En lisant la Lorelei. Wie ich die Lorelei gelesen habe
Marcel Broodthaers
1975
En lisant la Lorelei. Wie ich die Lorelei gelesen habe
Fullscreen
PAUSE
00:00
In this text-and-image composition, Marcel Broodthaers revisits Heinrich Heine’s Die Lorelei through an anachronistic combination of 19th-century color engravings of the poem, his own line drawings, and extracts from financial newspapers. In doing so, Broodthaers ...
Read more
En lisant la Lorelei. Wie ich die Lorelei gelesen habe
Marcel Broodthaers
1975
Munich and Paris: Edition der Galerie Heiner Friedrich GmbH & Co and Yvon Lambert
Unpaginated [28 pages]
32 × 24.5 cm
Edition of 100; numbered 13/100

In this text-and-image composition, Marcel Broodthaers revisits Heinrich Heine’s Die Lorelei through an anachronistic combination of 19th-century color engravings of the poem, his own line drawings, and extracts from financial newspapers. In doing so, Broodthaers disrupts the romantic mythology of Lorelei as an evil female spirit who lures people to their death in the water, replacing the poem’s narrative with the fragmentary language of economic charts.


 


Quoting Heine in the epigraph to his introduction (“When I think of Germany in the night, / I cannot find sleep”), Broodthaers reflects on the tragic destiny of a capitalist Europe, tracing the transformation of Romantic imagery into the language of destruction:


 


“It is not only Germany that makes me sad, even though old songs sometimes cross my mind. It is in many countries of Europe that its nostalgia has taken the place of an already nostalgic reality.


 


Historical Romanticism has become perverted in a process of destruction. Its face of ashes reappears as a signal of authority. Yet certain rumors still sing harmoniously, like ‘The Lorelei.’ Today, it’s ‘ready-to-wear.’ Let’s go back a hundred and fifty years. It was then legitimate that Heinrich Heine wanted to overcome Romanticism through irony. He did not marry ‘Lorelei.’


 


Whether Heinrich Heine’s voice was inscribed in the direction of modern thought or the opposite has already been the subject of a debate that had its relevance around the 1930s with Georg Lukács. And I do not wish to engage here in that analysis. It is not at all a matter of fixing a single figure. My proposal here, fragmentary, concerns the evolution of imagery around the Lorelei and the Rhine in the context of current developments.” (loosely translated from the French)


 


Broodthaers’s last artist’s book based on a literary work was released posthumously, with copies authenticated by the stamp “Estate Marcel Broodthaers” and numbered.

Munich and Paris: Edition der Galerie Heiner Friedrich GmbH & Co and Yvon Lambert
Unpaginated [28 pages]
32 × 24.5 cm
Edition of 100; numbered 13/100

In this text-and-image composition, Marcel Broodthaers revisits Heinrich Heine’s Die Lorelei through an anachronistic combination of 19th-century color engravings of the poem, his own line drawings, and extracts from financial newspapers. In doing so, Broodthaers disrupts the romantic mythology of Lorelei as an evil female spirit who lures people to their death in the water, replacing the poem’s narrative with the fragmentary language of economic charts.

 

Quoting Heine in the epigraph to his introduction (“When I think of Germany in the night, / I cannot find sleep”), Broodthaers reflects on the tragic destiny of a capitalist Europe, tracing the transformation of Romantic imagery into the language of destruction:

 

“It is not only Germany that makes me sad, even though old songs sometimes cross my mind. It is in many countries of Europe that its nostalgia has taken the place of an already nostalgic reality.

 

Historical Romanticism has become perverted in a process of destruction. Its face of ashes reappears as a signal of authority. Yet certain rumors still sing harmoniously, like ‘The Lorelei.’ Today, it’s ‘ready-to-wear.’ Let’s go back a hundred and fifty years. It was then legitimate that Heinrich Heine wanted to overcome Romanticism through irony. He did not marry ‘Lorelei.’

 

Whether Heinrich Heine’s voice was inscribed in the direction of modern thought or the opposite has already been the subject of a debate that had its relevance around the 1930s with Georg Lukács. And I do not wish to engage here in that analysis. It is not at all a matter of fixing a single figure. My proposal here, fragmentary, concerns the evolution of imagery around the Lorelei and the Rhine in the context of current developments.” (loosely translated from the French)

 

Broodthaers’s last artist’s book based on a literary work was released posthumously, with copies authenticated by the stamp “Estate Marcel Broodthaers” and numbered.

DESCRIPTION

In this text-and-image composition, Marcel Broodthaers revisits Heinrich Heine’s Die Lorelei through an anachronistic combination of 19th-century color engravings of the poem, his own line drawings, and extracts from financial newspapers. In doing so, Broodthaers disrupts the romantic mythology of Lorelei as an evil female spirit who lures people to their death in the water, replacing the poem’s narrative with the fragmentary language of economic charts.

