Orpheus with His Lute: Poetry and the Renewal of Life

Abstract

The Orpheus myth has fascinated Western man from the sixth century B.C. to the present. This book is an attempt to define, through a survey of the European tradition of literature, art, poetry and music, some of the philosophical and psychological implications and developments of that myth. As the supreme poet-musician of Greek tradition, the figure of Orpheus embodies the most central and persistent elements in Greek ideas of poetry, music and artistic creativity. His journey to Hades has led him to become, for some, a Christ figure; for others, he descended into the unconscious and received awareness of timeless truths and creative power; through the Orphic cult his followers tried to attain some kind of eternal life; the loss of his bride Eurydice and his eventual dismemberment likewise provide material rich for the anthropologist, psychologist and artist. Most of the existing studies of the Orpheus theme deal with the classical period, or the medieval, or with individual modern treatments such as Rilke's. The originality of this book is that it relates these different areas and follows suggestive threads into new and stimulating areas.