Orpheus

Orpheus with His Lute

The legend of Orpheus has exerted a powerful influence on the work of poets and artists through the ages--from the poetry of Virgil and Ovid and the Ovidian romances of the Middle Ages to the new mythologies of Blake and Rilke. Orpheus was believed to have aroused responses from inanimate nature as well as from living creatures, bringing about a peaceful order and even--in some cases-- restoring the dead to life. This challenging new study analyses the changing images of Orpheus in the poetry, sculpture and vase-painting of the ancient world. The author shows how later versions diverge from the early story of the divinely inspired poet-musician and reflect conflicting ideas about the nature of poetic creativity, its sources and powers. Orpheus with His Lute is essential reading for all those interested in literature and the psychology of aesthetic experience. It will also be of value to students of philosophy and the history of religion.

Orpheus

This volume surveys the literary treatment of the Orpheus myth as the myth of the essence of poetry - the ability to encounter the fullest possible intensity of beauty and sorrow and to transform them into song. The first half of the book concentrates on the ancient literary tradition, from the myth's Greek origins through the influential poetic versions of Ovid and Virgil and its treatment by other Latin authors such as Horace and Seneca. Later chapters focus on the continuities of the myth in modern literature, including the poetry of H.D., Rukeyser, Rich, Ashbery, and, especially, Rilke. The author's leitmotif throughout is the relation of poetry to art, love and death, the 'three points of the Orphic triangle'. Through close readings of individual texts, he shows how various versions of the myth oscillate between a poetry of transcendence that asserts its power over the necessities of nature - including the ultimate necessity, death - and a poetry that celebrates its immersion in the stream of life.

Orpheus