 

Quoting Heine in the epigraph to his introduction (“When I think of Germany in the night, / I cannot find sleep”), Broodthaers reflects on the tragic destiny of a capitalist Europe, tracing the transformation of Romantic imagery into the language of destruction:

 

“It is not only Germany that makes me sad, even though old songs sometimes cross my mind. It is in many countries of Europe that its nostalgia has taken the place of an already nostalgic reality.

 

Historical Romanticism has become perverted in a process of destruction. Its face of ashes reappears as a signal of authority. Yet certain rumors still sing harmoniously, like ‘The Lorelei.’ Today, it’s ‘ready-to-wear.’ Let’s go back a hundred and fifty years. It was then legitimate that Heinrich Heine wanted to overcome Romanticism through irony. He did not marry ‘Lorelei.’

 

Whether Heinrich Heine’s voice was inscribed in the direction of modern thought or the opposite has already been the subject of a debate that had its relevance around the 1930s with Georg Lukács. And I do not wish to engage here in that analysis. It is not at all a matter of fixing a single figure. My proposal here, fragmentary, concerns the evolution of imagery around the Lorelei and the Rhine in the context of current developments.” (loosely translated from the French)

 

Broodthaers’s last artist’s book based on a literary work was released posthumously, with copies authenticated by the stamp “Estate Marcel Broodthaers” and numbered.

Munich and Paris: Edition der Galerie Heiner Friedrich GmbH & Co and Yvon Lambert
Unpaginated [28 pages]
32 × 24.5 cm
Edition of 100; numbered 13/100

In this text-and-image composition, Marcel Broodthaers revisits Heinrich Heine’s Die Lorelei through an anachronistic combination of 19th-century color engravings of the poem, his own line drawings, and extracts from financial newspapers. In doing so, Broodthaers disrupts the romantic mythology of Lorelei as an evil female spirit who lures people to their death in the water, replacing the poem’s narrative with the fragmentary language of economic charts.

 

Quoting Heine in the epigraph to his introduction (“When I think of Germany in the night, / I cannot find sleep”), Broodthaers reflects on the tragic destiny of a capitalist Europe, tracing the transformation of Romantic imagery into the language of destruction:

 

“It is not only Germany that makes me sad, even though old songs sometimes cross my mind. It is in many countries of Europe that its nostalgia has taken the place of an already nostalgic reality.

 

Historical Romanticism has become perverted in a process of destruction. Its face of ashes reappears as a signal of authority. Yet certain rumors still sing harmoniously, like ‘The Lorelei.’ Today, it’s ‘ready-to-wear.’ Let’s go back a hundred and fifty years. It was then legitimate that Heinrich Heine wanted to overcome Romanticism through irony. He did not marry ‘Lorelei.’

 

Whether Heinrich Heine’s voice was inscribed in the direction of modern thought or the opposite has already been the subject of a debate that had its relevance around the 1930s with Georg Lukács. And I do not wish to engage here in that analysis. It is not at all a matter of fixing a single figure. My proposal here, fragmentary, concerns the evolution of imagery around the Lorelei and the Rhine in the context of current developments.” (loosely translated from the French)

 

Broodthaers’s last artist’s book based on a literary work was released posthumously, with copies authenticated by the stamp “Estate Marcel Broodthaers” and numbered.

MORE BOOKS

In this text-and-image composition, Marcel Broodthaers revisits Heinrich Heine’s Die Lorelei through an anachronistic combination of 19th-century color engravings of the poem, his own line drawings, and extracts from financial newspapers. In doing so, Broodthaers disrupts the romantic mythology of Lorelei as an evil female spirit who lures people to their death in the water, replacing the poem’s narrative with the fragmentary language of economic charts.

 

Quoting Heine in the epigraph to his introduction (“When I think of Germany in the night, / I cannot find sleep”), Broodthaers reflects on the tragic destiny of a capitalist Europe, tracing the transformation of Romantic imagery into the language of destruction:

 

“It is not only Germany that makes me sad, even though old songs sometimes cross my mind. It is in many countries of Europe that its nostalgia has taken the place of an already nostalgic reality.

 

Historical Romanticism has become perverted in a process of destruction. Its face of ashes reappears as a signal of authority. Yet certain rumors still sing harmoniously, like ‘The Lorelei.’ Today, it’s ‘ready-to-wear.’ Let’s go back a hundred and fifty years. It was then legitimate that Heinrich Heine wanted to overcome Romanticism through irony. He did not marry ‘Lorelei.’

 

Whether Heinrich Heine’s voice was inscribed in the direction of modern thought or the opposite has already been the subject of a debate that had its relevance around the 1930s with Georg Lukács. And I do not wish to engage here in that analysis. It is not at all a matter of fixing a single figure. My proposal here, fragmentary, concerns the evolution of imagery around the Lorelei and the Rhine in the context of current developments.” (loosely translated from the French)

 

Broodthaers’s last artist’s book based on a literary work was released posthumously, with copies authenticated by the stamp “Estate Marcel Broodthaers” and numbered.

MORE BOOKS