127 36 6MB
English Pages 264 [250] Year 1991
Page ii Southern Illinois University Press Carbondale and Edwardsville
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Under the Spell of Orpheus The Persistence of a Myth in TwentiethCentury Art Judith E. Bernstock Foreword by Peter Selz
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Copyright © 1991 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Edited by Sally Master Designed by Katherine E. Swanson Production supervised by Natalia Nadraga Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Bemstock, Judith E., 1946 Under the spell of Orpheus: the persistence of a myth in twentieth century art /Judith E. Bernstock: foreword by Peter Selz. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Orpheus (Greek mythology)—Art. 2. Arts, Modem—20th century. I. Tide. NX652.03B47 1991 700—dc20 909655 ISBN 0809316595 CIP Excerpts from Guillaume Apollinaire, Le Bestiaire ou cortège d'Orphèe, Paris; Deplanche, 1911. Reprinted and translated by Lauren Shakely New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1977. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Excerpts from Rainer Maria Rilke, The Sonnets to Orpheus. Translated by Stephen Mitchell. Copyright © 1985 by Stephen Mitchell. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481984.
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Dedicated to my mother and father, with deep gratitude
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CONTENTS Plates
ix
Foreword
xi
Peter Selz
Preface
xiii
Introduction
xv
Part One. The Fulfillment of an Ego Ideal
1
1. Orpheus the PreWar Hero
7
2. Rainer Maria Rilke and the Artist as Transformer
25
3. The Lyre
34
4. The Orpheus of the Concert Hall
42
Part Two. The Critical SelfImage
47
5. The Childish and Irrational Dreamer
55
6. Powerlessness and Dependence
64
7. The Mask of the Imagination
70
Part Three. Death and Suffering
127
8. Constancy and Continuity
132
9. Liberation from Guilt
150
10. The Death of Orpheus
163
Conclusion
178
Notes
183
Select Bibliography
217
Index
228
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PLATES 1. Franz Marc. Orpheus with the Animals, 19078
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2. Eugene Delacroix. Orpheus Bringing Civilization, 183847
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3. Raoul Dufy. First woodcut of Orpheus in Guillaume Apollinaire, Le Bestiaire ou cortège d'Orphèe. 1911
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4. Raoul Dufy. Second woodcut of Orpheus in Le Bestiaire
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5. Raoul Dufy. Third woodcut of Orpheus in Le Bestiaire
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6. Raoul Dufy. Fourth woodcut of Orpheus in Le Bestiaire
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7. Giorgio de Chirico. Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire, 1914
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8. Cima da Conegliano. Orpheus Playing for the Animals, ca. 150510
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9. Paul Klee. Orpheus, 1929
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10. Paul Klee. The Sultry Garden, 1919
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11. William Tucker. Orpheus II, 1965
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12. William Tucker. Illustration for Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets I: ix, sonnet 1
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13. William Tucker. Illustration for sonnet 2
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14. William Tucker. Illustration for sonnet 5
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15. Raoul Dufy. Woodcut of a lyre in Le Bestiaire
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16. Barbara Hepworth. Theme on Electronics (Orpheus), 1956
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17. Barbara Hepworth. Curved Form (Orpheus), 1956
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18. Ossip Zadkine. Orpheus, 1948
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19. Andre * Breton. Orphèe, 1942
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20. Jacques Lipchitz. Joy of Orpheus, 1945
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21. Carl Milles. Orpheus Fountain, 192636
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22. Carl Milles. Preliminary study for Orpheus Fountain, 1926—36
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23. Richard Lippold. Orpheus and Apollo, 1966
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24. Max Beckmann. The Funeral of Eurydice, lithograph in Johannes Guthmann, Eurydikes Wiederkehr, 1909
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25. Max Beckmann. Orpheus at the Seashore, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr
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26. Max Beckmann. Orpheus Departing from His Mother, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr
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27. Max Beckmann. Orpheus in the Underworld Surrounded by Shadows, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr
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28. Max Beckmann. Orpheus Embracing Eurydice in the Underworld, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr
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29. Max Beckmann. Orpheus's Final Departure from His Mother, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr
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30. Max Beckmann. Resurrection, 1909
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31. Peter Paul Rubens. Orpheus and Eurydice in Hades, 163537
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32. Puvis de Chavannes. Orpheus, ca. 1883
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33. Edvard Munch. Maiden and Death, 1894
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34. Oskar Kokoschka. Etching of Eurydice Waiting in a Garden, 191718
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35. Oskar Kokoschka. Etching of Orpheus Beseeching Eurydice, 191718
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36. Oskar Kokoschka. Etching of The Furies, 191718
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37. Oskar Kokoschka. Etching of Orpheus Leads Eurydice through the Forest, 191718
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38. Oskar Kokoschka. Etching of Eurydice Collapses While Leaving the Underworld, 191718
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39. Oskar Kokoschka. Etching of Psyche Removes Cupid's Blindfold, 1917 18
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40. Oskar Kokoschka. Orpheus and Eurydice, 1918
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41. Isamu Noguchi. Mask of Orpheus, 1948
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42. Paul Klee. A Garden for Orpheus, 1926
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43. Cy Twombly. Veil of Orpheus, 1968
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44. Barnett Newman. Song of Orpheus, 1945
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45. Bert Samples. Dawn of Orpheus, 1981
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46. Robert Kushner. Orfeo, 1986
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47. Mark di Suvero. Che farò senza Eurydice, 1959
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48. Mark di Suvero. Hand, 1960
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49. Cy Twombly. Orpheus, 1975
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50. Cy Twombly. Orpheus, 1975
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51. Ethel Schwabacher. The Collision of the Andrea Doria and Stockholm or Che farò, 1956
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52. Ethel Schwabacher. Orpheus and Eurydice I, 1969
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53. Ethel Schwabacher. Orpheus and Eurydice II, 1969
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54. Pablo Picasso. Orpheus Killed by the Maenads, etching in Ovid, Les Métamorphoses, 1931
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55. Pablo Picasso. Orpheus Killed by the Maenads, first state, 1930
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56. Pablo Picasso. Orpheus Killed by the Maenads, second state, 1930
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57. André Masson. Orpheus, 193435
122
58. André Masson. Orpheus, 1934
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59. Earl Staley. Death of Orpheus 4, 1985
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60. Earl Staley. SelfPortrait, 1981
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61. Arnulf Rainer. Ecstasy in Black Fire (Orpheus), 197374
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FOREWORD Peter Selz The study of iconography has never been successfully applied to twentiethcentury art, and moreover it has not been a very fashionable endeavor in the last twenty years. Judith Bernstock, however, has made iconography in its broadest sense highly relevant to our time. "In the twentieth century, artists have made Orpheus the expression of their profound searches into their inner beings to explain their ideals, fears, selfdoubts, and situations," she remarks in the Conclusion. By focusing on the extremely rich and almost universal symbol of the Orphean myth, Bernstock comes to grips with a truly significant problem in the meaning of modern art. The author cuts right through all the clichés and isms and movements by centering on issues of content. Written by a person of considerable learning, this study ranges from discussions of Greek mythology to modern art and literature as well as philosophical and psychoanalytic texts. In addition to appealing to individuals interested in modern art, this book, as it deals with the relation of word to image, will engage readers concerned with current cultural inquiry. It is also a contribution to the ongoing discourse on the meaning of representations. Furthermore, it will be useful to individuals concerned with the psychology, of art. Intelligently organized and well written, it is also a pleasure to read.
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PREFACE Because I have always been interested in the "whys" of art history and not just the accumulation of facts or the purely perceptual dimensions of works of art, I have been fascinated by iconography and creative motivation. Years ago I explored the hidden meanings in Baroque paintings by Nicolas Poussin and Guercino and sculptures by Gianlorenzo Bernini. In approaching twentiethcentury art I became inspired by the persistence of certain classical myths as themes in the work of a broad range of artists. Initially, I conceived of an exhibition—perhaps to be held at Cornell's Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art—a complex assemblage of the work of major painters and sculptors who have used metaphors of classical mythology. Eventually this proved to be too enormous a project, but my research culminated in an article (to be published by Artibus et Historiae) and in the conception of this book. In focusing on one myth, the scale of the enterprise has, I hope, been brought within reason. Over the centuries, the Orpheus myth has been crucial to the definition of the artist in society. Artists of our own time have recognized both the affirmation of the creative spirit and the fatal vulnerability of their own place in society that the Orpheus myth symbolizes. Their perceptions have been manifested in a great variety of expressive means. From the optimistic illustrations by Raoul Duly for Apollinaire's Bestiaire to the anguishing torture depicted by André Masson and Mark di Suvero, artists have responded to the deep emotional resonance of the Orpheus myth. This volume contains only a sampling of some of the most fascinating images inspired by the reputed founder of the arts. Several people have helped me to unravel the mysteries of the representations of the Orpheus myth by twentiethcentury artists. Whenever I needed aid with the interpretation of a particular aspect of the Orpheus story, Frederick M. Ahl, Professor of Classics, Cornell University, was more than helpful both with information and with suggestions for the references. Jacob Stern, Professor of Classics, City University of New York, also came to my rescue frequently with essential interpretations and bibliographical assistance. In the writing of the book, three of my colleagues in the Department of the History of Art, Cornell University, deserve special mention. Esther G. Dotson, Professor Emeritus, carefully reviewed the manuscript and contributed invaluable editorial expertise. I am also grateful to Stanley J. O'Connor, Professor, who generously shared his observations on the theme, especially
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with regard to the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. Even though the Orpheus myth has not resulted in an exhibition, at least so far, Thomas W. Leavitt, Professor and Director of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, has graciously remained available for consultation. He read the manuscript at several stages, made many valuable suggestions, and was supportive throughout the entire project. It is my fondest hope that the interest and enthusiasm that these scholars have evinced will be shared by the readers of this book. If nothing else, it may serve as a signpost to further research in this fruitful field.
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INTRODUCTION From classical antiquity until the present day, Orpheus has enjoyed a considerably wider appeal among artists, writers, and musicians than most other ancient Greek heroes) 1One of the reasons for his continued strong attraction lies in the complexity of his myth, which has led some to revere him as a prophet and religious founder, others to admire him as a musician with magical powers, and still others to regard him as a tragic figure—as both lover and artist. The diversity in representations of Orpheus reflects not only differences in outlook among individual artists and in sociopolitical and cultural environment but also the very nature of the Orpheus myth. His origins, accomplishments, and death have been preserved in a variety of ancient versions. Although other mythological figures appear in modern art, the Orpheus myth has provided special opportunities for the twentiethcentury and earlier artists to explore their identity. This study therefore focuses on Orpheus as a unique symbol of twentiethcentury artists' perception of themselves, of their creations, their personal lives, and their roles in society. Orpheus had become the paradigmatic artist of extraordinary sensibility. Identification with Orpheus has fulfilled, consciously or unconsciously, the psychological needs of the twentiethcentury artist plagued by low selfesteem and inner fears and conflicts. The use of the Orpheus myth in art raises the question of the relationship between word and image. Considering the importance of the discussion about word and image in recent intellectual thought, a study of the twentiethcentury artist's selfidentification with the legendary originator of the poetic word is especially timely.2 The subject of the affinities between the arts, referred to with the formula ut pictura poesis in the Renaissance, has concerned artists and writers since antiquity. The legendary father of song was appropriated by visual artists as one of their spiritual ancestors in the Renaissance, when painting was elevated to the level of poetry, on the basis of comparisons that had been made by such venerable ancients as Aristotle (Poetics 1447a1448b), Plutarch (De gloria Atheniensium 3.347a), and Horace (Ars poetica 36165). As Rensselaer W. Lee indicates, however, despite Horace's expression ''ut pictura poesis''—as is painting so is poetry—he would scarcely have approved of the conclusions drawn by Renaissance theorists regarding the close relationships between the sister arts.3 According to Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, the painter and the poet
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have the divine inspiration that Plato described in the Phaedrus (24445, 265) and are alike in spirit because both represent the great deeds of heroes; painting most resembles poetry in their similar expression of passions. 4 Sir Joshua Reynolds later likened painting to poetry in their analogous interpretation of the dignity of human life.5 From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, critics believed that the poet resembled the painter chiefly in their power to describe or paint clear, vivid images of the external world. With art's departure from narrative, sequential form in the twentieth century, it could finally approximate the structure and effects of poetry. Representation was replaced by an aesthetic of abstract formal relationships and of subconscious imaging as the artist drew ever closer to the poet. Thus, writers and artists in the twentieth century express the kinship between the arts differently from their earlier counterparts. For instance, to JeanPaul Sartre, the poet is like the painter in that both make objects; the poet conceives of words as things and joins them as a painter does his pigments: "A distinction must be made: the realm of signs is prose; poetry is on the side of painting, sculpture, and music."6 As recently as 1988, an anthology, of modern poets' comparisons of their métier with that of painters appeared, further manifesting the current salience of the topic7 An example of modern artists' emulation of poets is seen in the aspiration of Surrealist painters to create a peinturepoésie. The tendency of modern painters and sculptors to associate themselves with the father of song recalls the ageold equation of the visual arts with music, another means of connecting the arts. Famous examples in the Renaissance include Leon Battista Alberti's theory on proportions and the musica of the Tempio Malatestiano. Several twentiethcentury artists have sought to attain the effects of music, in which the signified—feeling—has been said to overshadow and transcend the signifier, for "music is the form of feeling."8 Through forms that connote feeling rather than narrative, artists such as Barbara Hepworth, Paul Klee, Jacques Lipchitz, and Richard Lippold create visual semblances of music and its embodiment in the song and lyreplaying of Orpheus. Twentiethcentury images of Orpheus suggesting the legendary singer as the personification of the artist in general reflect the strengthening of the bonds linking art, poetry, and music in much contemporary thought. The mere attempt of visual artists to associate themselves with verbal artists in their focus on Orpheus suggests a continuing desire to be classified in the same category, as creators of both sign and symbol. Correspondingly, several artists discussed in this book—Raoul Duly, Paul Klee, and Cy Twombly—are intensely involved with the interrelation of linguistic and pictorial signs in their work; these artists may be considered to continue the theoretical traditions of the "sister arts" and ut pictura poesis, explored currently by aestheticians and semioticians. The frequent preoccupation with Orpheus's power to transcend
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time may indicate the visual artist's attempt to explore the temporal dimension, traditionally the exclusive domain of literature and music, and still stressed by many modern writers as the phenomenon distinguishing word from image. 9 Because the myth revolves around a legendary literary figure, it is appropriate that several significant similarities may be found between modern literary and visual images of Orpheus. The works of art chosen are distinguished from earlier interpretations of the myth by their parallels with twentiethcentury literary portrayals of Orpheus from which they often derive, as well as with recent philosophical and psychological speculation. The iconography of most of these works of art has heretofore not been considered. Throughout this study we should keep in mind that each twentiethcentury artist's treatment of the Orpheus myth reflects a particular theory of the arts, a search into the origins of artistic creation, and an exploration of the meanings of images.
