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The Magic of Orpheus and the Ambiguities of Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Charles Segal
Charles Segal*
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Language is among the most mysterious of man's attributes. Its power not only to communicate truths about reality, but also to compel assent in the face of reality has often appeared miraculous, magical, and also dangerous. The marvel that mere words could impel men to the most momentous actions, and the admiration or fear that this fact inspires, are recurrent themes in classical literature. To express and understand this power Greek myth early framed the figure of Orpheus, a magical singer, half-man, half-god, able to move all of nature by his song. How that myth shifts in meaning and emphasis in representing that power is the subject of this essay. Though primarily concerned with classical writers, I shall also consider how a few modern poets used and transmuted this mythic material. My reading of the myth is both diachronic and synchronic. I attempt to study some aspects of its historical development and also to interpret it (especially in part I) as if all of its versions, taken together, form a contemporary statement about the relation of art and life.

Orpheus is a complex, multifaceted figure. For the ancients he is not only the archetypal poet, but also the founder of a mystical religion known as Orphism, with a well-developed theology, cosmogony, and eschatology of which much survives in hymns and short epics, mostly of late date. The ‘poetic’ Orpheus inevitably overlaps with the founder of Orphism, but it is the Orpheus of the poetic tradition that this essay discusses.

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Research Article
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Ramus , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , 1978 , pp. 106 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1978

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References

1. The most useful discussions are Guthrie, W. K. C., Orpheus and Qreek Religion (1952, reprint, New York 1966Google Scholar); Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1957Google Scholar), chap. 5, especially 147ff.; I. Linforth, M., The Arts of Orpheus (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1941Google Scholar). Sewell, Elizabeth, The Orphic Voice: Poetry and Natural History (London 1960 [1961]Google Scholar) provides a lengthy, if often highly personal, survey of the Orphic tradition in literature. For the medieval material and especially the fusion of Orpheus with Dionysus and Christ see Friedman, John B., Orpheus in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass. 1970Google Scholar), especially chap. 3. For briefer discussions see Owen Lee, M., ‘Orpheus and Eurydice: Some Modern Versions,’ CJ 56 (1960-1) 307ffGoogle Scholar. and ‘Orpheus and Eurydice Myth, Legend, Folklore,’ C & M 26 (1965) 402–12Google Scholar, with bibliography; Kushner, Eva, Le mythe d’Orphée dans la littérature française contemporaine (Paris 1961) 11–76Google Scholar, with bibliography; Mayerson, Philip, Classical Mythology in Literature, Art, and Music (Lexington, Mass. 1971) 270–9Google Scholar. For the ancient material see Kern, Otto, Orphicorum Fragmenta (Berlin 1922Google Scholar); Galli, Georgio, La sapienza greca I (Milan 1977) 118–289Google Scholar (with Italian translations), and for the Hymns and theogonic fragments, Abel, Eugenius, Orphica (Leipzig 1885Google Scholar, reprint Hildesheim 1971).

2. Metge, Bernat, Lo Somni, edd. J. M. de Casacuberta and LI. Nicolau d’Olwer (Barcelona 1925) 85Google Scholar (book 3, ad init). Lo Somni is thought to be composed between 1396 and 1399. I am indebted to Dr Alison Goddard Elliott of Brown University for introducing me to Metge’s version of the myth: see her ’Orpheus in Catalonia: A Note on Ovid’s Influence,’ CF 32 (1978) 3–15Google Scholar. Unless otherwise specified, all translations are mine.

3. Text and translations from Norton, M. D. Herter, Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke (New York 1942Google Scholar).

4. See Berg, William, Early Virgil (London 1974) 15–22Google Scholar; Segal, C., ‘Landscape into Myth: Theocritus’ Bucolic Poetry,’ in A. J. Boyle, ed., Ancient Pastoral: Ramus Essays on Greek and Roman Pastoral Poetry (Berwick, Victoria 1975Google Scholar) 45 with note 33. I cannot here deal with the full range of Milton’s symbolism, on which see Adams, Richard P., ‘The Archetypal pattern of Death and Rebirth in Milton’s Lycidas,’ Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 64 (1949) 183–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Caroline W. Mayerson, ‘The Orpheus Image in Lycidas’ ibid. 189–207.

5. Anthologia Palatina 7.8 = Gow, A. S. F. and Page, D. L., edd., Hellenistic Epigrams (Cambridge 1965Google Scholar), Antipater, X. See also Anth. Pal. 7.10.

