[ID: black and white drawing First panel: Orpheus, a young man in a Grecian toga, holds a lyre and walks into a plume of smoke coming from a giant skull’s mouth. Various abstract monsters also lie in the smoke. It reads on top: It takes a certain kind of person.. on Bottom: to think your love entitles you to violate the laws of the world.
Two smaller panels zoom in closer to Orpheus’ face. The third panel shows his back as he walks through the smoke.
Fourth panel is long and thin: A flower growing from the ground, and a series of increasingly sicker flowers next to it, perhaps the same flower, smaller and more ground down under Orpheus’ feet. It reads: To expect the heavens to defer to your ambitions.
Last panel: Orpheus and his wife, a Greek woman with long curly hair in a long toga, face each other in the smoke. A rope in the foreground stretches from left to right. In between the two, a line has been drawn and the rope is cut and unfurls at the line. It reads: Today I learn my husband is not a noble man.
How will I know you in the underworld? How will we find each other?
We lived for so long on the physical earth– Our skies littered with actual stars Practical tides in our bay– What will we do with the loneliness of the mythical?
Walking beside ditches brimming with dactyls, By a ferryman whose feet are scanned for him On the shore of a river written and rewritten As elegy, epic, epode.
Remember the thin air of our earthly winters? Frost was an iron, underhand descent. Dusk was always in session
And no one needed to write down Or restate, or make record of, or ever would, And never will, The plainspoken music of recognition,
Nor the way I often stood at the window– The hills growing dark, saying,
As a shadow became a stride And a raincoat was woven out of streetlight
A powerful Thracian musician with the power to charm all living things, he is most famous for his descent into the underworld to reclaim Eurydice. He was torn apart by Maenads for failing to honor Dionysus. Other myths credit him with the invention of civilization, vegetarianism, homosexuality and a set of magical practices called the Orphic mysteries.
So, I saw Hadestown last weekend, and of course I came up with a Tangled AU for it…
Special shout out to @dreaming-in-seams, who saw the exact same show I did, but from a different vantage, and who has been fangirling about it with me since.
And special thanks to Reeve Carney for having delicate fingers that were easy to translate into a woman’s hand.
I was your hallucination, listening and floral, and you were singing me: already new skin was forming. → AN ORPHEUS & EURYDICE MIX.
I. Fantasy; MS MR II. Sugar; Cristobal Tapia de VeerIII. Together (Maxx Baer Edit); The XXIV. Mother & Father; BroodsV. Woke Up Dead; Kyla La GrangeVI. Hearts Like Ours; The Naked & FamousVII. My Tears Are Becoming A Sea; M83VIII. Heavy Feet; Local NativesIX. To Be Torn; Kyla La GrangeX.It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus); Arcade Fire.
There are some very Orpheus and Eurydice themes in the narrative of Ed and Stede that do indeed make me feel many things. For the record, I’m using one specific take on the myth here (specifically notthe one in Symposium), but as is standard for myths, there are many different opinions on the nuances- this is merely one of them.
First and foremost, we need death. Stede endures this in a more literal sense- legally, he is now dead. An act of devotion, perhaps, as he seeks to cultivate a fresh start with his love. Equally, however, Ed himself undergoes a death. Not only does he gift Stede a disordered burial at sea, but he invokes one for himself, too. In episode ten, he lets the red silk representing his heart sail steadfast across the ocean. Anyone who’s familiar with the ending of Orpheus’ life will know that upon his death, his head and dutiful lyre were sent floating down the Hebrus River, straight out to sea. While Ed is alive both literally and legally, he sacrificed his heart- washed to the ocean much like Orpheus himself.
Next up, we travel to the crux of the myth. The quintessential theme of mournful love. The deep and burning sort, the kind that drives you to the underworld in an attempt to rectify what was so tragically lost. In OFMD we need to backtrack to episode nine, to Edward and his act of grace declaration; a show of all he’d lose, all he would risk, to keep his love safe. He accepts the journey, perils and all! Stede mirrors this in episode ten by not simply closing the door on his past, but by going so far as killing himself off, playing with death, in order to truly live life alongside his love. Much like Orpheus, this poignantly speaks to the boundaries that need to be crossed- both that metaphorical death and journey, but also the literal treck he’ll be undertaking as he pursues his lost love.
Orpheus finds himself underground because of this simple, grief-driven hope that death cannot be final- it must be negotiable. He brings his lyre, performing a most dismal tune, and the gods presiding over the Underworld are so utterly moved by his performance that a glimmer of hope is provided. Go on then, find Eurydice, but here is your caveat: have trust, have faith, know that she is there and do not allow your eyes to wander. It’s the backbone of all relationships epitomized to the highest stakes. You need to trust in yourself that your partner will be there, to have that faith that when you make it to the Overworld, they’ll be right behind you.
For Ed and Stede, this is episode nine. Edward returns from the Underworld, preparing for a new life- for them to enter the Overworld together- but his love is not there. This doesn’t follow the myth’s narrative to a T- but it does bring us back to the idea of trust and faith- both in your partner and moreso, in yourself. It’s the nagging fear that this is too good to be true- that the excitement can snap back to grave reality in a heartbeat. Both Edward and Orpheus turn around with buoyant hope, and in doing so, they are instead faced with their worst fear.
(One possible reading of the myth could be that in season two, Stede will be making his journey to the Underworld, seeking out his lost love. All the while, Ed has already made his trip downstairs, lost his love, and had his heart utterly grief-stricken in the process. There are so many ways to slice up this myth, but the themes are wonderfully applicable!)
AND IN ADDITION,
If we are going to view the symbolism of Orpheus’ lyre as comparable to Edward’s red silk, then we find ourselves with a very interesting concept indeed. A myth regarding Orpheus’ death also comes to explain the constellation Lyra. Following his death, Orpheus’ head and harp eventually came to rest on a beach- the waves having carried them ashore. Here, his remains were found and through various passing-alongs, ended up in the hands of the gods. As many important objects often are, it was placed in the sky to create the constellation Lyra- symbolic of Orpheus and his ceaseless, joyous music.
If we take that, and we say that Ed’s silk is his lyre, then we come to the conclusion that this item will wash up ashore, be found with reverence, and placed with pride in the sky; much like a flag that one may fly from a ship.
So, in that context, are the Maenads represented by Izzy who, in wanting Ed to engage with life rather than (celibate) mourning, kills him, sending head and lyre (red silk) floating downstream? He very much wanted to stop the music of his collaboration with the crew/ channeling of Stede.
