Joe Friggieri
Orpheus, his Song and his Music is the title of Richard England's seventh book of poems. It contains striking illustrations by Christina Darmanin and Sandrina England, was designed by Maria DeGabriele and Daniel Cilia, and published by Kite Group who, in the space of three years, have made a name for themselves as one of Malta's leading publishers, having just won first prize in the National Book Awards for Gerald Bugeja's book on Antonio Sciortino.
The Orpheus myth has left a lasting impression on Western culture. It features as a theme in all forms of art, including paintings by Titian, Rubens, Poussin and Corot, operas by Monteverdi, Gluck, Haydn and Offenbach, a symphonic poem by Liszt, a ballet by Stravinsky, and more recently in two operas by the contemporary British composer Harrison Birtwistle and one by Philip Glass. In literature, Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus (1922), Tennessee Williams' play Orpheus Descending (1975), and Margaret Atwood's cycle Orpheus and Eurydice (1976-86) have all been inspired by the Orpheus myth, while the Australian film director Baz Luhrmann used the Orpheus motif and Offenbach's music in his film Moulin Rouge! (2001). It was now Richard England's turn to add his name to the long list of artists who have dedicated their work to the story of these two great lovers who tragically lost the chance to enjoy their love.
England's Orpheus takes us on a journey starting with Orpheus' marriage to Eurydice, followed by his attempt to retrieve her from the underworld and his death at the hands of those who could not bear to listen to his music. The poems are preceded by a list of dramatis personae, from Apollo, Orpheus' father, to Calliope, his mother, from the Argonauts who needed Orpheus' music to help them pass the Sirens in Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece, to Aristaeus the beekeeper, whose attempt to seduce Eurydice made her stumble on a snake whose venomous bite caused her death as she was trying to run away.
The book is divided into seven sections, each one dealing with a salient episode of the story. The first poem is dedicated to Eurydice at her nuptial service, as she emerges "mantle-clad and tunic-robed in ecstatic gowns of gold to take the singer's hand, unaware that death would claim her on her bridal day." Orpheus plays the lyre and sings to the bride, while Calliope, his mother, "watches with heavy heart ... in shadowed grief ... as she foresees the dark and dismal outcome of her son's wedding." The serpent waits for the moment when to strike, while Apollo "from above and yonder" watches and waits for the myth to be fulfilled. It is in this way that the scene is set in the first couple of pages for the inexorable events that are to follow.
Orpheus had been taught to play the lyre by Apollo, and such was his skill on the instrument and the sweetness of his singing voice that he could charm wild animals and even cause rocks and trees to move to listen to him. In the second part of the book, the poet describes Orpheus as "the immortal cantor of the ancient world ... whose songs refracted rainbows and bleached the stardust of the skies," but who lost his ability to sing when Eurydice died. "As she parted from this earth and death darkened her olive eyes", he was "unable to traverse the immeasurable cavity of death", as "aphony drowned both his music and his song."
Section three deals with Orpheus' epic voyage with Jason and the Argonauts. "When men in search of venture set out on the Argo to the dreamlands and beyond, he it was, garland-crowned sorcerer in sacerdotal robes, who sang to mute the siren songs", "safely steering the vessel past the clashing rocks" and "calming the guardian-dragon of the fleece."
In the fourth part of the book Orpheus recalls "in mournful silence" and "in the mirrors of yesterday" the days when he and Eurydice "walked the Thracian fields" before the "gateways of time were scaled", and reality turned into a dream. This section also deals with the knowledge Orpheus is said to have learnt "from the mystic realms of Egypt" and "Alexandria's fabled library," a kind of wisdom that gave rise to the Orphic rites on account of which some writers in antiquity considered Orpheus a magician. For our poet, however, "all this he did before he met Eurydice. From then on he only sang of love", "in ardent expectation of the return of his beloved. For poets", as the poet puts it, "always dream that there is hope."
