Yes, Hal­loween is behind us, and some peo­ple may desire a break from the Lou Reed trib­utes in order to mourn him silent­ly. Fair enough. But indulge us once more, because Reed’s best music and the dark imag­i­na­tive work of Edgar Allan Poe are always rel­e­vant, and when they come togeth­er, it’s rea­son to cel­e­brate. And come togeth­er they did ten years ago with the record­ing of Reed’s con­cept album The Raven, a selec­tion of musi­cal and dra­mat­ic pieces put togeth­er by Reed. The album notably fea­tures actors such as Willem Dafoe, Steve Busce­mi, Eliz­a­beth Ash­ley, and Aman­da Plum­mer and guest artists like David Bowie, Kate and Anna McGar­rigle, and Ornette Cole­man.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion, if you can call it such, between Reed and Poe makes per­fect sense. As Mark Dem­ing at All­mu­sic writes, “it’s no won­der why Lou Reed regards Poe as a kin­dred spir­it.” Reed said as much in the lin­er notes: “I have reread and rewrit­ten Poe to ask the same ques­tions again. Who am I? Why am I drawn to do what I should not? … Why do we love what we can­not have? Why do we have a pas­sion for exact­ly the wrong thing?” Despite its col­lec­tion of seem­ing­ly mis­matched parts, Reed’s The Raven worked, Dem­ing writes, and Reed hadn’t “sound­ed this com­mit­ted and engaged” in “over a decade” (Pitch­fork had a decid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent take on the album).

The Raven was orig­i­nal­ly a com­mis­sioned work for a stage pro­duc­tion called POEt­ry, an adap­ta­tion of Poe’s work by Robert Wil­son (who had pre­vi­ous­ly worked with Tom Waits on The Black Rid­er). The title record­ing of Reed’s adapt­ed “The Raven” (top) is actu­al­ly read by a creepy-voiced Willem Dafoe. Ten years lat­er, we have Reed him­self read­ing his ver­sion of “The Raven” (above) at Cannes just this past June. He looks and sounds rather frail, but he’s men­tal­ly in top form. He breaks into his own read­ing to point out the fact that his ver­sion of the poem uses Poe’s “exact rhythm.” “If you don’t believe me,” he says, “you can check it line-by-line.” And so you can. Read Reed’s “The Raven” against Poe’s orig­i­nal. Of his mod­ern­iza­tion, Reed said:

The lan­guage is dif­fi­cult, because there are a lot of arcane words that prob­a­bly no one knew that they meant, even at the time – archi­tec­tur­al terms and what­not. So I spent a lot of time with the dic­tio­nary, to make it more con­tem­po­rary, easy to read. Or eas­i­er, I should say.

The Reed/Poe/Robert Wil­son col­lab­o­ra­tion also pro­duced a 2011 book, also called The Raven and illus­trat­ed by artist Loren­zo Mat­tot­ti.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Walken, Iggy Pop, Deb­bie Har­ry & Oth­er Celebs Read Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

Lou Reed — Vel­vet Under­ground Front­man, Influ­en­tial Solo Musi­cian — Dead at 71

Watch Red Shirley, Lou Reed’s Short Doc­u­men­tary on His Fas­ci­nat­ing 100-Year-Old Cousin (2010)

Nico, Lou Reed & John Cale Sing the Clas­sic Vel­vet Under­ground Song ‘Femme Fatale’ (Paris, 1972)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Back in col­lege, I took a fall-quar­ter intro­duc­to­ry music course. We hap­pened to have class on Hal­loween (an event quite seri­ous­ly tak­en around the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Bar­bara, in case you did­n’t know), and the pro­fes­sor held an espe­cial­ly mem­o­rable lec­ture that day. He had us study “Der Erlkönig,” music by Franz Schu­bert, words by none oth­er than Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe. While I will not claim that this tale of the haunt­ing of a mori­bund child, even with its dri­ving score, gen­uine­ly fright­ened me, I will say that it put the fear into me in a more exis­ten­tial way, a blow which only a sim­ple sto­ry can land effec­tive­ly.

“Who rides, so late, through night and wind?” asks Goethe’s poem, trans­lat­ed from the Ger­man. “It is the father with his child. He has the boy well in his arm. He holds him safe­ly, he keeps him warm.” The man feels con­cern for his ail­ing son, but the boy has trou­bles of his own: “Father, do you not see the Erlk­ing?” The father explains his son’s vision of this men­ac­ing­ly regal fig­ure away as the fog, as the wind, as the trees. But the child insists: “My father, my father, he’s grab­bing me now! The Erlk­ing has done me harm!” By the time their horse reach­es home, indeed, the Erlk­ing — or some obscure agent of mor­tal­i­ty — has him. Hear this fable sung, and watch it vivid­ly ani­mat­ed with sand on glass (no doubt a painstak­ing process) by Ben Zelkow­icz above. Hal­loween itself may have just passed, but “Der Erlkönig” remains time­less­ly haunt­ing.

We’ll add “Der Erlkönig” to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via NFB

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladis­las Starevich’s Ani­ma­tion of Goethe’s Great Ger­man Folk­tale (1937)

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky and Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

World War II Reliv­ed through Sand Paint­ing

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.