MILOSZ AS ORPHEUS

with Pope John Paul II, circa 1980

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

Standing on flagstones of the sidewalk at the entrance to Hades

Orpheus hunched in a gust of wind

That tore at his coat, rolled past in waves of fog,

Tossed the leaves of the trees. The headlights of cars

Flared and dimmed in each succeeding wave.

He stopped at the glass-paneled door, uncertain

Whether he was strong enough for the ultimate trial.

He remembered her words: “You are a good man.”

He did not quite believe it. Lyric poets

Usually have – he knew it – cold hearts.

It is like a medical condition. Perfection in art

Is given in exchange for such an affliction.

Only her love warmed him, humanized him.

When e was with her, he thought differently about himself.

He could not fail her now, when she was dead.

He pushed open the door and found himself walking in a labyrinth,

Corridors, elevators. The livid light was not light but the dark of the earth.

Electronic dogs passed him noiselessly.

He descended many floors, a hundred, three hundred, down.

He was cold, aware that he was Nowhere.

Under thousands of frozen centuries,

On an ashy trace where generations had moldered,

In a kingdom that seemed to have no bottom and no end.

Thronging shadows surrounded him.

He recognized some of the faces.

He felt the rhythm of his blood.

He felt strongly his life with its guilt

And he was afraid to meet those to whom he had done harm.

But they had lost the ability to remember

And gave him only a glance, indifferent to all that.

For his defense he had a nine-stringed lyre.

He carried in it the music of the earth, against the abyss

That buries all the sounds in silence.

He submitted to the music, yielded

To the dictations of a song, listening with rapt attention,

Became, like his lyre, its instrument.

Thus he arrived at the palace of the rulers of that land.

Persephone, in her garden of withered pear and apple trees,

Black, with naked branches and verrucose twigs,

Listened from the funereal amethyst of her throne.

He sang the brightness of mornings and green rivers,

He sang of smoking water in the rose-colored daybreaks,

Of colors: cinnabar, carmine, burnt sienna, blue,

Of the delight of swimming in the sea under marble cliffs,

Of feasting on a terrace above the tumult of a fishing port,

Of the tastes of wine, olive oil, almonds, mustard, salt.

Of the flight of the swallow, the falcon,

Of a dignified flock of pelicans above a bay,

Of the scent of an armful of lilacs in summer rain,

Of his having composed his words always against death

And of having made no rhyme in praise of nothingness.

I don’t know – said the goddess – whether you loved her or not.

Yet you have come here to rescue her.

She will be returned to you. But there are conditions:

You are not permitted to speak to her, or on the journey back

To turn your head, even once, to assure yourself that she is behind you.

And so Hermes brought forth Eurydice.

Her face no longer hers, utterly gray,

Her eyelids lowered beneath the shade of her lashes.

She stepped rigidly, directed by the hand

Of her guide. Orpheus wanted so much

To call her name, to wake her from that sleep.

But he refrained, for he had accepted the conditions.

And so they set out. He first, and then, not right away,

The slap of the god’s sandals and the light patter

Of her feet fettered by her robe, as if by a shroud.

A steep climbing path phosphorized

Out of darkness like the walls of a tunnel.

He would stop and listen. But then

They stopped, too, and the echo faded.

And when he began to walk the double tapping commenced again.

Sometimes it seemed closer, sometimes more distant.

Under his faith a doubt sprang up

And entwined him like cold bindweed.

Unable to weep, he wept a the loss

Of the human hope for the resurrection of the dead,

Because he was, now, like every other mortal.

His lyre was silent, yet he dreamed, defenseless.

He knew he must have faith and he could not have faith.

And so he would persist for a very long time,

Counting his steps in a half-wakeful torpor.

Day was breaking. Shapes of rock loomed up

Under the luminous eye of the exit from underground.

It happened as he expected. He turned his head

And behind him on the path was no one.

Sun. And sky. And in the sky white clouds.

Only now everything cried to him: Eurydice!

How will I live without you, my consoling one!

But there was a fragrant scent of herbs, the low humming of bees,

And he fell asleep with his cheek on the sun-warmed earth.

