The myth as we know it in bulletpoints:
- Eurydice is a tree-born hamadryad
- Orpheus is a king-singer, son of Calliope (a muse of epic poetry) and... either the king of Trace or Apollo (god of art and beauty) or Ares (god of war). He has an increduble gift of music - his singing can tame beasts and move mountains. In some versions of the myth Orpheus was also one of the Argonauts - heroses traveling with Jason to get the Golden Fleece
- Orpheus and Eurydice meet and marry
- on the wedding night Euryices is bitten by a viper
- she dies and goes to Hades (Hades is both a name of hell/underword and a name the god of death)
- Orpheus follows her to Hades. With his singing he tames Cerber (three-headed dog guarding teh gates to hell) and softens teh heart of Hades and his wife Persephone/Kore.
- Orpheus can lead Eurydice out. There was only one condition- Orpheus was not to look back as he ascended. He was to trust that Eurydice was immediately behind him.
- Orpheus did look back and his lost Eurydice forever
- Orpheus' live turned into moarning. His grief leads him to despair. In ne of the verison he staggers madly through the word until he's torn apart by a pack of Bacchae. In some other - he cannot love any woman ever agai so he turn sto men.
More about the myth here.
Famous interpretations of the myth
Sarah Ruhl's play "Eurydice"
Striking things:
- lots of missed connections and letters
- choosing between lover and father.
Eurydice on a wedding day receives a letter from the Underword from her dead father. She follows the messenger who tries to seduce her. As she resists she falls down the stairs and dies. As she enters the Underworld she's dipped in the river of forgetfullness, Lethe. It erases all her knowledge. The father takes care of her and teaches her to be human again. Orpheus sends her letters to the Underword. Finally he arrives himself, making the stones weep with his music. Eurydice has to choose between her father and lover. She follows Orpheus but screams, he looks backand all is lost. She goes back to hell, discovers that her father dipped himself in Lethe. She writes a letter to Orpheus and does the same. Orpheus dies and enters Underword, finds the letter but (because he was dipped in Lethe) too - cannot read it. They all all reunited but they are not themselves anymore.
Jean Anouilh's play "Eurydice"
Striking things:
- Orpheus' obsession whith Eurydice's sexual purity
- her readiness to sacrifice herself for love
- topics: trust and forgiveness
- presence of their toxic parents
Eurydice is the daughter of the leading actress in a second-rate acting troupe. She meets Orpheus, a son of a violinist at a train station. He's taken by her. But also repulsed by a thought that she had lovers before him. She lies to ease him and the colour of her eyes changes. They run away together but she's chased by her past. When her ex-lover tries to expose her she runs away from Orpheus and dies in a bus crash. Orpheus gets a chance to brink her back to live. The only condition is not to look in her eyes to check if she's lying. He cannot stop himself so sdies once more, leaving Orphée miserable and alone with his mess of a father.
Czesław Miłosz's poem "Orpheus and Eurydice"
Striking things:
- Orpheus' repultion with death. He chooses life over love
Orpheus is a modern man, an urban poet who believes that the only thing that made him human was teh love for his deceased wife. Now he stands in the wind about to enter teh morgue.
He goes through the cold corridors, at the end of which he finds Eurydice - chandged by death, grey and alien. He takes her out but cannot supress repultion. He looks back and leaves her behind.
"Hadestow" - album by Anaïs Mitchell
Striking things:
- love torn apart by econimical situation
- Hades controls the means of production
- Orpheus cannot provide for the family
- very Brechtian
Eurydice and Orpheus are poor but in love.
Orheus' music can make them forget about the
difficult situation. But realty kicks in finally.
Eurydice is hungry and desperate.
Hades is in control of the only business (?)
that provides work and "work is the only thing
that keeps us free".
Eurydice chooses to follow her "gut not her
heart". She joins Hades.
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - double album "Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus"
E
Arcade Fire - album "Reflektor"
- isolation, loneliness, looking for a connection
If this is heaven
I don't know what it's for
If I can't find you there
I don't care
- will we have enough strength to make it work?
- it's hard to believe it now but we can get over
the back things and feel love again
"Just sing for me all night
We'll wait until it's over
Wait until it's through"
- there's a price to be payed for love
- we're living in a crazy time of alienation
Elfiede Jelinek - Shadows (Eurydice Speaks)/Schatten (Eurydike sagt)
- Orpheus is an egoistic pop-star
- Eurydice doesn't want to be revived
A play by Elfriede Jelinek, an Austrian playwright and novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, is one of the typical post-dramatic texts – there are no classic situations, it is written in prose like an interior dialogue, introspection.
Jelinek deconstructs the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as a passively loving woman. Orpheus is one of the aspects of Eurydice’s psyche. He is to be canonized as a pop star, he’s vain. His singing causes teenage fans to faint.
In the Eurydice myth, no-one asks if she wants to be revived. In Jelinek’s version, she can express her will and say “no”. Jelinek approached the mystery of death. This goes even further, reaching for a myth of which the central figure is Eurydice. It moves among the shadows of the Champs-Elysees. Visions of death are to soothe anxiety. Jelinek fantasizes about what will be "after". No-one knows how to contact the shadows of death, but life will
go on.
Orfeu Negro / Black Orpheus - film by Marcel Camus (1959)
Orpheus looks for her in the missing persons office. The spirit of Eurydice inhabits the body of an old woman and speaks to him.
He retrieves Eurydice's body from the city morgue and carries her in his arms across town toward his home, where Mira kills him with a stone.
Dancing Eurydices - a song by Anna German (English version)
- lust, drink, barflies and jazz nights
- every woman tonight can be an Eurydice
the men will try to take hoem with them
Andew Bird - Orpheo Looks Back
- Orpheus is a deluded narcissist destroying everything on his way with his music
- he accidently kills Eurydice and wouldn't give her a rest even in hell
Eurydice: "If you play that fucking thing down here
I'll stick it up your orifice"
- very bloody:
"Birdies detonated in the sky
Bunnies dashed their brains out on the trees..."
- super-natural athmosphere of the carnival
- lots of samba
- Eurydice is followed by a killed in a Death costume
Orpheus is a streetcar conductor in Rio. Eurydice comes to Rio for the carnival. She's also escaping a dangerous stalker. Orpheus is engaged to Mira but doesn't look forward to the marriage - instead of buying a wedding ring he prefers to buy himself a guitar.
At a street party Orpheus dances with Eurydice not with Mira.
Eurydice hides from the Death in Orpheus' trolley station. Orpheus accidentally electrocutes her turning the tram on.
And there are places we must go to
To bring these hollow words on back from
You must cross a muddy river
Where love turns to love turns to fear
They say you don't look
There's only one way
On back from on back from here
They say you don't look
They say you don't look cause it'll disappear