Lorelei, Nixen e altre Wasserfrauen nell’opera di Joseph von Eichendorff

The extraordinary diffusion of the figure of the Wasserfrau, that during the Age of Romanticism becomes a vehicle for a reflection on art and creativity as well as on the relationship between silence and poetic word, allows to recall its presence through a few semantic pointers. In the lines of Eichendorff –yet also in his tale Das Marmorbild– the long hair, the water, even a song might suggest and arouse, in the lyrical Ego, those ambivalent feelings of desire and fear linked to the presence of the mermaid. The presence of the Wasserfrau (the “Eternal Feminine”) constitutes the Freudian –and the typical case– of “love and death” that the lyrical Ego projects onto the figures that inhabit the poetic landscape. The access to the poetic world/language is thus influenced by the experience of silence and threatened by the possibility of losing oneself in the unconscious mind.