13
worshlpped the tree-dwelllng Llllake as a goddess. J
10
Rudwln, p. 95.
11
Robert Graves and Raphael Patai, Hebrew Myths: The

Book of Genesls (New York: Doubleday and Co., 196.), p. 68.
2
Stlth Thompson, Hotlf- ndex of Folk-Literature

(Bloomlngtonr Tnd,: Indiana Univ. Press, 957)t V, "5^0.
x
3 Blau, p. 88.
Alexander, however, descrlbed the derivatlon thus:

"111 ls the dust-devil, and the name was applled to ghosts
whose food was dust.
When the word was borroêd by the
Semitca, it became llllum (maso.) and lllatu (fem.).
Ll-
latu was the handmald of the 111, and soon came to be

M - M W M
confunded wlth the Semltic lllatuthe nlght.
The latter
was ultlmately identified wlth Lllat, the nlght-demon that

sucked the blood of her sleeplng vlctlras. But the Babylonian extractlon of Llllth ls not thereby proven."
The controversy contlnues wlth the translatlon of
Llllth's name into various forms ln the Old Testament.
The Septuagint of the thlrd and second centurles B.C. gave
Lilith an animal connotation by substltutlng the words
"tuilles ape:: foi iier specific __aii_6 In Isaiah 3^-:l4#
Other
Greek translations of the flrst and second centurles A.D.

returned to uslng her name in describing the creature that
haunted Edora.!s rulned and desolate wllderness f-ortresses,
mentioned ln the Isaiah verse.
But her name was again de-
leted from Isalah by St. Jerome ln his Latln translation

of bOk A.D., and by Symmachus ln hls translatlon, composed
durlng hls relgn as pope between ^98 a*-d 51^ A.D.
rendered the word llljth as "nlght-monster."
Both men
Nor was the
beast lmagery abandoned with the Klng James version of l6iif
** Wllllam Menzles Alexander, Demonlc Possesslpn in

the New Testament (Edlnburgh: T. & T. Clark, 902J, P_ 16.
10
In ..hlch Lillbh vppoaro a.s a "scroooh~o.. ." And a__ R. P. Do:.
notc: , "V.hoLo_or or roi; ne o<. cepv the t:.ano o .lon of Iho Kino
Jarcs vorsion, thc ..orro of a dllc-rjma ro..r.lrn-. c).d the \:c::^n glve
romo to tho bird, or dic thj L3.rdf al-r;<r oT 111 cniene fronish
tho ranc for the doorpisod ..oron? Apoo-cntly tho for.-.cr. Thc
-.i.u.. v--ic.,i _._ sc.-e_.Cii 0..-1 mr. beon Dit'oorXy aooa.u er."^ thc ihlnj Jam?o rrs.h.-;., the Iof.:."h rorso doocrlbos hcr as bcing
accora-.c-i.nied hy roty-o, rcc!".jt poOlcc.u., c.lc, Jcchols, ootrlchos,
cr-hes o:l hlteo.'-'.7
h_-o\t Lilith .,o.c, in lcser.-d, tho fircb v:ifc of A d a m 1 ^c.,
bchore Evrt^hco ito cuo frc Ccnosls 1:2?. In ;hlch rabblnicO.
trv.hiMcn iri.oopr^tcd "raho arrl fcrale 'o.'catcd ho thovP' to ivoan
Lhot Gcd cr.otcd -vran c-.p.A ocoio hohp"_ah& a'c the 3a_.o tiroe and from
thc canc crsb, Jrc ic no'; roncioa. o rv.'.il iol.co.lS jjor seos tha
r
a sturbllnp bloch vhich hac va.zah_ al_oot cvcry child at Srnd_.y
School, as vrell as adulbo, ls ti.-.t :i-:, 'Jno firot ran, and Eve,
tho flrct v/ooon, hod t.;o chllcrcn o.:o n to natrrlty and both th_.cc
soo- rrn no difflcul.y rhntovor in fii.olno hroan-vjives, . . . To
accor.nt for a pcpaiation fron which Ca.in and 3eth got wives pt: ls|
*5 Hui"?in, p. 9^.
16
R. ?. Doo., "Ths Venaoful Eroci of Lilith and Sarael,"

Bull.etln oftitho Broohly_n hntcrclo~ical Society . XIt (Apr 11
1917),
7.""
17
18
Gravos, p. 68.
Harla Lcaoh, h r
Fo 1 kloro, i.vtholo,Tv_a.n-1
19liO), 'p. 622"^
^hloL '''r'Jj1-Ji Stcnv'o.rd Dictlororv of

o rcn-.l U-.'cr Ycrh OUII and ho^_ -.hllTj"
11
that early commentators selzed upon an Assyrian divinlty
and made her Adamfs flrst wife."1^ Despite Dow's explanatlon, It ls easler to believe that brothers married
their sisters.
What happened in the Garden after Lillth and Adam
had been created? From scanty lnformatlon, the poet
Robert Graves and the scholar Raphael Patai have hypothesized the following sequence of events concernlng Adara
and the pre-Eve Lllith ln the Garden of Eden:
1. Adam, jealous of the love he saw among
the anlmals, tried intercourse wlth all
of them, and, belng unsatlsfied, cried
out to God for help.
2. Lilith was then created for him from
fllth and sediment, Instead of pure
dust as Adam had been. Their union produced Kaamah, and innumerable demons
that stlll plague the carth.
3* Offended that she could not be on top of
Adarn durlng sexual Intcrcourse, she
berated hlm, and he recponded by trylng
to get her obedience by force. Enraged,
Lllith said the magic name of God and
flew away.
4. But fhe was recaptured by the angels
Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof near the
Red Sea, nursing her demon-children, the
lilim. She refused to roturn to the
Garden, saying that God had entrusted to
her the care of male and feraale infants
until they reached the aês of elght and
twenty days, respectively.
v ou \j{ 5
5. The angels admitted the folly of forclng
her to return to Adam, but God punished
her desertion by killlng a hundred of her
lilim per day.
-^ Dow, pp. 1-2.
65.
12
Rudwin offers a brlefer account of the legend In much the
same terminology, but adds detall not Included in the
Graves-Patal version:
She would not yleld even after the angels had
been sent agaln by the Lord to convey to her
the doom that she would bear many chlldren and
that they should a l die in lnfancy. Lillth
consldered the penalty so awful that she was
about to put an end to her life by throwlng
herself lnto the sea. The three angels, moved
by her anguish, agreed that she should have by
way of conipensation full power over all newborn boys during elght days after birth and
over girls during twenty days after blrth. In
addltion, she was given speclal power over all
children born out of wedlock.^l
Graves and Patai offer additional y the statement that
Llllthfs fllght to the Red Sea ls o. recollcctlon of
another Jewish superstltlon that held water to be an
attractlon for demons.
And though they are not speclflc
ln identlfylng thelr sources, they al ege that Llllthfs

escape, and Eve's subsequent creation and marriage to
23
Adam, may actually recall some early hlstorical lncldent.
In any case, as Rudwln says, Lllith was "the flrst woman
to challenge mascullne supremacy."2^
---' Rudwin, pp ; 96-97

V
22
Graves, p. 67.
^ bld,, p. 69.
22f
Rudwln, p. 96.
13
The derlvatlon of the Lillth legend may come from a
modlfication of one or more legends which have clrculated
around the creatlon of Eve. Graves and Patai offer the
followlng suppositions:
1.
The First Eve, whom Adam saw created

gland by gland, so disgusted him that
he refused her. God took her away,
and there ls no record or tale that
tel s us what happened to her after
she left Paradise.
2. Eve may have been created from Adamfs
tail, resulting in the now useless
coccyx.
3. God may have created one flgure with
a malefs face in the front and a femalefs in the back. This creature found
conversation dlfficult, and asked God to
separate it lnto two dlstlnct beings.
4, Adam and Eve may have bcen joined at
first as one body back to back, Ilke
Slamese twlns, and later scparated,
but forbldden to copulate. J
Dow relates brlefly the most popular verslon of Evefs
creation, that she came from Adamfs rib, stating:
"Lillth claimed equal rlghts, having been created out
of the same clay, and at the same tlrae. When she reallzed
how hopelessly obstlnate Adam was in hls reactlonary
vlews, she reached a decision not unlike that of the
ond=of-the-ninetoenth century Nora in Tbsen*s fDollfs
Graves, p # 66,
Ik
House.1
She flew out of Eden and auay from Adara, who ln
her stead got Eve for hls second wlfe, taken from hls
thlrteenth rlb on the right slde."26
Though the Lllith
section of this tale is not popularly known current y,

Adamfs rlb has become accepted as the origln of Eve, especlally ln Europe and the Amerlcas.
Dow also includes a very lnteresting colloquial
account of Ll lthfs creation which he obtalned from an
article by Jewish storyteller Fltz Nigle in the New York
Tribune (n.d., n. page).
Though too long to reproduce here,
Nlg efs varlations, whlch he claimed to have recelved from

an Egyptian guide, assert that Llllth was jolned to Adam
like Slamese tv.lns. Serarated with a flaming sword, Lilith
and her daughter Zellnda wandered to the land of Nod.
Caln Is supposed to have taken Zelinda as hls wlfe.
Later,
Dow
mentions brlefly Nlglefs varlatlons on the creation of Eve

as well, which say that Eve was born of a pimple on Adamfs
leg, and that tho fall of man was caused by her eating a
certaln grain, rather than an apple, as popular legend
identifies the forbldden food.2?
But because Adam was content with hls second wlfe,
jealous Lilith was not yet finished in the Garden.
<- Dow, p. 3.
z
bid., p. 8.
I.assey,
15
ln retelllng folktales from the Holy Land, notes that
Lillth took the form of the serpent to beguile Eve into
eatlng the fruit of the forbidden tree and into offering
lt to Adara, who, seduoed by her charm, accepted lt. Rabbinical legend, says Hassey, tells of Lllithfs flnding
the serpent at the gate to Eden, and of her enticing lt
Into lendlng her its body for the purpose of temptation.
This verslon of the use of the snakefs form for the purpose
of seduclng women has been traced by Thompson through many
folklores, finding it present ln such dlsparate cultures
as the Jewish and the East Indian.2?
Thompson did not
build specifically on I_assey!s materlal; nor dld he connect

Lllith with the tales that he found.
But he did dlscover
a wlde varlety of cu tures that adopted the motif of the

snakefs seductlon of the flrst woman as an Integral part
of storles about the creation and fall of man.
Ono com-
mon denomlnator that he found among the storles was the

presence of Godfs punishment of the snake:
it was relleved
of lts appendages and condemned to crawl on its belly for

all tlme.
All the stories that do mention Lllith note that
she was not daraned along with man, for she had left Eden
before the fall and was, therefore, lmmortal.
Gerald hassey, The Natural Genesls (London:

and Norgate, 1883), II, 109.
Thompson, I, 7^.
Wllllams
16
She dld not leave Eden, however, before serving as
w_e aother of aany dcmons. Jewish luru, promoted and
ciroulated from as far back as 1000 B.C., held that Adam
was forced by Llllth to sleep with her after he had already
mated wlth Eve. Adam then placod himself into a voluntary
130-year penance, durlng whlch tlme he refralned from
lntercourse wlth Eve. But he could not contro
hls nocturnal
emlsslons, which Impregnated female demons who bore hlm

spirit-demons and lllln ( rdat Ljl.lh
Llkewlse, male
splrlts lmpregnated Eve, who mothered demon chlldren who

personlfled the plagues of mankind.3 The bearing of demons
by human hosts corresponds to Blaufs assertlon that all
31
demons are half-human.
The Sheddm, says Hrs. Leach, are
evil spirlts born of Lillthfs flnal copulatlon wlth Adam
after her expulslon.^
Fatai clains that Lllith, after
forclng herself upon Adam, then set about seducing Caln,

bearing him innumerable splrits and der-ions.33
Then, after
eavlng Caln, she tried to return to Eeavenfs Cherubim,

who had somehow become attracted to her; but they scorned
her, and the pattern of belng known as a succubusferaa e
demonand child-ki lcr (see below) was thenceforth set.-^
Graves, p. 66.
3 1 Blau, p. 88.
3 2 Leach, p. 623.
33 Fatai, p. 302.
jk
Ibld-. P- 303.
17
Dow oontlnues the chronlcles of Lllith by traolng
her career after she left the Garden, when she became the
mlstress of Samael, or Sammael, chlef of the fal en angels.
Rudwin identlfles Samael with Adam-Be ial in the Talmud
in dlstinction from Evefs Adam-Kadmon, the Talinud recognlzlng two Adams.
Dow ldentlfles Sa.:ic.el with Ba-al, who "is
merely a leadlng man, a captaln, a governor, anybody above

the rank and filo.
This particular Ba-al, Samael, Is
beyond much doubt the man who appears ln the Old Testament
as Baalzebub, and In the New Teotament as Beelzebu . " ^
Samael fell in love wlth Lillth when he saw her lamentlng her loneliness.
Flndlng hls vlew on the equallty
of the sexes quite different, and more to her llklng, in

comparison with what she had bcen used to with Adam, she
accepted hls love, and the two settled in the Valley of
Jehabbum (also, Jehannum or Gehenna), ln the Cabala, the
abysmal horae of ovil spirits.3
As D O W explalns,
Nturally, then, the loyal descendants of

Adam could not speak too illy of thls woman
who had abandoned Adam, and apparently origlnated divorce. Even Jehannum became accursed
and the chlldren of Israel were warned not to
intermarry with this outcast posterity. The
place developes jslc] lnto an abode of darkness,
and further untii, In the attempts to localize
35 Dow, p. k.
3^ Gehenna was the smoldering olty dump for Jerusalem,
so lt follows that the narae of thls vlle place might concelvably develop Into a name for the horae of desplcable
spirits.
18
a Hell, it becomes one of the planes. . . .
Slmllarly traditlon has locallzed Heaven ln
planes, the "seventh heaven" remainlng as the
foighest attainable bllss. In the .ohammedan
ftOl^C*1"-^- ^ n
~ -r--1- - A - _._-_
^^* 1..". 1
_._.
__.____,
_T-a.V- <_>-.><>' i<_i-r. . <_.-. *^- T t " 1 ^ _ l p T*vvua..iu.u
__. v_. U M x i i u
/i* J_ _> X V-* ^* J_S- -
ly the abode of reputationless women. Thus

Lllith xas conslgned by tradltlon to consort
only with devlls.37
Samael and Lillth together formed a demonlc couple .ho
consplred agalnst the Lord ln hls plans for man and
womanklnd.38
Rudwln says that according to St. John
(which St. John he does not say),
lt was Samael, not
Lllith, who vla the serpentfs form begulled Eve to eat

the forbldden fruit.39
rs. Leach says that Lillthfs
acoeptance of Samael dld not deter her from more debauchery,

and she contlnued by cohablting wlth the Devll, who sired
the j_inn.
But the chronology for these events--from
the time she was in the Garden wlth Adam to her bearing
the Devllfs spawn--ls unclear; we do not know whether her
relatlonshlp v.ith Samael began whlle she was marrled to
Adam, whether she left Adara for Samael, or lf she mothered
the .1inn whlle llvlng wlth Samael.
There ls obviously a confuslon of consorts and progeny, a chronology for whlch no scholar has been able to
work out.
For lnstance, Dow contends that demons were born
Dow, p. 3.
3 8 Rudwin, p. 97.
39 ibid.
^ 0 Leach, p. 622.
19
to Llllth and Samael as well as Llllth and the Devll:
"Two or more broods of chlldren were born. . . . Tradltlon makes plenty of mentlon of the second, the female
devlls, whlch made Li ith a medlacval by-word, terror
of women ln chlldbirth, to be fought with amuletsan
easler way than by righteous llvlng."^1
Nor may one accept an Identlfication of Llllth as
Just the consort of the Devll, for varlatlons speak of
her as his sister, mlstress, even mother.
Poet George
S. Ylereck, who fancies himself scholar as well, claims

that "Lilith (or Lalllth) . . . was the slster of Luclfer."**2
Viereckfs "Queen Lilith" is based on thls assump-
tlon (see Chapter III). Addlng to the legend, he says,

"Lucifer and his cistor Lillth alone of all the angels
were the peors of God.
V/hen He had hurled brother and
slster to bottomless perdltion, He must have been
one-
some, lndeed, surrounded only by the servile throng of

meek submissive angels."^3
There are still raore Identificatlons of Llllth as a
relative of the Devil.
For lnstance, there is the example
of Llllthfs appearlng as the mistress of the Devll, an ldea

whlch appears solely In Jewish thought.
Chrlstlan lore
^1 Dow, p. 5**2 George Sylvester Vlereck, Th^Candle and the Flame

