ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

Orpheus and Eurydice


Orpheus was once an amazing musician, until his life took a drastic turn for the worst on his wedding day. His wife, Eurydice, was bitten by an adder while she was crossing a field with her bridesmaids. Orpheus, unlike many of the men in this time period was deeply in love with his wife. When she died he felt that he could not go on without her. Orpheus decided to enter the underworld and impeach their dark majesties, to let her return with him to the world above. This is his story, on three different levels of interpretation; Natural, Social and Psychological.


On the largest scale, the Natural scale, Orpheus is a prince. The love child of one of the muses and a Thracian prince; his mother gave him the gift of music, witch he used to his advantage. Growing up in Thracia gave him the perfect stage to display his musical prowess. He often could be seen walking through the forest with trees and rocks following along behind him. Very little is known about his life before his ill-fated marriage but, it is known that he did sail on the Argo with Jason, and saved them from certain death; when the sirens sang, he played his lyre and drowned out the alluring music. (Hamilton 107-108)


On the middle scale, (the Social scale) Orpheus is representative of the need of love in everyday life. Orpheus risked everything to save his wife because he felt that he could not live without her. If love did not exist this world would be a boring place, everything would be colder and more lifeless. Love is important to everyone on one scale or another, its important for a mother to love her children to help them grow to be healthy happy individuals, its important for a man to love a women so that our population doesn’t die out. It’s important for very mammal to have some form of love. Love is what makes a wolf protect her young or a doe protect her fawn. Love is the basis of our existence, without love we would be lost. Just like Orpheus without Eurydice, or Romeo without his Juliet.


On the most personal scale, (the psychological scale), Orpheus represents the need in all of us to be taken care of emotionally, the loss of someone we love, and the want to bring them back to be with you. Everyone has lost someone that they love at some point in time or another, and the desire to bring them back is so strong that you feel like you might go crazy, Orpheus felt that way the first time he lost his wife, that is why he went to Hades to persuade the underworld royalty to let Eurydice return with him to the world above. But when he lost her the second time he became a hermit. Living only for the music that no longer brought him pleasure only pain, he played out his sorrow and his loneliness hoping to someday be returned to his precious wife’s arms.


The story of Orpheus and Eurydice was created to represent the physical need to be loved and the feeling of the loss of love. Many people know what its like to loose a loved one, and want them back for just a moment, or a day, or an hour just long enough to say good-bye and tell them that you love them, just long enough to do what needs to be done, to have that final question answered. Never was there a story of such woe than that of Juliet and her Romeo… except for maybe Orpheus and Eurydice.