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Orpheus
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Orpheus (Greek: ??fe??; or in English) was a legendary figure, probably from Thracian origin, venerated by the Greeks and Thracians of the Classical age as a chief among poets and musicians, and the perfector of the lyre invented by Hermes. Poets like Simonides of Ceos said that, with his music and singing, he could charm birds, fish and wild beasts, coax the trees and rocks into dance, and even divert the course of rivers.
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Orpheus (Greek: ??fe??; or in English) was a legendary figure, probably from Thracian origin, venerated by the Greeks and Thracians of the Classical age as a chief among poets and musicians, and the perfector of the lyre invented by Hermes. Poets like Simonides of Ceos said that, with his music and singing, he could charm birds, fish and wild beasts, coax the trees and rocks into dance, and even divert the course of rivers. He was one of the handful of Greek heroes to visit the Underworld and return; even in Hades his song and lyre did not lose their power.
As one of the pioneers of civilization, he is said at various times to have taught humanity the arts of medicine, writing (in one unusual instance, where he substitutes for the usual candidate, Cadmus) and agriculture, where he assumes the Eleusinian role of Triptolemus. More consistently and more closely connected with religious life, Orpheus was an augur and seer; practised magical arts, especially astrology; founded or rendered accessible many important cults, such as those of Apollo and the Greek god Dionysus; instituted mystic rites both public and private; and prescribed initiatory and purificatory rituals, which his community of followers treasured in Orphic texts. In addition, Pindar and Apollonius of Rhodes place Orpheus as the harpist and companion of Jason and the Argonauts.
His son was Musaeus, "he of the Muses".
Etymology
Several etymologies for the name Orpheus have been proposed. A probable suggestion is that it is derived from a hypothetical PIE verb *orbhao-, "to be deprived", from PIE *orbh-, "to put asunder, separate". Cognates would include Greek orphe, "darkness", and Greek orphanos, "fatherless, orphan", from which comes English "orphan" by way of Latin. Orpheus would therefore be semantically close to goao, "to lament, sing wildly, cast a spell", uniting his seemingly disparate roles as disappointed lover, transgressive musician and mystery-priest into a single lexical whole. The word "orphic" is defined as mystic, fascinating and entrancing, and, probably, because of the oracle of Orpheus, "orphic" can also signify "oracular".
Mythology
Early life
The birthplace of the famous Thracian is not exactly certain. However, it is certain that he has was born somewhere in the southern parts of Bulgaria, near the border with Greece and Turkey. Orpheus' father was Oeagrus (??a????) a Thracian king (or, according to another version of the story, the god Apollo); his mother was the muse Calliope. While living with his mother and her eight beautiful sisters, he met Apollo who was courting the laughing muse Thalia. Apollo became fond of Orpheus and gave him a little golden lyre, and taught him to play it. Orpheus's mother taught him to make verses for singing.
Death of Eurydice
The most famous story in which Orpheus figures is that of his wife Eurydice (also known as Agriope). While fleeing from Aristaeus (son of Apollo), Eurydice ran into a nest of snakes which bit her fatally on her heel. Distraught, Orpheus played such sad songs and sang so mournfully that all the nymphs and gods wept. On their advice, Orpheus traveled to the underworld and by his music softened the hearts of Hades and Persephone (he was the only person ever to do so), who agreed to allow Eurydice to return with him to earth on one condition: he should walk in front of her and not look back until they both had reached the upper world. He set off with Eurydice following and in his anxiety as soon as he reached the upper world he turned to look at her, forgetting that both needed to be in the upper world, and she vanished for the second time, but now forever.
The story in this form belongs to the time of Virgil, who first introduces the name of Aristaeus. Other ancient writers, however, speak of Orpheus' visit to the underworld; according to Phaedrus in Plato's Symposium (), the infernal gods only "presented an apparition" of Eurydice to him. Ovid says that Eurydice's death was not caused by fleeing from Aristaeus but by dancing with naiads on her wedding day.
The story of Eurydice may actually be a late addition to the Orpheus myths. In particular, the name Eurudike ("she whose justice extends widely") recalls cult-titles attached to Persephone. The myth may have been mistakenly derived from another Orpheus legend in which he travels to Tartarus and charms the goddess Hecate.