(New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1912), P. 113.
^3 ibldt p. 11 *K
20
excludes the Devll from the sacrament of marriage, but
allov.s hiui a oompariion by endowi_& hlm with a motlier or
grandmother.^
In a German play pf 1*450, accredited by
tradition to the mythlcal Popess Joan, a female pope in

disgulse who supposedly died In childbirth, Lilith Is the
grandmother of the Devll.^5
i n Victor Hugofs La Fin de
Satan (see Chapter III), the Babylonian-Assyrian Lilith

ls equated with the Egyptian Isls, and further as Satanfs
daughter.^6
The Cabala does not llst Llllth as a relatlve
of Satan, and lncludes Nehema, Aggareth, Igymeth, and Hachlath as the Devilfs concublnes.^7
Mllton, ln PL Me_Lost,
does not mentlon Llllth, but does describe Satanfs lncestuous relatlonshlp with his daughter Sln, who sprang
full-blown from hls head as did Mlnerva from Jupiterfs.
The product of their forbidden unlon ls Death.^9
Mllton
put lnto poetry the literal meaning of James 1:15 in the

King James:
forth sln:
"Then when lust hath concelved, It bringeth

and sln, when It is finished, brlngeth forth
death."
Besldes the Devil, Lilith has one partlcular relatlve,
her daughter, Zellnda, as Dow calls her, the more-clted
Rudwin, p. 98.
5 Ibld.
^6
>14.
k7
bld.
Ibld.
21
Naamah as noted by Graves, Patai and others.
Naamah, says
Patai, ls most frequently described as the daughter of Lilith

and Cain, whlle Caln ls the son of Eve and Satan.50
He says
that Naamah is called Igrath when she and Lillth, as harlots,

visited Solomon for hls famous judgment of determinlng the
true mother of an infant.51
Graves finds Lllith again with
Solomon under the guise of the Queen of Sheba, but since

she often appeared as a halry night-monster, the fact that
the Queen had hairy legs was enough to tlp off the klng
that she was Lillth ln disguise.52
Rudwin concludes the
LIlith-Caln-Evo lore by relatlng the Koranfs account of

Hllth f s presentation of a daughter, Zellnda, to Adam.53
Desplte all the varlatlons and contradictions ln the
forms of the Llllth legend, one theme runs as a thread among
all accounts of Li lth, whatever the culture:
It Is the
theme of her inherent evll, llnked inexorably wlth her

erotic power.
Massey asserts that Adam had to have a wlfe
before Eve because of womanfs two phaoes, the menstrual

and the gestatlonal.5^
Lllith was the serpent-woman and /
typifled the menstrual phase of femlnlne blologlcal productivlty.
In a later stage of thought, menstrual woman
5 Fatal, p. 305; but the Blble clalms Caln was the

son of Adam and Eve.
52 Graves, p. 68.
53 Rudwln, pp. 95-96.
23
her of the Joys of motherhood.^ She cursed the whole of
Adam and Evefs descendants because of her envy; all of manklnd, since that curse, has been ln danger of Llllth.
And
though some tales featuro her seduction and murder of men,

or her danger to mothers, her maln target ls bables.
Often Llllth ls described as a harlot, or a vampire,
unable to satlsfy any man, unable to glve blrth, unable
to produce milk frora her breasts.59
In Aramalc llterature,
she ls a threat to virgins, mothers, and menstruating women.

A woman at the hour of chlldblrth Is particularly vulnerable, for Llllth prevents births through barrenness,
mlscarriages, or labor compllcatlons.60
She kills children,
by attacklng them, strangling them, plagulng them, sucking

4.U-.-C- v.--.-o 6l
<^JH3X J.
M X O V U I
V.J -r--o^ ^~"" rirl -. n1

*-___-
_._>>___>
_._-.
QJ
1 <ntl f Vcatlor a s
nlght monster, she ls particularly feared durlng the dark

hours, as Levl explalns: a "C f est la nult que Llllt exerce
ses ravages.
Un rabbln palestlnlen du III e slcle declare
qufll est dangereux de passer la nuit dans un malson isolee,

car ou court risque dfetre prls par elle. . . . II nfest
pas dit que seuls les enfnts aient a redouter alors ses
_*
62
mefalts."
5- uudwin, p. 95
59 Patal, p. 296. Blau contradlcts: "In the Talmud
there ls nothlng to indlcate that Lillth is a vamplrev
(Blau, p. 88).
60
Patai, p. 399.
61
Pld.t P* 300.
62
israel Levi, "Lillt et Lllin," Revue des Etudes

* V .//' K \ l
- <_- '
1+), 16.
I
2k
Throughout lore, Lilith ls al...:.ys evil, and often a
fata demone-ss. She and h^-r r.fl._oV-).;r-v arf. both fnund 1n
tales strangling sleeping babies; they also ceduce sleeping
men, who are subject to becomlng victims if thoy sleep
alone.3 If Llllthfs victlm wakeo up, he ls kllled. Mother
and daughter demons together klll chlldren because Lillth
believes that they should be punished for Adamfs sln of
refusing to obey Llllth, a bellef whlch had existed in
Jewlsh ore through the l880fs. Desplte the aggregatlon
of tales describlng her maliciousness, Rudwln finds a
more sympathetic side to Lilithfs attractlon for babies:
But Llllth after all may not be so black as
she ls painted. lior intentlon in visitlng
the lylng-ln roo^s of mortal women ls perhaps
not to harm but to hug the babies. Thls fatal
lmmortal, who has bcen denied the joys of
motherhood, seeks to prcss to her heart the
babies of the happier r.icmbors of her sex. This
bellef to the efcct that Lilith oves babies
and plays with thom in their sleep on the night
of the Sabbath ls supported by a certaln Jewish
belief. It is written ln the Talmud that lf a
child sralles during the night of the Sabbath or
the New Moon^ it Is a slgn that Lilith is playing with It.65
A motherfs fears and dreads of the pain of chlldbearlng
are erabodled ln the flgure of Llllth, and qulte often the
3 Graves, p. 66.
6k
6
Patai, p. 30f.
^ Rudwin, p. 99.
25
demoness is envisloned as a phantom hag who constant y seeks
to find, steai, and kiil newbom u-.uies, or to injure their
mothers, as previously mentioned.
She ls a threat perso-
nified, for she is to the nother an apparition of v,'omanfs

two greatest fears:
her anxiety over another viomanfs steal-
ing her husband, and her dread of danger to her chl d.
These
worrles meet ln the figure of Ll lth, whom Rudwln identifies

as a combination of the dream-glrl and the chl d-stealing
wltch, the latter havlng been known for three thousand years,
since ancient Egypt dovm to modern Italy.
Rudwln flnds
that she is a fusion of a I_oman lamia, the Greek hetera and

the Turkish vamplre.
The origin of Lillth as vamplre has
already been presented from her role as night-monster.
And
thls vampiric quallty echoes her threat to infants.

At first one raight leave undifferentiated the words
lllith and laraiâ. The ljl__J_a, according to Borges, "llved
in Africa.
Frora the waist up their form was that of a
beautiful v;oman; from the waist down they were serpents. . . .

They lacked the ability to speak, but they made a whlstllng
sound whlch was muslcal, and In the spaces of the desert
beguiled trave ers ln order to devour them."67
The lamia
became a specific figure, Lamia, and though Rudwln descrlbes
bb
6
Rudwln, p. 9^.
7 Borges, p. 143.
26
her as a Roman character, she is iuore ften descrlbed as a
Greek mythologlcal woman, Llllth-llke, but not qulte the
cainc. A ccmplctcly diffcrcnt criln myth scparates thom.
As Dow says, "In Horace, Appuleir:. and Tertulian Lamla is
a witch delighting in sucking childrcnfs b ood, and so Is
not unllke the whole conceptlon of Llllth."68 Levl says
that Lamla ls "sans doute pour mieux rendrc compte de la
forme femlnine du mot hebreu." ^ Accordlng to Busk, however, Lamia is not Just the Greek equlvalent of Lillth,
and he ldentlfies her as
the daughter of Belus and Lybla. Juplter
fell in love with her and carrled her to
Llbya ln Italy, and Juno, ln jealousy, had
all her chlldren destroyed as soon as born.
Lamia then, in desperatlon, wandered over
the earth, slayln^ the children of other
voên. Juno furthcr dcrrlrcd hcr of tho
power of sleepln^, and Jupitcr, ln compasslon
for hor v.cari.nesc, gave her the faculty of
removlns hor oyes >.nd replaclng them at pleasure; hc also endoued her with the pov.er of
assuming uhatevcr form she pleased.^
Throughout folk-literature,are characters who
have the attrlbutes of Llllth to some degree, even lf
they resemble her in only a slngle characterlstic. The
premaritally promiscuous women of Canaan worshlpped Anath,
a goddess who may have been borrowed from Anat of Babylon,
71
consort of Anu, king of tho gods.
Lilith, as weil as
68
69
Dow;..pp. 7-8.
Levi, p. 15.
7 R. H. Busk, "Curiocities of ..uperstltlon ln Italy,"

Notes & Queries. 6th ser., IX (Jan.-June, 1884), 5.
r..
67.
27
the serpent, is actually equated with a vlrgln mother
flgure In certaln Arabl c ci.ltures,"
Massey says she
ls the Egyptian Rerlt, the Goddess of the Seven Stars,

who was represented by Rerit the Sow, as well as by the
hippopotamus and the rhinooeros. The snake motif enters
agaln, with Rerltfs belng represented by the serpent, further lndlcating the role of the Lllith-associated snake
in myth.73
Frey adds that Lllith in the form of a snake
"is represented ln mediaeval mlssals and ln Michael An- "^^\

74
gelofs Slstlne fresco."'
In a Babylonian terra-cotta
relief, she is shown as human, but by the seventh century
B.C., she Is ln Syrlan art ln the form of a sphlnx.'^
Sometlmes Lillth is envisloned as comlng to earth, llke
the Goddess of the Seven Stars, from a satelllte invlsible
from our planet. In Israelite traditlon, she may be equated
ln part with Lamla, as well as with the Brunhild ln the
German Nibelunp;enll ed.
Folklore further envlslons her ln the followlng
gulses:
E&ypt: a friendly wel -wisher who takes
advantage of a lull ln the partylng over
the blrth of a child to steal it.
72
Massey, p. 109.
73
Ibid.
7k
. R. Frey, "Lillth," Notes & Queries, 6th ser.,

VIII (July-Dec, I883), 35^.
75 Patal, p. 297.
28
Italy: a mldwlfe who steals the chlld after
deliverlng it.
Baby 1 on-Assyria: a monster with a llonfs head,
a womanfs body, birds feet, riding on an
ass, carrying a snake in each hand, nursing
a black hound and a pig from her breasts.
Greece: a screech owl or bat.
Arabia: a goggle-eyed demon wlth one foot of
an ass and the other of an ostrich.
Aram:
a harpy on the rooftop.
Gerraany:
a sharp-nosed, scrawny harridan.
Land of Canaan:
a vixen.^
And there are still more vlsions of Lilith echoed

in other cultures,
Viereck presumes that "Llllth took
part ln strange phallic rites In Egypt; ln Germany she

was an enchantress paying homage to Lucifer at the
Witchesf Sabbath; and ln Java, transformed Into a tree,
she gave monstrous dreams and death to the vjayfarer."77
She may be, in addition, the Penobscot Indian Pskegdemus,
and La Llorona in Mexlcan lore, both characters child ess,
envious, fatal demon woraen.'
Colucclo expands on the
descriptlon of La Llorona ("she who weeps"):
Theodor H. Gaster, The Holy and the Profp.ne:

Evolution of Jevxish Cu ture~TNew York: William Sloane
Assoc, 1955). P.~ 19.
77 viereck, p. 113.
7Q Leach, p. 622.
29
Jlla] se "aparece" llorando lmplorando ayuda y
piedad, y cuando algtn comedldo se prepara a
sooorrerla, aprovecha esa oportunidad para sacarlo todo lo que lleva encima. incluso a veces
hasta la ropa. La Llorona exlste tambin en
otros pases de Amrica con una concepcl6n muy
semojante a la nuestraQ.a Argentimu^
In Costa Rica, "La Llorona . . . es una mujer dcsgranada
que vaga de noche por las riberas de los rfos, dando
lastimeros gemldos, y cuyo encuentro es fatal para el
vlajero.""^
The character may have some basis In his-
tory, for "Segun el Dr. Penaflel, La Llorona, el fantasma

blanco que de lastimeros grltos en noches tembrosas, es
para los indios de Mexlco, el alma de Mallnche, la Marlana
de los espanoles, la amante de Hernah Corte^s, condenada
a tan terrible explacion por habor tralclonado a su patrla.
The Lllith figure, whether manifestod directly or
echoed vicarlously, ls so extrcmely popular that a pause
to consider a deeper orlgin ls ln order.
J. E. Cirlot
has put forth an explanation for the popularity of Lllith,

llnklng her presence In folklore:to the figure of the
maternal Imago.
Lilith as a symbol is related closely to
the Greek figure of Hecate, with her

demands for human sacrlflce. Lillth
personifles the maternal jjnprq, in so
far as she denotes the vengeiul mother
7 Fellx Coluccio, Dicclomrlo Folk 1 orIco Ar[ cnt 1 no,
2nd. ed. (Buenos Aires: El Ateno, 1950), p. 246."
80
Ibld.
81
Ibid.
30
who reappears to harry the son and hls wlfe
(like the Stepmother or Motber-ln-law). Lillth
Is not related literally to the Mother. but
wlth the ldoa of the Mother venerated (that ls,
loved and feared) during chlldhood. Sometlmes
she also takes the form of thc desplsed, or
"long-forgotten" mlstress, as in the case of
Brunhild . . . or of the temptress who seeks
and brlngs about the destruct.on of the son
and hls wife. There ls a certaln quality of
the vlrlle about her. 2
Against such a fearsome creatureserpent-woman,
child-killer, nlght-monster--an antldote must be prepared. Just as Llllth represents certain fears and
dreads, so must countercharms be lnvented to stand for
the conquest of these anxleties. And a number of exorclsms exist by which to banish the spirlt of Llllth.
Though the early chronlc es record her name solely as
Llllth, In the Holy Land alonc she was popularly known
by a vast number of names ln the oral tradltlon. These
names include the followlng:
Lllith
Abitz
Abldo
Amorfo
Kkods
Ipkodo
Ayylo
jyy^
Ptrota
Abnukta
Strina
Kle
Ptuza
mr
'.^"T^.ft
Tltol
Prltsa
Legend says that the prophet ElIJah gathered all these

names together and reclted them, banlshlng her from hls
82
J. E. Cirlot, A Dictlonary of ^Sjrmbols (London:

Routledge'and Kegan Paul, l^zYTv- - n
8
3 Gaster, p. 22.
31
presence.
These names thenceforth served as a well-known
countercharm.
Gaster says that although the Jews had no
saints, Elijah appears as the conqueror of Llith because he

was the patron saint of clrcumcision, which prevents any male
from slring a demon chlld by a succubus.^
Spells agalnst Lllith often come from tales of a malefs
trlumph over her; each herofs method of banishment comes down
as a popular antidote.
Charms also exlst a one, wlthout bene-
flt of accompanying myth.
For instance, even today, Abyssinian
mothers-to-be vrear an ancient amuletic scroll in whlch the story

of Elijahfs discovery of the twe ve names of Lilith Is changed
to that of St. Slsinnius, a Syrlan saint of the thlrd century
whose vlrtue was so great that he killed his sister when he sus-pected her of consortlng with the Devll.8^ A slmilar story Is
told upon a like amulet cal ed St. Cyprianfs Scro l worn by expectant mothers in Armenia.8^ In a carbon-copy Coptic version,
Elljah becoraes the archangel Mlchael.8?
Is narned Sisinnius.88
In Greece, the hero
In a Slavonic tale of the basic story
of conquest, the hero who conquers a monster simllar to Lillth
8Zf
8
Gaster, p. 24.
5 Ibid., p. 22.
86
bid.
87
Pia.t P. 24.
^
bld. The Greek horo who defeats a monster cal ed
Gylouhence tho word ghoulls described by Alexander as a
ghul, "practlcally the counterpart of Lllith; a creature of
night and darkness; wanderino- abroad to decoy and devour
her lonc human victims" (Alcxander, p. 44).
32
ls Sisoe, whose name is slmllar ln root to Slsinnius.89
Gaster says that ln England St. George Is reputed by legend
to have overcome Llllth, and the story of hls conquost ls
reolted as part of an Ellzabethan charm agalnst nlghtmare.90
Gaster also clalms that a simllar charm ls found in Shakespearefs Macbeth:
"Aroint, thee, wltchl"?1
Another charm,
he claims, ls found in Psalms 121:6, wardlng off the presence of nlght-demons:
"The sun shall not smlte thee by
day, nor the moon by night."92
TJ- latter presumptlon
holds llttle weight, for although Lillth as representatlve

of womanfs menstrual slde is linked wlth the wax and wane
of the moon, nowhere else In lore is Llllth connected
dlrectly wlth the moon.
She uses the night as a cover of
darkness for her lnfamy, and probably would not want the
llght of the moon to betray her.
Indeed, Rudv.In finds
her active during the nlghts of tho New Moon (note 6 5 )

i.e., vhen the moon is dark.
There exlst stlll more counterforces agalnst Lillth,
includlng the following:
? Gaster, p. 24.
90
Si.
91
Ibld.
92
Ibid., p. 22.
33
1.
2.
3.
4,
5.
A chlld ls protected against Lilith if he

wears the arnulet of the three angels. But
Lilith T-71 kil one cf hor cwn childrcn if
she cannot find a hnman to ki l.94 Amu ets
wlth the names of Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangolof, or with the twelve names of Lilith,
are still v.orn wldely throughout the Near
and Mldd e East.95 Lev.I, however, maintains
that "Ce ne sont pluc lcc noms des anges qui
ont un pouvoir dfexorcisme, mais la possession
des no:ns de Llllt, conf orinment la croyance
populaire blen connue."9
Communlty-wide rltua s often protected the
society agalnst Lilith in Jewlsh vl lages.97
One can strlke a sleeplng childfs llps wlth
one finger to make a breath-sucklng demon vanlsh.
One can strike the nose of a child three times
and drivo Lilith away by the prescrlbed rough
words.99
Ll ith may a so be dcalt wlth by trapping her
under an inverted bowl. A number of ancient
bowl s. 0&?5| rrv.<c.r. <. n^-îf * niiv for this fmcticn
have been unearthed ln I.osopotamia.100
9^ Graves, p. 65.
95 Ibld.
96
Levl, p. 18.
97 Graves, p. 67.
9
^ Ibld. Thls could wcll be the origin of the