Orpheus and Ancient Orphism Orpheus and the ancient Orphic religion are discussed in this book only to the extent that they are necessary for an understanding of the modern artist's conception of Orpheus. No attempt is made to examine in depth the broad philosophical implications of ancient or modern Orphism; these have been the subject of other studies. For the Greeks, Orpheus dates from one generation before the Trojan War. He was the son of a Muse, presumably Calliope; according to some, his father was Apollo, but to most it was the Thracian river god Oiagros.10 Orpheus could sing and play the lyre so sweetly that he could tame violent beasts and attract all of nature.11 He possessed the secrets of the underworld, where he went in quest of his wife, Eurydice, who had died prematurely of a snakebite. Although he succeeded with his song in persuading the infernal gods to allow him to lead his wife up to the open air, he failed to follow the divine injunction (the law of Persephone) against looking back at her.12 After the second loss of his wife, he shunned women and even became the originator of homosexual love, at least among the Thracians.13 The most established tradition makes him the fatal victim of the Thracian women, who in a Bacchic frenzy murdered him either for rejecting them or for enticing away their husbands; alternatively, Dionysos may have sent his savage maenads to punish Orpheus for worshipping Apollo.14 According to the most widely accepted version of the sacrificial murder (the sparagmós), the body of Orpheus was completely dismembered, and his head and lyre were thrown into the river Hebros; his head miraculously continued to sing and the lyre to play as they floated to Lesbos. There the head was buried in the shrine of Dionysos, and the lyre was enshrined in
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the temple of Apollo. The head achieved renown as a giver of oracles until a jealous Apollo suppressed it.
According to another early Greek version of the myth, Orpheus was victorious in retrieving his wife from the underworld; this successful resolution was later perpetuated in medieval interpretations of the myth.16 Since the Renaissance, however, the Roman version of the myth has tended to dominate literary and artistic images of it. The Romans combined what had been two separate Greek legends—one of Orpheus's magical powers as a musician, the other of his descent into the underworld to fetch his wife (the katábasis). They also enriched the myth with the new theme of romantic love: Virgil introduced "the unhappy ending" (Georgics 4.453527) and Ovid further sentimentalized the story (Metamorphoses 10.185, 11.166). Because of the association between Greek music and poetry (invariably sung), the ancient Greeks thought of Orpheus as a poet as well as a musician and a singer, and even as the inventor of writing and all the arts. He was a theologos, who sang of the gods and the origins of all things. The magical and mystical powers of his music caused people to regard him as the founder of all the mysteries and as the introducer of religious rites and writings (teletai) into Greece.17 Recently discovered written sources throw light on the ambiguous and controversial ancient Orphic cult. These include: gold leaves from Hipponion with verses offering esoteric knowledge (revelation), the Derveni Papyrus with a theogoniccosmogonic poem supposedly by Orpheus, and graffiti from Olbia suggesting the existence of Orphikoi, probably a community, in the fifth century B.C.18 Other poems traditionally attributed to Orpheus (Orphica) were believed even by some ancient authors to be by Onomacritus, convicted of forgery for editing the Oracles of Musaios in Athens (ca. 520 B.C.) and also the redactor or forger of Homerica.19 The Orphica provided a literature in a field until then dominated by ritual and the spoken word of myth. Central to Orphic myth is the story of the slaying of Dionysos, the young child of Zeus and Persephone, by the Titans. These not only tore to pieces, but also boiled, roasted, and then ate him. From the soot of the Titans, who were burned in retribution by Zeus's thunderbolt, man emerged, and from the collected remains of the child, Dionysos rose again. Only lifelong purity could eradicate man's guilt for the crime of his Titan ancestors. Abstinence from everything in which there was soul and sexual abstinence were demanded of the Orphics. Orpheus evidently preached a strict way of life regulated by prohibitions through which purification could be achieved. Plato (Cratylus 400c) attributed to Orpheus and his followers a doctrine that explains their renunciations: the soul must "suffer punishment" and be
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enclosed in the body, which both imprisons and protects the soul until it "has paid what is due." Controversies about Orphism concern the extent to which it was a unified spiritual cult or sect based on the Dionysos myth and the doctrines of immortality and transmigration of the soul later developed by Plato. The doctrine of transmigration of souls appeared in Greece toward the end of the sixth century B.C. and was associated with both Orpheus and Pythagoras. This tenet assumes that a soul exists in every man and animal and preserves its own identity independently of the body that passes away. Herodotus (2.123) states that the soul must wander through the cosmos and be drawn in with the breath of a newly born creature; Plato (Laws 87ode) tells us that the doctrine of transmigration was presented in the mysteries (teletai), where it had strong believers. Aristotle (On the Soul 410b29) relates that "in the socalled Orphic poems" a soul, borne upon the winds from out of the universe ("the whole"), enters a living creature with its first breath; he also clearly knew Pythagorean myths indicating that ''any soul can enter any body." A satirical poem by Xenophanes attributes to Pythagoras the belief that a human soul can exist in a dog. 20 Although their explanations of the world differ, many Orphic and Pythagorean ideas and practices are too close to be disentangled. Orphic and Pythagorean doctrines of metempsychosis coincided, as did their emphases on abstinence and purification. A moral dualism underlies both Pythagoreanism and Orphism: the good part of the world is represented by such principles as form, limit, light, and the universe, which reveals the harmony and order that when contemplated become implanted in the human soul. PrePlatonic legends even have Pythagoras prove his doctrine of immortality by a descent into the underworld; Pythagoras regarded Orpheus as his chief patron, because experiments in music underlay Pythagoras's understanding of numerical ratios and he presumably had learned his number theology from Orpheus. 21Music's position of primacy in Pythagoreanism is clear in the conception of the universe as a harmonia. Most Pythagoreans adhered to a vegetarian diet as a form of renunciation of the cannibalism of the citystate. Renunciation of the world by the Orphics in their diet, another rejection of the citystate's values and practices, was based on one of Orpheus's most important teachings: "to abstain from murders" (phonoi), that is, to reject the tradition of blood sacrifice and a meat diet. Like the Pythagoreans, the Orphics viewed as cannibals those who consumed meat and did not practice the Orphic life, neglecting to purify the divine element imprisoned in man by the Titans and to bridge the gap between man and the gods opened up by the bloody sacrifice of Dionysos. Scholars disagree regarding the origins of the precept not to roast boiled meat. According to
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Marcel Detienne, it was the rule of certain of Pythagoras's disciples, distinguishing them from the Orphics; according to Walter Burkert, it was the dictate of the Orphics. 22 Because it was to consist of only burden and punishment, the Orphic life probably appealed to those already oppressed, who could find meaning in their hardships. Orphic and Pythagorean purity have been interpreted as subversive protests against the citystate, "transcendence by the upper route," as opposed to Dionysiac and Cynic "transcendence by the lower." 23 The tendency of at least one scholar to ascribe certain characteristics of pythagoreanism to ancient Orphism in a discussion of the twentiethcentury artistic movement known as Orphism is understandable, 24 for the relationship between Pythagoreanism and Orphism is also controversial, complex, and ambiguous. Some scholars have proposed that Orphic rites were really Egyptian and Pythagorean or that the Orphics and Pythagoreans formed a single group called by both names; others have regarded the Pythagoreans as an Orphic sect; it has also been suggested that the two were distinct but very similar sects and, finally, that the ancients considered Orphism and Pythagoreanism to be two aspects of one philosophicreligious system. 25 Two schools of Orphica have been proposed, one concentrating on the bestowal of culture found in the Demeter myth and Eleusinian mysteries, the other an Italian, Pythagorean school focusing on the doctrine of transmigration of souls. 26 As the extant ancient evidence of the historicity of Orpheus postdates his legendary, lifetime and is itself replete with inconsistencies and contradictions, there is much controversy regarding his identity. The possible Egyptian origins of Orphism would explain the statements of several ancient writers that Orpheus completed his education in Egypt and brought Egyptian mysteries to Greece. 27 Virgil (Georgics 4) later linked the myth of Orpheus with the bugonia, identified as a basic custom of the Egyptians. Because of his civilized character, his soothing music on the lyre, and his homosexuality, many have emphasized the closeness of Orpheus to Apollo. The Orphic concept of music was based on the instrument of Apollo, as well as on the voice and a concern with enchantment and calm. Considering the Orphic interest in the purification of the soul and its reliance on asceticism, the natural concomitant in music was a harmonic science, more soothing than rapturous Dionysiac music and dance. 28 The prominence of the Dionysos myth in Orpheus's teachings, however, his own descent into the underworld and return from it, and his death by dismemberment have linked Orpheus with Dionysos. The name Orpheus, which means "obscure" in Greek, is related to the "nocturnal" Dionysos, and is appropriate for a hero known for his journey into the underworld. 29 Nevertheless, Orpheus was murdered by followers of Dionysos, and his oracle
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was suppressed by Apollo. He therefore remains an ambiguous figure, similar to both gods but separate from them. He has been considered variously a BronzeAge Mycenaean shaman, a Thracian priest of Apollo who founded a Bacchic religion reformed with certain Apolline features, and a fictional figure. 30 Even Ovid confuses, or at least alludes to the confusion regarding Orpheus's allegiance, by referring to him first as Apollo's minstrel (Metamorphoses 11.10) and then as the minstrel of Bacchus's mysteries (11.6971). The Greek religion makes a basic contrast between the Olympian religion of the heavens, represented by Apollo, and the chthonic religion of the earth, represented by Dionysos. The interest of the Orphics in Apollo and Dionysos was dramatized by Aeschylus in a lost play, the Bassarae, in which Orpheus is portrayed as a devotee of the sun (Apollo), angering Dionysos, who sends his maenads to murder Orpheus. 31 The early Greeks conceived of the Olympians as bright/white and the chthonians as dark/black. 32 Like Orpheus's relationship with Dionysos, the interrelationship of the Bacchic mysteries and the Orphic movement is much debated. Starting in the time of Herodotus (ca. 430 B.C.), the Orphic religion was identified with the Dionysiac. In the Phaedrus (265b), Plato has Dionysos preside over teletai that effect liberation from ancient guilt and better hopes for the next world and are performed according to the poems of Orpheus33 Euripides (Hippolytus 95254) mentions people who are vegetarians, celebrate Bacchic rites, and consider Orpheus their master. The Orphic hymns are now regarded as part of the Dionysiac mysteries; the Hipponion lamella identifies the famous gold plates generally called Orphic as Bacchic; Orphic and Bacchic are alike in their concern for burial and the afterlife and the myth of Dionysos Zagreus. Dionysiac omophagy may be seen as the homologue of Orphic vegetarianism in that both rejected the system of values wedded to blood sacrifice. Yet as a savage god who ate human flesh and, consequently, identifiable with bloodshed, Dionysos is markedly opposed to the pure Orphic life. Dionysos is a complex figure, a magician capable of taking diverse forms, and when reborn was considered to have inaugurated the reign of refound unity. Orphism makes a strong distinction between the golden age Dionysos, sovereign of refound unity, and the bestial deity of omophagy. Vestiges of the late antique conception of Orphism remain in much later thought, especially the insistence on the unity and singleness of the cosmos, which the ancients considered to be an Orphic concept. Evidently, in Orphic thought, men appeared in an originally perfect world, but then were condemned to individual existence. The dismemberment of Dionysos became part of Platonic metaphysics with Plato's Timaeus (35a), according to which the world soul results from mixing an undivided and a divided principle with intermediate being. Among later Neoplatonists, Dionysos represents the
