In the wonderful “Book of Imaginary Beings” (trans. G. Veis, ed. Patakis), the great Borges dedicates a chapter to the mysterious Lilith. According to Jewish mystics, Eve was not the first woman of Creation but the second. It was preceded by Lilith.
According to the apocryphal legend, Lilith’s lust exceeded Adam’s endurance. We also know that she did not like the missionary attitude because she considered it too passive, on the contrary, she preferred what later became known as “Hector’s horse”: after the battle the warrior is exhausted; the mistress “rides” him to rest him…
Lilith, therefore, wanted to be “on top”. Legend has her even mating with angels (unknown how – angels have no gender, but who stands for such details), so God punished her by turning her into a snake. It is, of course, about the cunning serpent who seduces her substitute, Eve, so that the latter can taste the forbidden fruit. Lilith was initially identified with the dark reptile – that is, she was not far from the Devil himself.
Not for long though. As Borges notes: "Throughout the Middle Ages the influence of the word “lagil” (“night” in Hebrew) gave the myth a new twist. Lilith is no longer a serpent; she becomes an apparition of the night. Sometimes he is an angel who governs the population of the human race and sometimes a demon who falls on those who sleep alone (our note: see dreaming, flow) or on those who travel on deserted roads.
Borges also mentions an exquisite couplet by the Victorian poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), where we read that Lilith gave Adam “Figures that coiled in woods and waters/ Sons that flashed, daughters that phosphorescent.” Daughters that glowed; beautiful verse, dreamy and nightmarish at the same time. Notably, Rossetti was also an excellent painter, moving in the circle of the so-called “Pre-Raphaelites” of England, where often the ethereal female figures from the legends of the knights have something erotic but also threatening, dark. Case in point, John William Waterhouse’s stunning “The Rapture of Hyla by the Nymphs”.
“In the popular imagination Lilith is a tall and silent woman with long flowing hair,” writes Borges. I stand in “silence”: The woman who gives pleasure to the man until he finally falls can also look like a casturist, in a way. So many words are unnecessary. Eva must have been a talkative woman.
Article translated into English from this link → Λίλιθ, η σιωπηλή κόρη που φωσφόριζε | Η ΚΑΘΗΜΕΡΙΝΗ