V/estern superstition that cats suck the breath from babies,
inasmuch as Dow notes that cats and Llllth are often found
hanglng around together.
99 Blau, p. 83.
Gaster, p. 27.
34
6. The raale head of a household, to protect
hls children, may issue a bill of divorcew, -^ w. 4- 4- -,. -._!-. TtTtJ-l^t^. , -l___._."1_^-..-,-T 1 0 i.
UlC-1. U U WU.X U b i x i v i l ' i- IUU.J.C v uXtijCy , * v -
7. Blau notes, "Llllth is the chlef figure on

the fchi dbirth tabletcf still hung |1925J
on the walls of the ying-in room in the
East and in eastern Europe."
But even these charms are not enough to get rld of
Lllith. During the Renaissance, Caballst monks devised
storles to complete the legend of Llllth by disclaimlng
her immortality and maklng her subject to eventual lmpotence, even dath. Patal and Rudwln have chronlcled
the storles into a clear progresslon. The hellish Samael
ls held to have married her ln a ceremony arranged by a
creature called the Blind Dragon.10^ Is thls monster
the Levlathan of the Bible? As Rudwin states, "The demon
ls named Levlathan and his consort Is called Heva."10* They
appear ln a story identlcal to one included in the Zohar,
which "expressly states that Adam and Eve led a menage a
quatre with Samael and Llllth. At the moment when the
demon debauched the mother of mankind, the demoness offered
her beauty to the founder of the human race."105 Rudwin
101
102
Ibid.
Blau, p. 88.
10
3 Patal, p. 3H.
10/1
Rudwln, p. 101.
105 Ibid.
35
also says, "Other mystlcal wrltlngs represent Leviathan
as a sort of androgyny, of whom Snmael was the raale Incarnatlon and Li lth or Heva the fe_nle."10
And this
ralses the question of whether Samae , Ba~al, Leviathan

and the Blind Dragon are al
the sarne beltrc. We also
note Rudwlnfs concept of "androgyny," a description whlch

rings true wlth the myth of the creatlon of the first
parents who were Janus-faced.10?
Whatever the answers
and they will probably never be knovmjust the many

afflnlties among storles frora opposite corners of the
globe are intc:nii.fcing enough alone.
Rudwln continues the story of the doom of Lilith
with the information that the Cabnla relates that Samael
had given Llllth a splendld kingdom as a wedding present. 108
But Its magnificence did not compenoate for her lack of
children.10^
Patai explalns her lack of progeny with the
ldea that God had castrated Samael so that he and Lllith

could not procreate demons any more. 110
Understandably,
once he was castrated, Llllth moved on to more, shall we

say, fertile ground, and satlsfled her lust by fornicating
106
Ibld.
107
See note 25.
108
Rudwin, p. 98.
1Q
9 Ibld.
110
Patal, p. 311.
36
with sleeplng men. 1 1 1
Caballsts also lntroduced the idea of Lllithfs being spllt
into two_characters, a development of the stories about Lilith
and Naamah. 112
The characters were Li ith the Elder_and Llllth
the Younger, the latter having the body of a womanfrom head

to navel, and downward, a body of flaming flre. 1 ^
Later myths
established their opposlng qualities of evil and good.11^

The Safed Cabalist R. Shelmo Alqabes (c. 1485-1505) concluded the legend with a bravura sequence of events.
He wrote
in his mystical history that with the Israelites1 exile in the

elghth century B.C., God, the flgurative father of Israel,
ushered hls wife, Shekhina, into exile, and was forced to ac115
cept as his consort the slave-woman Lilith. J The rlse of
Liiith to occupy a place bobidu Gud seeius incompatible wlth
Lllithfs evll character, but Alqabes placed addenda onto the
tale to make the story loglcal.
Even in such a lofty posltlon,
her jealousy prevailcd; envious of Shekhina, Llllth plotted

the destructlon of the exlles1 Jerusalem temple, an event of
the flrst century A.D., predicted In the New Testament.
This
catastrophe, Lllith hoped, would signify the end of all Hebrew
111
iM.
112
bid.
13
-3 Ibid.
^__-IW---^_PI_.
11
bid. See the discusslon of George MacDonaldfs

1895 fantasy novel Lilith in Chapter III for an account
Of this conflict.
115
Ibld., p. 312.
37
worship, a spectacular feat that would bespeak the power
-
. .
->
.._.__,
1 1 6
T...4-
T . "1 - *- 1*. V.<-> A
V./-S+
ol' her aiaooncairaacrijLuao_Lns. Cuu Lxxxi/i. Ai~^ ^*/

oounted on the great faith of the Jews and their abllity
to keep their falth In God lntact even without the external
ald of a temple.
Shekhlna was restored and Lillth was

117
deposed from a position that would have givcn her grace.

Because of her treachery, God decreed that both she and
the Bllnd Dragon would be struck down to damnatlon at the
time of the Second Coming.118
her legend. 119
It ls a doom that concludes
Alqabes dld not allow for a sequel, and,
indeed, he has written what seems to be the concludlng

chapter in a folkloric history that had begun some four
120
thousand years before he llved.
The doora of Lllith at the hands of Alqabes terminates
her legendary history.
From her brief mention in the
2400 B.C. king list to the meeting of her destlny through

the pens of the Renaissance Caballsts, Llllth has undergone
a constant, fasclnating elaboration ln folk-llterature and
rellglous writings, the two forms often comblned and indistlngulshable.
The minutlae that acoompany her thousand
tales Indicate the lnterest wlth which storytellers
116 Ibid.
117 Ibid.
118 Ibid.
119 Ibld.
120
Ibld.
38
embroldered the baslc legend.
Affinltles and dlscre-
pancles merely add to the excltemnt of traclng
her
legend.
This chapter has focused on her evolutlon through
legend.
The emphasis now swivels to an equa ly lnterestlng
toplothe portralt of Llllth ln llterature.
CHAPTER III
LILITH IN LITERATURE
In conslderlng the fasclnation of cultures wlth the
flgure of Lllith--her themes and numerous variations-~the
observer notes without surprise that consciously fabricating artists have seized upon her character.
Authors have
borrowed her from the folk and placed her ln thelr own
works.
She thus enters a new phase of her career in be-
coming as permanent and enticing a flgure in literature

written for entert,inment as she had been ln the oral and
rellgious traditbns.
Indeed, she became first noticed and
then worshipped through the fictionalized word; and she

passed from the literature of the folk to the literature
of the book-buying public, of the artist, with smooth transition.
The emphasis upon Lillth ln belles lettres came ln
the second half of the nineteenth century, spearheaded by
the Pre-Raphaelite reaction agalnst so-called "Victorianism."
Until the emergence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood ln
1848, authors had not enjoyed much substance in llterature
on whlch to construct thelr artistlc studles of Ll lth.
Until that year there were* only three najor mentions of her
in books not designed to embel ish her legendary face for
the sake of the folk.
The first occurred ln 1621 ln Robert
Burtonfc _._sslvc_, specu atlve A-.atcriy of Melanoholy, v.hcroln

39
40
he allowed only the briefest of mentions to the demon-woman
who had lnvaded so many folk-literatures.
A l he said was,
"The Talmudists say that Adam had a wlfe called LIlis. be121
fore he marrled Eve, & of her begat nothing but Devlls."
Thls, ln the chapter "Nature of Deraons," ls not much to
bulld a(n) (anti)horoine upon, but lt was enough for Keats,
whose poem "Lamla" was based on his extensive readlng of
Burton, and on the folklore he already knew.
Lllith then
appeared qulckly in a scene in Goethefs towerlng Faust, but

she remalned ln the background, cast as a mlnlmally mobile
Helen of Troy.
Whatever Goethefs intentions, Llllth never
got past the chorus llne.

future authors.
._...,
Liiith,
Again, there ls little of use for
Finally, as Rudwin explalns, a hell-hagglsh
... i_.....*... v,. /-.v.-../-.,-<~ -T-^r.riards. "fortns

n o r a v i n ^ uc.aui/j -v c_njr ^_*^ ~
the
subject of the poem called The Diabo-Lady, or a Match In

Hell. wnlch v.as vrltten ln England In 1777 and fdedlcated
122
f
to the V/orst Woman ln Her Kajesty's Domlnions. "
The
anonymous author must have had a prlvate portrait ln mind,
and not a very lnfluential one, for the descriptlons of
Llllth ln other works are rarely unflatterlng.
So there was not much to bulld on In 1848.
The artlstlc
peak of the Vlctorian perlod was still to come ln the fifties

and sixtles, but the Pre-Kaphaeiites predietc.d the English
121
Robert Burton. t^^JL^^^âL

Tudor Publlshlng Corapany, 1927). P. 15.
122 Rudwln, p. 104.
(New York:
41
fascination wlth antl-Victorianicm wlth thelr helghtened
intorest In the erotic and the evil, preferab y treated
together.
A new llterary flgure sprang into beingthe
femme fatale--v;hose trcatment In the
iterature of the
time has been documented by Nunnally in his dlssertation.12^

The femme fata e par cxcellence is Lllith, undoubtedly
the queen of eros and evil, her throne uncontested; It
follows as the nlght the day th_>.t she would be a central
concern In the period.
Indeed, she vras.
VJith Dante Gabrie
RossettiJs poems
and palntings ccntering on the Lady Llllth, authors took

note and began ..ritlng a host of works that spanned the latter ' half of the nlneteenth century and spread well Into
the twentieth; co lntriguing a chcracter ls Lilith that
she appears evcn In contemporary literature,
This chaptor, then, examlnec the character of Lilith
as she has been chronlclod in literary works.
It bridges
the early works to the very latest, frora Rossettl's midnlneteenth century musings to Salamanca's I96I nove
Between them are analyses of the followlng works:
Lilith.
de Vlgnyfs
fragment "Llllth" (I859); Hugofs La Fin de Satan (1880);

aw-M--M>~~~M--to-*4-M*k~,~^~~*"^v>-9a--MM-M~*~M-ta
3 joscph Clayborn^ Nunnally. "The Vlctorlan Femme

Fatale: Mirror of the Decadent Temperament," unpubllshed
dlssertatlon, Texas Tech Unlversity (Lubbock, I968).
42
Browningfs "Adam, Lllith and Eve" and "Two Carae s" (1883,
1304); Garnettss "Madam Luciier" (i868); France's "The
Daughter of Lilith" (I889); Corellifs TheSou of Llllth
11 1
iwi _ n 1
. 1
---II
1 111
(I892); MaoDonald's Lllith (IS95); Viereckfs "Queen Llllth"

and "Children of Lillth" (1912); Sterllng's Llllth (1919);
Shawfs Baok to Kethusc ah (1920); Boycefs "Wherc Lilith
Dances" (1920); Erskinefs Adam and Evc (1927); and Sheehanfs
Eden (1927). These selections encompass the genres of novel,
short story, poetry and drama; Lilith is unconfined in art.
But, as In the study of her evolutlon through folklore,
the afflnitles and dlscrepancies amng the descrlptions
of her character in tho above rorks add to her ramif Ications.
It was v;lth the Pre-Raphacllte movement, and most partlcularly with Rossetti, that Lilith was flrraly given her
place in llterature, and in art as well. The best crltic
of the movoment ls I^fcadio Hearn, who In 1916 gave thls
account of the Lllith legend and Its modlficatlon to meet
the newness of the Brotherhood1s credo:
Llllth is the name of an evil spirlt belleved by
the anclent Jcrs and by other Orlental natlons to
cause nlghtr.oo.rc. But she did other things muoh
more evi , and there v.ere curlouc legends about
her. The Jevcc sald that before the first woman,
Eve, vras created, Adam had a demon vlfe by whom
he became the father of many evll splrits. When
Eve v.as creatod and glven in marr] age to Adam,
Lillth v/as noccssarlly jcalous, and reso ved to
avenge herself upon thc v.hole human race. It ls
even to-day the custom among Jews to make a charm
against Lillth on thelr marrlage night; for Lillth
is especlally tho enemy of bridos.
43
But thc partlcular story about Llllth thi?,t mostly
flgures in poetry and paintlng Is this: If any
young man seeo Llllth, he must at once fall ln
love wlth her, becauce she ls rauch more boautlful
than any human bcinpc: and lf ho falls In love wlth
hor, he dles. After hl.j death, lf hls body ls
opencd by the doctors, it will bo found thst a long
golden hair, one strand of womanfr^ hair, Is fastened
round his heart. The partlcular evll in uhlch
1
Lllith dellghts Is the destruction of the youth. ^
Rossettl was raesmerlzed by the splrlt of Llllth; hls
fasclnatlon wlth the character of the femme fatale determlned hls artistlc cvolvement. He updated the legend of
Lillth, flttlng it Into hls o.:n contemporaneity. On canvas
and on paper, there is evldent Rossettifs possesslon by
and repulslon from hls own eroticism. It is thls conflict
whlch produced his greatest works.
His palnting between 1859 and 1862 represents his flnest
work; desplte the dinenslonal flatness In his oils, and his
technical incompetencc, his brllliant coloratlon and adhercnce to old ldeals enlivened ..Ith fresh outlooks made him
among the greate3t of the Pre-Raphaelltes. Hls palntlng
Klng Arthurfs Tomb: thft last meetinp; of Lancelot and Gulnover

dlsplays a flrst-glance simllarlty to thlngs medleval, a resurgence of interest in that style wlthout the third dimenslon
of perspectlve. It resembles a Renalssance fresco, but
'zhr Lafcadlo Hearn, /mnree-.fitlonsôf Poetry (New York:

Dodd, Mead and Company:, 1916"). PP* 97-9c
44
there ls a disturblng difference.
Around the edês of the
work, In the corners of Its perception, are powerfui forces

deeply intent at work.
These are the incxplicable outllnes
that endow each work, literary or artlstlc, with that extra

bit of indeflnable eroticism.
The same powers are at work in hls poetry, ln particular "Eden rower" and his sonnet "Ll lth," the latter wrltten as a study of his own painting
-ady.Lmth.
The sonnet
offers the baslc tale that Hearn would later describe;

but it ls notable in that Roscetti seeks to lmmortalize
Lilith ln just fourtecn llnes, swooplng her up from Eden
into the present, crcctlng one ro.sterful Image along the
,.,*,.. ..A^ ~ t m
Rhf. sts. vouir v ..l e the earth Is old /
And, subtly, of hernelf conterap''atlve" (11. 5-6) - 1 2 5

Hls "Eden Bower." hov.ever, ls by far the better poem,
a porfect st.dy of Jealousy.
As Hearn descrlbes the work,
'Llllth ls represented only as declaring to her demon lover,

the Serpent, how she will avenge herself upon Adam and upon
Eve.
The ldeas are ln one way extremely lnterestlng; they
represent the most traglcal and terrlble form of Jealousy-that Jealousy wrltten of in the Blble as belng llke the
125 Dante Gabrlel P.ossettl. "Llllth," Th_Cor.nlote

Poetlc_al Worlc,. (Kew Yortc: Thomas Y. Crowell Company,
BF-T. P. 15>.
45
very firec of Hell,
We mght say tlrct In Vlctorlan verse
thls is the unique poem of jealousy, in a femalo personification."126 In our study, though, "Eden Bower" stands
for much more: It Is the firct work of art ln whloh Lillth
is not defined solely by her fo kloric background and Is,
lnstead, truly an artistlc oreatlon. It is a chilllng work:
It was Lllith the vrife of Adam:
(ffden'sbovcr jn floorer.)
Not a drop of her b ood was "hiVraan,
But she .:r_.s made llke a soft sweet woman.
Ll ith stood on tho skirts of Eden;
(/r_d 0 thc bovjor ancl the hourl )
She was the first tht thenco was drivon;
V/ith her :rs hell and with J\yc vras heaven. .__.
(11. l-8) 1 2 ^
And it is an important vork for lts vlrtue of faclle characterizatlon from lcgend alone. Rossettifs plece did not
Immedlately inspire a host of writers, but lt is apparent
that a rash of treatments ultimately followed, extendlng
well Into the twentieth century.
It ls difflcult, if not imposslble, to knovi how far
Rossettifs lnfluence spread. Although this thesls ls concerned prlmarlly with the Llllth legend and lts development throu,<:,h literature (and here, most y v;Ith Amerlcan and
Hearn, p. 98.
lz
7 Rossettl, "Eden Bower," p. 27.
46
Engllsh literature), we raust note that the next chronologicai inclusions of the Lilith character In
lterature
were made by two French authors in their works:
A fred
de Vlgnyfs I859 poetic fragraent "Lllith" and Victor liugo^s

drama La .Fln de oaton ln 1800.
De Vlgny v.as the flrst to link Lillth wlth Caln in
literature.
He produced a partlally realized work that
Maxlmilian Ruduln v.ould later call

an origlnal interpretatlon in that Lllith, the
first ii.ccrnatlon of v.oiiarkind, Is an lmpersonation of censuality and oterllity. When Adam
wearled of hor and recelvcd Sve ln her place,
Lllith cursed the of f srprlrg of the woman who
replaced hcr ln thc r.ffections of Adam and started her on her journcy across tho a-cs to found
the religion of nurdcrers, Through her influence,
4-v,r> -r* *"--i-..o...-.--r rr^ o; nf b-.r riva
w . _ _/ _.__-'
oecame
assass
O'*
of his own brother.1^0

But Hugo lmproved on de Vigny by turnlng Lllith (or at
least her implcicents) into a symbol, another step forward
In the elaboration of her llterary character.
De Vlgny
created one version; Hugo molded legend into literature.