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divine principle divided up into the real bodies in this world to be reassembled and restored to the primordial unity. According to a story dating from the third century B.C., Orpheus was a monotheist and, hence, could be used by Hellenistic Jews and early Christians to advance their respective causes. 34 The Testament (Diatheke) of Orpheus, an Alexandrian poem, was attributed to Orpheus, who was regarded as the son of Moses and as a theologian. Of the Christian apologists, Clement of Alexandria was the most intrigued with Orpheus. Orpheus served as the model for the Good Shepherd in late antique art and soon was identified with Christ on a more profound level. Medieval allegorists, following the lead of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, revived an interest in Eurydice by including her in their commentaries as reason, the complement to passion (Orpheus) in man's soul. By the late Middle Ages, the myth had evolved into a courtly romance extant in two versions, Sir Orfeo and Robert Henryson's narrative poem Orpheus and Eurydice. Marsilio Ficino provides the key to an understanding of the early Renaissance conception of Orpheus. 35 In 1462 he translated the socalled Orphic hymns from Greek into Latin. Ficino based his Neoplatonic theologh, and musical cosmology on the persona of Orpheus, who represented to him man striving to comprehend the order of the universe; Orpheus was an extraordinary poet possessing all four furores—poetic, religious, prophetic, and amorous. 36 Because Platonic love manifested unity with God, Ficino downplayed Orpheus's amorous failure. Angelo Poliziano's Orfeo (1480), a pastoral devoid of polemical or allegorical content, was unusual in its time but influential later in the sixteenth century. Orpheus makes his last appearance as a Platonic ideal in Francesco Patrizi's treatise Della Poetica, which refuted Aristotle's mimetic theory and viewed the singer as possessed with divine inspiration and symbolic of the unity of art and religion. By the late sixteenth century, when the concept of tragedy had been explored and love was detached from Platonic idealism, Orpheus was regarded as both a great artist and a tragic figure, and his experience with Eurydice had acquired positive connotations. From his role in the Renaissance as civilizer and symbol of the bonds linking man's achievements and institutions and man with nature, Orpheus evolved into an emblem of harmonious order in the universe—as well as of the "impatience of philosophy"—for seventeenthcentury rationalists such as Francis Bacon. 37 From the eighteenth through the early twentieth century, Orpheus maintained a prominent position in esoteric writings. The Romantic quest for reunification of the cosmos was evident in the strong attraction of several writers to a magical Orpheus with marked gnostic flavor; to the literary symbolists and their twentiethcentury descendants (most notably Rainer Ma
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ria Rilke), Orpheus represented both the suffering artist and the poet able to rediscover unity through a dialectical scheme in which opposites coincide. The traditional blend of Apollonian and Dionysian elements in the character of Orpheus continues in representations of him by twentiethcentury artists, who may suggest his resemblance to one god or the other or a fusion of them. Several artists reflect the impact of Friedrich Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, stating a dichotomy between Apollonian harmony and restraint and Dionysian drunken frenzy and arguing that a fusion of the Apollonian and Dionysian characterized the best Greek tragedy. 38 The ancient Greek contrast between Olympian and chthonian is extended by Nietzsche and appears in the light and dark symbolism that characterizes many twentiethcentury representations of Orpheus, evoking Apollonian and Dionysian associations, respectively. M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern propose that Nietzsche conflated Dionysiac with Orphic characteristics, not distinguishing between the cult of Dionysos and Orphism and deriving his ideas about mysteries and the Dionysos myth from the Orphics; they remark that Nietzsche's Dionysiac is really like "a good Orphic" in his feeling of a sense of "oneness with his neighbor, as if experiencing 'the mysterious primordial unity' itself." 39 Nietzsche later defined "the mystery doctrine of tragedy'' as "the fundamental knowledge of the oneness of everything existent, the conception of individuation as the primal cause of evil, and of art as the joyous hope that the spell of individuation may be broken in augury of a restored oneness." 40 The basis of this doctrine is "the problem of the one and the many,'' of great concern to the Greeks of the sixth century B.C., as demonstrated by the Orphic myth of the dismemberment and rebirth of Dionysos. 41
Orpheus in TwentiethCentury Art Modern representations of Orpheus tend to fall into two major categories: those that idealize him and those that focus on his weakness. The larger group encompasses works whose origins ultimately may be traced to the early Greek conception of Orpheus as a figure of peace and calm, a musician whose notes could move and tame all of nature, as well as a founder of a religious cult. He becomes a humanist champion as the civilizer of nature and as the representative of suffering multitudes. The second category follows an aspect that was emphasized in the Roman version of the myth, the conception of Orpheus as a flawed and fallible artist/lover. Certain works reveal an inevitable overlap of the two traditions, just as Virgil and Ovid themselves combined their descriptions of Orpheus's magical powers as a musician with their accounts of his tragic fate, ultimately the result of weaknesses in his character. Orpheus's murder by the Thracian women also receives different interpre
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tations. To some it indicates the superiority of the female principle, to others it represents the torments imposed upon humanity by oppressive regimes. Most of those who concentrate on the tragedy of Orpheus find it a means, perhaps unconsciously, of externalizing their own psychosexual conflicts. The myth of Orpheus has provided twentiethcentury artists and writers with a rich reservoir of symbols through which to express their own aesthetic ideals and their nostalgia for purity and to project their own tragic situations. It becomes the complicated story of the artist. Certain threads link many twentiethcentury images of Orpheus. Every artist who portrays him reveals some type of selfidentification with him, sometimes only through the artist's love of music and poetry, but often in more extensive, explicit, and complex ways. Modern portrayals focusing on the tradition of Orpheus's purity and transforming powers imply the artists' hopes for selfpurification and remaking. Through Orpheus they express their own needs for some form of psychological therapy. To some, Orpheus's return to life from death and his revelation of the beauty in life represent an affirmation of their own desires to live life to its fullest, whereas others condemn his headlong plunge into death and darkness as an avoidance of man's responsibility and right to rejoice in life. Continuing the early Greek conception of Orpheus as the revealer of mysteries, the possessor of the keys to the underworld, artists who seek to learn the inner truths of things and to penetrate the secrets of nature and the cosmos, the mysteries of life, often look to Orpheus as a guide. By examining their images of Orpheus in conjunction with biographical data and documented statements of their views of the artist, it is possible to see how modern artists' images of Orpheus constitute projections of their own selfconcepts. The psychological bonds proposed in this book between the ancient singer and the twentiethcentury artist may serve to corroborate Freud's and Jung's use of myth as a key to the continuity in the unconscious from primitive to modern humanity. The complex narrative of the myth and the varied implications of the Orphic tradition have invited artists to see in Orpheus the search for unity with nature, the descent into the unconscious as a kind of death, the hope of renewal and rebirth, the problematic relation of the sexes, the conflict or fusion of Dionysiac and Apollonian principles, the power of art to transform nature or the continuity of art against the transience of human life—fundamental issues confronted by the artist and by humanity in general. The particular use artists make of the Orpheus myth may fulfill their conscious or unconscious needs. It has therefore seemed useful to cite biographical factors that have formed or that reveal the artist's personality. I have assumed, for purposes of analysis and comparison, a basically Freudian model of the personality: the
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conscious and unconscious self in relation to structures of authority and control embodied first in the parent and then in society. This study is divided into three parts focusing on different aspects of the myth of Orpheus that have been treated most fully and frequently by modern artists. The first part considers glorifications of Orpheus's powers of metamorphosis, equated generally with the artist's ability to transform a harsh and corrupt reality through the powers of his imagination into an ideal world of beauty, feeling, and truth. Several of these artists seek to immerse themselves in the rhythms and unity of nature, in their attempts to become integrated with the universe, transcending their isolated positions in society. These artists imply that the ideal artist is in control of his world. The second part deals with a more critical view of Orpheus, the artist, as an emotional and unrealistic dreamer, helpless and at the mercy of women. He reflects the modern artist's acknowledgment of feelings of inadequacy, lack of control over himself and his environment. Through Orpheus the artist projects his own fear that his imagination of an ideal world may deceive him. Hence, as Herbert Marcuse writes, images "of the Orphic [and narcissistic] world are essentially unreal and unrealistic. They designate an 'impossible' attitude and existence." 42 Finally, the third part considers the significance of death and suffering in the myth, and its appeal to twentiethcentury artists obsessed with death and seeking reassurance of the continuity of existence and of the possibility of regression and of liberation from time and guilt. Among the artists who emphasize this aspect of the myth, several regard death as a crucial obstacle to be overcome before creativity can flourish—a descent into the depths of despair that will result in the liberation of creativity. Orpheus's descent into the underworld and return, his bodily dismemberment but spiritual immortality through his song exemplify the cycle of life and provide hope of overcoming mortal transience. Certain artists use the myth of Orpheus to demonstrate the ageold conflict between male and female and the impossibility of happiness in love. Others emphasize the need of the artist to be rid of woman, an obstacle to his creativity. Woman not only ultimately kills Orpheus, but woman had also lured him toward death initially. On the other hand, Orpheus's musical success as a homosexual has been seen as exposing the need for the male artist to merge with the female principle if he is to become fully creative. All these outlooks generally represent a projection of the artist's own feelings about his sexual nature.
