LINDA PASTAN'S "ORPHEUS"; H.D.'S "EURYDICE"

I know what some of you may be thinking: Orpheus has been "done to death" in poetry, music, and painting. And yet, and yet . . .  every Orpheus poem I've read, and that must be over a hundred by now, is different, and most are fascinating.  The story continues to haunt us, maybe because it's "unfinished business." Why did he turn? How did Eurydice feel about it? Was she furious and then self-empowered, as in h.d.'s Eurydice, or, as Rilke hints, relieved, since Orpheus ("she asked softly, Who?") ceased to mean anything to her. 

In fact, the first two stanzas of Linda Pastan's poem consist of questions. The last stanza ends with the "music of the body," different from the music of art. But ultimately it's the music of great art that survives, though it draws on the mysterious music of life that it must in the end survive. 


My favorite stanza is the first one, which poses the most important question, and has the magical phrase, "a fraction of darkness." 


Orpheus

When Orpheus turned

and looked back and knew

that genius wasn’t enough,

I wonder which he regretted most:

the failure of will,

Eurydice lost,

or what it must mean for her

to remain

a fraction of darkness?

Did he still tame animals

with his songs,

or would that seem a child’s game now?

Did he tune his lyre

to a minor key,

the last notes falling

like darkened leaves

to drift toward Lesbos?

In Balanchine’s ballet

the failure seems Eurydice’s fault

who tempted his blindfold off,

as if the artist must be absolved,

as if what matters

is the body itself –

that instrument stringed

with tendon and bone

making its own music.

   ~ Linda Pastan
      from A Fraction of Darkness


**


What did it mean to Eurydice to remain "a fraction of darkness"? More broadly, how does a woman feel when the man she thought a savior who would take her out of a hellish life into a larger, breathable world, betrays her in the last moment? (Not that it's ever wise to expect a man to be a savior -- see my "Tear Jars: Freud to Eurydice" poem


http://oriana-poetry.blogspot.com/2010/05/freud-and-jung-to-eurydice.html


HD has an interesting poem in the persona of Eurydice. The last section is especially strong.  It is generally thought that in this poem the betrayer is D.H. Lawrence, but h.d. had a whole series of men, starting with Ezra Pound, to whom she looked up as saviors, who then left her. 

EURYDICE

So you have swept me back,

I who could have walked with the live souls

above the earth,

I who could have slept among the live flowers

at last;

so for your arrogance

and your ruthlessness

I am swept back

where dead lichens drip

dead cinders upon moss of ash;

so for your arrogance

I am broken at last,

I who had lived unconscious,

who was almost forgot;

if you had let me wait

I had grown from listlessness

into peace,

if you had let me rest with the dead,

I had forgot you

and the past.

II

Here only flame upon flame

and black among the red sparks,

streaks of black and light

grown colourless;

why did you turn back,

that hell should be reinhabited

of myself thus

swept into nothingness?

Why did you glance back?

why did you hesitate for that moment?

why did you bend your face

caught with the flame of the upper earth,

above my face?

What was it that crossed my face

with the light from yours

and your glance?

What was it you saw in my face?

The light of your own face,

the fire of your own presence?

What had my face to offer

but reflex of the earth,

haycinth colour

caught from the raw fissure in the rock

where the light struck,

and the colour of azure crocuses

and the bright surface of gold crocuses

and of the wind-flower,

swift in its veins as lightning

and as white.

                               III

Saffron from the fringe of the earth,

wild saffron that has bent

over the sharp edge of earth,

all the flowers that cut through the earth,

all, all the flowers are lost;

everything is lost,

everything is crossed with black,

black upon black

and worse than black,

this colourless light.

                               IV

Fringe upon fringe

of blue crocuses,

crocuses, walled against blue of themselves,

blue of that upper earth,

blue of the depth upon depth of flowers,

lost;

flowers,

if I could have taken once my breath of them,

enough of them,

more than earth,

even than of the upper earth,

had passed with me

beneath the earth;

if I could have caught up from the earth,

the whole of the flowers of the earth,

if once I could have breathed into myself

the very golden crocuses

and the red,

and the very golden hearts of the first saffron,

the whole of the golden mass,

the whole of the great fragrance,

I could have dared the loss.

                              V

So for your arrogance

and your ruthlessness

I have lost the earth   

and the flowers of the earth,

and the live souls above the earth,

and you who passed across the light

and reached

ruthless;

you who have your own light,

who are to yourself a presence,

who need no presence;

yet for all your arrogance

and your glance,

I tell you this:

such loss is no loss,

such terror, such coils and strands and pitfalls

of blackness,

such terror

is no loss;

hell is no worse than your earth

above the earth,

hell is no worse,

no, nor your flowers

nor your veins of light

nor your presence,

a loss;

my hell is no worse than yours

though you pass among the flowers and speak

with the spirits above earth.

VI

Against the black

I have more fervour

than you in all the splendour of that place,

against the blackness

and the stark grey

I have more light;

and the flowers,

if I should tell you,

you would turn from your own fit paths

toward hell,

turn again and glance back

and I would sink into a place

even more terrible than this.

                              VII

At least I have the flowers of myself,

and my thoughts, no god

can take that;

I have the fervour of myself for a presence

and my own spirit for light;

and my spirit with its loss

knows this;

though small against the black,

small against the formless rocks,

hell must break before I am lost;

before I am lost,

hell must open like a red rose

for the dead to pass.

      ~ h.d.

***

 I love the last stanza -- all of it, but especially "before I am lost, / hell must open like a red rose." I don't need the last line about the dead. The rose says it all.