Hugofs attempt at epic drama ls centrally concerned
not with Lilith but with the heroic figure of Satan.
Crltlc
Elllott M. Grant pays obeisance to both Hugo and Satan:

"Were they not both rebeis?
authority and tradition?
128
Rudwin, p. 99.
Were they not both defiers of
Were they not, therefore, natural
47
allles ln a kind of common struggle against bourgeois
stuffinessf and morallty?"129 Bt Grant notes that
Hugo;s Heil is distinctiy un-iitonic:
(atanfs fate ls to enter Into tota darkness,
alone. For Victor Hugo does not pcople thi-s
dread domaln. I._ltonfs fallen arohangel hnd
at least the consolation of much co.-irany, a
mlghty host ovcr whom he held eoi.mand. All
that Iiur;o per.tits Satan is to ennender a daughter, the veilcd Specter Isis-Lllith, and to let
her appcar upon tho earth.
Throuoh thls creatuic. Satan's daughter, evll
ls projected lnto the world of men. She brings
to carth, as th-c waters of_the groo.t earth recejle, three" syabollc objccts: a noll of bronze,
a wooden club cnd a stono. They hoppen to bc the
weapoi.s with whlch Cain killed Abel. In Hugofs
poem thoy stam'i for War, Capital Punlshment and
Imprlsonment.130
To Lillth Eugo counterpoUes the flgureoof Llberty,
born of on of Luuifci^ foathers which hcd not fallcn
into the abyss. Her role is thc followlng, according to
Grant: "Satan rallcos ln the darkness of Hell where
despair and rc-morse havc at ast entered his soul. He
reallzes that he loves God and longs to return to the
light. Hls daughter Liberty intcrvenes in his behalf. Guided
129
Elllott M. Grant, The_J3j^JLo^^

(Cambridge. I-iass.j Harvard Univ. Press, i'y4b., p. 231.
130 ibid., pp. 233-34.
48
to the bottomless plt by the archangel Winter, she brlngs
to Satan the hcaling ooon of tlcep afiex first obtcinlng
hls permisslon to undo the terrible work of his othor daughter Lilith." 151
Lillth, then, is the only completely evil
character ln the verse drania; sho is unrepentant, unredeemed.

Even the demonlc Satan Is not her equal, for he, at least,
ls open to grace.
She never rccches so high.
The conflict
between Lilith and Libcrty for Satan's salvatlon ls the most

interesting part of Io Fin de fjr^nn. Though the whole of
the drama docs not coraprise a mo.ctcrpiece, as Grant admits,
parts of it "easily compcte wlth the best phllosophical
132
poems ln the Western World."
The development of LUlth in llterature was momentarily
stunted by the brief intcrvention of Robert Browning, who,
wlth his facility for mr-sterful draivatlc monologues and his
talent for the poetic deplotlon of human vices, should have
been able to turn out a rork of tho highcst caliber with
Lilith as central character.
He could have wrltten a work
to equal or surpass Rossettlfs, but he choce only to treat

the theme llghtly in his poems "Adam, Lillth and Eve" and
"Two Camels."
ljl
F. G. Kenyonfs Introduction to the collected
Grant, p. 237.
132 ibld., p. 342.
49
works neatly summarlzes the flrst:
"A trivial fanoy in
which the names have no signlficance beyond that of generallzlng the appllcation of the story by glving the
partles the names of the first man and the first women." 1 ^
But the poem does have a blt more substance thah Kenyon
concedes to it.
True, the names lraply little more than
eplgrammatical generallzation; but we may lnfer from the

dlalogue a brlef descrlption of the folbles of marrled
folk.
"Two Caraels" uses Lilith even less.
She ls men-
tioned only ln passing"Lllith kissed hls llps"ln thls

longer poem, whlch, wlth lts Arablan atmosphere, employs
her merely for effcct, ln the sr.me way that the desert
settlng and the Kebrevi quotatlon ln the poera also contribute to its flavor. ~-y '
Nor did Richard Garnett and Anatole France contribute
much to the elaboration of Lilith with their rer.pective
short storles "__ade.ni Lucifer" and "The Daughter of Llllth"
0.338 and 1889).
Garnettfs forgottable work might have
been wrltten just after he had closed a collectlon of epigrams.
It ls a sardonlc fantasy ln whlch situatlon, cha-
racter and dlalogue play second flddle to wit.
We have
*33 F. G. Kenyon, "Introduction," The Works of Rpbert

Brownlng (Boston: R. H. Hlnkley, 1912), X, ix.
^34 Brovming, "Two Carnels," The Works of Robert
Browning, X, 104.
50
in lt the scene of "Lucifer . . . p cylng chess wlth Man
for hls soul," the beglnning of a ta e expoundlng the vices
of the shrew.^35
Luclfer, king of holl, would woo the falr
lady Adeliza, brlde of Man, but for "the tonguo of Madam

Luclfer."13^
ncr match.
Beside her blazing bitchery, thc falr one Is
Madam Luclfor, queen of hel , ls not the power
behlnd the throne; she ls the throne itself, and al

demonium pales at her aggrandized horror:
Pan-
"Thls ladyfs
black robe, drlpplng with blood, contrasted agreeably wlth

her complexion of sulphurous ye low; the absence of halr
was corapensated by the exceptional length of her nalls;
she was a thousand mllllon years old, and, but for her
remarkable muscular vlgour, looked evcry one of them."13'
Thls monsterfs posltlon of royalty in heil agrees with
some descriptlons of Lillth as a monster instcad of a
beauty.
France trics to place the legcnd ln modern Paris with
poor results.
"The Daughter of Lillth" ls an encounter
wlth Lci a, who ls lltera ly Lillthfs daughter, yearnlng

for release from her subservience to the daughters of Eve.
The storyfs only virtue comes ln a litt e plece of informatlon
*35 Richard Garnett, "l.adara Lucifer," Tho Twlllght of

the Gods and Qther Tales (New York: Knopf, 92oT), p". Tf-l.
'l-i
P l l
I I
_ -
- - -
III
II I I - 1 1 - 1
!36 ibld.. p. 180.

13
^ ibid., p. 179.
51
revealed in pocsing, dcscri..i-o: Llllth's eccape from the
Garden:
"she lsft him to go to thoce roglons where long
years afterwards the Feroians ..e.t..ed, but v;hich at th s

tlme where Inhoblted b;y the pro-Ad_.mItes, more lntelllgent
and more beautlful than the sons of men." 13
Uowhere else
ln all the lorc of Llllth is thio concept of "pre-Adamltes"

presented.
It ls thus v.ho.t Frrnoe does not say that ls
the more lntrlguing, espcclal y his refusal to divulge the

current whereabouts of Lllith hcrcclf.
The story could
have been far more Interc-.t'.ng hrd he chosen her as hls

subject rather than Lella.
Marie Corelli's I892 novel Tlv- ..oul _of UJUth vas the
first extended fictlonal account, and the first to use
Lllith In a contcaporo.ry scttino.
Unfortunately, the book
is a metaphysico.1 ir.oss. But lt ls, at least, an attempt.

It Is a long, mcanderlng, florld, sentlmental, melodramatlc
novel that Is unintentionally funny.
The authorfs mistake
is turning the concept of Lllith as queen of erotic evil

lnto a piece of blatant roraance that has lltt e of the
origlnal legend In It.
In fact, the Llllth of the Garden
of Eden ls mentloned only once.
138
Feraz, the poet brother
Anatolo France, "The Daughter of Lilith," Balthasar,

trans., lirs. John Lane (i.'cv; York: Parke, Austin & Llpscomb, n.d.), pp. 76-77.
52
of the tortured mystlc El-Rami, considers a Llllth who is
totally good:
"Then he fell to consldering the o d
egend
of that Lllith, who lt ls sald was-Adam's flrst wife, and

he smiled as he thought what a name of evil omen lt was to
the Jews, who had charms and tallsmans wherewith to exorclse
the supposed evll influence connected wlth lt, whlle to hlm,
Feraz, lt was a name sweeter than honey, sweet singing."13"
He also dwells upon Rossettlfs "Eden Bower," amending It
to read " fWith Eve was hell, and v:Ith Lillth heavenf ."1/|0
And how;. indced, can we look upon this Llllth except
as the most heavcnly creature ever born?
tent ls clear:
The authorfs ln-
"Pillovred on a ralsed couch, such as mlght
have served a queen for coctllness, she lay fast bound ln

s umbcr, a ratchlccc piccc of lcvclincss, stirless as Uiarble,
wondrous as the ideal of a poetfs droam.
Her dellcate form
was draped loosely ln a robe of purcst whlte, arranged so

as to suggest rathcr thon conceal itc exquisite outllne, a
silk coverlet was thrown lightly over her feet, and her
head rested on cushlons of the softest, snowlest satin."1^1
Thls is not the Lllith of legend who exclted such men as
Rossettl to conjure vlsions of corrupt fasclnatlon; this
13
? / arle Corellt, The Soul of Llllth (New York:

A. Wesse s Comp^.ny, I892"), p. zW.
140 Ibid., p. 279.
^
Ibld., pp. 22-23.
53
ls a pale, fraglle romantlc heroine in a characterlstlc
state of iramoblllty--hardly a true Lllltht
This vision of Feraz is dead; wlse El-Rainl has brought
Llllth back to life after coming across her dcvastated
caravan ln the desert.
Now, six years
ater, she
les en-
tranced ln a London townhouse, the subject of E -Ramlfs

search for hell.
VJhile her body lles comatose, hr soul
wanders through the unlverse searchlng for somethlng ElRaml eventually discovers ls not there at allIt is ln
hls heart, where he has refused to
earn how to love, and
Lillth as hls teacher coioialts the ultlmate goodness.
She
can do no wrong, but ls merciless ln her sleeplng campalgn

to awaken ln him the spark of passlon:
structibie,vtorrible Lilithi
"Beautlful, inde-
She permeates the world, she
pervades the atmosphere, she shapes and unshapes herself

at pleasure, she floats, or flles, or sleeps at wlll, in
substance a cloud, ln radiance a rainbo.;!
She ls the es-
sence of God in the transient shape of an angel, never

14?
the same, but forever lmmorta ."i c This is the on y passage in the book that hlnts of the powerful Llllth of legend.
In a volurae of four hundred pages, lt ls far too small a
recognltlon of her multi-faceted character.
lkZ
bid.. p. 314.
54 *
Just three years later, though, George MacDonald
published his important achievement, the fantasy novel
Llllth.
Thls I895 volume arrived at the very end of the
Vlctorian period, but it managed to malntaln a dlgnity

all its own that belies lts tlme of creatlon.
As Lln
Carter has wrltten, "It is profound and moving, haunted

wlth shadowy figures, fllled wlth brlght, mocklng faces,
lllumlnated wlth flashes of stark and terrible and thrl llng
lmaginatlve force.
Its psychological perception and use
of drcam symbols is ainazlng, and bears close comparlson

with the best of Kafka."1^3
Lilith ls about a Lewis Carroll-llke sojourn through
a mlrror into a mystlfylnc realm.
A young Londoner, Vane,
ls thrust lnto the drama of the confllct between evi

Lillth and her good daughter Lara.
It ls the first treat-
ment of the theme of conf lct between Llllth and her progeny ln literature.
Behlnd the central confllct are hints
of the strange, pervaslve Pre-Raphae lte influence that

does not detract from a subject, but, rather, enhances lt
with the contrast of darkness.
There Is a background of
hinted decadence, similar to the atmosphere in Baudelalrefs

Fleurs du Kal, although, of course, the French work ls
non-Vlctorian.
1/+3
Lin Carter, "Introductlon," Lilith by George

MacDonald (New York: Ballantlne Books, 19&9), P. vili.
55
The flrst half of the book Is a puzzle for both protagonist and reader, because lt is difficult to sort out
just exactly v:hc io dcing ;hat to ;hom. For instance, is
Llllthfs daughter Mara good or evil?
As Mara herself enlg-
matlcally states, "fSome people take me for Lotfs wife,

lamenting ovcr Sodom; and 3orae think I am Rachel, weoplng
for her children; but I am neithcr of those. 1 " 1 ^
oplnion Is amblvalent about Lilith as well.
Onefs
As Vane gets
to know her, he asks, "fCould such beauty as I saw, and

such wlckedness as I suspected, exlst ln the same person?1"
As one character descrlbes her, " f If the princess I.e.,
Llllth hears of a baby, r,:_e sends the spotted leopard lmmediately to suck lts blood, and then it elther dies or
grows up an idlot. . . . She can te l at once the house
where a baby is coming, and 11cs down at the door waitlng
to get in.
There are vvords that have power to shoo her

146
f
away, only thcy do not alooyG work. "
Halfway through the novel, ldentltles and the Bibllcal
parallels are revealed.
Mr. Raven, Vanefs flrst contact
ln the land beyond the mlrror, ls Adam; he conjures Lilith

lnto appearing and says to Vane the following:
lhtht
George KacDonald, Llllth, p. 82.
ll
5 ibid., p. 138.
146
Ibid., pp. 123-24.
56
" . . . when God created me, He brought rae an
angelic splendor to be ray wlfe . . . her first
thcuoht -rcc pcwcr; shc ccuntcd it slavcry to bc
ono with r.ic: and bear chlldron for Hlm who gave
her being. One chlld, lndeed, she bore . . .
but flnding I would love and honor, never obey
and worshlp her, she poured out her blood to
escape me, so ensnarod the heart of the great
Shadow that . . . he ...ade her qi.ecn of Hell
. . . . The one chl d of her body she fears and
hates, and would kl.Ll. . . . Vllcst of Godfs
creatures, she llves^by the blood and llves
and souls of nen.ulli'7
Raven then goes on to exp aln how God crcated Eve, "fwho
is to Lilith as llght Is to darkness.fn1^8 Lillth exults
at the downfall of Adam and Eve. Raven lnslsts that she
repent, that she surrender her helllsh royalty; he predlcts
her eventual doom at the handc of her hated daughter ln
f_v.f~> C<*I.1RA nf" r.vrn
T7
hlte lcoro.rriCSG. Lilith cc the s
leopardess, is forced out of Raven's home. He remains and

explalns to Vane that
,;
the blrth of chlldren ls In her
eyes the death of thelr parents."1^ She seeks to drlnk the

blood of Adam and Evefs chlldren. In thls novel, then,
there ls the flnal shovidown between Lillth and Kara. It Is
apocalyptic. It is also still another segment of the great
master legend treatcd ln a new way for a new klnd of audlence.

A hlatus of seventeen years ensued after MacDonaldfs
book before l>ie nex_ menLlon of Liiith in literature. n
lUr7
148
l!i9
Ibid., p. 160.
bld.. p. 161.
Ibld., p. 163.
57
1912 George Sylvestor Viereck published hls book of poeras
The Candle and the Fl-o.ne.. including the works "Queen Lllith"
and "Chlldren of Lilith."
Viereck, as noted ln Chaptcr II,
inlticitcd the concept that Llllth was the slster of Lucifer.

"Queen Lilith" ls an exposition of the rise of Lilith to
the posltion of queen of hell, a rlse englneered by her
brother the klng.
Vlercck writes of strong passlons, as
wltne-cs thls passage:

"By the love of a ove tho.t ls stranê as myrrh,
By the kios and kllls and the doom that smileth,
By my c ovcn hoof and ny fiery spur,
Thou art my sicter, the Lady Liith,
I am--,!
"Ky brothor Lucifer!"
"I am thy lover, I am thy brother."
_."!"+
__-,.-
}..-.-*.
r^-f' -(-..- - .1 ,_ V . ^ T )
~ r^-^rt
.1 . _ - _ ^,
'-^--
^.^
._ ^ . _ w - ' ^ '
.*. *
ljfl->IW->'-.^-^^*-fl-'WMB'lll'%','>--^'~lg<-^*-~'*
\ 1_-. w
y\ X~*-.r\ *- r V.
_-. * 4 .
._.\_.<^.<^._.A,
Whlle ctrlngcd beadr; her sorr.r_.hs tcll,

(HO.J art thou fallon, Grbrlell)
Thy brldosraalds cooll be thc Deadly Seven,
And I .;ill n.ake thoe a quecn ln helll"150
The poc.n ls a porerful, persuasive work that far exceeds
hls strange "Chlldren of Llllth."
The latter ls about
homosexuals, pecullarly and euphe-mlstlcally treated as

"the thlrd, transitlonal sex."1^1
Why Llllth is seen
by Vlereck as a mother to homosexuals ls unexplalned; her
^50 George Sylvester Vloreck (psoud, for George F.

