La Loreley

Louis Marcoussis

'La Loreley', (The Lorelei) was the subject of two famous poems based on Clemens Brentano's ballad 'Zu Bacharach am Rheine' of 1801, one by German poet Heinrich Heine in 1824 and the second by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in his 1913 collection 'Alcools' (Alcohol). Marcoussis illustrated 'Alcools' and included a different image titled "La Loreley".

Loreley (Lorelei) was accused of bewitching men and causing their death while sitting on a rock above the Rhine River, combing her golden hair as sailors crashed their ships into the rocks below trying to reach her.

Rather than sentence her to death, the bishop consigned her to a nunnery. On the way there, accompanied by three knights, she comes to the what is now known as the Lorelei rock. She asks permission to climb it and view the Rhine River once again. She does so and thinking that she sees her love in the Rhine, falls to her death; the rock supposedly still retains an echo of her name.

Marcoussis' Cubist etching is composed of a giant seashell below water and an angular abstracted woman, combing her long hair which drapes over an arm that extends into the plane.
5/26/18