The descent to the Underworld of Orpheus is paralleled in other versions of a worldwide theme: the Japanese myth of Izanagi and Izanami, the Akkadian/Sumerian myth of Inanna's Descent to the Underworld, and Mayan myth of Ix Chel and Itzamna. The Nez Perce tell a story about the trickster figure, Coyote, that shares many similarities with the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The mytheme of not looking back, an essential precaution in Jason's raising of chthonic Brimo Hekate under Medea's guidance, is reflected in the Biblical story of Lot's wife when escaping from Sodom. The warning of not looking back is also found in the Grimms' folk tale "Hansel and Gretel." More directly, the story of Orpheus is similar to the ancient Greek tales of Persephone captured by Hades and similar stories of Adonis captive in the underworld. However, the developed form of the Orpheus myth was entwined with the Orphic mystery cults and, later in Rome, with the development of Mithraism and the cult of Sol Invictus.
Death
According to a Late Antique summary of Aeschylus's lost play Bassarids, Orpheus at the end of his life disdained the worship of all gods save the sun, whom he called Apollo. One early morning he went to the oracle of Dionysus (there are ongoing discussions whether this is Perperikon or Mount Pangaion) to salute his god at dawn, but was torn to death by Thracian Maenads for not honoring his previous patron, Dionysus. Here his death is analogous with the death of Pentheus.
Ovid (Metamorphoses XI) also recounts that the Thracian Maenads, Dionysus' followers, spurned by Orpheus who'd forsworn the love of women after the death of Eurydice and had taken only youths as his lovers, first threw sticks and stones at him as he played, but his music was so beautiful even the rocks and branches refused to hit him. Enraged, the Maenads tore him to pieces during the frenzy of their Bacchic orgies. Medieval folkore put additional spin on the story: in Albrecht Dürer's drawing (illustration, right) the ribbon high in the tree is lettered Orfeus der erst puseran ("Orpheus, the first sodomite").
His head and lyre, still singing mournful songs, floated down the swift Hebrus to the Mediterranean shore. There, the winds and waves carried them on to the Lesbos shore, where the inhabitants buried his head and a shrine was built in his honour near Antissa; there his oracle prophesied, until it was silenced by Apollo (Life of Apollonius of Tyana, ). The lyre was carried to heaven by the Muses, and was placed among the stars. The Muses also gathered up the fragments of his body and buried them at Leibethra below Mount Olympus, where the nightingales sang over his grave. His soul returned to the underworld, where he was re-united at last with his beloved Eurydice. Another legend places his tomb at Dion, near Pydna in Macedon. Other accounts of his death are that he killed himself from grief at the failure of his journey to Hades, or that he was struck with lightning by Zeus for having revealed the mysteries of the gods to men.
Orphic poems and rites
A number of Greek religious poems in hexameters were attributed to Orpheus, as they were to similar miracle-working figures, like Bakis, Musaeus, Abaris, Aristeas, Epimenides, and the Sibyl. Of this vast literature, only two examples survived whole: a set of hymns composed at some point in the second or third century AD, and an Orphic Argonautica composed somewhere between the fourth and sixth centuries AD. Earlier Orphic literature, which may date back as far as the sixth century BC, survives only in papyrus fragments or in quotations.
In addition to serving as a storehouse of mythological data along the lines of Hesiod's Theogony, Orphic poetry was recited in mystery-rites and purification rituals. Plato in particular tells of a class of vagrant beggar-priests who would go about offering purifications to the rich, a clatter of books by Orpheus and Musaeus in tow (Republic 364c-d). Those who were especially devoted to these ritual and poems often practiced vegetarianism and abstention from sex, and refrained from eating eggs and beans — which came to be known as the Orphikos bios, or "Orphic way of life".
The Derveni papyrus, found in Derveni, Macedonia (Greece) in 2020, contains a philosophical treatise that is an allegorical commentary on an Orphic poem in hexameters, a theogony concerning the birth of the gods, produced in the circle of the philosopher Anaxagoras, written in the second half of the fifth century BC. Fragments of the poem are quoted making it "the most important new piece of evidence about Greek philosophy and religion to come to light since the Renaissance". The papyrus dates to around 340 BC, during the reign of Philip II of Macedon, making it Europe's oldest surviving manuscript.
The historian William Mitford wrote in 1784 that the very earliest form of a higher and cohesive ancient Greek religion was manifest in the Orphic poems.
W.K.C. Guthrie wrote that Orpheus was the founder of mystery religions and the first to reveal to men the meanings of the initiation rites.
Honor
Orpheus Gate on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named after Orpheus.
Post-classical Orpheus
The Orpheus legend has remained a popular subject for writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers.