6. For Orpheus in the Eclogues see in general Desport, Marie, L’incantation virgilienne (Bordeaux 1952) 154ffGoogle Scholar. and 137 on the bucolic realm as ‘un monde pastoral soumis à l‘enchantment d‘Orphée’; Berg, (above, n. 4) 14; Putnam, Michael C. J., Virgil’s Pastoral Art (Princeton 1970) 200–2Google Scholar and 256f.; Van Sickle, John, ‘Studies of Dialectical Methodology in the Virgilian Tradition,’ MLN 85 (1970) 885fGoogle Scholar., 925–8 (a useful corrective to Desport’s enthusiastically positive view of Orpheus); further discussion in Van Sickle’s forthcoming book on the Eclogues.

7. For this ‘music of nature’ and (pastoral) poetry, Lucretius, De Return Natura 5.1379–98, though taking an ultimately sceptical view, is the locus classicus. See Segal, ‘Landscape into Myth’ (above, n. 4) 38ff.; Pöschl, Viktor, Die Hinendichtung Virgils (Heidelberg 1964) 53ffGoogle Scholar.

8. See Parry, Adam, ‘Landscape in Greek Poetry,’ YCS 15 (1957) 14Google Scholar, on bucolic poetry’s ‘ineantatory quality’ and ‘magical unreality’ which prevail upon us ‘to believe that rustic life is like this, and that we can share in it.’

9. See Segal, ‘Landscape into Myth’ (above, n. 4) 51.

10. Anthologia Planudea 13 = E. Diehl, ed., Anthologia Lyrica Graeca 1 (Leipzig 1925), Plato, Epigrammata. 27; cf. also Plato, Phaedrus 230 B-C; and for discussion, Segal, ‘Landscape into Myth’ (above, n. 4) 52f.

11. See Lee’s 1965 article (above, n. 1); Guthrie (above, n. 1) 29ff.; Bowra, C. M., ‘Orpheus and Eurydice,’ CQ, n.s., 2 (1952) 113–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dronke, Peter, ‘The Return of Eurydice,’ C & Af 23 (1962) 198–215Google Scholar.

12. See Aristophanes, Birds 693–702; Kern (above, n. 1) pp. 80ff. for other early evidence for the Orphic cosmogonies.

13. See Diodorus Siculus 4.25; Dronke (above, n. 11) 204; Guthrie (above, n. 1) 61. I cannot here enter into the early Christian use of this Orphic motif; for discussion see Friedman (above, n. 1) 57ff., 65ff.

14. Virgil, Georgics 4.520f.; Phanocles, frag. 1.7 and 23 ff. in Powell, J. U., ed., Collectanea Alexandrina (Oxford 1925Google Scholar) p. 107.

15. Phanocles, frag. 1.9–10; see also the works cited above, n. 11, for further discussion.

16. E.g. Kern (above, n. 1), Testimonia nos. 113, 117, 132 (pp. 33ff.); also Guthrie 44ff.

17. E.g. Kern, test. 94–101 (pp. 27ff.).

18. E.g. Eurip. Hypsipyle, frag. 64.2.93–102 (cited above, at the end of section II); also Alcidamas, Odysseus 24; Diodorus 4.25.2–4; Kern, test. 90–93, 108–112 (pp. 26f., 32f.).

19. Guthrie (above, n. 1) 120ff., especially 125.

20. See Malcolm’s, Henry Marcusian reading of Orpheus, Generation of Narcissus (Boston 1971) 37Google Scholar ff., 44, 161ff. From an almost diametrically opposite point of view Elizabeth Sewell (above, n. 1) attempts to restore the Orphic strain to a central place in Western culture, not merely as a voice of irrational impulse and private emotionality, but as a symbol for unifying intuitive and logical modes of thought, poetry and science. See, for example, her pairing of Sidney’s Apologie for Poesie and Thomas Sprat’s History of the Royal Society of London (1665–66) for a good contrast of the two views of Orpheus (pp. 71–81).

21. For the association of love and magic see Desport (above, n. 6) 263–70 with the references there cited; Segal, C., ‘Eros and Incantation: Sappho and Oral Poetry,’ Arethusa 7 (1974) 148–50Google Scholar.

