Orpheus in the Underworld

Books 10 and 11

The story of Orpheus in the hands of an earlier Roman poet, Virgil, is a tender love story of loss and artistic beauty. Ovid’s version is bewilderingly comic and surprisingly sordid. And violent. Orpheus, the epitome of the singer and the lyre player, marries, but his wife, Eurydice, is bitten by a snake and dies. Orpheus goes down to the Underworld to get her back. His singing and playing are so beautiful that Eurydice is released on the condition that Orpheus does not look back at her until they reach the surface. Of course, he looks, and he loses her a second time.

After that, his singing, although still wonderful, has the most bizarre subject matter. He renounces the love of women. Snubbed, the maenads, female followers of the god Bacchus, decide to kill him. After being hacked and beaten to death, his spirit is forever re-united with Eurydice’s in the Underworld.

Play, don’t sing,

the birds, the trees,

the stones are listening.

Or if you sing, then sing of how

the serpent bit your bride,

and how she died,

and how from grief and love

you too went down

into the world below,

and with the beauty

of your voice and lyre

suspended time in hell –

the shades, the demons rapt

with tears in bloodshot eyes.

Sing how your wife

almost escaped

the realm of death,

how you were weak

and could not help yourself –

you had to turn and look.

If hell, for love and beauty,

stopped for you,

imagine what a God could do.

But then you crossed

the Styx the second time,

the maenads

helped you there.

Hang up your lyre

in an olive tree,

you will not need it here.

You find the place

familiar yet changed,

Eurydice now healed,

the serpent’s sting undone,

and you can walk ahead

in beauty, light and love

and turn to look

at any time

without the fear of loss,

for you will never

have to cross

the river’s dark again

to that dark land above.