Corners), "Quecn Lillth," The Cnndlo and the Flame (New
York: Koffat, Yard and Company), pp."2^3.
^
Vlereck, p. 116.
58
functlon is not only unclear but also unmentloned.

Seven years later, ln 1919. George Sterllng trled
a mammoth contribution to the legend, but lts artifice
falled for lack of artthe mechanlcs outshone the characterizatlon.
Sterllngfs verse drama Llllth is an imita-
tlon Ellsabethan tragedy privately printed and circulated

ln 1919 but reissued in a pub lc edition in 1926.
It
galned fome in that later edltlon when Theodore Drelser

afflxed an ecstatic introduction,
To say that Dreiser
raved over the pley is to understate his comments on it.

His preface dribbles a l over itself in altrulsms and ldeals
that are, neverthcless, more profound than what is ln the
play itself.
As he says, "The deepost Impresslon I take
after several readings of this exaltcd lyrlc drama ls one

of noble and oven ecstatlc llnes and thoughts."1^2
Stcrling's o.:n intorprotatlon of the work Is more
modest and accurate; as Dreiser paraphrases Sterling, the
play Is "purely an allegory of temptatlon, without any profound philosophic determination to consign life Irrevocably
to the rollfsicjof elther good or evll.nl53
However, lt
is still posslble to garner some inslght from Drelserfs

words.
Vhen he beglns to analyze, rather than to rave, he
Theodore Drelser, "Introductlon," Llllth by

George Sterllng (Ncw York: The Macmillan Company, 1926),
p. vli.
59
emerges with manageable perceptionr,.
For example,
Drelser does have good dlscusslons of thematic masks ln

the play, such as Ll lthfs repreccnting tho baslo confllct between the good and evil sldes ln beauty: "Lllith
(the absolute of beauty, love and desire) ls pictured as
extracting joy from the suffering of another. On the
other hand, she is the cause of an intense joy that sets
itself over pain as lts equlvalent, lts fair exchange and
reward.nl5^ Drelser can rhapsodlze and analyze at the
same tlme:
But the boauty of thls poem! The arch deftness and clarlty of the argument and lts presentationt The lovcllnoss of the scenes and
the world that it presents
Its archetectonlc
as well as lyrlc wholcsoraenessl It ls compact
of P nob"l e H>.d h'V.nti__!T sercc of beaut,r-. At
the same time, bccause of ltc modernity as to
astronomical truth, as well as its conception
of plcasure and pain as the tv;o reallties, lt
rlngs rlcher in thouoht than any Amerlcan drarnatlc poem with whlch I am far.illar. Kore, lt
poses the problera of rood o.nd evil ln life ln
so lntrlguing and delectable a form that even
he who is content wlth the non-argumentatlve
contemplatlon of hlmself or llfe whether elther
pleasure or pain are deslrable realities. And
if so, to realize then that bcauty itself ls
the same, desirable or undesirable, since with
these others lt ls most inexorably entwined, and
may not be separated frora them.155
ljl
* Ibld., p. x.
155
Ibld., p. xil.
60
The play ls a pleasantly archalc work that reveals
Sterllngfs admlratlon for Ellzabethan dramatic form, for
the Middle Ages, and for events supernatural in the age
of knights.
It centers on the weakness of young Tancred,
who commlts many a foul deed ln the narae of the flckle

Llllth.
She shows her dual nature when she descrlbes her
ancestry:
"Joy is my slster, slster I to death" (1:11,
p. 11). For her sake, Tancred desecrates hls motherfs

coffln, murders his father, Klng Urlan, ln jealous rage,
allows hls best frlend, gallant Gavain, to die whlle he,
Tancred, remains with Llllth, and spurns the love of purer
Amara, who dles for the loss of his love.
Though Lillthfs greed is evldcnt"V.lth wrathfu
gems, / Each like a sun that sets ln sullen haze, / Is
Satan crowned, and he would glve them all / For any klss
of mine" (I.iv, 21-24)~-she offers side-by-slde a love
beyond love:
"I wait thee, as a night that waits its
raoon. / Forsake thy past lovefs poor ldolatriesl / Madness

awaits, and midnlghts drunk wlth Joy / Be wlsel" (III:Iv,
82-85).
She can promlse hlm a love just as lrresistible
as that with whlch Mephlstopheles tempted and won the soul

of Faust:
Thou shalt see
The face of Helen on another towfr,
And roam that land as eagles roara the dawn,
Seeklng enchanted peri s, and high dooms,
And Beauty set about with dreadful swords,
Heroes shall be thy comrodes. Wlntff. sh'ill cry,
And golch.-n gal eys bear thee do,Tn the rath
Of sunsets on great watorc. At the iast,
61
My llps shall walt thee in a mystlc place;
Ah!
hrp.c.t
to
T-.v_-.oo+
~._.w..-,_.
. .-. r,,.,-,..
j__._
__./.._u
*>
-i...., ?,,-.,,
Jt U i _..v._vtil
A lonely isle ln seas at truoe wlth

Come forth with mel
(III:Iv, 112-123)
X-_i/iU.
lmel
Clearly, she Is more than huraan, and more powerful than

humans: "Not any manacles may hold thls f esh, / For
which all klngs have yearned, nor any flr_...e / Subdue me,
who am child of fiercer flre, / Nor all thy hosts constraln" (I:li, 66-69). Finally, though, desplte all her
treachery and the strength of hls deslre, Tancred will
not betray hlinself: "I have loved / And greatly slnned.
I have been b lnd Indeed. / But ny humanlty I put not
by" (IV:iv, 152-54). And Llllth herself is spurned and
vanquished.
The followlng year, a far more arabltlous, avant-garde
production found its way from paper to stage---Bernard Shawfs
monumental Back to Kethucelah. Hls reputatlon was, by 1920,
flrmly establlshed, and this massive work reinforced It,
for he had taken on the mightiest subject since Milton wrote
centuries beforethe entire history of man. Evident y
Shaw thought of Lillth as a seminal flgure In the history
of the world. What he dld not think of her as, however,
was evil, and thus she is not the traditional Lilith of
legend. However, since he gives her the great flnale speech
bringing down the curtain in the last section of the play,
there Is reason onough to conslder her ac an ii.portant,
62
though mlnor, character.
Whether Shawfs lady fits the
mold or not. cm anlv... 1 \ri nvpv. . f onlv for the sake
of her name.
Llllth is mentlonod, but docs not appear, In the
first of the five sections that coinprlse Back to Methuselah.
Thls sectlon, "In the Beglnnlng," is set ln the Garden
of Eden, and much of it centers around the seductlon of
Eve by the Serpent (a feinale snake, lnterestlngly, but
not Lllith herse f). One passage spoken by the Serpent
contradlcts any other account of Llllth ln the Gar-den ln
legend or llterature:
I am old. I am the old serpent, older than
Adam, older than Eve. I remcmber Llllth, who
came before Adam ao Eve, I was her darllng
. . . . She was r.lone: there was no raan with
her. She saw death . . . and sho knew then that
she must f lr.d out how to renovr herself and cast
the r.kin llke rae. She ho.d a mi/rhty viill: she
strovc and strove and v.Ilj.ed and v.l led for more
rapons than there are locvec on all the trees of
the garcon. Hcr prngs rore terrlble: her
groans drove sleep from Eden. She sald lt must
never be agaln: that the burden of renewlng
llfe was past bearlng: that lt was too much for
one. And when she cast tho skln, lol there was
not one new Li ith but two: one like herself,
the
other that
likeLillth
Adam.156
Shaw thus
states
ls the mother of Adam and
Eve, a unique account. Furthcrmore, shc Ic capable of
lj6
Bernard Shaw, Baok to Mcthuselah (New York:

Brentano s, 1922), pp. B^9,
f
63
bearlng chlldren alone.
But she has lald the burden of
blrth upon Eve, about v.hlch Eve says the following:
"It
was Lllith v.ho did wrong when she sharcd the labor of
creation so unequally between man and wife.
If you, Cain,
had had the trouble of maklng Abel, or had to replace him

when he was gone, you v.ould not have killed him:
you
would have riskcd your llfe to save his. . . . That Is why

there is enraity between Woman the Creator and Man the
Destroyer."1^?
But Lillth is good, not evll, for she has actually
lmaglned lnto rc.allty the exlstence of Adam and Eve.
Shaw, the ralnd ls the true God.
And for
Kls hope Is placed in the
mouth of the She-Anclent charactcr In the flnal sectlon, "As

Far As Thought Can _each," v.hen she says, "The day wi
when there wlll be no people, only thought."
come
It ls in this
section, set in 31,920 A.D., that Llllth makes her only appearance.
Nonetheless, there ls vast import ln this, her
slngle entrance, for her goodness ls made crystal-clear.

wlll dlsappear,.but her lmaglnatlon wll
Man
brlng him back again
to start the cycle of Shawfs Creatlve Evo utlon, a term that,

while not original with hlm, describes his approach to the destiny of man:
trol.
that ratlonol cosraic forces are withln his con-
As the Serpent explains, "I ara justlfled.
For I
chose wlsdom and the knowledge of good and evil; and now
IMd., pp. 130-31.

jQ
Ibid., p. 290.
64
there is no evil; and wisdom and good are one.Ml59
And
Lilith remains, emblematlc of Shawfs hope for the maturatlon of thought and wlll.
Darl Macleod Boylefs 1920 pocra "Where Llllth Dr.nces"
was to be almost the end of the grcct Rocêtti-inf uenced
lnterest ln Lllith.
Thls era wou d come to a cloce on a
pecullar note, for Boylefs poem has merits and flavrs counterbalanced, a curious product over whlch her spirlt hangs
omlnous y.
The greatness of the poem lies in lts imagery:
Boylefs forte Is hls ablllty to create plctures that re ate

dlrectly to characterlzation.
For example, in the stanza
quoted below, Boyle ls able to merge stlll another motif

in the baslc ta ethe roamer of the nlght, the Inhuman
beautyv;ith poetlc evocation of sinister atmosphere, an
accomplishment heretofore not achieved in any genre.
stanza beglns the poem:
Where threc tall cypresses rtand dark
.Aâinst a sctting sun,
And the rhades of night lurk in their leaves
Ere the dcy be done,
And the day-bllnd bats fllt mournfu by,
Ere ever thc nlght be won,
And the great wnlte owl, he walts for her
Who comos when the day Is done.
,
160
(11. 1-8 )
159
Ibid., p. 298.
160
Darl Maclood Boyle, Where Llllth Dances (New

Yale Unlv. Press, 1920), p. 11.
Haven:
The
65
Scope Is to his credlt, too. The poem follov.s Llllth
through her night travels over the uorld. Or, rather,
one feels her lnfluence lnstead of her physical presence.
But Boyle will sacrlflce the eloquence of an lmage for
the sake of making the llnes rhyme. For lnctance, he
deals marglnally with Lillthfs antipathy for rellglon, but
expresses lt sophoraorlcally for the sake of rhyme: "But
she goes not nlgh the lllles tall, / The Virglnfs lllles
whlte, / For Lillth loves not Maryfs flower, / Glft of
A / A
the Angel brlght."
Cno finds better verse inside Hall-
mark cards.
John Erskinefs Adara and Eve (192?) is a lengthy novel
not at all about thc hov: and why of manfs fal from grace.
Instead, It rescnblcs an crponded proce work based on
Brov7nlngfs "Adam, Lllith and Eve," in that It Is an unornamented study of day-to-day exlstonce, most y ln dialogue.
There Is no God, no Samael, no demons or damnatlon, no
apples or Abels, no befores or afters. The focus falls
on Adam and hls osclllatlon between Lilith and Eve.
Brown-haired, soulless Llllth is wlser and more
practical than childlsh Adam or petulant Eve. She ls an
unpossessive soul. "If T wpre a manfs companion . . . Ifd
llke hlm to be loyal only so long as he loved me. That
Ibid., p. 13.
66
ls, Ifd llke hlm to be loyal a vjays, but because he stlll
loved, not bece.nse he hod formod R hab.tj' ~ And she Is
practica : "fOf course youfll love someone else,*" she
says to Adam. "fAnd Ifll try to be understandlng, though
probably say Ifra Jea ous as a cat. I harden my hcart a
16*.
llttle so as not not to feel when you tire of me. f " J
She teaches Adam the ways of sex and jealousy, of the
folly of possesslveness, and, raost lmportantly, of the
greatnoss of love, though he credlts hlmself wlth the
dlscovery: "It vias so siraple, when you got around to it
love vias a solutlon, an explanation of all existence, a
commentary on the wor d, a remedy for worry, an ultimate
eye-oponer. And he had lnventttf ltl Adara was satlsfled
with himself ."lbif
Compared with Lilith, Eve lc a bitch, queasily femlnine, uith the worst of femalo folbles, partlcularly the
lack of self-dopendence. Though Lilith came first, and
was perfectlon Itself, Eve "dld lndlcate advance. She was
lnc ined toward spiritual thlngs, and away from nature."1 ^
Adam thus deserts the far better, far more egalltarian
Lllith for Eve, who is too much a woman, too llttle a
goddess. Happiness is a thing of the past, but as Llllth
says, "fIf we fall frorn happiness, It may be because we
1
John Ersklne, Adam and__Ifore (Indianapolls: BobbsMerrill Co., 1927). pp.1J7-:HB.

163 Ibld., p. 137
l6
^ Ibld., p. 12?.
16; 225^
67
prefer somethlng else. f " 166
Adam as husband for Eve ls
lowered to the posltlon of "a kind of servant, mot expected to change employers."16?
Lllith does not pine,
nevertheless, for she has earller oxplalned, "fWhen I

reach the end of my life . . . I hope to have ralsscd
nothing, and to be sorry for nothing.,nl^
Though Erskinefs
book is a mlld entertainment, his contributlon to the embellishment of the legend Is negligible.
The qulot, b and
Lllith he portrays is not the fiercer character of legend.

Murray Sheehanfs portrait of her in his 1928 nove
Eden is much closer to the concept of erotlc evil that
Llllth stands for.
Unfortunately, though her character
is more interestlng than Erskincfs concept, Sheehanfs

book is the poorer ..or.: ovcrall.
Kdcn ls a long, drawn-
out actlonlecs thlng with bralnlccs dialogue.
Only Ll ith
makes lt worthvihile.
Adam ln Kdon is juot one liiore i_an in a long llne of
pawns In Lllithfs cosmlc game wlth God.
Eve, conceived
frora Adarafs rib as a God-created reactlon to Llllthfs

evll, ls a cheap playing piece easily sacrlficed by Lllith
in her jealous battle to win Adara away frora Eve and away
from God:
166
167
168
"her hope of maklng the man her own was a stark
Ibid., p. 267
bid., p. 275.
Ibid., p. 146.
68
deflance against the All-Powerful."169
to ensnare hlra-
She has the power
"Through the night she f-trotfe, lik.. no
thing in Heaven above npr on the earth beneath, majestic

bpyond belief, a new glory added to the Universe, a trlumphant swinglng raotion lncarnate, encased In flesh and
blood and yet dlsembodled, ravishlng to every sense. And
she knew it." 17
And God could not control her, for
"Lilith was not of God, nor of HIs creation.
She was a
splrit loose ln the unlverse and unconflned . . . avid of

sensation and eager of the flcsh."171
The emphasis in the book Is on seduction and guile,
and the book is a novel of revcnge.
to be as wise as Lilith.
Eve eats the apple
But Llllthfs plan ls for Eve to
eat It and to be dlsgraced before Adara, who must not eat

of the frult.
Adara, nevertheless, eats lt for love of
Eve, and Llllth is folled, desplte her cunning serpcntfs

wits.
She had been vory happy molding Adam, and lt had
been to her "as though she, Llllth, was to be his real

172
creator, and not He that had made the man." f
She ls not
through, however, In trying to viln hlm back, and she sets
her slghts on Cain as her tool by vihich to avenge herself
lb
9 Murray Sheehan, Ed_en (New York:

Company, 1928), p. 36.
-70 Ibid., p. 81.
171
Ibld., p. 8.
172
id., P. 26.
E. P. Dutton &
69
upon Eve.
Caln, concelved in the Garden before the Fall,
knows nothlng of good and evil save what Llllth teaches

hlm.
In contrast ls his slugglsh, c urasy brother Abel,
born after the Fal . Because of her influence, Cain is

rnore Lillthss child than Evefs, and hls corruption from
perfect innocent lnto mindless murderer ls her trlumph.
Sheehanfs Lilith, though not created by God as legend
says she was, is clocer to thc tradltiona
flgure.
Her
shrewd manipulatlon of Adamfs ego, her deflance of God,

her hatred of Eve, and her cold-blooded murder of innocent
Abel through corrupted Cain all bespeak a Lillth of legend
whom Sheehan transportod to the printed page.
His novel
ls not great; but his Lllith is a commendable creation.

