As this blog has established in the past, the main goal of this thesis is to discover and explore the connections of media featuring Lilith to the mythology that surrounds her, primarily that of the Alphabet of Ben Sira. As we saw in the quotations from Faust, these connections were fairly limited. However, today's document Lilith: A Metamorphosis shows a strong, will researched understanding of Lilith and her story.
Lilith: A Metamorphosis is a short novella written by Dagmar Nick, originally published in German. The English edition totals 47 pages with German text on the left pages and English on the right, making it a fairly short story over all, perhaps 25 pages or so. The story is told from the point of view of Lilith herself, explaining how she came to be transformed into a snake from a beautiful woman by means of being in contact with Adam.
Here, the ties to Ben Sira and other myths about Lilith are strong. Lilith stumbles across Adam by chance, although Adam calls her "[his] creature" (7), assuming that is the other person that the Voice has promised him. (The Voice, of course, being God.) Lilith comes and goes as she pleases, but always finds herself returning to Adam for some unknown reason. It's an effective means of demonstrating the idea of Lilith as Adam's first wife, although it removes the idea of a simultaneous creation for them both. Rather, the book suggests that there are other humans that live outside of Eden and that Adam is a sort of special project for the Voice.
Another strong tie to the earlier mythology is Lilith's other act ivies. Adam gives Lilith her name because "[she] is a woman of the night; therefore you are called Lilith. Whenever you come, it is night, and whenever you are unexpectedly up and away it is also night. Lilith" (19). In addition to connecting Lilith with the night there is also this passage.
"Nonetheless, I was still surprised that all of a sudden he had named me so, because the children I frightened and the men I annoyed in my land also took me for a nocturnal creature and called me Lilu, which sounds quite similar. They also call a screech owl, or what they imagine to be a desert kobold, Lilu. I don't know what I had in common with a screech owl other than its tenderness covered by a featherlight gown." (19)
So, here, we see a number of connections to the mythology. Children being frightened, men being annoyed - perhaps a connection to nocturnal emissions, and perhaps most importantly the screech owl connection, which is often another word used in the passage from Isaiah that Lilith is very commonly associated with.
The story itself has little more connection to the mythological Lilith beyond these pages, but the story is still immensely well done. Lilith is very believable, endearing figure and because of an accident where a tree limb accidentally falls on Eve as Eve tries to pull Lilith out of the Tee of Knowledge, is turned into a snake. Moreover, there is real research done into this, as Lilith describes in the passage quoted from page 19, making it an effective means of demonstrating a combination between creative lisence and retaining original mythology.
Works cited:
Nick, Dagmar. Lilith: Eine Metamorphose. Trans. Maren and David Partenheimer. Missouri: Thomas jefferson University Press 1995.
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