~ Czeslaw Milosz, from Second Space,

   translated by the author and Robert Hass

*

Una:

What strikes me is the last few moments of Milosz's version where Orpheus looks back and knows he's lost her by not going along with the scenario, but he lies down on the warm earth, under the blue sky, the sun and falls asleep. Earth itself as renewal, that contact. Little children know this instinctively and lie down in the grass, in the corn rows, between the bean vines – they just lie on the ground and soak up sun and dream. As we grow older, most of us rarely have full body contact with the earth.

So here's Orpheus regaining strength in this natural way. He already bears the imprint of his inspiration, Eurydice, and he goes on to write and sing more beautifully than ever. In fact losing her, rather than pleasing her as in a marriage he's free to a work romantically with his perfect muse, the inspiring woman who will never grow old – it will always be the young Eurydice he lost.

It reminded me of the story of Hercules who fought the giant Antaeus and couldn’t subdue him. Each time he knocked him down Antaeus got up stronger until Hercules realized that his mother was Gaia, the earth goddess, and when he came in contact with her she gave him strength as he lay there seemingly conquered. I think Orpheus also knew instinctively that the earth would renew him.

Oriana:

If we assume that in this poem Orpheus stands for Milosz, then it makes sense that this is how the countryside-bred Milosz saw it: contact with the earth/nature is renewing. It is the ultimate consolation, and perhaps the only one (seeing how wives don’t last; Milosz was twice widowed, even though his second wife, Carol, happened to be thirty years younger than he).

Most modern poets would have ended on line, “And behind him on the path was no one.” But Milosz rejects the modern taboo on affirmation. The scent of the herbs, the humming of bees, the warmth of the sun – these are the reliable consolations.

This is indeed an astonishing poem, showing that this ninety-year-old Orpheus remained, as always, a pessimist and an ecstatic at the same time, with the ecstatic element winning in the end, even though Eurydice is lost. The human beloved is lost, but not the beloved earth, which consoles him. Persephone rules the realm of death, but in the realm of the living, Milosz/Orpheus is consoled by the Great Mother, arguably Demeter. 

Milosz condemns the preference for nihilism and negative moods so common in modern literature. He can be explicit about it, as in this short poem:

A TASK

In fear and trembling, I think I would fulfill my life

Only if I brought myself to make a public confession

Revealing a sham, my own and of my epoch:

We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons,

But pure and generous words were forbidden

Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dare to pronounce one

Considered himself as a lost man.

            ~ Czesław Miłosz, 1970, From the Rising of the Sun

But it’s not only the ending which makes this poem so different from the typical treatment of the Orpheus and Eurydice story. The opening is marvelously original, and is perhaps the most modern element here. Orpheus does not enter through a cave or a forest or a lake.  We are not in nature; we are in a great city (could it be New York?), with sidewalks, and cars passing by, creating the effect of “waves of headlights.” He opens a glass door and enters what seems like a huge office building with corridors and elevators. There is no Cerberus; instead, “electronic dogs passed him noiselessly.”

He does descend, however, rather than ascend. This disappoints me somewhat, since I was already imagining a skyscraper as a kind of Hades, with dull-faced employees as the dead, and the penthouse as the throne chamber of Hades and Persephone. No such luck. Orpheus descends hundreds of floors down. Among the shadows, he meets some he used to know when they were alive, but they are indifferent, since they have no memory.

“For his defense” Orpheus has his lyre, on which he can play the “music of the earth.” Like the lyre, he too is the instrument of this music. In fact he is an artist first, and he knows it; everything else, including Eurydice, comes second: “lyric poets usually have – as he knew – cold hearts.” Nevertheless, he feels he needs Eurydice to warm his heart and make him feel more human.

It’s interesting that Persephone’s amethyst throne stands in an orchard of withered fruit trees. Hades is never mentioned; in this poem, Persephone seems to be the sole deity of the Underworld. Another twist on the traditional tale is the song of Orpheus. It’s not a song about his love for Eurydice and a plea for Eurydice’s return. Rather, it’s a description of the delights of earthly life, e.g. “swimming in the sea under marble cliffs,” or “the scent of an armful of lilacs in summer rain.”

Even though Persephone can’t tell whether or not Orpheus loves Eurydice, she decides that Eurydice can return to the upper world, provided Orpheus doesn’t turn around to make sure she is following. And Eurydice, gray-faced and rigid, corpse-like, is brought forth by Hermes. For a while, Orpheus can hear the footsteps of both Eurydice and the messenger god. But the sound gets more distant, and Orpheus loses his faith “in the resurrection of the dead.” Near the exit, he turns around: just as he expected, “behind him on the path was no one.”

