Undine Rising From The Waters and Lyonia

Kelle Groom:

I’ve long been drawn to writing ekphrastic poems. “Undine Rising from the Waters,” (1880) is a stunning marble statue by Chauncey Bradley Ives based on a medieval myth than an undine must marry a mortal man to have a soul. In the sixteenth century, Paracelsus named four elemental beings, with undines corresponding to water and appearing in A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits.

This story of Undine needing to marry a man to have a soul was also told in a nineteenth-century novel, Undine, by Baron Heinrich Karl de la Motte Fouqué. As an added twist, if the man is unfaithful to Undine, she is forced to kill him. Ive’s statue depicts the moment of Undine rising like a fountain to kill her husband.

Usually in an ekphrastic poem, the piece of art and any narrative (if that exists) is a starting point for me. Something accepted and then explored. However, in “Undine,” I found the myth so ridiculously patriarchal – a water spirit requires the love of a man to have a soul – that this is where the poem begins.
 
 
 
“Lyonia” takes place over the course of a day. A friend is painting in the morning; the speaker takes a walk in the woods and sees the first signs of Spring, and later makes a phone call. The dailiness was important, as a boundary gets crossed between her internal and external worlds.

When the internal world spills over, it’s clear that it’s parallel to the outside world of painting and walking and telephone calls. In my own life, these anxious, desperate prayers began in childhood, when my father went to war. They were propelled by the need to keep him safe.

This kind of frantic prayer increases in times of great suffering in the world, and in my own life. When in the poem, the prayer is so intense it can’t be hidden, it’s a moment of searing embarrassment. But I wondered if instead of hiding this overwhelming need to pray, I could have compassion for it.