#greek orpheus

[thorns-in-daisy-fields]

Icarus

flung himself

towards the

sun,

-

Orpheus

crossed

the point of

no return,

-

and Achilles

tipped the scales

at the price of his life

for the relief

of his lover's justice.

-

-

And me?

-

-

I sit on

my bedroom floor

with my head

between my knees

knowing love and grief

walk hand in hand

with fear and madness

following close behind.

-

-

I felt Icarus stumble

with clumsy wings

as he chased the one thing

that kept him from

freezing to death

-

He hugs me around the neck.

He whispers into my ear,

"It is worth it."

He squeezes me as if to beg

me to listen.

As if we'll both regret it if I don't.

"It is worth it. It is worth it. It is worth it."

-

So I ignore the warnings.

I ignore the flames.

I ignore the water.

-

Because

according to Icarus

it is worth it.

-

It is worth it. It is worth it. It is worth it.

-

-

I felt Orpheus' life crumble

at the alter

as he lost everything

that made his life

worth living.

-

He taps my shoulder

as I walk through Hades' trial.

I keep my eyes facing forward.

"There are no second chances here"

he warns me, his voice just above

a whisper.

"You might as well gouge your eyes out now

if you still want to stand a chance."

I squeez then shut instead.

-

Though, I wonder if he is right.

-

Before I know it, I'm looking for something to do it with

because Orpheus said

it was my only hope.

-

-

I felt Achilles scream and tear his hair out

when he found

his whole world

gone.

I felt the earth shudder as he

cried.

-

He stands beside me like a soldier.

He leans closer as he speaks,

his voice carrying the calmness

of a broken man.

"I say do what you will..."

-

He is quiet for a long moment.

I watch him for an answer.

He seems annoyed.

As if

his answer is obvious.

-

"...You see, you'll do everything

you can,

and they'll still be gone,

and it will still

be your fault...

And when it's over?"

He pauses again

and his silence weighs my chest down.

"Well..."

He doesn't say anything else.

-

He doesn't say anything else because he doesn't need to.

-

Icarus is a dead man.

Orpheus is a dead man.

Achilles

is

a

dead

man.

-

-

They are dead because love and

tragedy

go hand in hand,

yet they still had the courage

to follow

close behind.

-

-

-is gouging my eyes out really the answer?

[amajorsystem]

[aaloosshitposting]

"If I were orpheus I wouldn't look back"

But we look back everyday- rechecking emails, making sure a friend is still behind you, checking to see if you remebered to pick up your keys. It's second nature, a habit of care.

It was second nature for him too. He looked back, not out of weakness, but love. For what is love, if not to look back?

[gigizetz]

eurydice <3

[hermesmoly]

Why is it always about Orpheus turning back foolishly and never about Eurydice following him out of the Underworld, likely knowing she was doomed. That Orpheus went all this way, singing the story of their love, hopeful that he will return her to the surface and finally build their life together— but they will not. She knows her Orpheus will turn back. And yet she still follows him, all the way to the top, because the simple pleasure of seeing his back again is enough for her. Isn’t that a foolish thing to do for love?

[mishoru]

It's an old tale

[siderains]

jokes aside, the dialogue

“orpheus… can you look at me?”

and he doesn’t turn

“please, look at me.”

“i dont want to.”

“why?”

“because you’re not coming with me, are you?”

might be a refreshing take on an old tale, might be a love letter to mythology, yeah congrats kaos writers for making something truly interesting

[where-that-old-train-goes]

not normal about orpheus and eurydice. you loved someone so much it opened the stones of the underworld. so much that death had to listen. so much that everything stopped for your love. so much that you turned around. so much that even when you did wrong. she forgave you.

[isthemicon]

Kaos on Netflix is a bit as if someone who loved Percy Jackson growing up was told they are too old to like it so they took their love for it and combined it with Succession while listening to Hadestown soundtrack and watching Romeo + Juliet by Baz Luhrmann

[mcsiggy]

i made this awhile ago and forgot about it until now so uhh here u go lol

[princesssarisa]

In the past I've shared other people's musings about the different interpretations of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Namely, why Orpheus looks back at Eurydice, even though he knows it means he'll lose her forever. So many people seem to think they've found the one true explanation of the myth. But to me, the beauty of myths is that they have many possible meanings.

So I thought I would share a list of every interpretation I know, from every serious adaptation of the story and every analysis I've ever heard or read, of why Orpheus looks back.

One interpretation – advocated by Monteverdi's opera, for example – is that the backward glance represents excessive passion and a fatal lack of self-control. Orpheus loves Eurydice to such excess that he tries to defy the laws of nature by bringing her back from the dead, yet that very same passion dooms his quest fo fail, because he can't resist the temptation to look back at her.

He can also be seen as succumbing to that classic "tragic flaw" of hubris, excessive pride. Because his music and his love conquer the Underworld, it might be that he makes the mistake of thinking he's entirely above divine law, and fatally allows himself to break the one rule that Hades and Persephone set for him.