Note that this is a departure from convention. In the myth, Orpheus does get a glimpse of Eurydice. Milosz modernizes the story: the gods, if not yet dead (except for the the earth, the Great Mother), are moribund and die or at last fall silent during the ascent; likewise, the belief in the soul's afterlife is becoming uncertain. Yet he also gives it a happy ending (or sorts). As Una already discussed, Orpheus is consoled and renewed by contact with the earth. 

It’s also important to note that Orpheus enters the Underworld in autumn (fallen leaves, fog, cold wind) and in the city, and emerges on a warm spring day (it could also already be summer), somewhere in the countryside.  Thus, arguably, he seems to follow Persephone’s own pattern of entering and leaving the Underworld. The shift from city to country, to nature, likely reflects Milosz’s love of nature, acquired in his childhood on a Lithuanian estate.

Altogether, we have here an unconventional retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice story. While I would be more fascinated by trying to keep it urban, I admit that Milosz’s ending is also compelling. It connects his poem with the great tradition of nature poetry, including Asian poetry. Spouses die, friends move away; the beauty of nature remains and consoles.

Milosz wrote this poem in 2002, after the death of his second wife. He himself had only two years to live. His religious faith did not seem either strong or conventional, though “officially” he was a Catholic. Nevertheless, he remained a poet of affirmation, taking pride in

his having composed his words always against death

And of having made no rhyme in praise of nothingness.

Brad:

An observation: when Orpheus in Milosz' poem achieved renewal via nature he was ALONE. 

Men tend to need aloneness for renewal whereas women tend to need connection with others. Would a female Orpheus lie down in nature or would she go to her friends for support?

Oriana:

A very good point, but I would be careful about generalizing. Not all female poets are the same. Some might in fact seek solitude and quiet in nature, equally with or ahead of turning to their friends. Don't forget how introverted poets tend to be, male or female, and how much poets in general love the beauty of nature.

Interestingly, Ovid’s Orpheus did not turn to nature for solace. He turned to homoerotic love. Milosz “re-visions” the myth through the lens his own psyche. He does not trust the projections of the mind. The earth, however, is real -- the soil, the grass, the flowers.

ORPHEUS AFTER EURYDICE

O'KEEFE: THE BLACK IRIS

Don’t tell me that Orpheus failed.

An artist understands about faith –

the hours, the years, the life,

watching a blossom disclose

its throat, the secret

fur on the narrow tongue –

a blood-tinged light

crossing the perilous curve

of the corolla’s horizon,

nun-like petals that hide

the passion of patience inside,
a burgundy cleft in the heart

cowled with a hood of blue –

Look long enough at anything,

and it will grow in you –

One breath from embracing

black, in the center

of the blossom of your life,

he won’t turn:

not the Orpheus who sang

so much better after love, after death.

~ Oriana

**

Too many poems about Orpheus. Too many poems about O’Keefe. But let’s face it: these figures, one mythical, one historical, have turned into archetypes that shape our personal and collective psyche. The interpretations can be endless, and they keep on coming.

Why? Why do these stories have such great staying power over the millennia? Why, just in the last decade, hundreds of new poems about Orpheus? Is it that we too have tried to save someone we loved, gone through hell and back to rescue our beloved – and failed? Is it that we are all betrayers? Or is it that we all wait for the magical person to be save us and lead us to the world of light, and the savior is bound to betray us?

Or is it more simple: we try and try to find the answer as to why Orpheus turned around. Would we have been capable of absolute faith?

These are huge questions. My poem takes a more “narrow slice,” and looks at Orpheus as artist. An artist has to have infinite faith and patience. Georgia O’Keefe knew that, so I posit that it was difficult for her to accept the myth. Orpheus the poet and musician, through his years of disciplined, passionate patience, would not have turned.

Yet perhaps it’s not the turning or not turning that is of critical importance here, but the loss of the beloved.  If we have lived a while, we all come to know this loss.  It changes us, and, if we are artists, we unwillingly admit that we have become better artists as a result. As Louise Glück says, “I have lost my Eurydice . . . and it seems to me I have never been in better voice.”

