ORPHEUSAND EURYDICE t 57 ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE Like the other transformations in this book, Eurydice's ill-fated marriage to the mystical lord of song and her tragic metamorphosis from dead to dead again Metamorphoses X.1-77 have fascinated musicians, poets, and artists over the centuries. The story has inspired verse by Wordsworth and Shelley (both of whom looked to Vergil's The tragic story of the singer Orpheus (son of the Muse Calliope) and his account), Swinburne and Robert Browning, Rilke, D.H. Lawrence, Robert beloved wife Eurydice, twice lost to death, is certainly one of the best known of Lowell, and James Dickey; operas by Jacopo Peri (our earliest surviving opera, ancient myths. Ovid's version is told, with remarkable (and intentionally ill- first performed in 1600) and Claudio Monteverdi (1607), by Gluck and Haydn \ and Mozart in the 18th century, by Offenbach in the 19th, and even the modern proportioned) economy, in fewer than 80 lines: On the couple's wedding day, the hero's new bride falls dead, stricken by the bite of a serpent. Having mourned Japanese opera, Hiroshima no Orfe (Orpheus in Hiroshima), by Yasushi Eurydice "sufficiently" and "so that he might not neglect to try the shades of Akutagawa (1967); other musical compositions by Schubert and Liszt and Hell" -two of several deliberately curious details in the narrative-Orpheus Stravinsky; numerous dramatizations, includingHenry Fielding's farce, Eurydice, descends into the Underworld and appeals to Persephone and the prince of or, The Devil Henpeck'd (1737), Jean Anouilh's Eurydice (1941), and Tennessee darkness to allow his wife's return to the land of the living. With a rambling, Williams' Orpheus Descending (1955); paintingsby Titian, Poussin, Rubens, and Feuerbach (seen below); sculpture by Bandinelli and Rodin; and a wide range of highly rhetorical lyric that takes up nearly a third of the entire tale, the minstrel, ,-, who could charm animals and even stones with his song, literally stupefies all the ,I, other artistic productions, among them three choreographed dances by Isadora bloodless souls of Hades (the Danaids leave off carrying their urns and Sisyphus Duncan and the films Orphee (1949) and Le Testament d'Orphee (1959) by Jean sits down on his rock!) and instantly compels Hades' king and queen to his will, Cocteau and Marcel Camus' Black Orpheus (1959). on the condition, however, that in leading Eurydice out of their realm he should never look back at her face. Just as they reach the edge of upper earth, of course, Orpheus does steal a fateful backward glance, only to see Eurydice at that moment, "dying again," tumbling downward and for eternity into the abyss. Briefly stupefied himself at the calamity, and then thwarted in his attempt at a second crossing of the river Styx, Orpheus retreats to the mountains of his homeland Thrace (despite the implications of an earlier pledge to join his wife in death should he fail in his mission). The story was in antiquity widely known from several versions, in particular /. from Vergil's Georgics (IV.452-546), and modern readers ought to consider II. carefully the differences between the two accounts, just as Ovid expected his contemporary audience to do. Suffice it here to say that Vergil's protagonist is at once more heroic and more sympathetic, his Eurydice far more dimensional (in Ovid's telling, the hapless bride is a mere sketch of a character and has but a single word to say, Vale), his rendering of Hell more fearful (and never verging on the comic, like Sisyphus perched on his stone). In Vergil's concluding scene, Orpheus' head, torn from his shoulders by a throng of crazed Bacchantes and hurled into the Hebrus river, cried out the name of his beloved Eurydice again and again as it floated downstream, a pitiable lament re-echoed by the river's banks. In Ovid's anti-epic version, a clever undercutting of the traditional tale, Eurydice, "sufficiently mourned," seems insufficiently loved, and his magniloquent Orpheus seems closer in his ineptitudes to Daphne's blustering "Orpheus and Eurydice" Apollo than to Thisbe's Pyramus, whose actions speak, as properly they should, Anselm Feuerbach, 1869 far louder than his words. Osterreichische Galerie Vienna !iF; ORPHEUSANDEURYDICE1ftII 59 58 1ftII OVID:LOVEANDTRANSFORMATION 1 lode: BookIX hadendedwith the weddingof Iphis andIantheon the island lnde per immensum, eroeeo velatus amietii, of Crete; the marriagegod Hymenaeus(line 2) now makes his way from aethera dIgreditur Cieonumque Hymenaeus ad odis that eventto the weddingof OrpheusandEurydice. immensus, -a, -om, boundless, vast (with aethera 2). tendit, et Orphea nequlquam voce voeatur. croceus, -a, -om, of saffron;saffron-colored,yellow (the colorworn by Adfuit ille quidem, sed nee sollemnia verba bridesin Romanweddings). 