22. See Sophocles, Trachiniae, 660–2 and also 355; Segal, C., ‘Sophocles’ Trachiniae: Myth, Poetry, and Heroic Values,’ YCS 25 (1977) lllfGoogle Scholar.

23. Cf. also Theocritus, Idyll 11.1f., where poetry is a pharmakon against love, as opposed to passages like Euripides, Hippolytus 509ff., where love is itself the pharmakon, the ‘drug’ that causes rather than cures the disease. See in general Desport (above, n. 6) 256ff. and for some connections with the tragic Logos, Pucci, Pietro, ‘Euripides: The Monument and the Sacrifice,’ Arethusa 10 (1977) 167–178Google Scholar.

24. For the erotic (and also magical) implications of ‘Persuasion’ (peithõ) in Gorgias see de Romilly, Jacqueline, ‘Gorgias et le pouvoir de la poésie,’ JHS 93 (1973) 161CrossRefGoogle Scholar with notes 35, 36; also her Magic and Rhetoric in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, Mass. 1975) 17–22Google Scholar. Kennedy, George, The Art of Persuasion in Greece (Princeton 1963) 61ffGoogle Scholar., especially 63; Segal, C., ‘Gorgias and the Psychology of the Logos,’ HSCP 66 (1962) 99–155Google Scholar.

25. Cf. the ambiguity of the pharmakon in Phaedrus 275E, the starting point for Derrida’s, Jacques well-known discussion, ‘La pharmacie de Platon,’ La Dissémination (Paris 1972Google Scholar), originally published in Tel Quel 32, 33 (winter and spring, 1968). Cf. also Plato’s comparison of rhetoric with medicine, cookery, and gymnastics in Gorgias 464Bff.

26. See Seifal, ‘Eros and Incantation’ (above, n. 21) 148–50.

27. On the incantatory effects of this passage see Paolo Scarpi, Lettura sulla religione classica: L’inno omerico a Demeter, Univ. di Padova, Pubbl. della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, 56 (Florence 1976) 164ff.

28. Pindar, frag. 94b, 13–20 in Snell, Bruno, ed., Pindarus, Fragmenta, ed. 3 (Leipzig 1964Google Scholar) = Bowra, C. M., ed., Pindari Carmina ed. 2 (Oxford 1947Google Scholar) frag. 85.10–15. Cf. also Bowra, C. M., Pindar (Oxford 1964) 26Google Scholar.

29. See also frag. 139.11–12 Snell, where Orpheus is called ‘him of the golden sword, the son of Oeagrus,’ the only other reference to Orpheus in Pindar.

30. The text and meaning of the last sentence are controversial. I have translated it rather freely.

31. Pausanias 6.20.18 (test. no. 54, Kern). See also Euripides, Cyclops 646, Strabo, 7. frag. 18; in general Guthrie (above, n. 1) 19.

32. Bond, G. W., ed., Euripides, Hypsipyle (Oxford 1963Google Scholar) frag. I.iii. 8–14, and see Bond’s note on line 11 of this passage for keleusma, ‘boatswain’s order,’ as a technical nautical term.

33. If ‘Orpheus’ can be restored in a fragmentary papyrus of Alcaeus (frag. 80, line 8, in Diehl, Anthologia, above, n. 10), this would be the earliest literary reference; but this reading is most uncertain. The next earliest reference would be Ibycus, frag. 306 Page, in the middle of the sixth century B.C.

34. Havelock, Eric A., Preface to Plato (Cambridge, Mass. 1963) 26Google Scholar and chaps. 2 and 3 in general.

35. See my ‘Eros and Incantation’ (above, n. 21) 143f.

36. Gorgias’ phrase, logon echonta metron, ‘discourse containing measure,’ covers both: see my ‘Gorgias’ (above, n. 24) 127, 133.

37. E.g. Guthrie (above, n. 1), 40, plate 6.

38. For terpsis or hēdonē (‘pleasure’) as the effect of (oral) poetry and song see Homer, Odyssey 1.347, 8.542; Thucydides 2.65.8 and 3.38.7; Gorgias, Helen 14. In connection with Orpheus specifically see Kern (above, n. 1) test. 54 (Conon) and Plato, Laws 8.829D-E.

39. Since the veiled woman won by Heracles is never explicitly identified as Alcestis, as Gerald Fitzgerald of Monash University points out to me, the potential for irony in Heracles’ action here has an even wider dimension.