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PART ONE THE FULFILLMENT OF AN EGO IDEAL
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Since antiquity, Orpheus has been venerated for the spiritual power by which he could alter mortal things. Like Pygmalion, whose story he sings, he can breathe life into the inanimate. 1 To Orpheus, as to Pygmalion, the gods conceded impossible wishes: Orpheus was to return the dead Eurydice to life, Pygmalion to bring life to a statue. This is the sense in which Ovid in the Metamorphoses gave prominence to the story of Pygmalion as an allegory of the artist, of his own powers as a poet. The transforming powers of Orpheus are those of the artist: the sonorous magic of tone, the soothing effect of music acting like a hypnotic force, an enchantment, drawing attention to itself and causing a suspension of the will. 2 Orpheus, therefore, achieves what the visual artist attempts—to control the world through his art. 3 As Orpheus transforms the nature that he attracts by his song, the artist remakes the world that he takes in and possesses with his eyes. For several artists and writers, Orpheus represents the creative individual who can remake even himself. He personifies the productive artist whose attempt at a recreation of himself succeeds in effecting an ideologically constructed ego, unlike the thwarted neurotic who does not get beyond the destructive preliminary work in remaking his ego. 4 Orpheus thus embodies the individual who realizes his desire to control his existence, the assertive, independent person with a healthy selfconcept. For the artists discussed in this section Orpheus personifies the fulfillment of the demands of their higher nature, in Freud's terms, the ego ideal or the superego. 5 Artists who glorify Orpheus as a transformer of the physical into the spiritual and as a revealer of truth tend to be of two types: those who (unconsciously) enhance their low selfesteem by identification with a figure whom they believe capable, unlike themselves, of satisfying their ego ideal; and those who identify with him as a model of success in achieving the goals set for them by their ego ideal and that they believe themselves capable of attaining in the future. Orpheus represents the ideal self held out before these artists by their superego; those artists who regard themselves as able to reach the ideal self feel in control of their worlds and evince self respect when likening themselves to Orpheus. As one might expect, artists in this section who enhance their selfesteem through identification with Orpheus as the para
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digmatic artist do not seem concerned with his failures in love (as are the artists discussed in parts 2 and 3), and focus exclusively on an idealization of his achievements. Stéphane Mallarmé wrote that the Orphic explanation of the universe, the sole duty of the poet, was the perfect revelation of truth and beauty. 6 Throughout the twentieth century, Mallarmé's image of the poet's task had a lasting effect on images of Orpheus, for it reflected the goals of artists themselves. Orpheus is the artist whose job and privilege are not only to reveal beauty, but also to transform into beauty whatever is hostile or ugly, creating a whole new beautiful world. Artists' glorifications of Orpheus's transforming powers undoubtedly celebrate the ability of the artist's imagination to create a new reality—a celebration of the imagination rooted in preRomantic and Romantic theory and criticism. 7 Artists and writers have regarded Orpheus as the exemplar of the creative individual's power to shape an idyllic environment out of his present prosaic, materialistic one; he is the supreme embodiment of their own humanistic hopes to be transformers of an exhausted and meaningless existence. Thus, in 1932 the American avantgarde newspaper Transition advocated the establishment of an "International Workshop for Orphic Creation" and the formation of a new mythological reality. 8 Orpheus's incantatory powers offered an escape from the bitter truths of the depression and later reinforced the emerging positive mood of the New Deal. Twentiethcentury avantgarde artists have continually emphasized the primacy of the spiritual and the artist's ability to create a world of pure feeling, absolutizing the human spirit. 9 To individuals of this bent, Orpheus is the ideal artist capable of metamorphosing the visible into the transcendent; correspondingly, these artists themselves—for example, William Tucker and Richard Lippold—generally favor a reductive, abstract form, in which Orpheus (as well as other subjects) appears purified and liberated from the encumbrances of representation with its connotations of the physical and material. Although they may not refer consciously to ancient Orphism, its heritage is clear among these artists: its emphasis on spirituality, purification of the soul and of life in general through asceticism, freedom from contamination of the body, a source of evil. It has been suggested that the artist who denies the outside world in creating a pure construction of the spirit reveals a selfreflexive struggle of the spirit for supremacy and a resort to anxious defensive processes, such as repression, exalting mind and spirit over physical reality; 10 a strong emotional ambivalence often underlies the strain of
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idealism in modern art that projects a new spirituality. For several twentiethcentury artists, repression, arising from the conflict between libidinal instinctual impulses and cultural and ethical ideas may play a part in the idealization of Orpheus. On the other hand, since the period of romanticism, Orpheus has appealed to some artists as the embodiment of metaphysical curiosity, the hero who overcame every obstacle in pursuit of his vision of truth, the legendary founder of mystery religions who revealed cosmic secrets in his songs about the gods and the creation of the world. This view is in ironic contrast to Plato's condemnation of Orpheus in the Symposium (179d) as a poetmagician who obtained entry to the underworld by trickery. Already in the sixth century B.C., however, the idea of union with the divine as man's end appeared in European consciousness, with the Orphic mysteries established in Greece and Southern Italy. 11 Symbols and rituals of the ancient mysteries intended a lifting of consciousness to an illuminated state—the attainment of an exalted consciousness of oneness with the absolute, an apprehension of the one reality. Modern artists and writers concerned with discovering the invisible, hidden side of things have identified with Orpheus as the sacred and visionary poetguide of humanity, prototype of the gnostic quest, or the search for the absolute. 12 The language of his understanding of the mysteries of nature, "the codewriting" of nature, was sought by Friedrich Novalis, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and later by Franz Marc, Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Klee, and Barnett Newman. Such artists and writers as Marc and Jean Anouilh, have equated him with truth piercing through the lie of appearances; he has symbolized their own attempts to transcend a deceptive reality. 13 Some explore the mystical traditions, Christian and Eastern as well as Orphic, in seeking to rediscover the lost power of Orpheus, the singer with magic in his notes, who could metamorphose nature by his art. Novalis and Rimbaud looked to the occult and to the rich symbolic literature of Eastern thought for Orpheuslike access to the secrets of nature and to direct knowledge of the spiritual world. 14 The truth that Orpheus reveals for Robert Kushner is tied closely to Eastern mystical ideas that he has admired since a trip to Iran in 1974. He sees Orpheus and angels as alike in their spirituality and as "links from this plane to another." 15 Both are guides: "Angels tell us that perfection is possible, and Orpheus tells us that there is beauty.'' Thus, Kushner presents a modern version of Mallarmé's Orphic explanation of the universe as the perfect revelation of truth and beauty.
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When Orpheus magically calmed nature with his music he made it sweet and gentle, like himself, and was intrinsically united with it. Artists such as Marc and Jacques Lipchitz seeking unification with nature as a way out of the isolation of the self in modern society exalt Orpheus's powers of transformation, projecting their desired communion with nature through the musician who, as in Virgil's fourth Georgic (50614), communicated with the nature that he tamed. As Marcuse remarks, the image of Orpheus is one of joy, fulfillment, and a "liberation from time which unites man with god and man with nature." 16 These artists may seek an escape from individuation and a return in a modernized and much modified form to the oneness, the primordial unity of the cosmos, as in the teachings ascribed to Orpheus; their concern to merge their spirits with the rhythms of nature reflect ultimately their heritage from Orphic/Pythagorean beliefs in the harmonia of the universe, a natural order in the interrelation of man and his world. Rhythm and number, musical and mathematical principles of order, control the relationship between soul and body and explain Orpheus's command over nature. Like Virgil's Orpheus, who dwells in a nature with laws indifferent to human life and who, therefore, needs to create an ideal and dynamic order in nature through his art, 17 the modern Orpheus uses his art to tame his world, albeit an urban, industrialized one. Yet, even the most idealized images of Orpheus are pervaded by a sense of futility, a realization that his metamorphoses are transitory and artificial, like the artifice of the artist; beauty is subject to the harmful effects of society. The same artists who extol the ability of Orpheus the artist to change the physical into a transcendent spirituality simultaneously fight against the inevitable fragmentation and destruction by time and society of all that is beautiful. The sense of futility may also reflect the artist's awareness of his real inability to attain the ideal self embodied in Orpheus. The affirmations of modern poets who emulate Orpheus are similarly paradoxical; even in their aspirations to an ideal transmutation of reality, such writers as Mallarmé, Rilke, and Blanchot are attracted to an illusory or "null" center, like their romantic predecessor Novalis, who embraced nocturnal powers. 18
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1 Orpheus the PreWar Hero Franz Marc Franz Marc's lost painting Orpheus with the Animals (19078), intended as a model for a tapestry and preserved in a later copy, may be related to his strong love for animals and empathy with them (plate 1). 1 He evidently identified with the musician who civilized and communicated with animals, the prophet who protected them by his central teaching of abstinence from blood sacrifice and from eating meat. Suffering from one of the severe melancholic depressions that had overcome him starting in 1903, Marc fled to Paris alone on his wedding night in April 1907; like Orpheus he was separated from his wife shortly after his marriage, although by his own choice. Marc was trying to escape a painful reality, his feelings of insufficiency and guilt over hostility toward a highly critical father. He would later write: "At that time, death avoided me, not I it." 2 In paintings such as The Dead Sparrow (1905) Marc exposed both inexpressible fears and subconscious longings for death. 3 Melancholic and attracted to death, like Orpheus Marc was also a poet, and the year before designing a tapestry of the legendary hero, wrote, "One must be by nature poetic and creative in order to be redeemed through poetry." 4 Having tried in vain to win the love and approval of his father in reality, it is not surprising that Marc seems to strive, at least unconsciously, to
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enhance his selfesteem by identifying himself with the legendary singer to whom all of nature flocked. Marc's Orpheus with the Animals provides an early example of the twentiethcentury modernization of an ageold theme to suit the artist's needs. The ancient Greek belief that Orpheus "could move both the beasts and the trees by his song" (Diodorus Siculus 4.25), immortalized in the Metamorphoses (11.12) and Georgics (4.510), was a favorite subject in art of the late antique and early, Christian periods, revived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 5 It traditionally demonstrates the magical powers of the singer/poet to charm, dominate, and transform the personalities of his listeners. The power of Orpheus's music to tame the wildest of beasts was often interpreted, to quote Victor Hugo, as a taming of "evil instincts, the tigers which are in man." 6 On the left side of Marc's design, a striding and lyreplaying Orpheus attracts with his music a variety of animals, including the lions that the ancients describe and a great egret, symbolizing the flocks of birds that, according to tradition, flew above him. In late 1907, Marc would have been especially inspired by Orpheus's ability to charm wild beasts, for at that time he began what would be his lifelong preoccupation, the study of the spiritual world of animals and of their relationships to humans. Marc's image reflects his close observations in the Berlin zoological gardens during the fall of 1907 and then at the zoological collection in Munich. Marc's tapestry design represents the beginning of his departure from naturalistic to "composed" ("komponiert") painting, which functions as an organism with its own laws. 7 Rhythm is already the basic device unifying his composition: the horizontal contours of the backs of the foreground animals provide a stable base for the active motions of the animals at the right and the abrupt foreshortenings and strong accents in the center; the curving and diagonal lines that unify the whole show Marc advancing in the direction of a twodimensional art. The image reflects as well the strong impression of his trip to Paris in the spring of 1907, when he sensed a deep affinity with Eugene Delacroix, whose largest and most famous mural decorations in the Palais Bourbon (183847; plate 2) he would surely have seen. 8 Several features in Marc's composition suggest that he recalls and transforms Delacroix's Orpheus Bringing Civilization: the horizontal format, the profile view (in reverse) of two animals at the right, the flattening of space by flying creatures, and the contrapposto pose of the hero (also in reverse and clearly more awkward)—with one arm and one leg forward as he strums on his lyre, and especially the energetic curvilinear rhythms. That Marc should turn to Orpheus and possibly also to Delacroix's Orpheus is significant at this transitional point in his career. Beginning in the fall of 1907, he began to realize a joyous meaning in the harmony and unity of all
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nature. He wrote on 8 December 1908, ''I am attempting to enhance my sensibility for the organic rhythm that I feel is in all things, and I am trying to feel pantheistically the rapture of the flow of the 'blood' in nature, in the trees, in the animals, in the air." 9 Through compositional devices of parallelism and vibrations of lines he expresses visually his participation in the organic rhythm of nature, like Delacroix and other French artists. Marc's empathy with the rhythm of nature was part of his heritage from Romanticism, especially from his compatriot Novalis, who had envisaged a merging of man's soul with the outer world. In addition, Novalis identified with Orpheus more fully than any other nineteenthcentury writer. 10 As early as 1898, Marc's library included the complete works of Novalis. He also read avidly in Nietzsche's writings of the oneness of the cosmos, an idea that he found quite congenial. An exhibition in Berlin in 1906 of German painting from 1775 to 1875, featuring the work of Caspar David Friedrich and Philipp Otto Runge, undoubtedly at least partly inspired or reinforced the direction in which Marc was moving. Marc's pantheistic empathy with the vibrations and pulsations of nature and his heightened sensibility for the organic rhythm uniting all things reveals, ultimately, his inheritance from ancient Orphic/Pythagorean thought. His belief in the possibility of inhabiting the souls of animals in order to achieve the purest and truest states of being and thereby unite with the primal truths of nature and God, calls to mind the Orphic concept of transmigration, continued by Plato, according to which a single world soul pluralizes itself in animals; the soul of a human could be reborn in a beast and then rise again to man. 11 Although Marc may not have been aware of this Orphic tenet, his ideas are evidence that the beliefs traditionally attributed to the Orphics survive in modified form into the twentieth century. Animals represented a spiritual attitude to Marc; in his early paintings even typically wild creatures are placid and domesticated. His spiritualization of animals, which necessitated an "animalization" of his art, clearly suggests an affinity with Orpheus, who also humanized wild beasts. Animals were metaphors of the "ultimate truths" of a "quasireligious" character that Marc wanted to convey. His increasing preoccupation with the expression of the spirit, the feeling, and the secret soul in things reflects the view he articulated in 1911 that art should create ''symbols for the altars of a new spiritual religion." 12 It seems plausible, therefore, that several drawings dating from 1902 to 1908 of a shepherd with his flock, symbolic of Christ and his sheep, may refer to the artist himself. 13 The related subject of Orpheus entrancing wild creatures may be another example of selfidentification. Since early Christianity, Orpheus the tamer of wild animals had been regarded as a prototype of Christ the peacemaker. (In the catacomb of Domitilla, Orpheus's menagerie even consists of two sheep.)
