Lou Reed - The Raven

THE RAVEN

LYRICS AND TEXT BY LOU REED

WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY JULIAN SCHNABEL

Copyright 2003 by Lou Reed
Photographs 2003 by Julian Schnabel

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reed, Lou.

[Raven. Libretto]

The raven / lyrics and text by Lou Reed ; with photographs by Julian Schnabel.

p. cm.

Libretto of a studio adaptation of the musical POEtry.

eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9937-9

1. MusicalsLibrettos. I. Reed, Lou. POEtry. II. Poe, Edgar Allan,

18091849. III. Title.

ML50.R317R43 2003
782.140268dc21

2003051151

Grove Press
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

To Robert Wilson, our original stage director, whose idea this was.

To Hal Willner, my coproducer of the reworked audio version of this play.

THE RAVEN

This is a work for the imagination; therefore I have included only audio cues, as this version is meant to be heard in the mind.

Speakers (in order of appearance)

VOICE

OLD POE

YOUNG POE

LIGEIA

ROWENA

LENORE

POE

DEATH

RODERICK USHER

LADY MADELINE OF USHER

ENTERTAINER

POE ENSEMBLE

THE OLD MAN

FIVE POLICEMEN

FEMALE TEACHER

MALE STUDENT

MOTHER

DAUGHTER

JUDGES

DEAD PEOPLE

HOP-FROG

KING

TRIPITENA, A PRINCESS

Lo! Its a gala night.
A mystic throng bedecked
Sit in a theater to see
A play of hopes and fears
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Minds mutter and mumble low
Mere puppets they, who come and go
Disguised as gods,
They shift the scenery to and fro
Inevitably trapped by invisible woe.

This motley dramato be sure
Will not be forgotten.
A phantom chased for evermore,
Never seized by the crowd
Though they circle
Returning to the same spot
Circle and return
To the selfsame spot
Always to the selfsame spot,
With much of madness and more of sin,

And horror and mimic rout
The soul of the plot.

Outout are the lightsout all!
And over each dying form
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes with the rush of a storm.
The angels, haggard and wan,
Unveiling and uprising affirm
That the play is the tragedy, Man,
And its hero the conqueror worm.

Instrumental overture

Guitar melody

As I look back on my lifeif I could have the glorious momentthe wondrous opportunity to comprehendthe chance to see my younger self one timeto converse to hear his thoughts.

Cello melodycontinues throughout speech

In the science of the mind there is no point more thrilling than to notice (which I never noticed in schools) that in our endeavors to recall to memory something long-forgotten we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance without being in the end able to remember. Under the intense scrutiny of Ligeias eyes, I have felt the full knowledge and force of their expression and yet been unable to possess it and have felt it leave me as so many other things have leftthe letter half-read, the bottle half-drunkfinding in the commonest objects of the universe a circle of analogies, of metaphors for that expression which had been willfully withheld from me, the access to the inner soul denied.

Eyes blazed with a too-glorious effulgence, pale fingers transparent, waxen, the hue of the grave. Blue veins upon the lofty forehead swelled and sunk impetuously with the tides of deep emotion and I saw that she must die, that she was wrestling with the dark shadow. Her stern nature had impressed me with the belief that, to her, death would come without its terrorsbut not so. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable spectacle. I would have soothed. I would have reasoned. But she was amid the most convulsive of writhings. Oh, pitiful soul. Her voice more gentle, more low, and yet her words grew wilder of meaning. I reeled, entranced, to a melody more than mortal.

She loved me, no doubt, and in her bosom love reigned as no ordinary passion. But in death only was I impressed with the intensity of her affection. Her more than passionate devotion amounted to idolatry. How had I deserved to be so blessed and then so cursed with the removal of my beloved upon the hour of her most delirious musings?

In her more than womanly abandonment to love, all unmerited and unworthily bestowed, I came to realize the principle of her longing. It was a yearning for life, an eager, intense desire for life, which was now fleeing so rapidly away as she returned solemnly to her bed of death. And I had no utterance capable of expressing it, except to say, Man doth not yield to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.

I became wild with the excitement of an immoderate dose of opium. I saw her raising wine to her lips or may have dreamed that I saw fall within a goblet, as if from some invisible spring in the atmosphere of the room, three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby-colored fluid. Falling. While Ligeia lay in her bed of ebonythe bed of deathwith mine eyes riveted upon her body. Then came a moan, a sob low and gentle but once. I listened in superstitious terror but heard it not again. I strained vision to see any motion in the corpse, but there was not the slightest perceptible. Yet I had heard the noise and my whole soul was awakened within me. The red liquid fell and I thought, Ligeia lives, and I felt my brain reel, my heart cease to beat, and my limbs go rigid where I sat. In extremity of horror I heard a vague sound issuing from the region of the bed. Rushing to her I sawI distinctly sawa tremor upon her lips. I sprang to my feet and chafed and bathed the temples and hands but in vain; all color fled, all pulsation ceased. Her lips resumed the expression of the dead, the icy hue, the sunken outline, and all the loathsome peculiarities of that which for many days has been the tenant of the tomb.

And again I sank into visions of Ligeia. And again I heard a low sob. And as I looked she seemed to grow taller. What inexpressible madness seized me with that thought? I ran to touch her. Her head fell, and her clothing crumbled, and there streamed forth huge masses of long disheveled hair.

It was blacker than the raven wings of midnight.

These are the stories of Edgar Allan Poe
Not exactly the boy next door

Hell tell you tales of horror
Then hell play with your mind
If you havent heard of him