40. For the problem and interpretation of the Orpheus-episode see Oris, Brooks, Virgil, A Study in Civilized Poetry (Oxford 1963) 187ff.Google Scholar; Segal, C., ‘Orpheus and the Fourth Georgic: Virgil on Nature and Civilization,’ AJP 87 (1966) 307–25Google Scholar; Klingner, Friedrich, Virgil. Bucolica, Georgica, Aeneis (Zürich and Stuttgart 1967) 326–63Google Scholar; Wender, Dorothea, ‘Resurrection in the Fourth Georgic,’ AJP 90 (1969) 424–36Google Scholar; Stehle, Eva M., ‘Virgil’s Georgics: The Threat of Sloth,’ T AP A 104 (1974) 347–69Google Scholar; especially 361ff.; Tschiedel, H. J., ‘Orpheus unid Eurydike: ein Beitrag zum Thema: Rilke und die Antike,’ Antike und Abendland 19 (1973) 61–82Google Scholar, especially 77–82.

41. For Orpheus as the poetic scientist who understands nature’s laws see Apollonius Rhod., Argonautica 1.496–51, cited above, section I; also Sewell (above, n. 1) passim.

42. In placing Orpheus in Elysium Virgil is drawing upon an ancient tradition: see, e.g. Plato, Apology 41A and (scornfully) Republic 2.363C.

43. For the contrasts between Virgil and Ovid see Otis, Brooks, Ovid as an Epic Poet, ed. 2 (Cambridge 1970) 184fGoogle Scholar.; Anderson, William S., Ovid, Metamorphoses, Books 6–10 (Norman, Okl. 1972) 475ff.Google Scholar; Segal, C., ‘Ovid’s Orpheus and Augustan Ideology,’ TAP A 103 (1972) 473–94Google Scholar; Leach, Eleanor Winsor, ‘Ekphrasis and the Theme of Artistic Failure in Ovid’s Metamorphoses’,Ramus 3 (1974) 102–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 119ff.

44. On the significance of shade in the Eclogues see Smith, P. L., ‘Lentus in umbra, A Symbolic Pattern in Virgil’s Eclogues’, Phoenix 19 (1965) 298–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar; M. C. J. Putnam, ‘Virgil’s First Eclogue: Poetics of Enclosure,’ in Boyle, Ancient Pastoral(above, n. 4) 81f. Leach (above, n. 43), who has many stimulating remarks on the Orpheus episode, seems to me to dismiss the motif of shade too lightly and too ironically: ‘Retiring to a mountain top, he makes himself quite comfortable by calling up a little grove of trees with his song’ (p. 121). The tone of Met. 10.88–105 is quite different. Note the solemn and lofty beginning (where no ironic undercutting is easily apparent) 88–90: umbra loco deerat; qua postquam parte resedit dis genitus vates et fila sonantia movit, umbra loco venit. … The place lacked shade; but after the inspired singer, born of the gods, sat back in this place and struck his melodious strings, shade came there. The basic seriousness of the list of trees appears also from the careful study by Püschl, Viktor, ‘Der Katalog der Bäume in Ovids Metamorphosen’ (1960), in von Albrecht, Michael and Zinn, Ernst, edd., Ovid, Wege der Forschung, vol. 92 (Darmstadt 1968) 393–404Google Scholar. Pöschl stresses the trees’ mythical associations with suffering and therefore with the theme of Orpheus’ grief and the transmutation of suffering to beauty through art: see especially pp. 394, 400, 403; also Galinsky, G. K., Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Oxford 1975) 182fGoogle Scholar.

45. See Sewell (above, n. 1) 80: ‘Change and process and transformation become in this poem [Ovid’s Metamorphoses] a means of relating the inner workings of the mind with the workings of nature.… All fixed forms in nature are merely momentary crystallizations of a reality which is in perpetual change, and which, if we are truly to understand it, must be the model for our methods of thought. These have to be as flexible and plastic, beweglich und bildsam, as nature is.’ The last part of these remarks refers to the use Goethe made of Ovidian notions of metamorphosis. See also her discussion of Ovid’s poem, pp. 231ff., especially 235–6 on its central positioning of Orpheus and ’its use of myth as the instrument by which the whole span of natural process is to be understood and interpreted; … The reflexive use of that instrument to hold the universe and the mind together. …’

46. For the significance and patterning of Orpheus’ song see Coleman, Robert, ‘Structure and Intent in the Metamorphoses,’ CQ, n.s., 21 (1971) 469fCrossRefGoogle Scholar. and also the references cited above, n. 43.