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Links between Christian and pagan thought were important concerns of Marc as a student of theology, when he attempted to reconcile Christianity with the philosophies of Epicurus and Nietzsche. 14 Through selfreferential glorifications of Orpheus and Christ as founders of new spiritual religions, Marc may have symbolically gained the approbation of his father, fulfilling his ego ideal, which, as Freud noted, "contains the germ from which all religions have evolved"; the office of father, representative of the higher nature of man, is assumed by all authoritative powers. 15 Depression involves several factors, such as loneliness, a negative selfconcept, a desire to punish oneself or to regress, and a longing to hide, escape, or die. 16 By flight, the ego can succeed in defending itself against threatening external dangers. Marc's flight to Paris in 1907 represents one of his escapes. He soon found in nature a serene and innocent paradise that allowed him to escape from his disagreeable environment and to partake spiritually in the rhythms of the universe. In a letter of 1907, he likened himself to a fawn "which passes through a magical forest for which it had always been yearning." 17 Another statement from this period reveals a further attempt at escape: "If only life were like our dreams. Life is a parody, a devilish paraphrase, behind which stands the truth—our dreams. . .. Art is nothing more than the expression of our dreams." 18 Once again his ideas recall those of Novalis, who hoped that all life would become a dream and was preoccupied with dreams, for they revealed to him that which was most profound in existence. Finally, through Marc's idealization of Orpheus and probable selfidentification with him he could achieve another form of liberating escape: to an imagined harmonious existence with nature in the distant past. Orpheus himself can be seen as an escapist, not only from grief and from women but also from the brutality of the world, which he transformed into beauty instead of confronting it and coexisting with it. Marc's pursuit of a pure state of innocence represents a response to chronic depression and, as well, to a sense of the oppression and hypocrisy of middleclass materialism for which Orpheus typically served as an antidote. Frederick S. Levine indicates that the German expressionist artist's projection of his isolated position and his regression through an attempt to include himself in all of nature imply a return to the world of natural instinct (although Marc, in fact, identified with wild animals by domesticating and humanizing them) and, ultimately, a longing for death. 19 Marc's depression, morbid leanings, and desire to inhabit the souls of animals, to be included in the harmonic rhythm of the universe, and to found a religion of the spirit in art distinguish him from his colleagues and explain his attraction to Orpheus. Like Orpheus, who knew the mysteries and inner truths of nature, Marc was attempting to disclose
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the spiritual underlying the physical, the truth and beauty under the surface that Orpheus traditionally reveals. In 1907 Marc stated that his goal was to find "the pathos and mystery of life" and to reveal the essence, "the unearthly life" hidden behind the appearance of things. 20 In Munich and then in Paris Marc studied closely the work of Robert Delaunay, who identified with Orpheus and, like him, was considered to be a founder (in the artistic realm) of a new religion, Orphism. Marc then adapted the technique of French Orphism to his own peaceful images of animals dwelling harmoniously with nature. Guillaume Apollinaire and Three Artists: Raoul Dufy, Giorgio De Chirico, and Robert Delaunay Among findesiècle French artists, such as Gustave Moreau, Puvis de Chavannes, and Odilon Redon, the identification with Orpheus is of the tortured ego with the tragic aspect of the myth. A new, more optimistic attitude emerges in representations of Orpheus among younger French artists and writers in the years prior to the outbreak of World War I. Emphasizing the supremacy of the spiritual and trusting in the basic goodness of humanity they interpreted the myth of Orpheus moralistically and optimistically, viewing him as an inspired guide or initiator, a universal redeemer, an ideal hero. 21 Foremost among these writers was the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who since 1908 had thought of himself as an Orpheus redivivus, seeking the purity of origins. 22 At a lecture at the Salon des Indépendants in 1908, Apollinaire had said that young poets—"new Amphions, new Orpheuses"—would make stones and wild beasts respond to their strains. 23 He declared himself a poet in search of a new humanism and began to conceive of poetry as a religion with himself as its high priest. A book of verses devoted to Orpheus, Le Bestiaire ou cortége d'Orphée (Paris, 1911) manifested his kinship with the legendary poetmusician. 24 Apollinaire's celebration of a pure, spiritual Orpheus and selfidentification with him appear to derive at least partly from a strong need and failure to satisfy an ego ideal representative of a highly critical parent. In this respect he resembles Marc, but his situation is still more complicated. Apollinaire's mother, a poet whom he later emulated by his choice of profession, had given birth to him and his brother out of wedlock and as an addicted gambler (like her lover, an aristocratic Italian officer) was considered to be scandalous in Roman society. She abandoned Apollinaire early in his childhood and later returned to be a critical figure in his life. Constructing a superego was undoubtedly a difficult task for Apollinaire, whose mother, reprimanded by society, in turn rebuked him. She disapproved of him as an adult, particularly
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of his debauchery, and he recognized that she condemned faults that she also saw in herself. It was inevitable that Apollinaire would have rather complex and ambivalent feelings about his mother and that identifying with Orpheus as a poet would have provided compensation for threats from her and society. When Apollinaire turned to the purified Orpheus as a symbol of himself/the poet, he probably reflected guilt feelings over not pleasing his mother (whereas his brother did) and a sense of having merited abandonment by both parents during the first few years of his childhood because of his character, which we know he considered detestable. The uncertainty surrounding the identity, of Apollinaire's father, another reason for Apollinaire's low self regard, constituted another ground of identification with Orpheus. Whatever his personal reasons, Apollinaire was following a nineteenthcentury, tradition of reviving and applying ancient mysteries. He did not adhere, however, to his predecessors' belief in religious doctrine and was interested in the mysteries mainly because they suggested a spiritual realm to which the soul aspires. Raoul Dufy and Le Bestiaire ou cortège d'Orphée Eighteen of the thirty verses eventually published in Le Bestiaire ou cortège d'Orphée had appeared under the title "La Marchande des quatre saisons ou le bestiaire mondain" in La Phalange on 15 June 1908. Later in that year Apollinaire decided that Orpheus was more appropriate than a tradeswoman as an autobiographical symbol of the poet. He chose Raoul Dufy to provide the woodcut illustrations, assuring him that the artist's "culture" would inspire him ''with an ideal." 25 Dufy, therefore, is the artist most closely identified with Apollinaire's early, formative thoughts about Orphism. The poet's subscription form for the book described it as "very modern in sentiment, . . . closely linked by its inspiration to the works of the greatest humanist culture. The same spirit which moved the author inspired the illustrator, Raoul Dufy, who, as is well known, is one of the most original and capable reformers of the arts. . . . Le Bestiaire ou cortège d'Orphée is worthy of being considered as one of the most beautiful and choice books of our time." 26 Although originally a financial failure, Le Bestiaire has become one of the most sought after illustrated books of this century. Dufy's enthusiasm for his first published illustrations is evident in the great care that he lavished on his designs and his close supervision of the printing. In addition to pride in his skill, his special interest in representations of Orpheus may be related to his own selfidentification with the legendary singer. Unlike Marc and Apollinaire, whose selfregard seem to have required the aid of an Orpheus, the somewhat more confident Dufy probably would have identified with him as the symbol of an attainable ideal self. Whereas
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Apollinaire had been born to unmarried, financially secure parents who immediately abandoned him, Dufy came from a supportive and close family of modest means. His identification with Orpheus may represent the satisfaction of an ego ideal derived from a father who was an amateur musician—an organist—who instilled a deep love of music in all his children, two of whom became professional musicians. Dufy's woodcuts of Orpheus, like his later painted homages to Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, and Debussy, reflect the passion for music that he had acquired as a child from his father—and the "omnipresence" of music in his life. 27 His lifelong love of poetry was manifested in illustrations for Mallarmé, André Gide, and Colette. Dufy appears to be the first of several twentiethcentury artists who identify themselves with Orpheus at least partly because he represents the realization of their aspirations toward a fusion of writing (signs) and painting. Dufy's biographers emphasize his skillful creation of a sign language equivalent to elements of nature and people. His illustrations for Le Bestiaire mark the beginning of an endeavor to create signs and symbols equal to the meaning of Apollinaire's writing and of an optimistic attitude toward the artist as a creator of a new world of language. Dufy's woodcuts, particularly the fullpage ones of Orpheus, attest to his full collaboration with Apollinaire and agreement with his ideas, as expressed in letters dating from 1908 to 1910. Duly varies his scale greatly, dramatizing individual characters disproportionately, in accordance with Apollinaire's emphasis on the element of surprise, with his motto for the book, "j'émerveille," and with his conception of Orphism as a revelation of the mystery in life. The abundance of visual symbols that Dufy has enclosed in simple frames complements Apollinaire's close packing of abstruse images; the lyrical light and dark patterns and humorous imagery of the woodcuts constitute a visual equivalent for the melodious and ironical quatrains. The extent of Apollinaire's eclectic use of a variety of sources is matched by Dufy's. The fruits of Dufy's close alliance with Georges Braque at l'Estaque in the summer of 1908 are evident in the Cézannesque sculptural trees (plate 6), angular and geometric forms (plate 3), tubular drapery folds, and profile and fullface combinations; his friendships with Delaunay and the Douanier Rousseau are reflected in the floating circular clouds (plates 3, 5, 6) and childlike treatment of nature (plates 4, 5), respectively. Dufy is clearly combining and wavering between the animated surface treatment of his decorative fauve style and the highly structured compositions influenced in part by protocubism. Despite Dufy's undisputed success in visualizing Apollinaire's ideas (often quite close to his own) and his reputation then as a leading figure among the avantgarde, virtually no art historical literature has focused on the iconogra
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phy of these woodcuts. Both Apollinaire's verses and Dufy's illustrations are characterized by the strong idealistic and optimistic flavor of images of Orpheus the artist, as spiritual guide and universal redeemer, typical of French writers in the decade before World War I. Dufy's illustrations reveal a knowledge and imaginative modernization of traditional symbolism associated with Orpheus. Apollinaire opens Le Bestiaire with an equation and celebration of painting/ drawing and poetry and an exhortation to the reader to admire Dufy's accompanying woodcut (plate 3): Admire the remarkable power And the nobility of the line: This is the voice that came from light Which Hermes Trismegistus cites in his Pimander.29
In his explanatory notes Apollinaire writes: "He praises the line that formed the images, magnificent ornaments of this poetic diversion. 'Before long,' we read in the Pimander, 'the shadows descended . . . and there came from them an inarticulate cry that seemed to be the voice of light.' Isn't this 'voice of light' drawing, that is, line? And when line expresses itself fully, everything is colored. Painting, to be exact, is a luminous language." Art historical discussions of Dufy's first woodcut of Orpheus have been limited mainly to formal considerations of the "nobility of the line" and the bold contrasts of light and dark that complement Apollinaire's "voice that came from light" and "shadows descended." A monumental, classicizing nude, unlike Dufy's other woodcuts of him, this Orpheus most closely evokes the hero with superhuman powers who was the legendary son of Apollo. Posed like the Apollo Belvedere with a windblown chlamys, he demonstrates one of the four types of divine madness (mania) that Plato describes in the Phaedrus (24445, 265): the Apollonian, or prophetic, pertaining to divination of the future, the greatest of the arts. Dufy thus visualizes Apollinaire's continuation of the nineteenthcentury tradition of Orpheus as a poetseer and the elevation of the poetartist as a godlike creator possessed with divine traits. Paul Valéry may have set the precedent for Apollinaire and Dufy, for he had regarded Orpheus as the symbol of the artist with divine character, identifying himself with Orpheus and recognizing his own "mysticisme esthétique."30 Surrounded by architectural structures, Dufy's Orpheus also calls to mind Apollinaire's association of Orpheus with Amphion, builder of temples and citadels,31 again following Valéry, as well as Goethe. Whereas Orpheus, according to tradition, could merely set stones in motion with his song, Amphion with the music of the lyre that he received from Apollo, could move stones
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into position to raise the walls of Thebes. Valéry's Orpheus, a musicianarchitect, had shown the intimate alliance between these two arts and between the two myths. Dufy's Orpheus exists in an ancient Egyptianized realm, with his foot resting on the base of an obelisk and a familiar symbol of the tomb of Osiris behind him. A fanciful pyramid at the right is balanced by an incongruous, but similarly shaped Eiffel Tower at the upper left. The Egyptianizing element in this image is explicable. One recalls the ancient tradition that Orpheus completed his education in Egypt and brought Egyptian mysteries to Greece, as well as the widely held belief that Orphism originated in Egypt. Moreover, Egypt and its magical religion had been identified since the Renaissance with hermetic thought; 32 in this verse Apollinaire mentions the Pimander by Hermes Trismegistus, reputed to be a great Egyptian magician and author of the Hermetica—a number of philosophical, theological, and occult writings supposedly translated from Egyptian into Greek. Louis Ménard had published a translation of the Pimander in 1866 that inspired many French writers such as Gustave Flaubert. Apollinaire evidently had this translation in hand when he was writing several poems in these years.33 In his introduction Ménard emphasizes that the Greeks learned from the Egyptians; Pythagoras, in particular, borrowed much from the Egyptians and was initiated into mysteries brought from Egypt by Orpheus.34 Ménard also cites the difficulty of distinguishing the Orphics from the Pythagoreans. Certain parallels are clear between the Greek poet with Egyptian origins and the Egyptian writer named after the god who had invented the lyre and identified with the Egyptian god Thoth, patron of the literary arts and originator of all mystical wisdom. Both Orpheus and Hermes Trismegistus were magicians of ambiguous Greek/Egyptian background themselves considered to be originators of the literary arts and mystical wisdom and providers of a revelation of creation. Apollinaire surely knew PierreSimon Ballanche's Orphée (1828), based on an earlier translation of the Pimander, and like the first verse of Le Bestiaire, linking Orpheus with Hermes Trismegistus.35 Ballanche, a social philosopher, had presented Orpheus as a civilizing god, with his mission to change the human condition and with his myth representing the evolution of society. over fifteen centuries. Dufy's woodcut therefore parallels Apollinaire's and Ballanche's comparisons of Hermes Trismegistus with Orpheus and also applies the ancient myth to the present. Orpheus's association with ancient and modern buildings in this woodcut implies his importance for both eras; the inclusion of the Eiffel Tower in an Egyptianized realm suggests the continued relevance of Orpheus, Orphic creativity, and the hermetic tradition for the twentieth century.