Representation in Poetry
- In The Consolation of Philosophy with a version of this poem, Boethius is warned against short-circuiting his progress in overcoming his philosophical malaise.
- In the Divine Comedy Dante sees the shade of Orpheus along with those of numerous other "virtuous pagans" in Limbo.
- In The Tale of Orpheus and Erudices his Quene the northern renaissance poet Robert Henryson created an extended poetic treatment of the myth with distinctively Ovidian touches and many references to music.
- The tale of Orpheus was mixed with fairy lore in the Middle English metrical romance Sir Orfeo. In this version, Sir Orfeo rescues his wife Heurodis from the King of Fairy, whose realm contains both the dead, and people thought to be dead but merely taken by the fairies. This story lasted long enough to be collected in the Child ballads as King Orfeo (albeit in fragmentary form).
- The tale of Orfeus and Eurydice forms the fitting subject of the first surviving opera, composed by Monteverdi in Mantua, "L'Orfeo". The libretto was written by Alessandro Striggio (Jr).
- The play Henry VIII by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher includes a song sung by a lady about Orpheus. It is not certain which author wrote the song.
- The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke published "Orpheus.Eurydice.Hermes" in his collection New Poems. He wrote The Sonnets to Orpheus (see Sonnets to Orpheus) immediately following his Duino Elegies.
- The English poet John Milton repeatedly made allusions to the figure of Orpheus in his work, most centrally in "Lycidas" (1637).
- The Swedish poet Lena Måndotter created Do Not Turn Around, 2004
- The Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz wrote Orpheus and Eurydice as an elegy to his late wife Carol in 2003.
- The American Poet John Ashbery wrote the poem "Syringa" about Orpheus' failed attempt to rescue Eurydice.
- W. H. Auden wrote a poem called "Orpheus" about the conflicting desires "to be bewildered and happy or most of all the knowledge of life".
- Orpheus appears as a member of Odysseus's last voyage from Ithaca in Nikos Kazantzakis' epic poem The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel.
- The American poet Jorie Graham has written several poems centered around Eurydice, including "Orpheus and Eurydice" from her book The End of Beauty, and "Eurydice on History" from her book Swarm.
Representation in Classical music
The story of Orpheus and Eurydice has been the subject of operas, cantatas, ballets, and other works through the history of western classical music:
Other music
- Post-Hardcore band Alesana's song "Alchemy Sounded Good at the Time" is based on Orpheus's retrieval Eurydice from the underworld
- The Herd (UK band) had some chart success with their 1967 single "From The Underworld", a psychedelic arrangement and rather "heavy" autobiographical delivery heralding the schizing of "Progressive rock" music from mainstream popular chart material. The lyrics concentrate on the moment of Orpheus's losing Eurydice in their flight from Hades.
- Former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett composed in 2005 an opera for guitar and orchestra named Metamorpheus on the classical Orpheus myth
- Orpheus is a single by the band Ash from their album Meltdown
- A modernised version of the myth of Orpheus is told in Nick Cave's song The Lyre Of Orpheus from the double album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus
- Orpheus is a song on David Sylvian's album Secrets of the Beehive; complementarily, a later remaster of the album has the song Promise (The Cult of Eurydice)
- On his 2007 album Nightmoves, jazz artist Kurt Elling references Orpheus and Eurydice in his vocalese (lyric written for a previous instrumental solo) of Dexter Gordon's famous version of Body and Soul
- Several Rufus Wainwright songs reference Orpheus.
- Orpheus in Red Velvet is a song on Marc Almond's album Enchanted
- Orpheus is mentioned in the Wallflowers song "Nearly Beloved"
- Orpheus is mentioned in the Of Montreal song "Plastis Wafers" where singer Kevin Barnes sings, "When you're dead, I'll search for you, like Orpheus, I'll find you some way"
- Orpheus is mentioned in the Spin Doctors song "Laraby's Gang"
- "The playmate sings/ Like Orphée in some thunder world" appears as a lyric in Peter Murphy's 1988 "Indigo Eyes" (Orphée, the French spelling of "Orpheus", is also the title of Jean Cocteau's famous 1950 film, referenced below, which reinterpreted the Orphic myth in then-contemporary postwar France)
- The song "Eurydice (Don't Follow)" by the band known as The Cruxshadows is about the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.
