4:1 Still sorry for himself, David laments the loss of bingo nights,
4:2 nights of liquor, squid and butter – all that it took to channel his trepidation.
4:3 He will admit an oddity, a subliminal search for risk, an urge to burn the house,
4:4 but refuses to have his search for hips, for another splendid elevation, chastised.
4:5 Risk carries its own desire to teach, a biblical mission to show man to himself,
4:6 while the chore of walking in a straight line does not bear much appeal.
4:7 The fabric of the rabbi, the dreamer, the traveller: all woven out of a godlike panic.
4:8 Growing old in the same well-loved armchair: is it as pleasant as the chase?
4:9 Having escaped his own catastrophe, he continues to mourn he knows not what, awaiting dinner from his wife.
This is a reinvention of Psalm 4, based on an English transliteration of the Hebrew text. The rewriting is based purely on sounds, without any recourse to translation, filtered through the various languages spoken by this writer. Each new psalm is essentially an auditory hallucination, revealing the content of the poet’s psyche, and an attempt at using the techniques and literary codes of religious revelation to build a personally relevant mythology.
Lorelei Bacht
3 Questions for Lorelei
What was your process for creating this work?
In his little boat, the boatman - This poem refers to the legend of the Lorelei, a young woman who threw herself into the Rhine River and was transformed into a siren. The lines in German are taken from ‘Die Lorelei’, a poem by Heinrich Heine, originally published in 1824. This work also contains references to ‘Rhénanes’, a series of poems by Guillaume Apollinaire (1913).
Reinvented Psalm 4 (“Still sorry for himself”) - This is a reinvention of Psalm 4, based on an English transliteration of the Hebrew text. The rewriting is based purely on sounds, without any recourse to translation, filtered through the various languages spoken by this writer. Each new psalm is essentially an auditory hallucination, revealing the content of the poet’s psyche, and an attempt at using the techniques and literary codes of religious revelation to build a personally relevant mythology.
What is the significance of the form/genre you chose for this work?
In his little boat, the boatman - As a multilingual person who grew up speaking heavily compartmentalised languages, I have been exploring the possibility of allowing multiple languages to cohabit in a single text.
Reinvented Psalm 4 (“Still sorry for himself”) - As well as an exploration of psalms and the poetry of revelation, this is a commentary on the loss of languages, as a branch of my family lost Hebrew somewhere along their travels across continents.
What is the significance of this work to you?
In his little boat, the boatman - It is an exploration of the legend behind my own name, a game of multilingualism, and an homage to Romanticism in German and French poetry.
Reinvented Psalm 4 (“Still sorry for himself”) - Is a slightly surreal, humorous psychic voyage to the heart of middle age and failing relationships.
Lorelei Bacht is a multicultural poet and lover of all things bizarre living in Asia. Her work has appeared / is forthcoming in such publications as Visitant, The Wondrous Real, Quail Bell, Abridged Magazine, Odd Magazine, Postscript, Strukturriss, The Inflectionist Review and Slouching Beast Journal. She is also on Instagram: @lorelei.bacht.writer and on Twitter: @bachtlorelei
Next (Activating Healing (Visual Art)) >
< Back (In his little boat, the boatman)