The article that follows is a translation of a piece originally written for my (almost) weekly column in the Greek cultural magazine PHENOMENA, a weekly insert in one of the Greek national daily newspapers, Eleftheros Typos, and published Saturday, Sept. 9th 2012. Expanded and accordingly footnoted, this will also form a subsection of my thesis, but in the current form it was expressly written for a general readership. The Greek version is here.
Many of us will remember the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice from our childhood, embellished with images of the tragic musician, who could enchant the whole of creation with his music, and even moved Hades to tears, but was unable to save his beloved. Our teachers used to tell us the story as a moral lesson, stressing Orpheus’ error as he hesitated at the threshold of the Underworld and turned back to see if his beloved Eurydice was truly following him. They would interpret the tragic end of the story as the result of breaking a promise.
Plato reproached Orpheus, saying that since he was not prepared to die in order to be with his beloved, Hades tricked him by showing him only a shade, and not the true Eurydice. According to Aeschylus, at the end of his life, Orpheus denounced the worship of Dionysus and turned to worship Apollo, and as a result was torn to pieced by furious Maenads as a punishment for abandoning Dionysus. The pieces of Orpheus’ corpse ended up in the river Evros, where his lyre and his head, continuing to sing mournful hymns – travelled as far as Lesvos, where they were buried (according to one of the many versions of the myth). According to another version, they were placed beneath an oracle, where Orpheus gave prophecies to all who asked for them.
Aside, however, from the better- or lesser-known myths, the figure of Orpheus is surrounded by a host of other stories and legends, some of which would have him be the son of Apollo himself, or the son of Oiagros, king of Thrace. According to Apollodorus, Orpheus was the founder of the Dionysian Mysteries, and the Orphic Mysteries are considered a later evolution of the same. In both cases we find a strong initiatory element interwoven with mysteries of death and rebirth, heavily ritualised with artistic and ceremonial elements.
Time-travelling myths
Through the centuries, the myth of Orpheus kindled the imagination of many scholars, artists, and storytellers. Depending on the period and the source, we find various elements of the myth accordingly highlighted, depending on the priorities, the fashions, and the demands of a given era.
In its journey from the mythology of ancient Greece, through Ovid’s epics, the myth travelled through medieval poems and tales, was the theme of the first true opera (Eurydice by Jacopo Peri, 1600), and dozens of other operatic and musical interpretations, all the way through to the 19th century, the French occult revival, and the circle of Symbolist artists who were inspired by the work of Joséphin Péladan. Here we find Orpheus – or more specifically, his decapitated head on his lyre – as a central theme of many Symbolist paintings. And of course, since we are dealing with occultists as well as symbolists, these depictions certainly hide far more than a tribute to a tried and tested old favourite of a theme.
The first thing we notice in the Symbolist depictions of Orpheus, is that the vast majority focus on the decapitated head and the lyre – the dead Orpheus in other words, who continues to sing, even in death. In the painting by Gustave Moreau we see a young Thracian woman holding the head and the lyre, while the paintings by Redon, Séon and Delville all follow precisely the same motif: the head and lyre in the foreground, and the sea or beach where, according to legend, Orpheus’ remains were washed up, forming the background.
We might assume that, lacking further imagination, these artists simply depicted the end of the myth as a kind of study in symbolic still life. However, a closer look at the journey of the Orphic myth through the centuries, demonstrates that this isn’t the case at all.
Since the Renaissance, the figure of Orpheus had already been conflated with that of Dionysus, and Orpheus was frequently considered and depicted by various artists – particularly Michaelangelo – as an alter ego of Dionysus himself.
In his treatise The Birth of Tragedy (1886), deeply influenced by various Theosophical theories and other occult practices of his time, Nietzsche outlined the notion of Dionysian-Orphic ecstasy and possession that were the motive force of Symbolist art, and a supreme form of initiation into the invisible forced of man and universe. This idea of initiation was at the heart of occult thought of the time, and it refers to awakening, discovery, and the development of dormant human faculties which are available to all, but are in a state of dormancy. Just like in Orphic legend, only initiates may drink from the spring of Mnemosyne after death, so that they may evolve spiritually.
In the greatly influential work The Great Initiates (1889), Edouard Schuré discusses the notion of initiation in depth, and presents the initiatory journeys of various great figures in human history and legend. Among them, Ram, Moses, Jesus… and Orpheus. Regarding initiation, he says the following: “Modern man seeks happiness without knowledge, knowledge without wisdom… For someone to achieve mastery, the ancient sages tell us, man must fully reconstruct his physical, ethical and spiritual existence. Only then can an initiate, initiate [another]….Therefore, initiation was, then, something very different from a hollow dream, and something far greater than a simple scientific theory: it was, then, the creation of a soul out of itself, its evolution on a higher level, and its flowering on the divine plane.”
For Schuré, Orpheus was the one who, heralding Dionysus, transmitted this Dionysian, theurgic impulse, first throughout Greece, and
then Europe. Orpheus himself stands for creative genius, initiatory tradition, and his lyre symbolises human existence itself, whereby, according to Schuré, “every chord corresponds to a mood of the human soul and contains the laws of one science and one art,” thus ‘proving’ Orpheus to be “the great mystagogue, ancestor of poetry and music, which reveal eternal truths.”
