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Updated: May 23, 2025
And this classic and cultivated effect he secured not at all, or only very incidentally, through the force of association, by dotting his hillsides and vaporous distances with bits of classic architecture, or by summing up his feeling for the Dawn in a graceful figure of Orpheus greeting with extended gesture the growing daylight, but by a subtle interpenetration of sensuousness and severity resulting in precisely the sentiment fitly characterized by the epithet classic.
The 'Kalevala' contains an instance of this practice, where it is said that no one was so hardy as to clasp hands with Wainamoinen, who is at once the Orpheus and the Prometheus of Finnish mythology. These Runoias, or rhapsodists, complain, of course, of the degeneracy of human memory; they notice how any foreign influence, in religion or politics, is destructive to the native songs of a race.
When my patron comes home I will humbly suggest Orpheus singing at the stem, a following wind, a great bellying sail behind, and all around wet air and splashing grey sea, the stem ploughing it up silver and white and green, and away aft under the bend of the sail there would be Jason and the steersman, possibly Medea, with the curl out of her hair, and perhaps just a touch of the golden fleece, just a fleck of pale yellow to enliven the minor tints!
He revived on the modern stage the tragedies of the ancients, or rather created a new kind of pastoral tragedy, on which Tasso did not disdain to employ his genius. His "Orpheus," composed within ten days, was performed at the Mantuan court in 1483, and may be considered as the first dramatic composition in Italian.
But it is not less true that there are books which are of that importance in a man's private experience, as to verify for him the fables of Cornelius Agrippa, of Michael Scott, or of the old Orpheus of Thrace; books which take rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative; books which are the work and the proof of faculties so comprehensive, so nearly equal to the world which they paint, that, though one shuts them with meaner ones, he feels his exclusion from them to accuse his way of living.
In this work we find great improvement in both taste and versification, and the rather uninviting subject is treated and embellished in a way that makes his fame rest in great part on the poem. The fourth book, especially, with its episode of Orpheus and Eurydice will live forever for its plaintive tenderness.
For the most part I escaped wonderfully from these dangers, either by proceeding at once boldly and without deliberation to the goal, as is recommended to those who run the gauntlet, or by keeping my thoughts on high things, like Orpheus, who, "loudly singing the praises of the gods to his lyre, drowned the voices of the Sirens, and kept out of danger."
The yearning of Orpheus for the beauty he was losing, for his love going down to Hades, as in life love and beauty did go the yearning which sang and throbbed through the golden music, stirred also in the lingering beauty of the world that evening.
John turned politician; what! thou all of a sudden to become a railer against the divine sex that made thee what thou art! Fly, fly, unhappy apostate, or expect the fate of Orpheus, at least!" "None of your raileries, Tarleton, or I shall speak to you of plebeians and the /canaille!" "/Sacre/! my teeth are on edge already! Oh, the base, base /canaille/, how I loathe them!
At last, as if too much to bear, Orpheus interrupts their threnody with the words, "The Sounds of your Lament increase my bitter Anguish." In answer to his prayer, Amor, god of love, appears and announces that the gods have been moved to compassion; and if his song and lyre can appease the phantoms, death shall give back Eurydice upon the conditions already named.
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