My next journal entry showed some ambitious plans:
Outline for “Lilith” (epic poem in blank verse)
Book I—Lilith’s arrival at the Red Sea. She meets the demons (souls without bodies). She acquaints them with her history and becomes mistress to them all.
Book II—Adam’s realization that Lilith shall not return voluntarily. He tells his story to the Angel of God, demands her destruction and the creation of a new mate. Eve is created from Adam’s rib.
Book III—The three angels arrive at the Red Sea to bring Lilith before God to stand judgement. She calls upon the demons for support and is abandoned by them. As her last stand she holds the angels at bay by threatening to invoke God’s true name. She escapes and resolves to end marriage as an institution.
Book IV—An encounter between Lilith and a young wife in which after futilely attempting to convince the wife to leave her husband, Lilith becomes furious and kills her son. Lilith reasons that if logic is fruitless than an emotional attack—destroying the fruits of marriage—would be more successful.
Book V—The birth of Asmodeus. He ascendency to the Kingship of Demons. He learns of Lilith and seeks her out, finding her in the ruins of a once-great city which he learns was destroyed by her work. He proposes marriage which she refuses, detailing her objections to the institution. He proposes instead a special partnership which she finally accepts with the tempation of being able to exact revenge on the demons of the Red Sea.
Book VI—The Queen of Sheba story.
Book VII—Something to wrap it all up.
I first encountered the Lilith story thanks to a combination of listening to Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (with its song, Lilywhite Lilith) and looking up the name in my Reader’s Encyclopedia, a great compendium of the sorts of things that one is likely to encounter while reading the canon of literature as it stood in the mid-twentieth century. As I recall, around the time that I wrote this entry, I discovered that the writer Howard Schwartz was giving a lecture about Lilith at the Spertus Institute of Judaica in conjunction with the release of his newest book of Jewish folktales, Miriam’s Tambourine. After the talk I told him of my desire to do something creative with the Lilith story and he encouraged my ambition.
I of course, never did, other than a few scattered lines here and there which weren’t especially good, although I think that there is still something potentially good here, although who would want a modern epic poem in blank verse is more than a little bit of a mystery so I doubt I ever will write this.
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