Another aspect of an important myth is that it is timeless. In the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, the critical moment of his turning around becomes an eternal moment.  There is a suspension of time, the way it seems to happen to important memories. For instance, I am always that seventeen-year-old girl who is boarding the jet that will take her across the Iron Curtain (remember that phrase?) to the West. I can easily imagine a scientist, weary after many hours in the lab, at the moment of discovery. And I can imagine Orpheus forever holding within him the image of Eurydice’s face just before it dissolved. The exquisite poem by Lenny Lianne is a meditation on this moment.

ORPHEUS AFTER EURYDICE

Over and over he recalls

the clockwise motion of his body at the bend

in the uphill path as he turned
to glance back, and glimpsed her gazing at him.

Before her face scattered, swept away
as if in a roiling sandstorm, her looking back
at him rippled through his whole body,
binding them together.

In the same clockwise motion seconds turn
into minutes and are worn down, compacted
into memory, his image of her watching him
fills his new afterlife, so when he closes

his eyes to recall her, he remains unsure
is it he who sails through the space
that excludes her, or is it she
who travels across it and keeps coming toward him.

            ~ Lenny Lianne

**

This poem is an example of taking a very “narrow slice.” The music and the imagery turn on each other, imitating the turning motion of Orpheus. But he isn’t the only one who performs an action. Eurydice, usually presented as a passive character who does no more than disperse like smoke after the fatal glance, returns his glance, and in that glance they are united forever: she keeps coming toward him.  

Michael Peterson:

I think the fault in Orpheus's turn is with Hades, not Orpheus, just as in the ludicrous instruction to Lot to not look back at Sodom and Gomorrah. We look back – it's what we do.

I love your poem, especially juxtaposed to O'Keefe's painting. Very powerful (and erotic). You mention a suspension of time in your comments. I think of these as stopped clock moments. I have many in my life, tattooed across my soul, still very much alive and influential.

**

Oriana:

Thank you, Michael, for your perceptive comment, which hangs here like a shining fruit on the Tree of Knowledge. Yes, we turn and yes, we eat the Forbidden Fruit. Positing God's existence, that was his cunning scheme to ensure that the fruit would be eaten.

Jorie specializes in presenting the moment just before the transformation. We know how the story ends; she forces us to stay in the “before,” the glance, the fruit, already within us, but still unravished, always just about to happen, to step into the eternal.


**

Marjorie:

“Orpheus after Eurydice” is short, to the point, and very skillful.  And it is quite interesting from the standpoint of what it does with physics.  There's Orpheus's ending question of whether he moves toward Eurydice to close the distance between them or whether it's Eurydice who moves toward him (though never quite arriving, so that Orpheus's fantasy of gaining Eurydice is never really consummated).  I also thought that using "clockwise" motion at the beginning of the poem was very clever, since it allowed Lenny to use "clockwise" again to describe the seconds and minutes during which Orpheus might have gained Eurydice but then, in a trice, lost her.  It's a haunting story, this tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, and I think Lenny's poem captures the haunting uncertainty in it.

THE SEEN VERSUS THE REAL: JORIE GRAHAM’S “ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE”

Felice Casorati, Ritratto di Silvana Cenni, 1922


ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

Up ahead, I know, he felt it stirring in himself already, the glance,   

the darting thing in the pile of rocks,

already in him, there, shiny in the rubble, hissing Did you want to remain   

completely unharmed?—

the point-of-view darting in him, shiny head in the ash-heap,

hissing Once upon a time, and then Turn now darling give me that look,   

that perfect shot, give me that place where I’m erased....

The thing, he must have wondered, could it be put to rest, there, in the glance,   

could it lie back down into the dustiness, giving its outline up?

When we turn to them—limbs, fields, expanses of dust called meadow and avenue—

will they be freed then to slip back in?

Because you see he could not be married to it anymore, this field with minutes in it   

called woman, its presence in him the thing called

future—could not be married to it anymore, expanse tugging his mind out into it, tugging the wanting-to-finish out.

