What: Heinrich Heine Fountain (the Lorelei Fountain)
Where: Joyce Kilmer Park & The Andrew Freedman Home, The Bronx, NY 10452
As the first of the Center for Urban Esotericá’s Workshop-Tours: Concourse, we re/discover the recently restored and superbly crafted fountain-statue of the mythical “Lorelei” in Joyce Kilmer Park. The dialogues invoked by the statue around universal themes of love, betrayal, and renunciation, will be first explored on-site in Joyce Kilmer Park, and then individually developed through a guided intuitive art workshop back at the Andrew Freedman Home. Supplies and refreshments will be provided. All are welcome, experience with art-making is not necessary.
Context:
Symbols, the language of myths, are esoteric in nature and require a combined approach of thinking and feeling to comprehend. They are both universal in their themes and profoundly personal. They push the limits of a perceived “multiculturalism”, to an inter-culturalism. The emergent themes have been circling, swirling, and morphing around the globe for thousands of years. Everyone can claim them; they belong to us all.
Indeed, the intercultural language of esotericá takes on varied expressions, their details change, the characters morph in texture and form. And yet, it is precisely because of this variety that it becomes possible to discern a vast, open-ended undercurrent to the human condition. When personally, holistically, engaged with, these stories have a chance to evolve with us, bringing more awareness and stimulating more empathy in the choices we make, the paths we follow, and those that we light for others.
Die Lorelei: Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
Sculptor: Ernst Herter (cast, dedicated 1888-9)
Die Lorelei
“I do not know what it might bode
That I should be so sad,
A fairytale from long ago
Now will not leave my head.
The air is cool and darkening
Above the quiet Rhine;
The mountaintops are sparkling
In afternoon sunshine.
The loveliest young maiden sits
So beautifully up there,
Her golden jewelry gleams and glints,
She combs her golden hair,
She combs it with a golden brush
And while she combs she sings;
The tune is both miraculous
And overpowering.
It grips the sailor in the ship
With a wild and aching woe;
His eyes are only looking up,
Not at the rocks below.
I believe that in the end the waves
Devoured ship and boy,
And that is what the Lorelei
Accomplished with her voice.”
(translation by Anna Leader)