ORPHEUS' DREAM

Jordi Rodríguez-Amat

	Orpheus and Eurydice The beloved Eurydice has died and Orpheus decides to go to the underworld to snatch her from the realm of the dead. At that moment, Cupid, the angel of love, appears and announces to him that Apollo has been moved by his pain and has granted him the right to go down to the underworld. However, he then imposes the condition: not to touch her don't even look at her, otherwise he will lose her forever. Once on the island of the Blessed Spirits, Orpheus takes Eurydice without looking at her. Orpheus takes Eurydice before Pluto and Proserpina. Painting by Rubens.

I personally get excited listening to one of the most famous arias from Gluck's opera 'Orpheus and Eurydice':

Click the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BjCvWvg0So

I like walking through the streets of a big city and sticking my nose into what is going on around me. On a nice day in May I was walking calmly down a street in the east of Paris when suddenly I saw a funny guy dressed in an old fashioned way with clothes that left a part of his chest uncovered. The lower part of his asymmetrical skirt reached his knees. This character had a musical instrument in his hand. Later I learned it was a lyre. That man was crossing the street when suddenly, a car sounded its horn. Just wanting to step on the sidewalk, he stumbled and fell on his lyre. The anguish at having crushed his instrument sank him into a deplorable state. He wanted to enter an establishment just in front of where he fell. The signboard on the front door read: Luthier du maître Gerard Dupont.

The man spoke a very old Greek and could not express himself in French. His tremor prevented him from picking up the lyre and I had to be the one who grabbed it. With my knowledge of languages, I could communicate with him in ancient Greek, because that character couldn’t speak a single French word. It must be said that I had not spoken ancient Greek for years and I had to make a great effort. I hadn’t seen Homer for many years and, consequently, I didn’t have the chance to practice ancient Greek. Even so, I was pretty good.

I helped him into the establishment. Curiously, Maître Dupont thought that I was mentally sick. The luthier did not see the character because that man was invisible and I was the only one who could see him. Maître Dupont couldn’t understand that I was speaking alone in a very strange language.

The man, I learned later, was called Orpheus. He wanted to enter the establishment of the luthier to see if he could add two more strings to his seven-string lyre, which he had received from Apollo. His idea was to add two more strings in honor of the nine muses, thinking mainly of his mothe Calliope, from whom he inherited the virtues of music and singing.

He would repair the lyre and put two more strings on it, said Maître Dupont. However, I had the feeling that he wanted me to go quickly out of his workshop. In his mind, I thought, that I could be disturbing him and without saying anything I went. Anyway, he told me to come back after six o'clock in the afternoon.

I had the feeling that Orpheus was a sad and melancholic person. My impression, full of conviction, forced me to believe that the man was in a sad personal state and I thought that I could do something to help him. We went to the corner of Avenue de l'Opéra with Rue des Petits Champs where there is a Starbucks Coffee. We had been talking for more than two hours. Orpheus was the son of the king of Thrace and God of the Oagros rivers. He explained to me that Apollo himself had given him the lyre and that his mother, the muse Calliope, introduced him into the world of music and singing.

I explained that many artists represented the myth that bears his name and that of Eurydice and he started to cry. Even so, after telling him that there are many of these paintings in the Louvre, he said that he wanted to see them and because we were not very far from the museum, we took the Avenue de l'Opéra, crossed the rue de Rivoli and, when we reached the place du Carrousel we could see the Pyramid of the Louvre. Once inside the museum we visited lots of rooms with paintings representing Orpheus and Eurydice. We saw works by Gustave Moreau, Bruegel le vieux, Corot, Nicolas Poussin and many other artists. Before each painting, Orpheus could not stop crying. He was telling me about his own myth. He fell in love with the beautiful Euridice and immediately they got married. I remembered reading The Metamorphoses of Ovid, which explains the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice among others.

To be in love is a human quality characterized by strong emotions of attraction towards another human being. They are often uncontrollable emotions for cognitive reflections because the mind does not possess the ability to be conscious of its own states. There are even those who believe that falling in love is a temporary state of personal stupidity.

As we were walking in the Louvre, he explained how he knew Eurydice. One day, while walking along a river, Orpheus met the Nymph Eurydice, one of the Nias, and fell in love with her. With his lyre and his ability to sing and to delight people, animals and even plants, he celebrated the beautiful Eurydice who could not resist his music. Just on the wedding day, a viper pierced the heel of Eurydice, after having trampled him accidentally, and ended her life with its powerful poison. Just at that moment Eurydice fell into the dominion of the dead. Orpheus went crazy and fell into a state of absolute sadness. He explained that he was ready to go to hell to find her. I asked him to let me to accompany him. The answer was that this was impossible but that there was the option of going there myself by adopting his personality. He told me that he was afraid, not of hell but of himself because he could not stand to leave without turning his head to see his beloved Eurydice.