What he dreamed of was this road (as he walked on it), this dustiness,   

but without their steps on it, their prints, without   

song—

What she dreamed, as she watched him turning with the bend in the road (can you

understand this?)—what she dreamed   

was of disappearing into the seen

not of disappearing, lord, into the real—

And yes she could feel it in him already, up ahead, that wanting-to-turn-and-

cast-the-outline-over-her

by his glance,

sealing the edges down,

saying I know you from somewhere darling, don’t I,   

saying You’re the kind of woman who etcetera—

(Now the cypress are swaying) (Now the lake in the distance)   

(Now the view-from-above, the aerial attack of do you

remember?)—

now the glance reaching her shoreline wanting only to be recalled,   

now the glance reaching her shoreline wanting only to be taken in,

(somewhere the castle above the river)

(somewhere you holding this piece of paper)   

(what will you do next?) (—feel it beginning?)   

now she’s raising her eyes, as if pulled from above,

now she’s looking back into it, into the poison the beginning,

giving herself to it, looking back into the eyes,

feeling the dry soft grass beneath her feet for the first time now the mind

looking into that which sets the ___________ in motion and seeing in there

a doorway open nothing on either side

(a slight wind now around them, three notes from up the hill)

through which morning creeps and the first true notes—

For they were deep in the earth and what is possible swiftly took hold.

~ Jorie Graham

 **

Lenny Lianne:

It's hard to look at just one poem in Graham's book [The End of Beauty] as all seem connected.

As always in Graham, time is one of the themes. Here, she implies that every moment is already inside him (and us?) and waiting or impatient to be realized. And/or there is one eternal moment waiting to be realized and that one moment negates, or undermines, the concept of future.

As for Eurydice, she realizes he has this moment within him and goes forward to meet it. For her, the glance embodies being seen and her image taken within him. It embodies recognition and she reaches for that recognition by looking at him looking at her.

**

Oriana:

I think Lenny's analysis is very perceptive. Eurydice fully anticipates that annihilating glance.

What she dreamed, as she watched him turning with the bend in the road (can you

understand this?)—what she dreamed   

was of disappearing into the seen

not of disappearing, lord, into the real—

And yes she could feel it in him already, up ahead, that wanting-to-turn-and-

cast-the-outline-over-her

by his glance,

sealing the edges down,

saying I know you from somewhere darling, don’t I,   

saying You’re the kind of woman who etcetera—

and yes, Eurydice looks back into his eyes, since she wants to disappear into the seen (the perception, the literary story) rather than the real. I agree with Lenny that this could be understood as Eurydice's wanting Orpheus to carry her image within him, to seal herself within him forever, her face and body now indelible in his memory, the way she looks in the moment of his losing her. Rather than real life, she prefers this transformation into an eternal image.

Note that doorway that opens "nothing on either side" -- this could imply the void before birth and the void after dying. But myth and great art are immortal -- though constantly re-visioned.

A marvelous touch here is that the real is full of Hollywood-type clichés. This makes it easier for us to understand why Eurydice would reject it.

Note as well that the beginning of Graham's poem has in it the Rilkean impatience that seems to characterize Orpheus, his trying to anticipate the future (as well as reaching back into the past):

And his senses were as if divided:

while his sight ran ahead like a dog,
turned back, came and went again and again,
and waited at the next turn, positioned there –
his hearing was left behind like a scent.

. . .

This poem was written during a period when Graham was interested in the human desire for closure. We want something to end – we may even want the world to end – so we can see what the meaning was.

Another interesting aspect of the poem is the shifting point of view. We start with the glance being animated as a kind of tempting serpent, but eventually the main focus is Eurydice. It’s her active response, her decision to look back at Orpheus, even though it means her annihilation (though not in the realm of the story, “the seen”) that is the revision of the myth.

In Graham's third volume, The End of Beauty, the poem that precedes “Orpheus and Eurydice” is “Self-Portrait As Both Parties.” It’s yet another, indirect approach to the myth.

Imagine the silt and all that it was.

The grains that filter down to it through the open hand of the sunlight.

How its rays weaken down there. How when it comes to touch

that smoothest of girls the slow bottom of the river,

is it Orpheus as it glides on unharmed but really

turned back with its one long note that cannot

break down?

How would he bring her back again? She drifts up

in small hourglass-shaped cloud of silt where the sunlight touches,

up to where the current could take her,

up by the waist into the downstream motion again into the

hard sell, and for a moment even I can see

the garment of particles which would become her body,

swaying, almost within reason, this devil-of-the-bottom,

almost yoked again, almost quelling her weightlessness,

flirting here now with this handful of

mudfish his fingers touch silver . . .  But they gun

through the weeds, the weeds cannot hold her

who is all rancor, all valves now, all destination,

dizzy with wanting to sink back in,

thinning terribly in the holy separateness.