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Apollinaire's references to light in this first image of Orpheus correspond to Orpheus's traditional identification with light, because of his relationship with Apollo and the Apolline features of his character. At this time Apollinaire used fire and light as emblems of himself. He wrote that the flame, symbol of painting, has purity, magic unity, and sublime truth. 36 He used light to represent the ability, of the avantgarde artist to create a new form because light to him gave human meaning to the universe. Thus, he writes: "Isn't this 'voice of light' drawing, that is, line," and later, "I love the art of these young painters because I love light more than anything else."37 Apollinaire transfers to the realm of painting ("a luminous language") the ageold belief in Orpheus as a symbol of the power of the word, a spiritual voice of light. Ballanche's Orphée described a vision of a voice of light and a concomitant sense of the unity of existence. This Orpheus provided a model for Apollinaire's poet visionary as receptacle of light (the divine principle) and creator of its manifestation, the word. Ballanche's Orpheus was a poetpriest, initiator of all Europe into the mysteries, a prophet who shed light upon his time.38 Apollinaire used light as a metaphor for the attainment of poetic wholeness and the ability of creation to transform a dead past into a new inner consciousness—like Orpheus, who had been granted the right to lead Eurydice to renewed life, and when he returned from the realm of the dead created a new idyllic world. Apollinaire's description of drawing (line) as the "voice of light" and his attribution of "remarkable form" to the artist correspond closely to the ideas of Dufy, who by 1908 had begun to paint in accordance with a new conception of the equivalence of color and light. The evocation of light through color or through black and white contrasts was linked with his lifelong aspiration toward the creation of a spiritual light, the sign for him of the "true artist."39 This image of Orpheus may represent the artist's ideal self as the voice of light, with angelic face and blond hair reminiscent of Dufy's frequently cited "girlish complexion" and blond curls. In a woodcut that displays his dexterity at drawing a classical subject, Dufy demonstrates his own attainment of an ideal mentioned earlier in a description of his teacher in Le Havre: ''We looked up to him with great respect and admiration, for he was a true artist, a great draftsman in the classical style.''40 Several factors would explain the choice by Dufy and Apollinaire of the specific monuments in the first woodcut of Orpheus in Le Bestiaire. Three architectural structures—pyramid, obelisk, and Eiffel Tower—are all constructions based on the triangle. Orpheus was considered to be an ancient theologian who foresaw the Trinity.41 In the fragment that Ménard indicates derives from Orphic verses, Hermes Trismegistus invokes the ideal light of the Trinity, and Ménard remarks that the name Trismegistus ("three times very great") was given him because Hermes said that in the Trinity is a single god.42
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Both pyramid and obelisk are also traditional firelight symbols, as the word "pyramis," applied to both structures in poetry and emblematic and iconographic writings, implies. Classical authors stress the solar implications of obelisks. In Plato, the pyramid is the geometric sign of the element of fire. The obelisk in the foreground of Dufy's image of Orpheus illustrating "the voice that came from light" was chosen undoubtedly because, as Ménard notes (citing [Jacques Vicomte] de Rougé), Egyptian monuments are religious in origin and invoke the sun as the supreme being; Hermes Trismegistus presumably wrote in hieroglyphics on obelisks dedicated to the sun the same truths that he voiced in the Hermetica, with their foreknowledge of Christianity and the Trinity. 43 Ménard notes that Christian authors also assigned cosmological meaning to the pyramid, parallel ideas of the Contra Julianum of Cyril of Alexandria describing a pyramid underlying nature and the ideal world.44 The triangular nimb as an attribute of the Holy Trinity may have become common in seventeenth and eighteenthcentury art partly under the influence of hieroglyphics.45 The pyramidal structures in Dufy's print further call to mind the importance of the triangle in Pythagorean theory and the traditional association of Hermes Trismegistus with Euclid by Freemasons, who also combine Egyptian belief with the medieval past as Apollinaire does in Le Bestiaire (see below). In this first illustration, Orpheus, the ideal artist, appropriately stands before the tomb of Osiris, the chest that according to Egyptian belief contained the god's body; Ménard indicates that Hermes Trismegistus sees man in his abstract essence as like Osiris, the ideal man.46 God, Hermes Trismegistus states, is an indefatigable artist, always a master of his science. He is compared to the painter, the sculptor, and the musician.47 In his notes to Le Bestiaire Apollinaire writes that Orpheus "invented all of the sciences, all of the arts." Like Virgil's Orpheus, exemplary poet of science representing control of nature through intellectual understanding of the world, Dufy's mythical poet/ artist takes the place assigned to artists in the Renaissance: alongside mathematicians (implied in geometric constructions), scientists, inventors, and technicians. As an image of antiquity, this realm also recalls the scholars, sages, and philosophers with whom poets were associated in the Renaissance.48 Apollinaire and Dufy both left high school prematurely, without receiving diplomas, and depended on their independent readings for future acquisition of knowledge— about which Apollinaire had strong feelings of insufficiency. This particular glorification of the artist as the equal of scholars, therefore, may represent the imaginary fulfillment of another aspect of the ego ideal by poet and illustrator. Apollinaire's second image of Orpheus demonstrates the eclecticism of Le Bestiaire—mingling lyric imagery with a lewd sense of humor, with hints of genuine religiosity, and with the melodious rhythms of folk songs and nursery
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rhymes. His second title "Orpheus" seems incongruously paired with its accompanying quatrain: Look at this lousy herd, A thousand feet, a hundred eyes: Rotifers, mites, insects, And microbes more wonderful Than the seven wonders of the world And Rosamund's palace!
In his notes to this quatrain, Apollinaire writes that the King of England [Henry II] proved his love for his mistress Rosamund: To shelter Rosamund from the hatred The queen bore her The king had such a palace built As never had been seen before.
The palace was like a labyrinth, with tortuous paths in its garden, which Eleanor of Aquitaine managed to traverse on her expedition to poison her husband's mistress. Dufy may refer to this garden (plate 4), with its variety of flowers and insects, including bees, traditionally symbolic of sweetness and religious eloquence. In Robert Guiette's discussion of Apollinaire's possible sources and the meanings of the French name Rosemonde, he mentions that the poet manifests a symbolist "assimilation": the woman is totally identified by her name with the beauty of the rose. 49 Although unrelated to the medieval legend of Rosamund, the classical Orpheus is at home in this garden, for he creates a world of beauty as pure as that of Roseoftheworld, the embodiment of pure beauty. With his spiritualizing powers of metamorphosis, this artist is able to transform imaginatively even a lousy herd of rotifers, mites, and insects into wonderful microbes; he attains Apollinaire's own goal of being able to control his outer reality, beautifying and spiritualizing it as he brings it into his inner, subjective world. In addition, he symbolizes the poet's (Apollinaire's) hope to reach his higher nature, perfecting himself by eradicating a "lousy herd" of flaws and, with them, feelings of worthlessness. By portraying Orpheus in a flowering garden, Dufy conveys his lifelong love of nature, particularly of flowers, and his poetic endeavor to create a visual sign language translating the discourse among natural elements. Apollinaire's third quatrain on Orpheus states: May your heart be the bait and the sky the pond! For, sinner, what fish of fresh water or ocean In form or in flavor can equal The beautiful, divine fish that is JESUS, My Savior?
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He further elaborates: "Wellversed in magic, he knew the future and made the Christian prediction of the coming of the SAVIOR." Corresponding to Apollinaire's, Dufy's imagery suggests Orpheus as founder of a new religion, the universal redeemer by his spiritual powers, who since early Christianity had been associated with Christ, 50 another founder of a new religion (plate 5) and the redeemer whose coming he prophesied. To the right of Orpheus, a miniature whale leaps from the sea to meet him and bears the Greek letters IXqYS , meaning "fish," the anagram of the Greek words for "Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior." Orpheus is presented as the spiritual equal of the beautiful, divine fish that stands for Christ. Apollinaire and Duly thus refer to the early Christian adaptation of the ancient Greek belief in Orpheus as theologos, singer of the origins of the world, possessor of cosmic secrets, and expert in the ritual of the mysteries. The ship in the left background is surely the Argo, with which Orpheus first appears in art, identified as an Argonaut in a relief sculpture on the Treasury of the Sicyonians at Delphi (ca. 550 B.C.).51 Twentiethcentury artists still include Orpheus among the Argonauts; for example, he accompanies them in Max Beckmann's triptych of 194950.52 Ancient authors cite the various functions that Orpheus performed on the Argo: he indirectly settled quarrels by causing the Argonauts to forget their anger when listening to his song, he calmed a stormy sea by his music, and he served as the leading spirit of the expedition in religious matters. These included saving the company in a storm by praying to the Dioskuroi, gods of seafarers, as the only Argonaut who had been initiated in their mysteries.53 Like Novalis and Rimbaud before him, Apollinaire saw the magician as a poet and the poet as a magician and Orpheus, the singer with magic in his notes, as the prototypical seer poet. Like Marc, Apollinaire would have responded to the belief in the animation and unity of existence by an inner life or soul regulated by rhythm and number associated with ancient Orphism, and explaining the myth of Orpheus's power over animals and plants, for Apollinaire was fascinated by the idea of the artist's ability to gain power over his world through paint, words, and sounds.54 Hence, this Orpheus draws fish in the sea toward himself as Marc's calls forth animals. In contrast to the first, classicizing illustration of Orpheus, the third apotheosizes the artist in a Christian context. A veiled reference also undoubtedly exists to Apollinaire's new conception of the poet/artist as seer and of himself as the high priest of a religion of poetry, attracting young poets to himself as their leader. By merging ancient and medieval imagery with a contemporary message, Dufy's woodcuts show the poet able to transform past experience into present consciousness. Once again, Duly conveys an autobiographical message through Orpheus.
