Quotes About Orpheus

Mandelstam was, one is tempted to say, a modern Orpheus: sent to hell, he never returned, while his widow dodged across one-sixth of the earth's surface, clutching the saucepan with his songs rolled up inside, memorizing them by night in the event they were found by Furies with a search warrant. These are our metamorphoses, our myths.

Orpheus struck dumb with hindsight.

I had to say goodbye to her once before, but it took everything I had to say goodbye to her then, again, for the last time, like poor Orpheus turning for a last backwards glance at the ghost of his only love and in the same heartbeat losing her forever: hinc illae lacrimae, hence those tears.

All my life I've made friends and lost lovers and talked about these two activities as though they were very different, opposed; but in truth love is the direct and therefore hopeless method of calling Orpheus back, whereas friendship is the equally hopeless because irrelevant attempt to find warmth in other shades. Odd that in the story Orpheus is lonely, too.

Husband, we talked about this, Persephone chided. You can't go around incinerating every hero. Besides, he's brave. I like that. Hades rolled his eyes. You liked that Orpheus fellow too. Look how well that turned out.

Be forever dead in Eurydice, and climb back singing. Climb praising as you return to connection. Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient, be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings. Be. And know as well the need to not be: let that ground of all that changes bring you to completion now. To all that has run its course, and to the vast unsayable numbers of beings abounding in Nature, add yourself gladly, and cancel the cost. Sonnets to Orpheus II, 13

Christian sources, both literary and iconographic, do in fact draw parallels between Orpheus and Christ, just as Jewish art draws them between Orpheus and David. These, however, normally refer to the story of Orpheus as a musician whose playing could tame wild animals. Early Christian texts and images then adapted this theme to describe Christ as a "new Orpheus" who could tame human souls.

It was generally believed, said Theophilus, that Orpheus learned his music from the birds. His small voice, piping after theirs, filled with all the secret stories of the earth.

Love is the unfathomable ground that is hidden in darkness, but the resolution is the triumphant victor who, like Orpheus, fetches the infatuation of falling in love to the light of day, for the resolution is the true form of love, the true explanation and transfiguration.

I hate parties. And a wedding is the biggest party of all. All the guests arrived and Orpheus is taking a shower. He's always taking a shower when the guests arrive so he doesn't have to greet them. Then I have to greet them. A wedding is for daughters and fathers. The mothers all dress up, trying to look like young women. But a wedding is for a father and daughter. They stop being married to each other on that day. I always thought there would be more interesting people at my wedding.

Orpheus never liked words. He had his music. He would get a funny look on his face and I would say what are you thinking about and he would always be thinking about music.

If we were in a restaurant sometimes Orpheus would look sullen and wouldn't talk to me and I thought people felt sorry for me. I should have realized that women envied me. Their husbands talked too much. But I wanted to talk to him about my notions. I was working on a new philosophical system. It involved hats.

Orpheus said the mind is a slide ruler. It can fit around anything. Show me your body, he said. It only means one thing.

Collect yourself: to smother what you feel, recall to order, summon in one place; making, like Orpheus, a system against loss.

Orpheus 2 He has been trying to sing Love into existence again And he has failed.

Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.

Or bid the soul of Orpheus singSuch notes as, warbled to the string,Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek.

I hate parties. And a wedding is the biggest party of all. All the guests arrived and Orpheus is taking a shower. He's always taking a shower when the guests arrive so he doesn't have to greet them. Then I have to greet them.

The film Black Orpheus is one of my favorite films of all time, which is set in Carnival in Brazil.

It is correct to love even at the wrong time. On rounds, the newborns eyed me, each one like Orpheus in his dark hallway, saying: I knew I would find you, I knew I would lose you. -ICU The Road to Emmaus

Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back.

Don't look back, you asshole! he thought. Good advice, from Orpheus to Lot.

I have already mentioned that even Zeus stood in sacred awe of the goddess Night.{39} According to the tales of the disciples of Orpheus, an account of which I shall postpone until later, Nyx was herself a threefold goddess.

The Orpheus myth is my favorite myth, and the prodigal son is my favorite parable.