47. Leach (above, n. 43) 118–27, while rightly calling attention to ironic and negative elements in the Orpheus episode, seems to me rather exaggerated and tendentious in her insistence on ‘artistic failure’ (e.g. in her treatment of Orpheus’ death, p. 127). It is, however, the merit of her careful and interesting study to have called attention to the often neglected theme of artistic creativity in the Metamorphoses. For a very different emphasis, though with some of the same concern for the central importance of the artist, see Viarre, Simone, L‘intage et la pensée dans les ‘Metamorphoses’ d’Ovide (Paris 1964) 251Google Scholar.

48. On the implicitly happy ending see Viarre (preceding note) 411f. and her article, ‘Pygmalion et Orphée chez Ovide (Met., X, 243–97),’ REL 46 (1968) 241fGoogle Scholar.; also Segal, ‘Ovid’s Orpheus’ (above, n. 43) 489f.

49. In another tradition, probably familiar to Ovid, the presence of Orpheus’ head on Lesbos endows that island with special musical qualities: see Kern (above, n. 1) test. 119, 130–5.

50. For the parallels between Orpheus and Pygmalion as representatives of the magic of transformation and artistic creation see Viarre, L’image (above, n. 47) 205–8 and ‘Pygmalion et Orphée’ (above, n. 48) 235–47 passim, especially 242ff. on the theme of animating lifeless forms; also Fränkel, Hermann, Ovid. A Poet between Two Worlds, Sather Classical Lectures 18 (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1945) 93–7Google Scholar. For a more negative view of the relationship between the two myths see Leach (above, n. 43) 123–5 (in my opinion an exaggerated and one-sided reading).

51. See Leach (above, n. 43) 130–2, who calls Midas’ power ‘a travesty of artistic transformation’ (131); also Coleman (above, n. 46) 470; Otis (above, n. 43) 192f.

52. Note also the contrast between Midas’ favorite, ‘Pan who lives always in mountain caves’ (11.147) and the richly dressed and splendidly accoutred Apollo, described at some length ten lines later (11.165–70). See also Viarre, L’image (above, n. 47) 251.

53. The text and translation are those of Leishman, J. B., ed. and transl., Rainer Maria Rilke, New Poems (London 1964) 142–47Google Scholar.

54. For this concentration on Eurydice rather than Orpheus see Sewell (above, n. 1) 330–3; Kushner (above, n. 1) 22; H.D.’s ‘Eurydice’ is a good example in recent poetry.

55. See Segal, Charles, ‘Eurydice: Rilke’s Transformation of a Classical Myth,’ Bucknell Review 21 (1974) 137–44Google Scholar, especially 143f. Tschiedel (above, n. 40) 62–71. Sewell (above, n. 1) 394ff.; Tschiedel (above, n. 40) 72ff.

56. For this interpenetration of life and death in the Sonnets to Orpheus see Sewell (above, n. 1) 394ff.; Tschiedel (above, n. 40) 72ff.

57. Dronke (above, n. 11) 205f. Citing the end of the First Duino Elegy, Tschiedel (above, n. 40) 72f. remarks, ‘Klar und deutlich ist in diesen Zeilen die Leben und Tod umspannende Einheit des Seins ausgesprochen, und jene gegenseitige Bedingtheit beider Existenzformen, die früher im Bilde von den im Totenreich liegenden Wurzeln des Lebens ihren Ausdruck fand, sie hat sich hier konkretisiert zur Frage nach der Möglichkeit des Lebens ohne die Toten, einer Frage, die die negative Antwort in sich trägt.’

58. The preliminary research for this study was facilitated by a National Endowment on the Humanities Summer Stipend for 1977, which I gratefully acknowledge. Teaching some of this material at the University of Melbourne under a grant from the Australian-American Educational Foundation and the Fulbright program in the summer of 1978 helped toward some refinements of my ideas. Some of this material was presented at public lectures at the Australian National University and Monash University in July 1978. I am grateful to all those Classics Departments for helpful comments as well as gracious hospitality. I am particularly grateful to A. J. Boyle, Harriet Edquist, Gerald Fitzgerald and Elspeth Longney for friendly and stimulating discussion.