This verse novel, like its
once famous author, is a conundrum. Just
as Isolde Kurz herself
combined the humanist convictions of her mother with the
German nationalist legacy of her father,
her verse novel, Lilith’s Children
combines ideological, theological and even technical daring
with a
conventional, sometimes almost fustian poetic diction. Yet more
paradoxically,
it manages
to be an adventurous feminist tract while indicting the descendants
of Eve. Kurz’s narrative
presents a new
“Genesis,” recasting the Biblical story through a vision of the
mythical
Lilith.
In Jewish legend, Lilith is a
demoness―but Kurz reveals that it was this winged
creature who
gave Adam access to the divine. She was his muse, the spur
of his imagination
and all his
striving. His rejection of
her in order to taste the lips of Satan’s smarmy creation, the
ego-stroking
Eve, represents the first fall, one that precedes the tasting of the
other
forbidden fruit. Lilith’s
Children is a formally
fascinating and intellectually
satisfying book. Convincing as myth, it
is
also touchingly human.
This metrically and
stylistically faithful translation into English by Becca is the first.
The book,
which also provides an essay
introducing the work and its author in their historical and literary
context,
should do much to revive our appreciation of a significant 20th
Century
German writer.
