Aspects on Rilke's poem Orpheus Eurydice Hermes

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ASPECTS ON A RILKE POEM

or:
Comparing Cecilia's opinion on Rilke with TLM's on Ibsen,
Orpheus the Blind Poet,

...or maybe "Through the Looking Glass" is the only title I've ever want. 
Even though it's taken.

INTRODUCTION

A lot of posts under the bridge since Cecilia gave us the Rilke poem 
"Orpheus Eurydice Hermes". Even longer since Sonny gave us the first verse. 
But I'm slow, my thoughts wander astray and I've more than once wished I had 
that Twilight Zone gift of getting the rest of the world to Stop when I tell 
it to, enabling me to catch up with it. So let's pretend it is mid November 
again:

(I've attached the entire poem way down there for those of you that haven't 
memorized or saved it: see note (*) )

Such a beautiful poem you gave us, Cecilia and Sonny. It would be a loss for 
the rest of us bananafishes if you put these discussions off list. That one 
verse from Sonny was enough to stir my imagination, and then reading the 
entire poem afterwards was like reading the entire Hamlet after first only 
listening to his To Be or Not to Be monologue.

After reading the poem, my thoughts started to wander. Bouncing on Cecilia's 
interpretation a few times, I wrote down my own. But then that changed, too. 
Finally I had to write a few words on the aspect of Cecilia's interpretation 
I got must stuck on.

Such a simple story:

Orpheus with a lyre that no one can withstand
Orpheus marrying Eurydice
Eurydice fleeing from an admirer, and bitten by a deadly snake
Orpheus pleading for the lost life of Eurydice: in the name of love
Orpheus failing to hold his end of the bargain, turning around on the way up

So simple. Yet so elusive

MY FIRST READING

I know little of Rilke. The soft sadness and beauty of the poem, however, 
touched me in a way I think similar to Cecilia's (**), but also totally 
different.

I read this as a poem of a love lost. At some time there was love. Orpheus' 
feeling, now turned into objectifying obsession, was once gentle, true. To 
Eurydice his songs had once been a fruit of something shared; the phrase 
"that man's property" once had a ring of mutual love to it rather than 
exercise of power.

Then, suddenly, the love is lost. We know not why. We know only that another 
man's eyes were upon her, another hand reaching out for her. She resisted, 
but something is changed, something has happened. Before, during, after? 
Perhaps even she doesn't know. But suddenly her eyes are turned inwards. She 
hardly notices her husband's desperate measures; from a distance only, 
through the wrong side of a looking glass. Does she fail to see how fragile 
that desperate passion is, how wrong it has turned; how surely it must fail? 
Does it matter? She can do nothing about it. What was once true is now an 
abuse:

"Sie war shon nicht mehr diese blonde Frau,
die in des Dichtes Liedern manchmal anklang,
nich mehr des breiten Bettes Duft und Eiland
und jenes Mannes Eigentum nicht mehr."

Therefore the sadness of the poem. Relief for Eurydice, yes. Love is lost 
and brute force doesn't suffice. But sadness all the same.

That is how I first read it. That's why Cecilia's interpretation sounded so 
unjust, that's why I had to object to it.


ORPHEUS THE BLIND POET

But something happened. The more I looked into the matter, the more I 
thought about it, the more the circumstantial evidence gathered around me. 
Orpheus the poet, the twister of words and sound: what did he know about 
love? Isn't there an end to the use of his lyre? How many times can he 
perform the same trick of playing to his audience, knowing they can't 
resist? When does he start to listen as well?

He doesn't listen. He doesn't want to hear what she has to say. And she 
doesn't have words for what she's feeling either. Not like he has. How could 
she? She is no poet, not in his way, with words and music. Tantalus stopped 
drinking water when Orpheus sang for Eurydice, Sisyphus sat on his rock to 
listen. Who listened to her? No, she turned inward and waited  - to the 
extent she almost forgot - for what must come: the silence to reach even 
Orpheus' head, the doubt making him look around.

After her second parting he tries to get back to Hades, get them all to 
listen to him again, give him another try. Still he refuses to understand. 
But this time they've had enough. For days he wanders around without food or 
sleep, accusing everyone but himself. Melting the hearts of Tigers but not 
the ice in his own.

After that he plays the holy eremite, dwelling on love lost. E was 
everything for him, and he lets no one else in. Drinking and weeping, he 
turns down any invitation. Filled of his own cruel faith.

Finally the women around him have had enough. They try to destroy him, but 
he almost saves himself with his smooth talk, his music or is it heart which 
no arrow can penetrate. But then they take away his words, his music, 
everything shielding him from reality: and then their stones can reach him. 
Then they can destroy his blind heart.

"Orpheus suffers and dies the martyr's death of a prophet and a savior," 
Classical Mythology online says. A prophet in his own mind, I say.

Suddenly this poem, for me, is a tale of Eurydice's liberation from a man's 
objectifying worship of her. Her cause was just even in my previous reading, 
of course, but then it bore with it more of that sadness over love lost. Now 
the only love lost was a false one. That's why I didn't welcome this second 
reading. Because it made it all so much easier.


