Dante's Heart
Re-tellings of the Orpheus Myth
vanishing into the darkness. In the Metamorphoses, the story continues to tell
how Orpheus was torn to pieces by the Bacchanantes, who tossed his head
and lyre into the river. His head floated out to sea, still murmuring the name of
Eurydice. In Ovid, the story has a somewhat happy ending, for the spirit of
Orpheus returns to the Underworld and is reunited with that of Eurydice. D. L.
Jeffrey has said that the Orpheus story is “one of the strongest, most
comprehensive myths dealing with the human predicament ... [about] the
profound sense of loss and heart sickness which attends a personal
confrontation with the problem of Death.”(5) Unlike the story of the happy
singer in “Pan the Piper,” the story is actually about the inevitability of loss and
death and the fact that not even the power of song can save a person from
death. There is, however, the qualified happy ending in Ovid, which suggests
that death is not an end, but a beginning.
The story of Orpheus originally had a happy ending. L. P. Wilkinson points
out that “the normal [pre-Virgilian] version of the story made Orpheus
successful in bringing Eurydice back to earth.”(6) M. Owen Lee shows that
“no extant author before Virgil tells the story of Orpheus’ tragic backward look”
although Euripides first makes what “appears to be an explicit reference to
Orpheus losing his wife to death and descending to Hades to bring her back.”(7)
He argues that “Virgil appears to have fashioned a new and tragic version of the
story … which has become canonical.”(8)
Because Orpheus represents the power of music and poetry to enchant all
living things, he is the archetypal poet and singer and has interested poets since
Back Page 3 Endnotes
vanishing into the darkness. In the Metamorphoses, the story continues to tell
how Orpheus was torn to pieces by the Bacchanantes, who tossed his head
and lyre into the river. His head floated out to sea, still murmuring the name of
Eurydice. In Ovid, the story has a somewhat happy ending, for the spirit of
Orpheus returns to the Underworld and is reunited with that of Eurydice. D. L.
Jeffrey has said that the Orpheus story is “one of the strongest, most
comprehensive myths dealing with the human predicament ... [about] the
profound sense of loss and heart sickness which attends a personal
confrontation with the problem of Death.”(5) Unlike the story of the happy
singer in “Pan the Piper,” the story is actually about the inevitability of loss and
death and the fact that not even the power of song can save a person from
death. There is, however, the qualified happy ending in Ovid, which suggests
that death is not an end, but a beginning.
The story of Orpheus originally had a happy ending. L. P. Wilkinson points
out that “the normal [pre-Virgilian] version of the story made Orpheus
successful in bringing Eurydice back to earth.”(6) M. Owen Lee shows that
“no extant author before Virgil tells the story of Orpheus’ tragic backward look”
although Euripides first makes what “appears to be an explicit reference to
Orpheus losing his wife to death and descending to Hades to bring her back.”(7)
He argues that “Virgil appears to have fashioned a new and tragic version of the
story … which has become canonical.”(8)
Because Orpheus represents the power of music and poetry to enchant all
living things, he is the archetypal poet and singer and has interested poets since
Back Page 3 Endnotes
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