Faust:
Who’s that there?
Mephistopheles:
Take a good look.
Lilith.
Faust:
Lilith? Who is that?
Mephistopheles:
Adam’s wife, his first. Beware of her.
Her beauty’s one boast is her dangerous hair.
When Lilith winds it tight around young men
She doesn’t soon let go of them again.
(1992 Greenberg translation, lines 4206–4211)
After Mephistopheles offers this warning to Faust, he then, quite ironically, encourages Faust to dance with “the Pretty Witch”. Lilith and Faust engage in a short dialogue, where Lilith recounts the days spent in Eden.
Faust: [dancing with the young witch]
A lovely dream I dreamt one day
I saw a green-leaved apple tree,
Two apples swayed upon a stem,
So tempting! I climbed up for them.
The Pretty Witch:
Ever since the days of Eden
Apples have been man’s desire.
How overjoyed I am to think, sir,
Apples grow, too, in my garden.
(1992 Greenberg translation, lines 4216 – 4223)
Rossetti wrote in 1870:
Lady [Lilith]…represents a Modern Lilith combing out her abundant golden hair and gazing on herself in the glass with that self-absorption by whose strange fascination such natures draw others within their own circle.
Of Adam’s first wife, Lilith, it is told
(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)
That, ere the snake’s, her sweet tongue could deceive,
And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
And, subtly of herself contemplative,
Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,
Till heart and body and life are in its hold.
The rose and poppy are her flower; for where
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
Lo! As that youth’s eyes burned at thine, so went
Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
And round his heart one strangling golden hair.
lilithsrealm 