DISAGREEING WITH CECILIA

The first interpretation Cecilia makes, is:

>He's talking about remembered images and feelings: she is no longer the
>woman with blue eyes echoing through a poet's songs, no longer catching the
>wide couch's scent and clinging to the island that she offered to him. She
>was beyond life at this point, uncertain, gentle, and ethereal.  There was
>no longer anything of life in her.  She belongs to heaven, not to him.  
> >And
>Rilke's take on it is that when Orpheus turns around, Eurydice is saved, 
> >not lost.

This interpretation I can completely follow and agree with as a possible 
one. But for me it is not so interesting to imagine E as being really dead 
in the direct sense. And yes, Cecilia goes further:
>Rilke was of the opinion that human relationships were 
>distraction-->Eurydice was no longer empty in death, no longer feeling the 
>need for love.>It's a completeness of self that she attains with death, and 
>Orpheus would>have taken that from her in his need to resume the mortal 
>relationship.>There's no need for a shared couch in death, you see, for 
>Eurydice has>become "untouchable; her sex had closed / like a young flower 
>at>nightfall... " because she no longer needs someone to complete her.  She 
>is>complete in and of herself, and needs no one.
I don't like what you're telling me here, Cecilia. I know little of Rilke's 
opinion about relationships as distractions. Was she really empty before? To 
"no longer [feel] the need for love", is that what a completeness of self 
is? Surely, the search for love can make one loose ones self. But can the 
other extreme be a real way?

The dualism between autonomy and togetherness is a hard knot to untie. I 
look at it a little like a Heisenberg' dilemma (***): if you go too far on 
one extreme, the result doesn't make sense. You have to allow both aspects.

What does it mean, then,  to be complete? To be - in another way of putting 
it - oneself?

IBSEN'S PEER GYNT

I turn to Ibsen, and the old play that has never left me since I first saw 
it: Peer Gynt. Peer Gynt lives what for me is the archetype of the life of 
the superficial modern man. He lives by the day, thinking little of things 
beyond the emotion of the moment: his lust for women, alcohol, fame and 
fortune has no perspective but the immediate. *His* immediate emotion - he 
is egoistic in the "worst" sense: anybody else is only an instrument for his 
passions, to be used until something else comes by, something shining a bit 
brighter, looking a bit fresher.

After a life of many fortunes and misfortunes, Peer meets up with the 
button-moulder, a servant of the Creator/Master. The button-moulder is to 
melt Peer up and re-use the raw material for a new creation. Only the true - 
the true sinners or the truly good - end up with a better fate: those having 
been "themselves". The in-betweens, those being neither, end up in the 
melting pot. And Peer, the button-moulder says, is one of the latter.

When Peer object, he has to prove he's been himself. First he doesn't 
understand at all. How can Peer be anyone else but Peer? He tries to prove 
that he's been himself without really knowing what that is.

When asking others, they tell him that no, he hasn't been himself, he's been 
himself *enough*. And that, they tell the ignorant Peer, is a world of 
difference.

After failing, he can't but ask the button-moulder up front.

PEER:
One question only:
What is it, at bottom, this "being oneself"?

THE BUTTON-MOULDER
A singular question, most odd in the mouth
of a man who just now-

PEER
Come, a straightforward answer.

THE BUTTON-MOULDER
To be oneself is: to slay oneself.
But on you that answer is doubtless lost;
and therefore we'll say: to stand forth everywhere
with Master's intention displayed like a signboard.

PEER
But suppose a man never has come to know
what Master meant with him?

THE BUTTON-MOULDER
He must divine it.

(Quote from play taken from this website:
http://members.visi.net/~jhlind/playsonline.html)

I can't say I'm one with the button-moulder's answer, but it has always 
fascinated me. The distinction between "being oneself", and "being oneself 
enough", and the question of what being oneself means, those are eternal 
questions. The importance is that we feel there is a difference, and there 
is a meaning - if only for ourselves, a personal one. If we didn't think 
that, if we'd be satisfied with it all being "a random lottery of 
meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes"(****), if that "answer" 
took care of it all, then my guess is we wouldn't be here on this list, any 
of us.

Back to the Rilke poem. I do not want to read it the way Cecilia does. The 
completeness of self excluding others is not the completeness of self that 
make us human. That is not to be oneself. To find a positive definition 
perhaps takes a life-time. So be it.


/TLM


------------------------------------

Notes:

(*) The poem:

ORPHEUS, EURYDICE, HERMES

That was the deep uncanny mine of souls.
Like veins of silver ore, they silently
moved through its massive darkness. Blood welled up
among the roots, on its way to the world of men,
and in the dark it looked as hard as stone.
Nothing else was red.

There were cliffs there,
and forests made of mist.  There were bridges
spanning the void, and that great gray blind lake
which hung above its distant bottom
like the sky on a rainy day above a landscape.
And through the gentle, unresisting meadows
one pale path unrolled like a strip of cotton.

Down this path they were coming.