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Born and raised near the English Channel, Dufy always "had sea themes in his blood" and viewed the sea as an "ideal extraterritorial plane." Numerous canvases exhibit vast stretches of water scattered with an array of objects and creatures. Further, like Apollinaire's Orpheus, "wellversed in magic," Dufy aspired to magically reduce to essentials subjects that would charm his audience. Apollinaire's fourth verse on Orpheus cautions: The female halcyon, Eros, the flying Sirens Know deadly songs— Dangerous and inhuman. Don't listen to these doomed birds, But to the angels of paradise.56
Dufy's accompanying woodcut, showing Orpheus holding his lyre, confronted by a beautiful winged siren (plate 6) suitably follows (with other subjects intervening) the image of Orpheus near the Argo. According to Herodotus, Chiron had told Jason to invite Orpheus to accompany the Argonauts because Orpheus could assist at the dangerous moment of passing the sirens. This illustration calls to mind the description of Orpheus's accomplishments by Apollonius Rhodius: Thracian Orpheus, son of Oeagrus, stringing in his hands his Bistonian lyre, rung forth the hasty snatch of a rippling melody so that their ears might be filled with the sound of his twanging; and the lyre overcame the maidens' voice. (Argonautica 4.9049)57
Apollinaire gave a particular interpretation to the danger of the sirens at this time, for he was despairing over having humiliated himself by allowing prostitutes to distract him from his poetry. He devoted the entire page after this last image of Orpheus to sirens. The temptation of the sirens also appears in Apollinaire's contemporaneous poem "Lul de Faltenin" (1907), in which a young swimmer, Odysseus, is torn between their allurement on the one hand and poetry and glory on the other.58 In addition to implying a contrast of the songs of the sirens and of Orpheus, Apollinaire and Duly may also refer to the hero's exemplary, legendary rejection of women and dedication to music and young boys after the death of Eurydice. Apollinaire's verse seems to be the voice of his superego, representative of his mother reprimanding him for his debauchery and Dufy's corresponding image may reflect pangs of conscience for his "love of all things tender and voluptuous."59 It is an ironic
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fact that Apollinaire's own instrument was not the intellectually superior lyre, but the flute, associated since antiquity with Pan and sensual pleasures. Poet and painter remind themselves and others to follow their high and noble pursuits and not allow temptations of the flesh to deter them. Whereas the sirens, symbolic of women, are inhuman in Apollinaire's Bestiaire and thoroughly repulsive in his "Lul de Faltenin," the seductive female to the left of Dufy's Orpheus is all the more dangerous because of her beauty. Dufy surely could not have brought himself to portray anything but an idealized sensual nude; as he said shortly before his death, "I have always rejected that which was not beauty." 60 Because of his own consistent quest for beauty, like Delaunay, Dufy was also sympathetic to the Orphic explanation of the universe presented by Mallarmé and the symbolists as the perfect revelation of truth and beauty. The contrast between the songs of Orpheus and of the sirens only heightens their fundamental similarity: both demonstrate the hypnotic force, the enchantment, of music. Obviously reflecting his own ideals, Dufy's friends refer to him frequently as an enchanter.61 It is clear that Dufy's artist (poet/musician) will succeed only if he heeds the example of Orpheus, who listens to the angels of paradise and, instead of succumbing to the sirens, persists in creating his own pure, spiritual, inspired harmonies. The will of the artist and the power of his art, conveyed in the pose of Orpheus, are the subjects of the final image dedicated to him, for it is the only woodcut in the group depicting him holding his lyre with both hands, evidently playing it. The power of his music is given the fullest expression in this woodcut and confirms that Orpheus's ability as a musician underlies his superhuman, spiritual powers commemorated in the other images. Giorgio de Chirico Apollinaire's identification with Orpheus was also immortalized in art by his friend Giorgio de Chirico, in a somewhat more obscure and solemn manner than in Dufy's illustrations of the whimsical Le Bestiaire, but referring to the same aspects of the myth. In 1914, Giorgio de Chirico's brother Savinio (Alberto de Chirico) prepared a pantomime based on Apollinaire's poem "Le Musicien de SaintMerry," which suggested a selfidentification with Orpheus without naming the mythical singer. In a portrait of Apollinaire that he painted at the same time, Giorgio de Chirico probably also implied an association between Orpheus and Apollinaire, portrayed in a profile silhouette (plate 7).62 A plaster cast of Orpheus in the foreground, to which the painter has given dark glasses, implies, as Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco proposes, "the blinding quality of poetic light" and refers to the legendary poet as a seer and prophet. The mold of a shell in the painting alludes to the lyre of Orpheus, and the
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mold of a fish to his association with Christ, recalling Dufy's woodcut (plate 5) and Apollinaire's text. By 1914, Apollinaire had, like Orpheus and Christ, announced the founding of a new religion, Orphism in art and poetry. Robert Delaunay and Orphism In 1912 and 1913 Apollinaire used the term Orphism to designate the revolutionary poetry and painting that he considered to be a later form of Cubism and that he believed he had discovered, "If Cubism is dead, long live [the new] Cubism. The reign of Orpheus is beginning."64 At a lecture at the Salon d'Or in October 1912, Apollinaire had explained that he was calling a group of diverse artists Orphists, because they were moving toward pure painting and abstraction, and in the same month he wrote of Orphism: "It is the art of painting new structures with elements . . . entirely created by the artist, and . . . endowed by him with a powerful reality. The works of the Orphic artists must . . . give . . . a sublime meaning . . . It is pure art."65 Although Apollinaire was the only one of the group that he called Orphists to honor Orpheus as a subject in his work, and none of these painters is known ever to have depicted the ancient hero, each was considered to be a descendant of Orpheus because each in his painting had attained high levels of unity, purity, and truth— ideals associated with Orpheus and his followers.66 Pure painting was characterized by a coherent structure independent of naturalistic structural devices, but was not necessarily nonrepresentational. Apollinaire's conviction that pure painting, like music, attempted to communicate emotion directly, without an intermediary subject, was undoubtedly inspired by Kandinsky's On the Spiritual in Art (1912) and the symbolist analogy between music and a painting that affects the soul directly. Apollinaire was interested in the ability of the artist, musician, and poet to give form to an inner life and to create a new universe. The Orphists inherited from the symbolists the need to transform nature in order to create a new world of painting, as Orpheus had shaped a new, ideal world. The Orphists were concerned with expressing a "modern consciousness" (identified with "simultanéism"), a mental grasp of the simultaneous existence of numerous states of being. To Apollinaire, the modern Orphist captured the intense pulsation of life, its mysterious quality, which emerged in visions or fantasies uniting him with the cosmos.67 Like the legendary prophet, the artists whom Apollinaire called Orphists were concerned with communicating essential truths. They looked to the mystic and the occult in their attempts to express this novel mode of inner consciousness that transcended the verbal and intellectual, penetrating the reality of modern life and "the great world harmony."68 Seeking to surpass themselves and to unite with the vast world (as if to achieve the Orphic oneness), the Orphists were
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inspired by the ideas of Henri Bergson, who saw a continuity between the intellect and the whole. Aspects of his thinking evidently stimulated an interest in concepts (for example, of a harmonia) traditionally linked with Greek Orphism or Pythagoreanism. Robert Delaunay most fully identified with Apollinaire's label Orphist and for a while even wanted exclusive rights to it. 69 The painter seems to have regarded Orpheus as a guide and wrote to Marc on 11 January 1913: "Painting is by nature a luminous language (the procession of Orpheus). . . . Vision is infinitely perfectible, and I remember the words of Orpheus."70 At that time, Delaunay and Apollinaire aspired to certain ideals and accomplishments long attributed to Orpheus and his religion, or at least used them to justify their own modern theories and practices. Although Frank Kupka maintained that Apollinaire's term Orphism was inspired by his rhythmic paintings with musical titles, it is more likely that the two articles Delaunay wrote during the summer of 1912—"LaLumière" and the text for Apollinaire's "Realité: peinture pure" (Les Soirées de Paris, [Paris], no. 11 [December 1912]) influenced Apollinaire's ideas about Orphism and the application of the notion of simultanéism to painting. According to Apollinaire, Delaunay expressed the purest beauty through the purest means; through simultaneity of colors, he achieved a painting that "acts on us in the same way as nature and poetry"71 and was as lyrical as the music of Orpheus. Delaunay himself wrote that he "played with colors, as in music one can express oneself through a fugue of colored phrases."72 His paintings became increasingly abstract between 1912 and 1913 as he became more intent on creating a new poetic and sublime form and convinced that a universal generating principle put him in touch with the harmonic simultaneous movement of the universe73—part of his heritage from ancient OrphicPythagorean thought. Like Apollinaire's and Marc's, Delaunay's aspiration toward the pure and the spiritual, his rejection of the material, and his related selfidentification with Orpheus may be related to feelings of unworthiness stemming from an early rejection by parents and fruitless attempts to win their attention. Delaunay's aristocratic parents had separated when he was a child, abandoning him to the care of relatives. The return of his mother (an amateur artist) only resulted in further feelings of isolation and solitude on the part of the child as she seemed unable to communicate maternal tenderness. Hopeful of participating in the harmonies of the universe, Delaunay seems to seek reunion with the mother he had lost in infancy, as Orpheus sought refuge in nature after the loss of the woman he loved. Even Delaunay's turn to painting, in emulation of his mother, may itself have been a symbolic attempt to earn her approval.
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Delaunay's emphasis on light, as in his Windows of 191213 ("windows opening on a new reality"), inspired Apollinaire's poem of the same title, his praise of Delaunay's paintings ("Light is here revealed in all its truth"), 74 and his further identification of Delaunay with Orpheus (traditionally associated with light). From Leonardo da Vinci's writings on light as the "window of the soul," Mallarmé's poem ''Fenêtres," and Apollinaire's ideas, Delaunay, in turn, derived his rather confused conception of light as equivalent to sensibility, and the notion that ''our soul finds its most perfect sensation of life in harmony," which results from the amount of light reaching the soul through the eyes. He claimed that he and other artists were approaching "an art of painting that is purely expressive . . . an art that is becoming plastic, whose sole purpose is to translate human nature . . . as it is inspired toward beauty" and that light "is necessarily vital to all expressions of Beauty."75 Delaunay was clearly sympathetic to Mallarmé's Orphic explanation of the universe as the perfect revelation of truth and beauty. Orpheus, the legendary singer who showed that there is beauty by transforming the world with his sonorous music into a living harmony understandably served as a guide to Delaunay, who saw the expression of harmony in nature as the subject of painting, and the "purity of means" in painting as "the purest expression of beauty."76 In his constructive paintings Delaunay conceived of himself as a transformer of the real world and of traditional, figurative painting into an ideal realm of pure painting. Apollinaire wrote that Delaunay—like Orpheuscreated a new world operating in accordance with its own physical laws. By 1930, however, Delaunay would state that Apollinaire had used Orphism in an attempt to unite the young avantgarde and to assimilate painting to his own "poetic, musical and plastic Games."77 Apollinaire, it is clear, had personal reasons for celebrating Orpheus and popularizing the term Orphism.