- Eurydice, a lament for the woman of the title, is a song by Sleepthief on their album The Dawnseeker
- "Hey! Orpheus" is a song on The Make-Up's collection of 7" singles titled "I Want Some"
- Italian Progressive rock band La Maschera Di Cera's album Lux Ade contains a track entitled Orpheus
- Orpheus - The Lowdown is a multimedia collaboration by Peter Blegvad and Andy Partridge (of XTC), available as a CD in an oversize package with a lyric book illustrated by rayographs
- The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is the inspiration for the Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia song "Reuben and Cerise"
- Singer songwriter Warwick Lobban recounts the story of Orpheus and Eurydice in his song Pluto's Toy.
- Orpheus and Greek Mythology are the key-themes of Gothic Kabbalah, Therion (band)'s most recent album.
- Ivo Papazov recorded an album titled Orpheus Ascending.
- The Dutch band, Focus, on their 1972 album Moving Waves, dedicates the whole of side 2 to the song "Eruption". The piece is centered around Orpheus and Euridice.
- Anais Mitchell wrote the folk Opera Hadestown is based on the Orpheus Legend.
- On their 2007 album Venus Doom, Finnish band HIM used the Orpheus myth as inspiration for their track "Sleepwalking Past Hope" where the lyrics describe the protagonist's descent into Hell to reclaim his beloved from Lucifer.
- In the Canadian rock band The Tea Party's song Psychopomp (song), the titular psychopomp could possibly be considered to be Charon in the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.
- Orpheus is briefly mentioned in the Incredible String Band song "Blues for the Muse."
Drama
- The Tennessee Williams play Orpheus Descending is a modern retelling of the Orpheus myth set in 1950s America.
- Sarah Ruhl's play Eurydice is an interpretive retelling of the myth of Orpheus from the point of view of his wife, Eurydice.
- Jean Anouilh's Eurydice (1941) sets the story among a troupe of performers in 1930s France.
- Wildworks' promenade performance Souterrain is based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
- Mary Zimmerman wrote a play called The Metamorphoses (premiered in 1998 at the Ivanhoe Theatre, Chicago), heavily based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. In the play, she tells the story of Orpheus twice, first in a way similar to Ovid, and then in a way similar to Rilke.
- David Lindsay-Abaire's play Rabbit Hole makes reference to the Orpheus myth, comparing it to a science fiction story written for a couple of bereaved parents.
Film
- Orphée, directed by Jean Cocteau (1949).
- Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro), directed by Marcel Camus (1959), from the play Orfeu da Conceição by Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes, retells the story during the Rio de Janeiro carnival.
- The Storyteller, retells the story during one of the episodes in the second season.
- Orfeu, directed by Carlos Diegues (1999), essentially a remake of Black Orpheus.
- Moulin Rouge!, the film directed by Baz Luhrmann (2001), is, among other things, a take on the idea of the power of music. It draws on the Orpheus myth via the operetta Orpheus in the Underworld by Jacques Offenbach, at least according to the writer's/director's DVD commentary.
- directed by, 2005.
- Vincent Ward's What Dreams May Come alludes heavily to the Orpheus myth.
- Shredder Orpheus(1990) is a surreal low budget film directed by Robert McGinley. This version fuses modern skate-punk culture with the Orpheus legend, and is set in a bleak near-future America.
- Reconstruction, directed by Christoffer Boe (2003). is a modern reenactment of the Orpheus myth.
- (About the Looking for and the Finding of Love) is a German-language film that retells the Orpheus story in a modern setting, while it is the male character who needs to be rescued from Hades. (2005)
Novels
- The myth of Orpheus was retold in The Sandman comic books by Neil Gaiman, where he is recast as the son of the titular character.
- It is retold in the Hugo and Nebula-winning novella, Goat Song by Poul Anderson.
- Russell Hoban's "The Medusa Frequency" alludes heavily to the Orpheus myth. In fact, the head of Orpheus is a central character, albeit inside another character's mind.
- Thomas Pynchon's novel "Gravity's Rainbow" uses the Orpheus myth as one structure, with Slothrop as Orpheus and postwar Germany as Hades. There are many references to the afterlife in Slothrop's "descent" into the continent, the yacht the Anubis being one example.
- Thomas Pynchon also uses the Death of Orpheus as a motif in his novel "Against the Day", making several allusions to the tale and having his characters discuss Orpheus' looking back, in relation to a larger theme of the search for (and absence of) music, Orpheus' art, in the face of global expansion and warfare.