And though he would hold her up, this light all open hands,

seeking her edges, seeking to make her palpable again,

curling around her to find crevices by which to carry her up,

flaws by which to be himself arrested and made,

made whole, made sharp and limbed, a shape,

she cannot, the drowning is too kind,

the becoming of everything which each pore opens to again,

the possible which each momentary outline blurs into again,

too kind, too endlessly kind,

the silks of the bottom rubbing their vague hands

over her forehead, braiding her to

the sepulchral leisure, the body, the other place that is not minutes

~ from “Self-Portrait As Both Parties”

**

This is a Rilkean Eurydice, who wants to remain dead:

dizzy with wanting to sink back in,

thinning terribly in the holy separateness.

and

she cannot, the drowning is too kind,

the becoming of everything which each pore opens to again,

the possible which each momentary outline blurs into again,

too kind, too endlessly kind,

the silks of the bottom rubbing their vague hands

over her forehead, braiding her to

the sepulchral leisure, the body, the other place that is not minutes

-- I assume that "the body" is here the dead body, for which time doesn't exist. Or else it's the body as opposed to the mind; time exists for the mind.

Also, Eurydice can no longer be grasped. This is in line with the Ancient Greek conception of the shadows in the Underworld. Thus, Odysseus tries three times to embrace his dead mother, and cannot.

I shamelessly brought this poem in because I am enchanted by the beauty of it --

Imagine the silt and all that it was.

The grains that filter down to it through the open hand of the sunlight.

How its rays weaken down there. How when it comes to touch

that smoothest of girls the slow bottom of the river,

is it Orpheus as it glides on unharmed

-- and more gorgeous lines. The idea of sunlight being Orpheus is immensely original and poetic.

**

You may say, but what about women poets identifying with Eurydice, speaking in the persona of Eurydice? There is h.d.'s Eurydice ("At least I have the flowers of myself") and Linda Gregg's Eurydice. Those of you who participated in our discussion of Jack Gilbert will readily recognize that this is Eurydice-Linda speaking to Orpheus-Jack Gilbert. I find the line "You were always curious what love is like" especially revealing.

EURYDICE

I linger, knowing you are eager (having seen

the strange world where I live)

to return to your friends

wearing the bells and singing the songs

which are my mourning.

With the water in them, with their strange rhythms.

I know you will not take me back.

Will take me almost to the world,

but not out to house, color, leaves. 

Not to the sacred world that is so easy

for you my love.

Inside my mind and in my body is a darkness

which I am equal to, but my heart is not.

Yesterday you read the Troubadour poets

in the bathroom doorway

while I painted my eyes for the journey.

While I took tiredness away from my face,

you read of that singer in a garden

with the woman he swore to love forever.

You were always curious what love is like. 

Wanted to meet me, not bring me home.

Now you whistle, putting together

the new words, learning the songs

to tell the others how far you traveled for me.

Singing of my desire to live.

Oh, if you knew what you do not know

I could be in the world remembering this.

I did not cry as much in the darkness

as I will when we part in the dimness

near the opening which is the way in for you

and was the way out for me, my love.

                       

                                    ~ Linda Gregg, Too Bright to See

**

Here the biographical temptation is very strong, and we may start thinking, “Oh sure, Jack Gilbert messed up his first marriage with non-stop infidelities, his betrayals of her trust that he was committed to their life together, which led to divorce; his second wife, who in his poems seems devoid of her own personality [actually she was a sculptor], died, becoming Eurydice material for the troubadour's poems.”

We need to return to the poem itself, and surrender to its lyricism and its insight. Eurydice already knows how this will end: she will cry even more when they part because he does not really want to share his life and his world with her. At the same time, Eurydice’s last words are my love -- this is not h.d.’s angry Eurydice, but rather a sadder and wiser Eurydice who remains loving, but is perfectly resigned to what will happen.

And thus, by a commodious vicus we come back to Lenny’s comment that the end of the story is already contained in it long before it actually takes place. In fact one could argue that already the beginning contains the end; that's why Greek poets thought the first word was so important (e.g. the first word of the Iliad is rage). 

It is amazing to see the power of the myth to stay alive for thousands of years. Of course each writer (poet, composer, movie maker) sees it through a different lens. This means an eternal freshness and new attempts to grasp the mystery of life, love, and death.