In front, the slender man in the blue cloak--
mute, impatient, looking straight ahead.
In large, greedy, unchewed bites his walk
devoured the path; his hands hung at his sides,
tight and heavy, out of the falling folds,
no longer conscious of the delicate lyre
which had grown into his left arm, like a slip
of roses grafted onto an olive tree.
His senses felt as though they were split in two:
his sight would race ahead of him like a dog,
stop, come back, then rushing off again
would stand, impatient, at the path's next turn,--
but his hearing, like an odor, stayed behind.
Sometimes it seemed to him as though it reached
back to the footsteps of those other two
who were to follow him, up the long path home.
But then, once more, it was just his own steps' echo,
or the wind inside his cloak, that made the sound.

He said to himself, they had to be behind him,
said it aloud and heard it fade away,
They had to be behind him, bit their steps
were ominously soft.  If only he could
turn around, just once (but looking back
would ruin this entire work, so near
completion), then he could not fail to see them,
those other two, who followed him so softly:

The god of speed and distant messages,
a traveler's hood above his shining eyes,
his slender staff held out in front of him,
and little wings fluttering at his ankles;
and on his left arm, barely touching it: _she_.

A woman so loved from one lyre there came
more lament than from all lamenting women;
that a whole world of lament arose, in which
all nature reappeared: forest and valley,
road and village, field and stream and animal;
and that around this lament-world, even as
around the other earth, a sun revolved
and a silent star-filled heaven, a lament-
heaven, with its own, disfigured stars--:
So greatly was she loved.

But now she walked beside the graceful god,
her steps constricted by the trailing graveclothes,
uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.
She was deep within herself, like a woman heavy
with child, and did not see the man in front
or the path ascending steeply into life.
Deep within herself. Being dead
filled her beyond fulfillment.  Like a fruit
suffused with its own mystery and sweetness,
she was filled with her vast death, which was so new,
she could not understand that it had happened.

She had come into a new virginity
and was untouchable; her sex had closed
like a young flower at nightfall, and her hands
had grown so unused to marriage that the god's
infinitely gentle touch of guidance
hurt her, like an undesired kiss.

She was no longer that woman with blue eyes
who once had echoed through the poet's songs,
no longer the wide couch's scent and island,
and that man's property no longer.

She was already loosened like long hair,
poured out like fallen rain,
shared like a limitless supply.

She was already root.

And when, abruptly,
the god put out his hand to stop her, saying,
with sorrow in his voice: He has turned around--,
she could not understand, and softly answered
_Who?_

					Far away,
dark before the shining exit-gates,
someone or other stood, whose features were
unrecognizable.  He stood and saw
how, on the strip of road among the meadows,
with a mournful look, the god of messages
silently turned to follow the small figure
already walking back along the path,
her steps constricted by the trailing graveclothes,
uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.


-----------------


(**) Cecilia's comment to the poem, in full:

Taken in context with the rest of the poem, the lines begin to have more
meaning than they do alone, although I think that Jim did a commendable job
with the little that he had available:  A woman no longer belonging to a man
in a sexual sense to be sure, but in the sense that she has become
intangible, I think.

He's talking about remembered images and feelings: she is no longer the
woman with blue eyes echoing through a poet's songs, no longer catching the
wide couch's scent and clinging to the island that she offered to him. She
was beyond life at this point, uncertain, gentle, and ethereal.  There was
no longer anything of life in her.  She belongs to heaven, not to him.  And
Rilke's take on it is that when Orpheus turns around, Eurydice is saved, not
lost.

Rilke was of the opinion that human relationships were distraction--
Eurydice was no longer empty in death, no longer feeling the need for love.
It's a completeness of self that she attains with death, and Orpheus would
have taken that from her in his need to resume the mortal relationship.
There's no need for a shared couch in death, you see, for Eurydice has
become "untouchable; her sex had closed / like a young flower at
nightfall... " because she no longer needs someone to complete her.  She is
complete in and of herself, and needs no one.

Regards,
Cecilia.


---------------


(***)
According to the Heisenberg theory of uncertainty (dx * dv = constant):
If you tell the exact speed of a particle, you can't at the same time point 
out where it is. It can then be anywhere in the universe. On the other hand, 
if you measure the exact position of a particle, you cannot tell (at all) 
with which speed it is moving: hence you can't tell where it is next 
nanosecond. To get a full picture that makes sense, you have to measure the 
approximate speed and position of a particle.

This "paradox" pair has many physical equivalents in quantum physics, but 
the speed/position is the most famous.

Disclaimer for those flirting with new age concepts as "the quantum soul" 
etc:
This factual theory is strictly limited to quantum effects. On the macro 
scale, it has no relevance. And it does certainly not in any way make what 
I'm stating any more probable: I use it as a metaphor only. The fact I find 
it thrilling nature works in this way, is a different subject.



----------

(****)
Quote from Reality Bites:
Troy Dyer:
There's no point to any of this.
It's all just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near 
escapes.

So I take pleasure in the details.
You know... a quarter-pounder with cheese,
those are good,
the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain,
the moment where your laughter become a cackle...

And I, I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights
and I ride my own melt



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