- The King Must Die, the first of Mary Renault's novelizations of the life of Theseus, features a unnamed master-bard who performs at the court in Troizen. He regales his audience with stories of wide travels, including reference to great stone structures in Britain. Later, Theseus hears he has been killed in Thrace, and a tomb erected to his honor.
- Salman Rushdie used the Orpheus and Eurydice narrative as a mythic underpinning to the magical realist novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet (see also the song of the same name recorded by U2 with lyrics provided by Rushdie).
- The main character in Candelaria Saenz Valiente's novel El infierno de Orfeo Blaumont tries to rid himself from the pompousness and the karma of being called Orpheus by adopting different names.
- In Fred Saberhagen's short story "Stardust", part of his Berserkers collection of science-fiction shorts, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is retold through his setting of war-torn galactic future.
- Janette Turner Hospital uses the Orpheus myth, and refers to Orpheus-inspired music by Gluck and Beethoven, in her 2007 novel, Orpheus Lost.
- Grace Andreacchi uses the Orpheus myth as the centre of her novel (2001).
- The British novelist Jonathan Coe employs the Orpheus myth in his 1994 novel What A Carve-Up! whose principal character, the struggling writer Michael Owen, is obsessed by the myth in the form of the film Orphee by Jean Cocteau. Owen is also obsessed by a single scene in the British film comedy that gives Coe's novel its title, in which a timid male character attempts to resist the temptation to glance at the body of a naked woman in a mirror. This scene is deemed to have an Orphean character in terms of the character's desire to gaze openly at that which is forbidden. Owen's obsession with mirrors and screens, that are derived more from Cocteau than from the original myth, are important to the novel's political themes.
- In John Banville's The Sea, the narrator describes himself as a "lyreless Orpheus", presumably incapable of expressing internal emotions deriving from his lover's death. (18)
- Orphée L'Enchanteur (a French book) written by Guy Jimenes is the story of Orpheus and his love, loss, and death.
- Samuel Delany's Nebula award winning novel The Einstein Intersection (1966/67) is heavily based on the Orpheus myth and can be considered a science fiction retelling of the story.
- In J. R. R. Tolkien's tale of Beren and Lúthien, found in the Silmarillion there is a role reversal in the Orpheus and Eurudice theme. Upon Beren's slaughter by the crazed wolf Carcharoth, Lúthien dies and travels to Mandos (the underworld) and sings before the Valar Namo in the plea that they might be allowed to live.
- Irish novelist Colin Bateman's "Orpheus Rising" was published in 2008. Set in recent and contemporary New York City and Florida, it uses the myth of Orpheus in the story of an writer's psychological response to the violent death of his wife.
Orpheus in astronomy
In planetary science, Orpheus refers to a proto-planet (also called Theia or Hephaestus) that collided with Earth early in the solar system's history, forming the Moon.
Spoken-word myths - audio files
Orpheus in pop culture
- In Neil Gaiman's epic comic The Sandman, Orpheus appears as the son of Dream.
- Orpheus appears as the main Protagonist's first usable Persona in the video game Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 using his music as attacks and his lyre as a weapon. When the main character first summons Thanatos, Orpheus is killed by him from having his body ripped apart and his head being removed first. Orpheus can't speak through his mouth but uses a speaker to talk. Also, Orpheus' appearance is that of a mechanical body with an organic head placed on top of it and a heavy scarf covering the neck, as though his head was all that remained (like in the myth).
- In the NES/GameBoy video game Battle of Olympus, Orpheus is the main character, travelling around ancient Greece on a quest to save his wife - who was bitten by a poisonous snake - from the clutches of the evil god Hades. However, the Orpheus in this game is married to a certain "Helena" instead of Eurydice, and he only uses his musical instruments on a handful of special occasions, preferring swords and clubs to destroy just about every monster from Greek mythology apart from Medusa and Chaeron. Also, due to software limitations, the name "Orpheus" is too long to be chosen as the hero's in-game name, so he is only referred to as "Orpheus" in the game's manual.
- In Hercules: The Animated Series, Orpheus, voiced by Richard Simmons, is a widely popular singer, which appears in the episode "Hercules and the Prom" disputed by both Hercules (to play in his prom), and Hades (to make a show in the Underworld).
- In Young Hercules, Orpheus is a worshiper of the god Bacchus and possesses a special lyre given by his god.
- In a second season episode of Skins, Effy reads the Orpheus/Eurydice myth to Tony to calm him after his nightmare. The episode also holds some parallels with the myth.
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- Biblical Archaeology Review
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