The figurc of Lilith was thereupon abandoned for
thirty-three yearsf tine, whon suddenly, ln 1961, she
becaioe the subject of J. R. Salamancafs masterwork of sexual
obsesslon, Ijlith, to date the finest, most cohesive portrait of Lillth yet put on paper.
The novel is marred--
lt is lengthy and pretentlousbut for sheer evocatlon

of the splrit of Llllth, both good and evll, but ultlmately
erotic, beyond any moral code, it ls the best piece of
literature ever wrltten about her.
The book has enjoyed
a s ow, but steady, growth in the !_5e of Its eoterie, and

one could woll suspect a future cult built around Saiamanca,
such as the klnd Tolkien, Hesso, Vonnegut, Burgess and
_2> .3 ( <33 __ f*0::; -'

- >_
3C
>;- '
70
iji-.uoisttu ntivu piuuuued In recent years.
When the book firct came out, superflclal critics
lambasted what they co. lcd Its contrlved quality and
lts sensual __..pect3. But a fou critlcs saw beyond these
eleraonts. In the Lihro.ry Jourr.il, Dorothy Kyren sald,
"There is a l^.rge Gotiic novel, wrltten with extraordlnary
talent and soncitlvlty. There are sensua elements, but
lt v.ll be unfortunate if the novel Is judged chlefly on
lts sensuality. . . . A glowlng deccrlption of a rural
tournonent, porceptlve incldentcl scenes from drowsy town
llfe, and a cor_.pc.ssionr.to feell.g for exlstence just on
the othor sido of nornallty aro sorae of tho achlevements
that make this one of the year's outstanding novels.ul'3
Harding Lemay, in the K ;'... ,York Kcrnld Tribune Revlcu of
Bookr, stated, "It is a trlbuto to J. R. Sa amancafs great
skill r.s a viriter that both tho surface of thls novel
stylish in tonc, precico in langu-.ge, sure ln evocation
of placeand thc unspoken knowlodgo whlch lies beneath
it corablne to produce a v-ork of no.ture artlctry."1
"Rapture" descrlbes the book as no other word can:
"rapture," as we raean ecstasy, "rapture," as Shakespeare
meant madness. And Llllth Arthur is rapturous, bedazzled
17
3 Dorothv Kvren. "LlHth." T.jbrary Jonrnal, LXXXVI

(July, 1961), 2494.
17/1
Harding Lemay, "Lilith," K..w York l erald Tribune

Revlev. of Books (30 July 19oT57 P." 9.
71
and bedazzllng, bewitchlng, spell-castins. In her room at
the rich man's asylum, Poplar Lodge, v.horo she is boing
treated for schlzophrenia resulting frorn guilt cauoed by
incest, she spends her tirae weavlng lncrcdlble tapeatrles,
playlng ethereal music on her exotic flute, illuiolnatlng
manuscripts in an arcane language of her own invo.ntlon.
She is a race unto herself, her life based on her secret
worldfs most basic tenet:
HIARA PIRLU RESH KAVAN
"I'f you can read this, you will know I love you," she says. 75
The story is told from thc first-person vlewpolnt of
./-... i-. "../-< 4- \ _. ~ T \ - r*- r- t->, + . - '-, r\ - ' <->.. \" n .^- ^. - ^4-f-.y_.^;/_>y4. _vt 4" V\ <_ v'cj YIT
i U - U X i _ l/H/
Vinuoil. |
Y j, _ v_/ H V _ - U
_v__
_.x_ <-.*. v <.. *_ .i _ __ __ i _ _. J__i
_ -i-J _ .-.-. j
land Liental home. He lets Lllith control him so that he

becomes obcecsed wlth her. Kc strives to regaln self-control,
to break free of what he calls her dcraonic pocsession over
him, and what is actually hls own sexual obsesslon. Hls
dread of the spell drlves him to annihilate an Inmate,
Warren Evshevsky, who is his rlval for Lilithfs attentlons.
It Is an event whlch pushes Lillth over the brlnk lnto
complete madness, burdenlng Vincent with llfelong guilt
and sorrow.
-75 j. R. Salamanca, Llllth (New York: Bantara, I967),

p. 236. Hereafter referred to withln the text by the first
initial L.
72
Vincentfs descent Into the maelstrora ls wrltten in
retrospect.
As he says early in the novcl, "Nothlng ever
is secn cleariy; a wayc the pathus of the percelver helps

to crcate the thlng percelved, as the lmoge of water in
sunlight Is lllumlned by the thlrst of the observer" (L,
p. 8 ) . HIs first sight of her Is descrlbed In radlant
prose, an lmage of "sunllght through honey . . . great
violct eyes wlth a bright, tendcr mouth, wlth a hlnt of
cruelty . . . her lncrpressible strangeness and beauty
. . . behind her, rlslng dlstantly and mlstlly wlth a look
of enchantment through the summcr haze, the Falaoe of
Fantasy from whlch she had stro.yed" (L, p. 10). This
flrst vlew is only a borc lntimatlon of wh.-it Is to come.
When he tours the mstitution on his first ay at work and
comcs upon the v;omenfs vard, soraethlng pov.erful grlps hls
awareness:
"TKore ne.z sorothlir; ecrle, comethlng wltchlike
and profound about thooe vjomen . . . that I cannot forget

. . . I had the lmpression that the strangeness, the falnt
alarm they made me feel, vas invoked not by the loss of
their powers but by tholr added powers" (L, p. 84).
To satlsfy a demand made upon him by his grandmother
Just before she dled, Vincent has gone to Foplar Lodge to
help people.
But he does not work there merely to fulfill
a deathbed wish; he ls punlshlng hlmself, teaching himself
73
humi lty.
His obsesslon with Llllth Is self-punlshment:
"I think shame is the most profound oT all emotlons; I

think the world is ruled by shame" (L, p. 38). And hls
desire raakes him not unllke the lnraates he cares for:
"people who are subtly estranged from thelr cnvironment,
their lnstitutlons and companlons, both by temperaraent
and fortune, as I was In my youth, are apt to be more
keenly and more wlstfully sensitive to such a concept
than are others.
Feellng thelr separateness, and the un-
accountable gullt of lonelinoss, they feel the need, perhaps, to redeem it by an act of scrvice or sacrlflce, ln
the company of comrades.
It is a way for them to rejoin
humanity" (L, p. 46).

Irrevocably, he ls drawn furthc-r and further Inside
Lilithfc hauntcd clrcle:
"VJhen I hcard Klss Arthur play-
lng the flute thc other day, I felt thcre was soraething
famlliar about that muslc. . . . the quallty of the music
as lf by llstening to it I had corae Into contact wlth
somethlng I had known or seen somewhere, however brlefly"
(L, p. 103). Is it deja vu?
Jungfs collective unconscious?
The tlmeless and eternal?

Salamanca wlll not say,
and, ln not doing so, he deepens the nystery.

There ls no doubt that Lilith ho ds control over
Vlncent; but it is a control which he hlmself has created,
a hold he encourages wlthln her to punlsh hlmself.
Much
of what she says hints at her gcddess ot.o.ture, to which
mc. . /__-_
74
she oos coo:: clovotco. iv Vin-,ent.
In c-oKlr^ of hor do-
mlnlcn, chc coys iroo ;K:o oiohoc no caorifiooo, thvvt :1

would not l.ikc to bo corovv j.n th.xo _;o.y<
l voulo like peo-
plc t 0 lorv. r.e" (L. p. 121). So anrious lc oho to be loved

tKot shc v/clcoros gi._dly iho ;.vrohlp of roor d r. ,_od Vo>rron,
Viroontfs voveriooc ri\-al vKoso ccvpony Kllith cijoyc slnply
b;cri.se che odolres his r.blllLy to oroate K:oHtl.rrl thlr.gs
vith his hvrdc,
J trrc îvaj.ry lc onc 01 tKe cros;von; yet
so poccoslvo is vlnccvK tKot aryonc vho rccclves a froctlon

of Lillth:s :K:to.v;Lon ls hv.vêd a co ..jvvitor.
Lilith for
..arrcr ic v v;.bcl in vvicK vo rorr his froclna ..io>_, admlration _v:d
ovcly lovo.
iri for Vlnee.v.: cKo ic vvvd cbsssoion.
..orrcri 30-s oi h(.rk "f j' i^vliy rvve nothinr; elsc to llvo for f "
(L; p. 144). So It is no vovi.er tKv., Karrcn kll s hlnself
v/hcn Vi_ioentfs jo_-loi.oy vro .vis hira to lie vicloosly to the
boy, rcoovtln^; thot Lilivh rcrj.Iy tKirvVP ha is a fool.
LilitK Jnnccent y c?,yot n I oKall llve foreror.
But
As long as
men like ycv. nocd ne f " (L, p. 230). For her, "All love is a
possession- (L, p. 24o).
Idllth is rr.d, it ic truo, brt Vincona. Is moro Inoana
than she becausc ho livoc in tho bivvr.o.lcss vjorld of tho
sahe, conv.Ittlng crir.ec agalnat tho holplecs.
it r-.s cost me my soul ^
"I thio.v
or.i'u the r.vturo of hor madnass,"
he sayo, overpovrcrcd cy hjr neov. to lovc all things at once,

vdIoori..ilnaucly but niu scui hoc long Kcon goni) froD h-rvlng
75
lived In the world of men.
How rlghi; Llllth is whon she
says, "*If you discovered your beaotiy God lovcd cthcrc

as grcatly as he loved you, would you hate him for lt?
He shows love for none of you, and you worshlp hlm.
show my love for all of you, and you desplse ue f " (L, p.
254).
She has too much love to give:
" f I v:ont to leave
the mark of my desire on every llving creature In the

world . . . If I v.-ere a poct, I would want to do It with
words, and if I vere a Caesar, I would do lt wlth a sword.
But I airi Lillth, so I must do It wlth my body" (L, p. 281).
There ls no way Vinccnt can reconclle hlmself to sharing
his love and her love for hlra, Hor madness Is his doom,
and his doom ls hls ovm passlonate obr.osslon.
Lilith is
an lnstruraent used by Vincsnt as a means to hls ovrn end,

for Llllth is a v.hirlpool, thc uncrdin
that drags hlm into madnec..
splral of deslre
The l.vp-.ct of an unfoldlng
catastrophe never lessens, and the book runs like dark

blood.
Tho brlef pastora
and make it darker.
Idylls mere y contrast the doom
Lillth and her mad world pervade the
heavyraagnolla-scentedatraosphere of the novel wlth a timedefylng pervaslvenes.'..

Thus lt is seen in thls selection frora raodorn lterary
works, both great and minor, that Lillth has come lnto a
new prominence, no longer religious or superstltlous, but
through the medlura of the authorfs pen.
From the Pre-
76
Haphaelite lnfluence to the masterful product of Salamanoaa tii.ie span of just a
ittic ovor a centv.ry-iKne
literary artlsts have fashloned thlo f.lguro of folklore

into an enduring object.
While each author :_.oy have only
completed a bit of the portrait, evc'o one's contribution

to and elaboration of the figure from legend hv.'._ served
to broadon-Llllth's spell.
CHAPTER IV
EULA VAHNER:
AN AMERICAK LILITH
In traclng the chronicles of Lillth, this thesis

has been concerned x.ith examining Llliths v.ho were rraaed
as such.
Now the focus svjltches to an examlnation of a
Lillth figure one step removed from the specifically

named portrayals in the literal examples from folklore
and the figuratlve selections from llterature.
Thls
flgure is Eula Varner, a central figure in William

Faulknorfs Snopes trllogy, v.hich consists of The Hamlet
(1940), The Tovm (1957) and The Unnsion (1959).
In a work by Faulkner, the gauge of a characterfs
goodness or vlrtuo is his o-blllty to stay attuned to the
motion of the universe.
The good are the adrvptable.
Often, raen are portrayed as poor belngs who cannot remaln

mobile.
The decaying Southern mansion headed by a moulder-
ing patrlarch ls the scene encountcred in such books as

The Sound and .tho__Fur and Absalom, Ahsalom
The female,
on the other hand, retains her moblllty, refuslng to stagnate.
Women thus emerge, in such works as Ught. in August
and As I Lay Dyin^, as the better sex, according to Faulkner.

Eula Varner is Faulknerfs hlghest comp lment to femlnlnity.
Ko other woman in hls novels quite reaches her
positlon as a goddess on earth.
77
In The Sound and the Fury
78
Caddy Corapson allo.s herself to be dragged into prostltution through the forces of the dark honor of her brother Quontin, her own chov.en selflr.hnesc, and the Southern
tradition that nak.es woraan st.bserviont to man.
Drusilla
Kawk in Thr JJ._iy->n.-..Pt>-shed is fiery, but not strong, only

a high priestess to Lillth and not Lillth herse f.
Nar-
clssa Benbow's glven narae In Sanctrary and Sartorls revcals

her klngdon of the self, a pervorslty, accordlng to Fau kner.
Aodie Bundron of As
,_lay Dylnp: is a fascinatlng
character, but che remalns bed-rldden for the whole of the

novelfs present action, and moves only when she dies and
ls carried away in her casket.
Devjey Dell, Addiefs daugh-
ter, Is slmple feraale lust, the bltch In prlraordial heat.

And Tempie jjrake of S^-.nctu^ry and Kcouicv f or p._ Kun io a
detached, destructive splrlt v;ho latcr repents her evil
actlons.
Eula ls Faulknerfs only Lilith.
In the first two
books of the Snopes trilogy, he calls her a Helen, a

Seralramis, a Venus or Aphrodlte.
But in The Town, he
refutes these comparlsons and makes flrm, final reference

to Eula as Llllth.
He calls her "tho.t damned Incredib e
woman, that French:nanfs Bend Helen, Semiramis:

Helen or Semiramis:
LUIth:
no:
not
the one before Eve herself."1?6
Wllllam Frûlkner, The Town (New York: Vlntage,

1957)t P. 44. Hereafter reerred to wlthln the text by
the flrst lnitlal T.
79
References to Eula as one of the above flgures are made
throughout the first two books of the trilogy:
but It is
thls pascage in the second book tliat Identifies Eula Irrevocably as Lllith, for It is the last mythic associatlon
made in the trllogy, and It refutes a l past nentions.
Yet Faulkner does not do justice to the povrerful
Lillth figure of Eu a Varner.
There is no way to knovi
whether he ever planned thc Snopes trllogy as a trllogy;

seventeen years, after al , seprrated the publication of
the flrct and second vo umes.
At the end of The Hamlet,
the flrst book, Eula Is a p>rlsoner of her mercenary husband, Flera Snopes; she ls a \io\:^n victiralzed by the sarae
decadent Southern tradlticn that dooincd Caddy Compson.
With Tho Tc..n, Fau knor could Kcve released Eula from her
Wl_
_ _ 11 -..
___
bondage, lettlng her go hcr v.v.y back into motion, away

from the quagrairc of greed that Flem ctands for.
He choce,
instead, to have her commlt sulcide, thus brlnging to a

jarrlng halt the goodness In raotion that Eula as a woman
had represented.
The suicide was a mlstake on his part,
for a Li ith figuro would not have to kill herself:
she
would slnply vanquish her conflict wlth deadly povier. In

The IK- nsion, howcvcr, Fau knor trior. to rectlfy his error
by elevating Eula back to the
evol of legend he had esta-
blished for her In The,iIf.mlet.