This “religion” of initiatory and creative genius was the motive force of the Symbolists, for whom Orpheus was the archetypal Artist-priest, who, in Péladan’s vision, would collectively initiate society through their exposure to the mysteries hidden within symbolic artwork. Therefore, these works in which we see the repeated motif of Orpheus’ head and lyre, are no less than sacred icons, talismans encapsulating their whole raison-d’etre. And Orpheus is their patron saint…
One might rightly quesiton why the Symbolists preferred the decapitated form as opposed to a more Dionysian, triumphal figure such as that preferred in Renaissance depictions. The simple answer is ideologically based: the head and lyre are symbols, and as such, offer more compositional and interpretative freedom to the artist than a full human form complete with background and props, where focus on the symbol will necessarily be diluted. By isolating the complex symbol of the head-and-lyre, the artist is free to make it his own and to use all his skill so as to communicate the symbolic message, just as is the case with stylized icons in various religious traditions.
The second, more complex answer, is rooted in human prehistory, since the human head and ritual decapitations date back to the time of the Neanderthals, as is evidenced by archaeological findings. We find decapitated heads as ritual objects in diverse prehistoric civilisations. It also appears in Greco-Roman myths, albeit in refined form, such as the relatively unknown story of Lityerses, bastard son of King Midas, who would decapitate his rivals until he was himself decapitated by Hercules. The Celts preserved the heads of enemies defeated in battle and hung them around their horses’ necks, a practice recorded in Celtic, Roman, and French art, as well as on coinage of the day, and the Vikings had a similar practice.
In legends from the medieval period onwards, there were stories of heads as oracles, the best-known of which was the Baphomet of Templar lore. Many studies have also noted references in chivalric tales of the quest for the Holy Grail, where in many cases, rather than a cup, a tray is described, upon which sits a decapitated head with magical properties. From medieval times onward, we also find numerous references to magical heads and ritual decapitations in alchemical allegories, as well as in a host of folk traditions from across Europe and beyond, from Asia to Latin America.
The ceremonial significance of the decapitated head differs a great deal from one civilisation to the next, and as stressed by archaeologist Lauren Talalay in a detailed study of ritual decapitation in prehistoric Greece, we should not assume that what applies to one culture, also applies to another. In most ancient Asian cultures, for example, as well as Assyrian culture, enemies were decapitated as a sign of manhood, heroism, and the honour of victory, while in other cultures decapitation was exclusively seen as an act of respect and ancestor-worship.
In Greece and in regions of Anatolia, human skulls have been discovered – often decorated and painted – dating from the Neolithic period. These were carefully placed in specific parts of buildings, positioned in relation to specific sculptures or other artistic elements, or on altars. Despite the fact that the precise details of their use and significance remain a mystery, most archaeologists appear to concur with regard to their ceremonial and deeply symbolic significance, as well as the fact that they formed a symbolic link between the living and the dead. Above all, however, through the decapitation and attribution of a new symbolic form to the skull after death, automatically the skull and all that it stands for acquires a new form of life, and thus, a kind of immortality.
Which brings us back to the Orpheus of the Symbolists. Resurrected in the fin-de-siècle, with new magical qualities, as an archetype and epitome of human creativity and artistry, the representative and embodiment of Dionysus, simultaneously a tragic figure reborn as a supreme symbol through the wrath of the Maenads. A symbol need not be elaborate in order to be powerful – in this simple lyre and peaceful face are concentrated all these meanings, with the depth of centuries. All that is left, is to allow him to perform his initiation.
By way of an epilogue:
When a myth travels down the centuries and across civilisations, there are always additions and subtractions of details, conflations
and syntheses with other myths and folkloric elements. It is very easy for oversimplificatioons to occur because we think that some elements seem similar to others, or to insist that one or other version of the myth is “the right one”. But if we look at a myth – or a symbolic figure such as Orpheus – without keeping in mind this journey through time, then we are almost certain to come to the wrong conclusion. The Orpheus of the French Symbolists and occultists is not the Thracian Orpheus of the 5th and 6th centuries B.C.E. He represents the transmuted myth that now carries the mythology, the hopes, wishful thinking and visions of two and a half centuries, and is represented in these specific ways at this specific time. Nor, as some purists might argue, is he a “false,” “stolen” Orpheus. He is who and what he is, and if we are to comprehend this fragment of culture on its own terms, then we need to perceive it within its full context. By overlaying our own interpretational filters, we are simply creating new material for interpretation by future sociologists and cultural theorists, and unfortunately, we would also be missing the point.
Sources:
- Edouard Schuré, The Great Initiates
- Lauren Talalay, Heady Business: Skulls, Heads, and Decapitation in Neolithic Anatolia and Greece, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 17:2 (2004).
- John F. Moffitt, Inspiration: Bacchus and the Cultural History of a Creation Myth, Leiden, Brill, 2005.
- Dorothy Kosinski, Orpheus in Nineteenth Century Symbolism, University of Michigan Press, 1989.