Of my Eurydice. To you are owed ourselves and all creation; A brief while
We linger; and then we hasten late or soon, to one abode...
... The favor that I ask is but to enjoy her love and if the Fates
Will not reprieve her, my resolve is clear
Not to return: may two deaths give you cheer."
(Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book X, translated by A. D. Melville)
Yesterday I dissed Aeneas for not being among the great lovers of literature. I mentioned Romeo and Juliet, and Cleopatra and Marc Antony, but my all-time favorite has always been Orpheus, the lute-player who will go to the Underworld to find his dead bride, and if that fails, will please the gods with his own death. It's a seemingly win-win situation. What charms me about Orpheus is that he unlike all the others I've spoken about so far, allows for love to transform him and affect him-- his figure makes the suggestion that other love forms are not really love but a kind of ownership, pleasure boat ride, social contract etc. Odysseus was faithful to Penelope, but she was not the compass that led him to Ithaca. Aeneas chilled with Dido while it served the interests of him and his people. Romeo was too chicken to go on living without Juliet-- and didn't even wait to see what his options were. Orpheus, on the other hand, has it all figured out. I don't want to make this blog post about how I wish there were more of this guy around, what I do want to talk about though is his concept of destiny, particularly hell, and then maybe add a few reflections of my own, given recent events in my life.
The first thing to understand about pre-Christian Greek and Roman narratives is that there was only a kind of hell that they could aspire to after death-- they didn't have the chances monotheistic faiths give us. It was death, and then the realm of Pluto, the god of the Underworld, cold and uncaring, who plundered the living earth at will, taking figures like Proserpina and Eurydice with him. For Orpheus to contemplate death for Eurydice then, was to contemplate what in Christianity is a kind of eternal damnation. Later on in the Inferno, there will be more such figures-- people who for the sake of another we willing to face this eternal damnation, Paulo and Francesca being my particular favorites.
But there is also an opposite case where romantic love and the after-life instead of being one and the same, are battle-axes pointed at each other, one waiting to destroy and interrupt the existence of the other. In our times, then, it seems that we often end up choosing between faith and love, rather than trying to mediate both. Is it the fear of Hell that keeps us from allowing both or is it the desire for Heaven? Orpheus didn't have a choice about where to go to search for Eurydice, so he floated into hell. Paulo and Francesca were joined by the hip, but are seemingly unregretful about their stolen kiss. What I want to say here is that many of the greatest lovers in Western literature do not see hell as abominable-- possibly because it is a hell of virtue, nobility, and love, rather than a hell of low actions, murder, and avarice.
While the Greeks and Romans didn't really have a concept of the Underworld as Hell, Dante certainly did. I'm going to write about Dante later, but I do quickly want to mention that it is the most noble figures of the Western imagination that end up in the Inferno-- these are people of great virtue and perseverance, and thus whose presence makes hell a better place. This is a great line to end with, this idea of making hell a better place, but I want to go a little further and think about the forces Orpheus has to wrestle with: Death, and destiny (or, the Fates). It is to the Fates that he turns first, believing that the fabric can somehow be unwoven and the nightmare of separation ended. Unable to have Eurydice in life, Orpheus chooses to have her in death. And this doesn't work out either, as the story goes. So my last question then is this: is life one big speed-dating event? Do figures like Orpheus waste their time trying to be the living among the dead, trying to unwind the fabric that has suffocated their love? Or is the struggle to make a love clear among the darknesses of Hell and Heaven perhaps a duty that such figures undertake, to make the world a better place through the eternity of their pain?
The first thing to understand about pre-Christian Greek and Roman narratives is that there was only a kind of hell that they could aspire to after death-- they didn't have the chances monotheistic faiths give us. It was death, and then the realm of Pluto, the god of the Underworld, cold and uncaring, who plundered the living earth at will, taking figures like Proserpina and Eurydice with him. For Orpheus to contemplate death for Eurydice then, was to contemplate what in Christianity is a kind of eternal damnation. Later on in the Inferno, there will be more such figures-- people who for the sake of another we willing to face this eternal damnation, Paulo and Francesca being my particular favorites.
But there is also an opposite case where romantic love and the after-life instead of being one and the same, are battle-axes pointed at each other, one waiting to destroy and interrupt the existence of the other. In our times, then, it seems that we often end up choosing between faith and love, rather than trying to mediate both. Is it the fear of Hell that keeps us from allowing both or is it the desire for Heaven? Orpheus didn't have a choice about where to go to search for Eurydice, so he floated into hell. Paulo and Francesca were joined by the hip, but are seemingly unregretful about their stolen kiss. What I want to say here is that many of the greatest lovers in Western literature do not see hell as abominable-- possibly because it is a hell of virtue, nobility, and love, rather than a hell of low actions, murder, and avarice.
While the Greeks and Romans didn't really have a concept of the Underworld as Hell, Dante certainly did. I'm going to write about Dante later, but I do quickly want to mention that it is the most noble figures of the Western imagination that end up in the Inferno-- these are people of great virtue and perseverance, and thus whose presence makes hell a better place. This is a great line to end with, this idea of making hell a better place, but I want to go a little further and think about the forces Orpheus has to wrestle with: Death, and destiny (or, the Fates). It is to the Fates that he turns first, believing that the fabric can somehow be unwoven and the nightmare of separation ended. Unable to have Eurydice in life, Orpheus chooses to have her in death. And this doesn't work out either, as the story goes. So my last question then is this: is life one big speed-dating event? Do figures like Orpheus waste their time trying to be the living among the dead, trying to unwind the fabric that has suffocated their love? Or is the struggle to make a love clear among the darknesses of Hell and Heaven perhaps a duty that such figures undertake, to make the world a better place through the eternity of their pain?
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