5 nee laetOsvultiis nee telIx attulit omen; crocee> ...amictu: the words surround velatus just as the cloak itself fax quoque, quam tenuit, laerimoso strIdula fiimo was wrapped around the god. velO, -are, -avi, -atus, to cover, clothe (with Hymenaeus 2). usque fuit nullosque invenit motibus ignes. 2 aether, aetheris, acc. aethera, n., the upper regions of space, heaven. Exitus auspicio gravior. Nam nupta per herbas digredior, digredi, digressurus, to go away, depart. dum nova, Naiadum turba eomitata, vagatur, Cicones, Ciconom, m. pl., the Cicones (a tribe of southern Thrace). Hymenaeus, -I, m., the Greek wedding refrain,' the god of marriage (cf. Hymen 1.480). *ora, -ae, f., shore, coast. 3 *tendo, tendere, tetendi, tentus, to extend, stretch forth; to proceed. j DiscussionQuestions Orpheus, -a, -om, of or belonging to Orpheus. I 1. How is the positioningof immensum / aethera (1-2) appropriate to the Orphea . voce: Ovid uses the adjective instead of Orpheus' name, in . order to focus on the man's most remarkable attribute, his scenedescribed? mesmerizing voice (which in this case fails to achieve the effect he 2. How doesmeterreinforcemeaningin verses2-3? What is especially desired); cf. Rhodopeius .. yates (11-12). effective in the shift of rhythm in 3? nequiquam: because, while Hymenaeus did appear, his epiphany proved most unpropitious. 3. Comment on the wordplay in voce vocatur (3). 4 I~ iIIe: Hymenaeus. 4. What are the multiple effects of the meter, the polysyndeton, and the nee . / nee . nee (5): an effective polysyndeton. sollemnis, -is, -e, ceremonial, ritual; traditional. positioning of the adjectives in 4-5? sollemnia verba: i.e., the wedding hymn. 5. How does the ominous scene conjured up by lacrimoso ...fiimo (6) 5 nee . ielix: a heavy spondaic line, with conflict of ictus and accent. foreshadow the events that follow? *-omen, omlDlS,-. n., omen, augury, slgn.. 6 quoque quam: note the alliteration and cf. iisque/-osque in the next line. 6. Notice that Eurydice is at first (like Orpheus) not named, but only referred to lacrimosus, -a, -om, tearful; causing tears. as nupta ... nova (8-9); knowing that Ovid's audience was already well lacrimoso. fiimo: the repeated o's are perhaps meant as a mournful familiar with the story, what do you see as the effect? sound effect. stridulus, -a, -om, shrill, high-pitched (here, hissing or sputtering, a sound furthersuggestedby the repeateds's in 6-7). 7 *iisque, adv., all the way to or from,' continuously. nullas . ignes: i.e., the torch was sputtering and smoking (irritating the eyes of the celebrants) and never thoroughly caught fire, even as it was waved back and forth to ignite the sparks. alliteration of nand t, the assonance of per/her-, dum/-dum, and the motus, -us, m., movement (here, even with shaking). series of a's, especially in comitata vagiitur. 8 exitus, -iis, m., departure, exit,' outcome. nupta, -ae, f., a married woman, wife; with nova, a bride. Exitus. gravior: sc. fuit; brevity, ellipsis, and the quick dactyls add 9 dum: as often, the conjunction (which we should expect to precede nupta) is point to the sententia. delayed; cf. the position of postquam (11). *auspicium, -i, n., omen, augury (here abl. of comparison). Niiias, Niiiadis, f., a Naiad (a river nymph). Nam . vagiitur (9): there are some striking sound effects, including vagor, vagiiri, vagiitus sum, to wander,roam. 60 tIIIr OVID:lOVEANDTRANSFORMATION ORPHEUSANDEURYDICEtIIIr 61 10 occido, occidere, occidi, occasiirus, to fall, collapse; to die. 10 occidit in talum serpentis dente recepto. talus, -I, m., ankle-bone, ankle. Quam satis ad superas postquam Rhodopeius auras in talum ... recepto: lit., with a snake's tooth received into her ankle; even in Latin the circumlocution is rather odd, as are other aspects of deflevit Yates, ne non temptaret et umbras, the narrative. ad Styga Taenaria est ausus descendere porta, dens, dentis, m., tooth, fang (note the assonance in serpentis dente). perque leves populOssimulacraque ffincta sepulcro 11 Quam: = Eam, object of deflevit (12); Eurydice, like Orpheus, is still not 15 named (their names are delayed to verses 31 and 64, respectively). Note Persephonen adiIt inamoenaque regna tenentem the internal rhyme Quam. -ras (at the caesura) -quam. -ras. umbrarum dominum, pulsIsque ad carmina nervIs satis: a curious modifier (did Orpheus mourn Eurydice just "enough"?), one of several elements in the narrative which Ovid deliberately introduces to undercut, and even burlesque, Orpheus' heroic image. *superus, -a, -um, above, upper. DiscussionQuestions ad superas . auras: freely, in the air above, i.e., in the upper world; the alliteration of s in this verse (seven times) may onomatopoetically 1. What effect does Ovid achieve through the enjambement of occidit (10) and suggest the swirling of the winds on earth, in opposition to the stillness r the shift of meter following? Comment too on the line's striking c/d/t of the Underworld. Cf. supera . ora (26). I alliteration; are these sounds appropriate to the context? *Rhodopeius, -a, -um, of Mt. Rhodope (in Thrace, Orpheus' homeland).