Orpheus has this dream when he travels to the underworld in the fifth part of the book in order to bring back Eurydice. After playing his lyre to put Cerberus to sleep, and softening the hearts of Hades and Persephone, Orpheus is allowed to take Eurydice back to the world of the living - on one condition: that he must walk in front of her and not look back until both have reached the upper world. Soon, however, he begins to doubt whether she's following him, and thinks that Hades might have deceived him. Just as he reaches the gates of hell and daylight, he turns around to gaze on her face, their eyes meet, and because Eurydice had not yet crossed the threshold, she vanishes back into the Underworld. This part of the story, the most dramatic, occupies the fifth and sixth sections of the book, the fifth being described as 'Trekking the hypotenuse of Hades - Infinity and Time - Eternity and Now,' the sixth as "Ashes of Longing - Cinders of Loss - Endless Summer - Dreamless Sleep.' These are some of Richard England's favourite themes, and the poems in these two sections - the longest in the book - contain passages of great lyric beauty as the plot moves inexorably forward to what Apollo "from above and yonder" had "watched and waited for" from the start. - "a failed aborted mission only for the myth to be" - as "song to silence paled and music and musician lapsed to endless sleep." "Then it was that the oracles of the underworld revealed to him that she had lived to be loved and lost and he to love and lose."
After losing Eurydice forever, Orpheus is said to have abstained from the love of women. Feeling spurned and rejected, the Maenads, followers of Dionysus, tore him to pieces during the frenzy of their Bacchic orgies. They threw his head and lyre into the river, and these floated to the island of Lesbos, where the inhabitants buried his head and built a shrine in his honour. The lyre was carried to heaven by the Muses, and was placed among the stars. The Muses also gathered up the fragments of his body and buried them below Mount Olympus, where the nightingales sang over his grave. In the poem 'He had not died in vain', the poet describes the scene as follows: 'On the hills of Kardzhali, in pastures silver-tinged, he lies in the sleep of the unspoken. There a purple flower to which he gave his name shines in shades of splendor as if to echo the colour of his voice." His song endures beyond the limits of time, and his music is "born from absence chiselled from the pastures of his pain. To this day he spins his song, fertile and fecund; and as from the realms of myth-time, the rainbow of his music rides the star-lanes of the sky; contented and consoled, he comes to know he had not died in vain."
This feeling of optimism runs through many other poems in this part of the book. "On summer solstice morn, when the eye of heaven's light prolongs the time of day, the new-born rising sun unfurls its primal rays to caress the threshold of his tomb; and with their lambent lustre ignite once more the passion of his song. Thus it is that once a year on midsummer day the voice of the mythic minstrel sings again to greet the nascent sun." And again: "now with thread of life unwoven, the singer dwells beyond the vaults of heaven -- a space-time traveller is some distant worm-hole, where things begin and also end or hover in between. There, where silence reigns in some galactic realm unchartered and unknown, each night when the moon congeals the sky, in unison with the music of the spheres, one can still hear the echo of his voice." In the same vein, "Yet, on a shimmering threshold of tamarisk hope his voice again will ride the waves resurgent and reborn; sail endless seas, reach sands and scented shores, and sing savannah songs opal-toned and amber-hued, satin notes and silken chords, dazzling as the rising sun. In "Once the candle of life is extinguished', one can hear the poet's own voice reverberating in that of the 'mythic minstrel': 'Once the candle of life is extinguished, I know we shall meet again incarnate in some parallel universe, where time is always now and space is always here. Immortal and divine we shall unmask the mirrors of our souls, and in a transient trance, rejuvenated and renewed, roam the realms of ecstasy."
The tone throughout this final section is epiphanic. From 'the caustic corridors of Hades' we emerge into the dazzling light of the rising sun. From 'threads of sorrow' and 'looms of loss' the poet now weaves 'a tapestry of love.' With Richard England, as with St Paul and the Christian tradition, death is not allowed to have the last word.