The magnlficence and povjer of Eu a in chlldhood, adolescence and adulthocd could not have culmlnato in her
80
sulclde.
The Eula Faulknor presents ls far too sencually
aware a person to hasten llfefs end.
Eula is sensuality
itself, and the cause of sensuallty In othern, and she ls

treated as archetype ln The Hamlct, as ill-treated woman
ln The Town, and as logcnd In The Jl^ns I on.
Her alluro Is deplcted unerrlngly.
Eula Is lntro-
duced in the openlng p__ges of The Hamlet. appearlng as a

pubescent nymph of thlrteen.
Sho ls already "a soft
ample girl with definite breasts even at thirteen, and

eyes like cloudy hothouse grapcs and a full damp mouth
always slightly open." 177
She ls lntroduced at a dinner
table scene, where she is absorbed In her own otherworldllness, not llstening to supper patter on barnburning
..
r.
J_
".._--->/-,
V. 11 " V - i ' '.r~
ana. rxem oiiopco, n._ x--. U.J. ^ !_.-_.-.._-.__._.
Faulkner does not let her rcappear for some time,

but then devotes an entlre section to her, paintlng
vlvidly a portrait of Ker mystic quallty:
hcr entlre appearance suggested
some'symbology out of the old Dlonysic
timeshoney ln sunlight and bursting
grapest the writhen biccding of the
orushed fecundated vine bc-neath the hard
rapacious trnvpilng goathoof . . . she
seemed to llsten in sullcn berusemcnt
wlth a weary wlsdcm heircd of all roammallan rvaturity, to the enlarglng of her
own or/ins. (H, p. 95)
She does not seera to do much of anythlng else. She ls
motlon as yet ln stlllness, a dynamlcally symmetrlcal
77
V-illlara Faulkncr, Tho Komlot (Kov. York: Vlntage,

1940), p. 10. Hereafter referrea 'to "wlthin the text by
the flrst lnltial H.
81
paradox who ls congenitally lazy, but whooo o'.rthy feraininity ls noticcd qulckly by her bvcthor Jody:
just like a dogi
Soon as she poscco anythiiig in
pants sho beglns to glvc off soi.othlng.

lt!
" f Khc f s
O .F;
You can smol
You can smell It tcn feet awayP" (H, p. 99). It
ls no wonder that she reo.ctc so phyclcally:
Knturc Kas
grantcd her tho suprerae feralnlnity, the livin- Incarnation of Uomanhood Itse f.
of
She lncpires "a lcashed turmoil
ust like so raany lorerlng do(vs r.fter a scarce-pledged
and apparently uniwares bltch" (H, p. 131). She Is the

embodi.vont of thc earthfo fccundity and brings into the
hamlet of French:v.ns Bend and thc vlllage of Jeffercon
the irrationallty of the natural worldshe, the image
and fulfl lraent of inanfs roproscod instlncts.
Her firct vlctlm Ic the schooltoacher Labove, who
falls prey to hcr on flrst ..:: __nce:
"Then one wornlng
he turned frc.. the crudc blo.ckboard and sav: a face eight

years old and a body of fourtccn .:lth the female shape
of twenty, which . . . brought . . . a molst blast of
sprlngfs llquorlch corruptlon, a pagan trlumphal prostration before the suprene prlmal utcrus" (H, p. 114),
The Dlonysic iropl. catlons in Eu afs character are cler.rly
present:
"she would transform the very wooden desks and
benches lnto a grovê of Venus" (H, p. 115). Even her

ignomlnlous sweet potato lunch malntnins suzerainty ovor
the hapless Labove, who Imaglnes lt as being eaten by
82
an "anonyraously pregnr._nt imraorta
. . . on a sunv.lso slope
of Olympus" (H, p. 124),

The hcpolessly infatuated idolater Labove givcs way
to I- oake i-.cCarron, vho leads Eu.v. down the garden path
lnto "what everyone elce but her, as it presently appeared, called troublo" (H, p. 141). From infornatlon
revealcd in later volur.es of the trilogy, a succcsslon of
what lnppens next can bo pieced together,
Abandoned by
McCo.rron, the unvied mothcr Eula becomes a woman prey to

gosslps.
Flon Snopec, enterprlslng and unscrupulous, set-
tles ln Frcnchoanfs Kond, and in swlft and arcane ways

buys Eula frcra hor father in exchonge for land.
Flcm thus
obtains the allurlng Eulo. and povjer as v.ell, here In the

society that trcasures (and hoards) femininlty, that equates
vast ownershlp wlth corvuriity inportance.
He gets Eula,
the tovm prir.e, and status in ono r.acter ctroke.
Snopeslsm
has entered thc South, and Eula is its unhappy victlm who,
for the sake of not sharaing her father, raust submit to
Flerafs hegemony on the basis of his propinqulty as lega
father for her child.
Thus, Eula becomes the ironic, tragic match for Flem,
For as we learn later, Flem hlmself ls impotcnt, and the
irony is dlsastrously clear; their raarriage is all battle
voluptuousness vs. lrapotence, spirltuallty vs. materiallsm,
motion vs. establlshment, Mother Earth vs. bastard greed,
heart vs. head, nature and irratlonality vs. buciness

and cunning.
Ker departurc from Frcnchman's Bend Is unnotlced by
the hanlet, descrlbed as "a little, lost vlllagenameless, wlthout grace, forsaken, yet whlch wombed once by
chance and accldent one bllnd sced of the spondthrlft
Olymplan ejaculation and dld not even know It . . . (H,
p. 149). Eula appears once raore before the bookfs end,
but her sensuality has been strangely unimpaired by Flern
mallclous opportunlsm. Men standlng under her window
by nlght descrlbo hcr as a tlneless Diana:
She was J.n a white garmont. The heavy
braided club of hcr hair lookcd almost
bicok arvlnot lt. She dld not iean out,
she merely ctood thcre, full ln the noon,
_-r hir.r.'.-cyod or c f ivvinly nov
0,-,,,,.*>-, yyh
o^k ng"dco;o~ard / . . the Kcavy gold
hair, tKc naok not traglc and perhaps not
even doc-cd:
juct carncd, tbe stron?
falnt llfe of breasts boncath marblollko
fol of the f.arnent; to thoce bclow v.hat
Brunhlldc, vrat Khinevaiden or^what spurious rivcr-rock of papier-ir.cho, what Kelen
returnoa to what topless and shoddy Argos,
waiting for no one . . . (H, p. 311)
Thls is the last view of Eula ln ^Jranflet--kept by
Flem ln the house, catchlng a gllmpse of freedora only
by staring at the moon. Had Faulkner not written the
succeeding voiuraes in the triio y. ono couid judge hcr
seemingly lnescapable predlcament as traglc, for there
seems to be no exlt.
84
Eula Varner Snopes in The To-:n is Eula ten years
later, and her stature cs a voluptuous goddess has Increased wlth the years. In the fol uwing dcocripticn,
she is envisloned by twelve-year-old Chlck Kalllson, nephew of Gavln Stcvens. Chick reraembors her as "a belle
throughout that land" (T, pp. $-6), and beyond that
realizes her beauty and power ln retrospect:
She wacnft too big, herolc, what they call
Junoesque, It vras that thcrc was Just too
much of T.hat she was for any one hi.ioon female package to contaln, ond hold: too much
of whito, too much of fevalo, too much of
maybe juot glory, I donft know: so that at
flrst srdit of her you felt a kind of shock
and grotitude jusc for belng male at the
same instant with her ln c--x.ce and tlme . . .
(T, p. 6)
Chlck then echoec whab uiust be tKc con__.cn thought of a
the malo population of Jofferson: He realizes that no
man .iculd evcr bc hcr ivctch, she the symbol of manfs
perfect, and unattalnable, nate. 'ihe one hlndrance to
her full, unchallenged reign Is Flera who, knowing he is
impotcnt, marries her anyway, runnlng all her sultors
out of the state, and then departlng wlth her for Texas,
from v-jhich thoy return with what Chick innocently cal s
"a girl baby a llttle larger than v;hat you would have
expected at only thrce raonths" (T, p. 6). The cuckolded
brldegroom has hcld the v.lnnlng hand all along, yet has
mysteriously uttered not a word, has betrayed no adverse
85
attltude in the sltuation, refuslng to admlt by word or
deed that the child ls not hls.
How lronic it is that
the foollsh br.degroora is married to the most soxualiy

desirable woman in townhe, the would-be cucko d, holdlng mute.
What he is ho ding out for ls yot to be re-
vea ed.
Flem knows what Is going on and whore he stands.
V. K. Ratllff rightly sums up Flernfs shrewd mind when
he says, "Not catching his wife ulth Manfred DeSpain yet
ls llke that twenty-dollar gold piece pinned to your
undershlrt on your flrst malden trip to what you hope ls
going to be a Kemphis v.horehouce.
Ke dont need to unpin
it yet" (T, p. 29). Ivanfrcd DcSpaln Is both town hero

and Flcr.fs hi^den ace.
Jf.ffor.90n watche.. <v. a, mov.. ng
ln an aura of "decorun and nodecty and solitarinesc"

(T, pp. 9-10), enbark on a spectacularly scandalous affair
wlth DeSpain; and the tovnspeop e endow it with all the
rltual and pageantry of courtly lovehe, the "Godfrey
de Bouillon, the Tancred, the Jefferson Rlchard Llon-heart
of the twentieth century" (T, p, 13); she, wlth a f esh
that could burn its cloth cover off; and the two of them
together, representlng "slmple unadulterated unlnhlblted
*
^ _ ' - T
<--,_.#
iiumor L-ciX JLUau"
f m
-_
\t
p.
3).
r* \
T51
-...
1-J.CJJJ
_.*""!-
v-> ^s,--
mj._
J-OU
j_^xc*jr
r\^r
\r\\ /-
t-i r. r\
JU
_*_.^
untll it ls tlme to wrest control of the bacnk from

DeSpalnfs arms.
He keeps lt up hls sleeve until the tlme
is rlpe eightcen years later.
86
Eula now emerges as Lilith ln Gavin Stevons* descrlptlon of her drawing arrows frora the quiver cn DeSpainfs
back.
It ls Gavin who calls Eula LlliUh, "whon oarthfs
creator had perforce In desperate and or.azed alarn in

person to efface, reraove, obllterate* that Adam might
create a progeny to populate it" (T, p. 44). In usny ways
Eula is the inage of Lilith, with the erccption thot she
ls not evil.
Unlike the orlginal Llllth of fo klore, the
destruction Eula cauces in men who yearn for her is unintentlonal, and her open-heartedness ls more credit tlian
debite.g., offering herself to the chivalrous Gavin out
of pity for hls unhappiness.
lecs, she ls known for.
But destruction, neverthe-
The mystic erotlclsm that Llllth
conveys Is lnvested securely In Eula.
Too, Lilithfs daugh-
ter flnds parallel in Eulafs Llnda, who ls at once good

and evi , and even soncv.here ln-between.
Llnda is good
in that she ls thb sensual lndcpendent splrit her raother

ls; she ls evil, ln that she avcnges Eulafs suicide and
her own bastardry through cousin Mlnk Snopes, who murders
Flem.
Yet even thls ls not completely ev.il, for Faulkner
condones the deed by vlrtue of Flemfs lnhumanlty.
F em
hlmself ls equlvalent to castratod Samael, and It ls only

natural for Eula to seek an affair.
And as Lilith fInds
doom, so does Eula.

Her doora begins vzhen she starts eraorglng as a character,
losing her archetypal dlraenslon.
She and lanfred had be-
8?
come aware of thelr gerininoting relationship at a Christmas
Ba l
"shnmojronly" danclng topethor in a hlrhly rcvar.tic
scene. One can hear the theatrlcvl huch tKat nu..t have
swept over the dancers on the floor <o thcy votehod thcse
double-crossed lovers tr.ko the flrst publlc stcp in an
affair that will cad to Kula's sulcide and jvnfrooô selfimpoccd emlgration from Jefferson. He will oove tho town
after elghteen yoars as c foster huoband, woarlng mournlng
for a wife he hos never hod.
].rlafs flrst words corae when she offers herself to
Gavin who gallantly refusos her advancec. Dla ogue bcglns
to tie her dcvn in tirae and p ace, and, unfortunately, her
lnage be:;ins to cru_-.:ble ar; the rcodor starts to suspect
somethlnv akln to proraiscuity in hcr charactor. Llllth
was prcralscuou ., too, hvt on o cooi.i.o scale; Eulafs venture

is munci.ane. Frcv. i.wi on, Kula Varnor gocs dovnhiil,
She locatec Kcrceix through dialogue and. raortal action,
and her timelessncss bccones deflated as the raythic qua ity
fades. She emergc-s as a character rather than as a goddess
by such ci'.plo oide actions as strlklng a n.atch on the sole
of hor choc.
In
The Tovn Govin otovens becones a principol char-
acter, but only In rÎotlon to Kula. He, of tho bookfs

four no.rrators, lc the one raost siaittcn by her charms.
He credits her with the ablllty to b aze malc hunger Into
88
anguish mercly by her existence.
He mourns that he is
not the choscn clandestine suitor as ls DeSpain, cnd he

transfers his ldolatry from Llllth/Eu a to Zclindo/Linda,
when he reallzec that thc earth goddess will never be hls.
Yet he stlll besleges
hinself with the torture of iraaginin
Eula and Hanfred together, knowing "how nuch effort a rnan

v.111 make and trouble he wlll invent to guard and dcfond
hln.oelf against the boredora of peace of mind" (T, p. 135).
Gavin a,s martyr cubliioely rlses to his roie.
He can never
thli.K of her as a Snopes, defilcd by the cold hand of F era,

an avaricious na'ie In opposltion to a wonanly dlvinity
that "precludcd Snopccishne s oi.d roode It paradox" (T,
P. 136).
K t the seedt. of ôosip forn:
"Jeffcrson was too
snali for a thirty-flvo-yoar-old Vachelor, even a Karvard K. A. and a Kh. D. from Helcolberg , . . to eat lce
crcon and read roetry with a slxteen-year-old high-school
girl" (f, p. 180). Eula 'nas glvcn her posterlty the crown
of eternal wovanhood thnt had been hers alone.
Llnda,
she hopes, will be a poet and a second edltlon of herse f:
"not just a love child but one of the elect to
share couslnhood with ti.e vjorldfs lmwortal love-children-fruit of that brave virgin paotion not Ju.vt capable but
doomed to count the earth itself wc l lost for love" (T,
p. 226).
89
Thls passago reflects the noblllty of lnslght and
P/s-.sk'l.v.r-- nf t.-V.-rV. _ Tnv>o -*. /\-P TiSil o 1 e ov-o-l-i.-_?_ . <~ r*a "*__. blr
_.-,wXj.a.J ;; ,
v/j.
x u i , v/11
-*. ^ u x u u i .
_> x
i_.vv_L.-~
_-
-- _ -- ____._
__ >-
_---<---_ r
but at tho sarae tlme, thls, a conversatlonal monologue

wrltten from the point of vlow of an cmnlscient author,
lacks crcdlbility, and Eula ac a goddess ls pushcd further into obllvion by Faulknerfs lnslstence upon needlessly clarlfylng her ethercal forra. He quenches her image
by saylng the following:
She was ..educcd slmnly by herself: by a
nymphcnonia not of the uterus: the hot
unbearable otherwlso unreachab e itch and
burn of tho roare or hoifer or sow or bitch
in season, but by a nymphomania of a gland
wbose only ease v.ac ln creating a situatlon
containinv a recipient for gratitude, then
supplylng the gratitude. (T, p. 272)
Thus he has predicted a readerfs reaction by classifying
her genorosity as prcvlccuity, explalnlng It by suggesting
that she is very rcuch ln concact with the earth, satlsfylng her desire by approaching availabie humanity and
spewlng forth her wonder. It ls a jejune explanation
at best.
Faulknerfs manlpu ation of the llve.c of hls characters
is most evldent when Eula Is made to commlt suicide. He
trles to explaln thls self-murder by having her say, "You
cannot stand against the cold inflexlble abstraction of
a long-suffering comraunityfs polnt of vlew" (T, p. 312).
Earller, in The Town, Jefferson had been dellghted at the
90
coupllng of lts greatest hero and most erotlc citizen.
But Faulkner changed his mlnd about how the town should
react to Eula. By sraall-town standards, the affalr should
have been accepted as a llttle-discussed town tradition
that had exlsted for eighteen years. And Eula, incredlbly
enough, always above the reaches of public opinion, has
needlessly succumbed to group presslre and at that, to
a change in the townfs approvlng attltude that Faulkner
shovis as turning from cecret picasure to public outrage:
He fkanfrcd DeSpaln} had not only flouted
the morallty of ivarriaac which decreed that
a man and a wovvn cant sleep together without
a certiflcate frora the pollco, he had outragod the econcry of roorrlage, whlch ls tho
productlon of chlldren, by maklng publlc dlsplay of the fact that you can be barren by
cholcc v.lth Ir.rpunity; ;c had outra;;cd the
institutlon of narrlan-o tvice, not just his
ovm but the Flcm 0r_opesfs too. (T, p. 338)
The heretofore-honest Eula v.lll roradoxlcally not allow
Llnda the secret of her illegltlivacy. Eula, the woman
of lntegrity, the symbol of the best of femininlty, is
killed, not by her own hand, but by Faulknerfs. It Is
lmplausible. to say the least, that Jefferson would
becorae scandalized by an affair that had lasted alrnost
a generatlonfs tlrae. And even if It dld take effrontery,
the mallce was borne agalnst DeSpain, and not Eula. Yet
Faulkner decrees that Eula kill herself.
By the time of the writing of the thlrd novel, The
91
Hanslon, Faulkner must have rea ized his error in judgment,
for he began once again to raise Eula to the leva'. of bcing
legendary.
Ratllff says, "When a covrmnlty is luuky enourvh
to be the coraraunity that every thoucand years or so has

a Eula Varner to plck It out to do her breathlng in, the
least we can do for soraebody Is to sct up somethlng . . .
a shrlne to mark and remember i t . " 1 ^
once agaln, but ln retrospect:
Eula Is revered
"when a community suddenly
discovers that it has sole ovmershlp of Venus for however

long lt v.lll last, she cannot, must not be a chaste wlfe or
even a falthful mictress whether she ls or not or really wants
to be or not" (H, p. 211). Tho lnage Is of a village population!s shajue at hctvlng to b^.ar thc ccnccquonccs of its pro~
priety and raaking amends pootiav.ously,
By allcvlng the townspoopj.e to opp.veclate Eula once
agaln, Faulkner atorlbutes her ...Ith thc goodnecc and the
superhumanity wlth vmlch he endows the characters who move
ln tune wlth Motion, the novement of the unlverse and of
the ultli-.ate goodnecs.
Eu a, indolent and lmmoblle In
her adolesccnce, developed lnto a v.o_:.an who refused to