Then there are the versions where his flaw is his lack of faith, because he looks back out of doubt that Eurydice is really there. I think there are three possible interpretations of this scenario, which can each work alone or else co-exist with each other. From what I've read about Hadestown, it sounds as if it combines all three.

In one interpretation, he doubts Hades and Persephone's promise. Will they really give Eurydice back to him, or is it all a cruel trick? In this case, the message seems to be a warning to trust in the gods; if you doubt their blessings, you might lose them.

Another perspective is that he doubts Eurydice. Does she love him enough to follow him? In this case, the warning is that romantic love can't survive unless the lovers trust each other. I'm thinking of Moulin Rouge!, which is ostensibly based on the Orpheus myth, and which uses Christian's jealousy as its equivalent of Orpheus's fatal doubt and explicitly states "Where there is no trust, there is no love."

The third variation is that he doubts himself. Could his music really have the power to sway the Underworld? The message in this version would be that self-doubt can sabotage all our best efforts.

But all of the above interpretations revolve around the concept that Orpheus looks back because of a tragic flaw, which wasn't necessarily the view of Virgil, the earliest known recorder of the myth. Virgil wrote that Orpheus's backward glance was "A pardonable offense, if the spirits knew how to pardon."

In some versions, when the upper world comes into Orpheus's view, he thinks his journey is over. In this moment, he's so ecstatic and so eager to finally see Eurydice that he unthinkingly turns around an instant too soon, either just before he reaches the threshold or when he's already crossed it but Eurydice is still a few steps behind him. In this scenario, it isn't a personal flaw that makes him look back, but just a moment of passion-fueled carelessness, and the fact that it costs him Eurydice shows the pitilessness of the Underworld.

In other versions, concern for Eurydice makes him look back. Sometimes he looks back because the upward path is steep and rocky, and Eurydice is still limping from her snakebite, so he knows she must be struggling, in some versions he even hears her stumble, and he finally can't resist turning around to help her. Or more cruelly, in other versions – for example, in Gluck's opera – Eurydice doesn't know that Orpheus is forbidden to look back at her, and Orpheus is also forbidden to tell her. So she's distraught that her husband seems to be coldly ignoring her and begs him to look at her until he can't bear her anguish anymore.

These versions highlight the harshness of the Underworld's law, and Orpheus's failure to comply with it seems natural and even inevitable. The message here seems to be that death is pitiless and irreversible: a demigod hero might come close to conquering it, but through little or no fault of his own, he's bound to fail in the end.

Another interpretation I've read is that Orpheus's backward glance represents the nature of grief. We can't help but look back on our memories of our dead loved ones, even though it means feeling the pain of loss all over again.

Then there's the interpretation that Orpheus chooses his memory of Eurydice, represented by the backward glance, rather than a future with a living Eurydice. "The poet's choice," as Portrait of a Lady on Fire puts it. In this reading, Orpheus looks back because he realizes he would rather preserve his memory of their youthful, blissful love, just as it was when she died, than face a future of growing older, the difficulties of married life, and the possibility that their love will fade. That's the slightly more sympathetic version. In the version that makes Orpheus more egotistical, he prefers the idealized memory to the real woman because the memory is entirely his possession, in a way that a living wife with her own will could never be, and will never distract him from his music, but can only inspire it.

Then there are the modern feminist interpretations, also alluded to in Portrait of a Lady on Fire but seen in several female-authored adaptations of the myth too, where Eurydice provokes Orpheus into looking back because she wants to stay in the Underworld. The viewpoint kinder to Orpheus is that Eurydice also wants to preserve their love just as it was, youthful, passionate, and blissful, rather than subject it to the ravages of time and the hardships of life. The variation less sympathetic to Orpheus is that Euyridice was at peace in death, in some versions she drank from the river Lethe and doesn't even remember Orpheus, his attempt to take her back is selfish, and she prefers to be her own free woman than be bound to him forever and literally only live for his sake.

With that interpretation in mind, I'm surprised I've never read yet another variation. I can imagine a version where, as Orpheus walks up the path toward the living world, he realizes he's being selfish: Eurydice was happy and at peace in the Elysian Fields, she doesn't even remember him because she drank from Lethe, and she's only following him now because Hades and Persephone have forced her to do so. So he finally looks back out of selfless love, to let her go. Maybe I should write this retelling myself.

Are any of these interpretations – or any others – the "true" or "definitive" reason why Orpheus looks back? I don't think so at all. The fact that they all exist and can all ring true says something valuable about the nature of mythology.

[thecollectibles]

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE by danlin zhang

[godihatechoosingusernames]

Merlin would have loved saying he would have NEVER turned back if he was in Orpheus's place

Arthur would have loved saying he would have NEVER let Patroclus fight instead of him if he was in Achilles's place

[thequietesthing]

i’m sorry but KAOS is like a greek mythology fanfiction AU on steroids and i love her for it.

[kittyoperas]

lover’s desire.