I assumed that the wound I had on my breast in the form of a lyre occurred just when Orpheus fell as he wanted to enter the store of the luthier maître Gerard Dupont.

I wanted to prepare myself to metamorphosize into the character of Orpheus on my visit to hell. Ovid offered to be my companion and Dante drew hell with nine circles for me and he also gave me a letter so that Charon could help me to pass the Acheron river to get to Hades. I knew that entering hell was virtually impossible for someone who did not belong to the commonplace of the dead. Before starting the journey, I picked up the lyre at the store of Maître Gerard Dupont.

Tired of crying bitterly and singing songs of demand and despair, I decided to enter hell to look for my Eurydice. I crossed the great door and right in the area of Tartar I saw that it was full of criminals moaning. At the beginning of this route I would like to ask the reader to follow me and to joint me on the journey as Dante and Virgil did.

Just at the time of crossing the great gate and stepping into the territory of the dead I saw the waters of the river where Charon, with his infernal boat, passed souls from the space of the living to the space of the dead. I presented to Charon the letter of recommendation that Dante had given me and his face filled with joy. He remembered Dante and Virgil perfectly and we were talking for a long time. Although he was responsible for bringing the dead into the kingdom of Hades through the Acheron River, he had feelings of mercy. Christian iconography has represented him as a devil with a long, harsh, beard. Just after crossing the river, I started my journey at the beginning of which there was the guardian Cerberus, a three-headed monster. Fortunately, with my lyre and the grace of my song I managed to complete the whole journey very slowly, observing each and every one of those who moaned there. Stunned, I could see that there were many people, who I have known throughout my life, who were now dead. I'm a brave man but just watching those people crying made me think.

Everything changed as I passed through a highly illuminated room. There I saw men and women, young and old, participating in a rampant orgy. They drank and ate passionately. It was a scene where everyone was involved in all kinds of sexual relationships. Continuing along the way and thanks to my music, I managed to stop Ixion’s wheel turning and to stop Tartarus from starving from hunger. Further on, right at the back of the road, I thought I saw the shadow of Virgil followed by Dante. The darkness of the place did not allow me to see the two images clearly and I thought it was nothing more than an impression, a simple sensory perception produced by the desire to meet them. Finally, I reached a long corridor of shadows full of death screaming and crying, at the end of which there was a great room where, sitting in two large armchairs, there were Hades and his wife Persephone.

Human beings have always respected death. Many religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, among others, have sought a solution for the fear of death; The body is destroyed, but the soul survives. In other cultures, such as Buddhism, death and reincarnation end when human beings agree to suppress all desire and, thus, stop reincarnation to achieve a state of absolute peace, the nirvana.

Human being have constantly been looking for a relief from their fear of death. Death, however, is the means to achieve absolute peace and cease the joy of living or the sufferings generated by the body and the mind. Death is the release of the submission to which the body is subjected. Agnostic and considering my inability to reflect on the future, I cannot create any doctrine or belief about death. God, life and death are objects of constant interrogation without a possible response.

Fear, always the fear of death, has caused certain civilizations to believe in life after death, burying the dead with everything they could need in the later life.

Orpheus, together with the Gods Dionysius, Heracles, Hermes and others, having been able to enter the space of the dead, returned to the place of the living, but Orpheus is a myth and in myths they mix desires and experiences created by the superior imaginative capacity of the human being.

In the great room, Eurydice was sitting next to Hades and Persephone. I explained to them that my passion for my wife Eurydice obliged me to penetrate the domain of the dead. Not because of curiosity or to face Cerberus. Then I took my new lyre and they loved my voice and my music. I asked them a thousand times to let me take Eurydice and after asking me to sing other melodies again, they finally agreed to let her go. A condition was imposed on me; Do not look back to see if Eurydice is following me until we returned to the space of the living.

I walked steadily knowing that my dearest woman, the beautiful Eurydice, followed me. I felt the beat of my heart and the joy vibrated in all my body. I was sure that I would not look back until the end of the journey. The road was very long and sometimes I wanted to turn around to see if she was following me. Exhausted, I wanted to reach the space of the living as soon as possible. Everything was dark and silent. I did not feel the breath of Eurydice. At times I doubted if she was following me. The temptation was great, but my head forced me to move on. At a certain time, I thought that we were already far from the great room where Hades and Persephone reigned in their Thrones and the temptation was so strong that I turned my head. Just at that moment I woke up and in front of my bed the image of Eurydice appeared diaphanous, smiling, with her arms wide open. I got up from the bed to get closer to her, but when I was just going to embrace her with my arms wide open she completely disappeared.

Jordi Rodríguez-Amat

March 2019