III


Whore Brentano sowed, many have reaped. Since the publication of his
_Godwi_, about sixty-five _Loreleidichtungen_[75] have been written in
German, the most important being those by Brentano (1810-16), Niklas
Vogt[76] (1811), Eichendorff (_ca._ 1812), Loeben (1821), Heine
(1823), Simrock (1837, 1840), Otto Ludwig (1838), Geibel (1834, 1846),
W. Müller von Königswinter (1851), Carmen Sylva, (_ca._ 1885), A.
L'Arronge (1886), Julius Wolff (1886), and Otto Roquette (1889). In
addition[77] to these, the story has been retold[78] many times, with
slight alterations of the "original" versions, by compilers of
chrestomathies, and parodies have been written on it. There is hardly
a conceivable interpretation that has not been placed upon the
legend.[79] The Lorelei has been made by some the evil spirit that
entices men into hazardous games of chance, by others, she is the
lofty incarnation of a desire to live and be blessed with the love
that knows no turning away. The story has also wandered to Italy,
France, England, Scotland, Scandinavia, and the United States,[80] and
the heroine has proved a grateful theme for painters and sculptors. Of
the epic works, that by Julius Wolff is of interest because of the
popularity it has enjoyed. First published in 1886, it had reached the
forty-sixth thousand in 1898. Of the dramas that by L'Arronge should
be valuable, but it has apparently never been published; nor has Otto
Ludwig's operatic fragment,[81] unless recently. Aside from Geibel,
Otto Roquette is the most interesting librettist. Of the forty-odd
(there were forty-two in 1898) composers of Heine's ballad, the
greatest are Schumann, Raff, and Liszt, and in this case Friedrich