relate to any man pcrraanently.
Even her marrlage to Flera
did not attach her to earth; but Fiem*s possessiveness

kept her tied dovm, llke a great welght upon her choulders
that would not let her rlse agaln to be in raotlon. By
attaching herself to l.anfred, she sought to overcorne
Flcrafc burden upon her.
Yct the v.aygin- tonyueo of
92
Jefferson only bear dovm harder upon her. By wlthdrawlng
herse f froin Motlon, she has crcated the inevitabllity of
her destructlon, and her admlttance to the existence of
earthly llfe wlll create "an aching void where once had
^ ared that lncandescent shape" (T, p. 133). Faulkner
wlll not allow her to reenter Hotlon, calllng her "that
slngle one dooraed to fate" (T, p. 133, Itallcs Faulknerfs).
But Eula ls stlll a goddess.
Shc remains the woman
who mesmerlzed Labovo, who transfixed DeSpain, who haunted

the minds of the raen of Jeffercon.
erase these fascinatlons.
Her suicide cannot
So Jefferson returns Eula to
mythic stature; she ls relnstated by the very people who

deinanded her downfall in the first place, includlng Faulkner himself.
By rcverlng her regn as tiraeless goddess
again, the tovmspeople of Jefforson placc Eula lnto Motion

once again, and she, unavare Llllth, mother of all, through
her respect for the sanctlty and value of human passlon,
becomes a legend that extends her lifetlme beyond the
mundane lnto the mythic.
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
Thls study, then, has traced the career of Lillth:
Earth Kother, whore, virago, demonecs.
The dates of her
progrescion run from herraentlonin the Sumerlan klng llst

of 2400 B.C. to the publlcation of .Salamancafs novel
^LLlJjh i n 1961a hlstory of forty-four hundrcd years,
more than four mlllcnnla during which she has conslstently
fascinatcd the artist and the folk, the medleval monk and
the modern reader.
In folklore, where religion and llterature were one,
she appeared in folk- iteratures of totally alien cultures
that had the one covv.on denorainator of her flgure ln their
tales.
The volunlnovs data nccumulated from these folk-
llteraturos comblned to f orm a portralt of a Lilith v.ho,

primarily frora robbinical tradltion, w s the first representatlve of enanclpated v.oi'.an ln her declaration of independence over Adam In the Carden of Eden.
These tales Insplred a number of authors ln a wide
variety of countrlecfrora Araerlca to Israelto seize
upon her figure and raodify it for use ln literature for
an audience that roeognlzed past religions as mythology.
This Lilith for popular consuraption v.\as not always treated
fairly; for ln some cases, the literary artist did not
do her folkloric prototype the justice she deserved.
93
f -*r"
9^
The tales from folklore also served as foundatlons
for authors who uscd. the Lilith flgure in a raore llteral
sense; that Is, they did not name their characters Lllith,
but chose, instead, to adapt some of Lillthfs characteristlcs into their own orlglnal creatlons.
Literature is
full of exaraples of Lilith flgures, both flguratlve namesakes and modified products.
The achleveraent in any language, ln any llterature,
regardless of wrlter's lntont, Is a picture of Lllith in
her most oommon guioe:
that of the unlque, super-human
demoness who is ercticisra incvrnate.
The faot that she
has produced a four-thousand-ycar interest ls proof enough

4.^,^4. +.,- fnn. v.or w<rr i.mjfir of her eros and cvll is far
V A *.*-*+ m*
W *. * --*
-_ - -
frora its v.ane.
\^j
__.
A SELECTED BIBLICGRAPHY FOK TKE STUDY OF LILITH

This biblioyo.ophy atievyts a co.iit-rehenslve ourvc^ of
wrltteii r.aterlal on' Lllith.
Two aroac ,.<re ccvcrod:
llstii.g of artic e:. pertaining to tho legond it.olf; and

an acscrb age of ..orks ln whlch Lillth appsars as a character.
This 11 st Includes both works conou tcd rnd not con-
sulted for thls thesls, and is Intended as an lmpetus for

futuro ro8earchers who wish to build on vrhat I have a ready
done, in hopes tlvvt additlcnal research wil
uncover stlll
more facets of the Lllith flgure In fo k ore.
Alexander, W. Kenziec. Doônlac Poorog.r.lon ln the Neif

Tootoinont.
Alpert, Hollls.
EJinburgh:
T. & T. Clark, 1902.
Review of fi n Succucuo:
Publlc What it V'ants."
"Giving the
Sati.rc>" n-rlow, LII (10
Kay 1969), M .
Bacher,
"Lilith, Konlgen von o::v.raged," Monat-
schrift Fur Dlo V.lssenschaf t dcr. Judenturast XII

(1870), I87-89.
Barlng-Gould, Sablne.
New York:
Baudissin, W. W.
LQftends f lrl Tectament Character3.
Kacrnlllan & Co., I87I.

Studion.. Lelpzlg,
876.
Belloy, Auguste de, Mrquls. ItLllQ}* n P I885.

Ben Yehuda, Elelzer.
salem:
Mllllon ha-LaPhon ha-Ibrlt, Jeru-
Ben Yehuda, 19*.0.
95
96
Blau, Ludwlg. "Llllth." Jewish Fncyclovedia.. lev ed.
New York:
Funk and Wagnal s Corrpany,
925. VIII,
87-88.
Boyle, Darl KacLood.
Uhere Lillth..rr.no. s.
New Kvvvn;
Yale Univorslty Press, 1920.

Brecher, Gldecn.
^jj__Tran3cendo.r.tale.
Bro.mlng, Robert.
in
"Adam, Lilith and Eve," "Two Came s"
he Korks of T.ol.ert Brc.mlng.
Kenyon.
Boston:
Bruck, Moses.
Vlenna, IG50.
Ed. Sir F. G.
R. H. Kinkley Company, 1912.
"Vom /ovulette belflnderUoechnerln."
Rablnl c chq_Cgrer.onlayi^-fc*vvorehe.
Burr, Amella Joserhino.
"Lilitlu"
Breslau, I837.
Scrlbnorfs Maftazine.
XLVII (Kcty, 1910), 588.

Burton, Hobort.
Anatory oiy K.ianoholy.
NCV
York:
Tudor
Publlshing Co., -929.

Bu.ck, R. H.
"Ci.riositiec of Superotltlon in Ita y," Notes
& Qucrics, 6th ser.,_IX (Jcn.-June, ICS^), 5.

Cahan, Jacob.
"Llllth," Shlrim.
Carrere, Emillo.
.
las Cortcsanas.
Odcssa, 1913.
Madrid, 1927.
Los O.los de los Fantar.mar.. Madrld:
Editorial Mundo Latino, 1920.

Catherwood, May Hartwe l.
"Lillth," Lipp 1 ncottfs Irrzz1ne,
XXVTI, n. d., n. pag.

Cheyne, Thomas Kelly.
New York, I892.
The Prophoclcs of Icolah.
5th ed.
9?
Clrlot, J. E.
London:
AJHctlonary of Syrabols.
Trans. Jacv: Sage.
Routledge and Kegan P&ul, 1962.

"Evefs Dlary" in F.vtractr,_ Frore, Ac0 mf s
Clemens, Samuel L.
Diorg.
New York:
Harper, 190^.
Coffin, Trlctrni. P., and Hennig Cohon.

ric*
Garden City, N. Y.:
Colller, Ada Langworthy.

Woman.
Boston:
Colucclo, Folix.
Alres:
Iôl^^^Ju^jie-
Doubleday, I966.
Llllth:
The Lc^snd of th_. Flrst
D. Lathrop & Co.f I085.
Diccionar_vo Folklorlco Argentlno.
Buenos
El Ateneo, 1950.
Coreill, Marie.
The Soul of Llllth.
London:
A. Wessels
Company, I892.
Daehnhardt, Alfred OsKar.
Dowr R. P.
MlKîKl'voi*
Xelpzig, 1907-1912.
"Thf> Venêful Brc^d of Li ith and Samnol,"
Bulletin of tho B.rocklyn Ent...nolon:lcal Society, XI

(1917), 1-9.
Elsenmenger, Johann Anoreas.
London:
^}^!PJjc}S^-,J^^^L^JI^
J. Robinson, 17^8.
Emants, Marcellus.
Ersklne, John.
Llllth.
Sneek:
Adam and Eve.
H. Pljttersentz, I885.
Indianapolis:
Bobbc-Merrlll
Co., 1927.
Fabrlclus, Johann Albert.
Tcstamcnti.
Codex Pseudocj)lvgr.vphus Veteris
IlamL _ _rg, 1713.
Faulkner, Wllliam.
The Karalet.
Tho Manslon,
- The Town.
Kcw York:
Kew York:
Ncw York:
Vlntage, 19^0.
Vlntge, 1959.
Vintage, 1957.
98
i-ussej,, uriai-xes. La Mngle AftByrlenne.
Farls:
Ecole
Pratlque des Hautes Etudes, 1902.

France, Anatole.
"The Daughter of Llllth" in Bn.Xthasar.
Ed., Frederlc Chapman.

York:
Trans. Krs. John Lano.
New
Parke, Austln & Lipscomb, I n c , n. d.
Freldus, A. S.
"Bibliography of Lillth," Bulletln of
the Brooklyn Bntorao?c.og_icaI<_j5qoljatjr. XII (1917), 9-12.

Frey, A. R.
"Lilith," Notes & Querles, 6th ser., VIII
(Ju y-Dec, 1883), 35/1,

Garnett, Rlchard.
"K.adara Lucifer" ln The IVllight of the
Gods and Cthcr__Talc3.

Gastor, Theodor H.
New York:
Alfrcd A. Knopf, 1926.
The Holy and the Prof ane.:_ __ , Eyolution
of Jewir.h Fol?:v7ays. Kew York:
William Sloane Asso-
clates, 1955.
Genvan, Juliucz.
Lillth.
Gerould, Gordon H.
Lwow, 1905.
Tho Ballac., of Tradltlon.
New York:
The Clarondon Press, 1932.

Glll, Brendan.
Cineraa."
Rovlo.. of filra Lil.Ith:
NcwJTorkor, XL (10 October 196*0, 202.
Ginzberg, Louis.
^*
"The Current
'
Tho_Legends of the Jew3.

_ _ _ _ _ ! * . i <
iiii n* I W I I
1 "" _ m
- i' m i
Phlladelphla:
r - - M ^ ___, _N_ _
Jewlsh Publications Society of America, 1909.

Glnzburg, Pesach.
"Llllth" In Hn^hllou
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von.

Rr.v, ed.
New York:
Odessa, 191^.
Faust ln World Masterpleces.
Ed, Kaynard Kack.
Trans., Louis Kac.eice.
W. W. Norton & Compo.ny, I n c , 1965.
Gourmont, Remy de.
Llllth, Sulvi de Thebdat. Parls:
Soclete de Mercure de France, 1906.
99
Grant, Elllott M. The Career of Vlctor Hugo. Cambridge,
Krvcsw!
Harr.-r.rd Univ^sitv Pr-or..-.. 10-^6
Graves, Robert, and Eaphael Patal.

Bock. of GemvAc.
Hobrew .Kyths:
Garden Clty, N. Y.:
Tho
Dcub eday
and Co., I n c , 196*..

Grunbaum, Max.
Ggo^Tielte Aufsatze zi>:r_gpracji-_ und
Sagenkunde.
Grunwald, Max.
Berlln, 1901.
Kittollungcn dar Oosellschaft fir Ju-
dische Voiky^ydo.
n. p., n. d.
II, V, VII.
Homme , Fritz. Pr:.-?i-J?.lJ?.^n- Lelpzlg, 1881.

_.
. Vorssm 111 s0 h e KultuT.
Hugo, Vlctor.
Leipzlg, 1881.
"Lo. Fin de Satan" in 0ouvresjCoranletes de
VLctor^Kuô.
Parls:
Librairie du Victor Hugo
Illustre', 1880.
Hundt-Rr.dov_.ky, Kortvig.
D3 e, Judenschule.
Jehoash (pseud. for Solo;aon Kluvgarten).

wete Callah" in Gesr.-7.ra.olto Lledcr.
.
London, 1823.
"Die Gegan.cv? York, 1907.
"Die Bose Challastre" In Kcue Schrlften.
New
York, 1910.
Jensen, Wllhelm.
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100
Kloos, Wlllem. "Lillth Trlumphatrix" in Verzcn. Amsttrdam, 189^-1913.
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-./WA.,
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llth cJ * New York:
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v
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i - 11- _ _-_-n-ii .i
i 111 1 --
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V /
Nlppur.
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'
r '* * * " * * * " . J * * * W -M-BMv^*U-__i' iM><rr-'^Miuir*W<îW^Kr_B_-H<^BM^^ w
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Patal, Raphael.
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102
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.
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1
i.
< -
'
<'
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^ - * * " ' ' i-mmrmmm-*m>mmmmmm+<mmm . .L _I
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103
Splre, Andre.
Samaol.
Steriing, Goorge.
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Llllth.
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,The_Fclktalc
Nev? York:
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19^6.
_.
6 vols.
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1955-53.
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^
_,
Tf^Seoj-it D_ootrJ ?-.<. jn
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Wllllaia Rider & Son, 1913.
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Llllth.
Widmann, Joseph Victor.
Frankfurt, 1886.
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Wi cox, Ella Whee er.
Voices.
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"The Birth of Jealousy" ln World

H?arst * c Tntcrnrtio-.ial Llbrrry

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LILITH:

EROS AND EVIL

CASET CHARNESS, B.A.

I wish to express my thanks to Dr. Robert G. Collmer,

For his friendshlp, scholar-

shlp and leadershlp I am most grateful and appreclatlve.

seventeenth-century Engllsh literature, and we were

A supplementary text, Fulghumfs Dlctlonary_

of Blbllcal Alluslons ln Bn ltsh Llterature, caught my

through its alphabetlcal llstings,that afternoon, I

a Jean Scberg movie of just a few years back called Llllth,

I dld prellmlnary research on Llllth, delvlng into the two

Graves and Patal*s book Hebrew

The Book of Genesls (though I would later look

upon the book as suppositlon rather than scholarshlp) and

For when I enrolled the fol owing summer in Dr. J. T.

I lncreased my paper to twonty-flve pages for Dr.

McCullen, using Rudwln.

Dr< Col-i.mer's own graduate

course in bibllography, in which I enrolled durlng fall,

his help I set about composing a bibllography and sendlng

I contlnued to expand on my theme, whlch

finally developed into a masterfs thesis.

EngliGi- _>__.<>->. t lt> m o ft.e_nex v-_. -uapu.i

whlch I explore Llllth in folklore.

spin-off frora Rudwlns descrlptlon of works ln whlch

to include all the v.orks In which she ls featured; instead,

I am concerned in Chapter III wlth those

IV focuses upon Faulkner's Snopes Trllogy, which has as a

the pure rescarch of Chapter II wlth the origlnal work

a combinatlon of the dulce and the utlle,

the p easurable and the functional.

A complete account of her character, however

from the Jewlsh legend about her conceptlon ln the Garden

are inescapable because Llllth undergoes physlcal and

theless, the chapter seeks a full plcture that ls the sum

The examlnatlon lncludes the follow-

the derlvation of Llllth's name; the flrst

chronicles of Lillth; her place in the Bible and her role

The flrst written

reference to Li ith occurs ln the

Sumerlan king IIst, dated c. 2*. 00 B.C., identlfying her

klng 11 st ls extant, however, and we know of the lnclusion

Llllu, one of a famlly of related demons, which folk-

lorist Raphael Patal partltions as follows:

Llllu, one of whom is Lillth.

The Llllth, a class of succtibl-incubi,

Jewish scholar Ludwig Blau, on the other hand, llsts only

neither body nor forra; devils, appearing in complete human

Raphael Patai, "Llllth," Journal of Amerlcan Folklore,

3 Ludwig Blau, "Lillth," Jeulsh^nqx^ojjedla (ftew

B.vi "ira is r.l_o

ItiicoA as Jesroc, tho ncn co Slraoh, Ho outhor.ol hh-> ..pooryphoi

Aiihrvooc (a Go coll-.d T-:S:.:PJik\'^^}}--.) c.lrrt 180 B.C. A lcbro

:o:h, !t Is nc::j v.ldoly y:\.c:::n ..n ohe Grcoh tronolotlon thot B

Sira'o nrnhoo:" ::ou.e. As Ji.l.lan ho-'or:..:t .;rn 0.000, the lrh~

of Jeclsh trfhilon .uippi:,: .ontiris; ^hc hih e (O.T.) and s...;.t.

zlnc. i..ore thon ? oenturier. of culorral &:co' 'vh."0

..oro for tr nslo.tlc:i, lc ?.. spoo.Vf !c .rovh cc v/ell, rhich hoshe

_T-a.V- <_>-.><>' i<_i-r. . <_.-. ^- T t " 1 ^ _ l p Tvvua..iu.u