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2 Rainer Maria Rilke and the Artist as Transformer Rainer Maria Rilke's image of the legendary hero in his Sonnets to Orpheus, written in February 1922, has far surpassed any other figure in modern literature in its international fame and impact on representations of Orpheus by twentiethcentury artists and writers. Rilke is one of the few twentiethcentury poets to have reached a worldwide audience and in France is read even more than French poets of this century. 1 The Sonnets were inspired by a French prose version of Ovid's Metamorphoses, a postcard reproduction of a drawing by Cima da Conegliano of Orpheus playing for the animals (ca. 150510, Florence, Uffizi; plate 8),2 and the recent death of Vera Knoop, the nineteenyearold daughter of Dutch friends. The Sonnets to Orpheus arose from "a hurricane in the spirit," as the poet paced back and forth across his room "howling unbelievably vast commands and receiving signals from cosmic space and booming out to them my immense salvos of welcome."3 Rilke's extraordinary burst of inspiration resulted in a work resounding with the freedom and joy of their creation, the clearest and fullest possible apotheosis of the powers of feeling, which can effect metamorphoses. Under the influence of his friend Lou AndreasSalomé who had studied with Freud and introduced Rilke to him in 1913, Rilke had considered entering
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psychoanalysis for his depressions; with the close knowledge that he had gained of Freud's theories he was inspired to write his Third Elegy. Similarly, the Sonnets, expressing an overwhelming desire to save himself by change, may have been Rilke's tacit acknowledgment of his need for some form of therapy and reflect at once his interest in Freudian analysis and his repulsion and rejection of the Freudian method of effecting selfchange. Instead, like his compatriot Franz Marc, who had also suffered from a sense of failure over attempts to fulfill the demands of an ego ideal, Rilke tried other means, including idealization of Orpheus and identification with him, to save and strengthen his ego. To Rilke, Orpheus symbolized the poet's ability of selftranscendence (and his song, pure transcendence). Through creative activity the poet transforms the visible into the invisible—from experience into inwardness, a true state of awareness—and thus escapes an unworthy, rejected self and achieves perfection. Rilke regarded his rigid, reactionary father as incapable of loving and as possessing "a kind of indescribable fear of the heart toward [him], a feeling against which [he] was very nearly defenseless."5 Rilke's mother, who always appeared to her son to be superficial and excessive in her religious piety, had hoped for a girl and raised him as such. With a mother who would have liked to change his sex and a father who rejected his son's character, it was inevitable that Rilke would suffer from identity crises, depressions, psychosexual selfdoubts, and longings for transformation to a more acceptable, even transcendent self. Rilke required of himself that he reach the realm of the angel in the Duino Elegies: "I must get beyond man and pass over (as a novice) to the angels."6 The angel was the witness and the warranty of the highest perfection of feeling, the invisible configuration of sheer inwardness, and the realization of transcendence. Rilke explained that the Elegies show our need and ability to accomplish the transformation of the visible and tangible into the invisible vibrations and agitations of our own nature, for we are "transformers of the earth, our whole existence."7 According to Rilke, the contemporaneous Elegies and Sonnets "support each other continually," and the theme of transformation was furthered in the Sonnets through the figure of Orpheus, who symbolized the poet's ability to change the world into rhythmic vibrations. He believed that our greatest and most permanent tasks are those of transformation and transmutation, which attain their highest expression in the song of Orpheus, who demonstrates eternal metamorphoses. Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus open with an image of the ideal poet whose song is a tree that effects transcendence and is a symbol of creation and recreation:
Page 27 A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence! Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear! And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared. Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright Unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests; and it was not from any dullness, not from fear, that they were so quiet in themselves, but from just listening. Bellow, roar, shriek seemed small inside their hearts. And where there had been at most a makeshift hut to receive the music, a shelter nailed up out of their darkest longing, with an entryway that shuddered in the wind— you built a temple deep inside their hearing. (part 1, sonnet 1)
Since antiquity the metamorphosing powers of art and the animation of brute nature have been implied in Orpheus's charming of trees to follow him. Ovid presents an arrangement of trees that symbolize the feelings of Orpheus himself (Metamorphoses 10.89107). As G. Karl Galinsky notes: "The literalness of the theme of movement of trees . . . is superseded by its transference to its imaginative and tonal qualities," the whole reflecting the situation of the singing and grieving Orpheus. 8 The tree, traditional symbol of vegetable rebirth and selfrenewal, was associated with Dionysos, who, according to Plutarch (Moralia 5.3i), was worshiped "almost everywhere in Greece" as "the tree god."9 The selfidentification of the poet with the tree was frequent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Baudelaire expressed his complete identification with nature by comparing himself to a tree: "First you lend the tree your passions, your desires or your melancholy; its sighs and its oscillations become yours and soon you are the tree."10 For Rilke, a tree is a symbol of creation and growth as well as a descent into roots. Considering the strong visual element in Rilke's poetry and his characteristic sensitivity to art and inspiration from it (as in his earlier Orpheus poem) and the fact that he went to the trouble of procuring a copy of the drawing by Cima da Conegliano that he had seen in a shop window and kept it constantly in view of his worktable, it seems important to study the Renaissance drawing. For some reason, scholars have neglected to discuss it fully in considering the origins of the Sonnets.11 Although Rilke clearly did not intend a literal description of the drawing, the first sonnet about Orpheus is strangely reminiscent of Cima's image of
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Orpheus. His plaintive singer sits before a tree that seems to sprout ambiguously above and from him. The outline of Orpheus's chest resembles that of the trunk of the tree, his legs seem like its roots, and the branch bursting into foliage above echoes the contour of his lira da braccio. On 31 January 1922, a few days before Rilke began the Sonnets, he had written a triptych titled "Short poetic cycle with the vignette: lyre breaking into foliage." One may speculate that the first of his Sonnets emerged partly as a result of the drawing's reaffirmation of his feelings about Orphic creativity. A delicately drawn tree has "ascended there" and is identified with the creator whose song transforms the disorder of nature into art. "A new beginning, a beckoning": all becomes silent before the poet's song. Quietly ("so quiet in themselves"), barely perceptible creatures (gazelles, rabbits, birds) have crowded from the bright, unbound forest to listen to the music. The square design becomes a sacred realm, a temple for "creatures of stillness"—those who hear and allow themselves, their visible forms—to become invisible in this universe of feeling. By identifying with Orpheus, Rilke evidently gained greater confidence that he could transcend his unworthy self and satisfy a demanding ego ideal. Orpheus transforms even himself through the power of his song, the metaphor for the principle of existential change: Will transformation. Oh be inspired for the flame in which a Thing disappears and bursts into something else; the spirit of recreation which masters this earthly form loves most the pivoting point where you are no longer yourself. (part 2, sonnet 12)
Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus have been called the most consistent myth of artistic experience in modern German literature and one of the strongest affirmations ever of the promise of existential salvation through poetry. 12 Rilke's Orpheus exemplifies the artist capable of remaking himself, for Rilke had decided that selfanalysis and healing through his art were his only salvation. His thinking shows a distinct similarity to Nietzsche's in Thus Spake Zarathustra, in which the idea of selfovercoming is expressed through the concept of the will to power, which is a striving to transcend and perfect oneself.13 In his attempts at salvation through selfdeification as Orpheus, Rilke apotheosizes the poet as the singing savior who can redeem himself from the misery of his fragmentary existence. The Sonnets completed Rilke's world view; while writing them he felt that the antinomies of his existence were transformed into a rhythmic event as he became Orpheus, a model of virtual connection. He dwells freely in a double realm, where opposites are recon
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ciled in an eternal wholeness. The Sonnets reveal Rilke's spirit rising above the doubt and despair into which he had initially plunged, with a final impression of liberation, harmony, and rhythmic equilibrium. Paul Klee Paul Klee's letters and diaries as early as 1912 show his admiration for his friend Rilke, with whom he shared an apartment in 1919. Although he somewhat critically (and inaccurately) noted in his diary that Rilke was "still an impressionist" and Rilke, in turn, expressed concern to a friend in 1921 about Klee's tendency toward abstraction, the artist clearly recognized that they were kindred spirits. Klee wrote, "His sensibility is very close to mine." 14 His frequent discussions with Rilke had provided the one ray of light for him during World War I. Klee and Rilke shared the opinion that one's position is a rhythmic exchange between the self and the worldspace. To both, art parallels creation; they believed that art must arise from a descent into the depths, from a relinquishing of the material world and an attainment of the invisible and spiritual, the world of eternal relations in nature. Klee's long series of angels begun during the second decade of the century—symbols of the supreme transmutation, of the visible into the invisible—may quite likely have been inspired by Rilke's angels in the Duino Elegies, begun in 1912. Rilke's beings represent his goal as a poet: transcendence, the ultimate achievement of transformation of experience into spirituality or inwardness.15 Klee may have revealed his own identification with Orpheus in two images that he dedicated to Rilke, a pen and ink drawing titled A Garden for Orpheus and a varnished watercolor on panel titled Orpheus, dating from 1926 and 1929, respectively (plates 42, 9).16 The affinity with Orpheus that Klee probably felt is easy to comprehend, considering the importance to him of poetry, music, and the classics. He stated that poetry and music were "as much a part of his own being as painting" and at an early age had even maintained that he was fundamentally a poet but did not consider this to be "a hindrance in art."17 A picture to Klee could be a symbol: "something poetic, but not literary."18 Like Orpheus, Klee was an inventor of writing—like Dufy, an inventor of an enigmatic vocabulary of pictorial symbols and linguistic signs. Throughout his life he read Greek poetry in the original. Klee came from a family of musicians; his paternal grandfather had been an organist and his father had originally hoped to be a singer and was trained as one. Disappointed in his aspirations, Klee's father settled for a career as a (mediocre) teacher. Will Grohmann, on the basis of conversations with the artist, proposes that the father probably revealed his disapppointment about
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his own career in sarcastic remarks directed at his son. Klee's mother had studied music at the Stuttgart Conservatory and hoped that her son, to whom she was always close, would become a professional musician. She had encouraged his learning to play the violin at age seven; by eleven he was a violinist in the Bern municipal orchestra. Opera, particularly the work of Mozart, was a continual source of inspiration for Klee in the early 1920s. He was always an active concertgoer, and at Dessau in the late 1920s—when he created his images of Orpheus—music meant more to him than ever before.20 As early as 1913, Klee had begun to ponder the possibility of applying his knowledge of music and music theory to art. The "keyboard" of stripes in his "Egyptian pictures" done after his trip to Egypt in late 1928 to early 1929 "beats out" rhythm based on certain numerical intervals.21 In his notebooks Klee uses horizontal stripes to denote movement, and when a pattern of these stripes gradated in value is juxtaposed with its reverse, the whole illustrates "unambiguous movement and countermovement (in a plane)."22 One of the most important of his Egyptian pictures, the watercolor Orpheus (plate 9) consists of an ascending rhythm of mainly warm, earthcolored horizontal stripes of varying widths extending from the left border to the contour of a tall curvilinear shape pinched in slightly below center; on the right are wider stripes of similar colors, with a stronger accent of green. The effect is as much musical as visual—a subtle, contrapuntal polyphony of interwoven bands evokes the gentle Apolline music of Orpheus, while also suggesting a lyrical transformation of the Egyptian landscape and architecture. Orpheus reveals Klee's endeavor to create pictorial rhythms that would correspond to rhythms in nature and the cosmos. He believed that rhythm held the world together, a notion reminiscent of Pythagorean thought. Another was his longstanding conviction that relations among parts in works of art correspond to hidden, organic, numerical relations in nature.23 For him as for Marc, the task of the artist is to transform the mysteries of life into art, making secret things visible. Gert Schiff has convincingly proposed that Klee's watercolor Entseelung (1934; Kunstmuseum Bern, Paul Klee Stiftung) represents the departure of the soul from the body and the drifting through air of "thoughtforms."24 Some of these dissipate completely, others become incorporated into the soul of the universe—a distinct reminder of the Orphic/ Pythagorean concept that souls destined for rebirth occupy different levels of air. Orpheus reflects not only Klee's love of music and his affinity with Orphic ideas, but also his closeness to his revered friend, Rilke. The drawing A Garden for Orpheus probably refers directly to Rilke's Sonnets (see pages 13639 below). Klee surely knew Rilke's emphasis on transformation in the Sonnets and himself was concerned in his art with revealing successive transformations
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in time and space of natural forms. He believed that the artist's own metamorphosis should take place when he enters the realm of polyphonic music and wrote to his wife on 17 April 1929 regarding another painting in the Egyptian series, "the polyphonic interplay between earth and atmosphere has been kept as fluid as possible." 25 Klee achieves this effect in these paintings by the vertical organization of interpenetrating planes. In Orpheus, earth and atmosphere are transformed into each other and, as in the Sonnets, the merging of two realms is confirmed by an organic being that transforms itself from physicality into pure spirit, like Rilke's Orpheus. Starting early in his career, Klee's marked reserve and inaccessible personality, noted by several historians, bore fruit in many masked, autobiographical images.26 Several early watercolors mirror his selfidentifications as poet and musician (for example, The Artist (PoetPainter), 1908; PoetDraughtsman, 1915). The last work that he explicitly labeled a selfportrait dates from 1922, but in many images he continues to suggest his features or selfreferential situations. In several drawings from the 1920s, he appears disguised as a musician (for example, Contact of Two Musicians [1922], implying Klee as violinist and his wife as pianist), an alchemist, and a magician (Black Magic and Magical Experiment [1920]). These guises manifest the belief expressed in his Creative Credo that the artist is invested with magical powers by a supernatural entity, "Art does not render the visible; rather, it makes visible."27 He also wrote: "Creative power is ineffable. It remains ultimately mysterious. . . . we are ourselves charged with this power," and "my hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will."28 Thus it seems plausible to speculate that Klee, like Rilke in his Sonnets, may refer to himself in his image of Orpheus—that the organic being in this painting may be one of the many symbolic forms in which Klee implied himself. He reveals himself with similarly elongated head intersecting horizontal bands (a cloud) above the earth in the pen and ink drawing The Sultry Garden (1919; plate 10); through identification in Orpheus with an organic being that blends atmosphere with earth and represents rhythmical harmony, reminiscent of Rilke's Orpheus, Klee could achieve his longstanding goal of unity with nature. This image of Orpheus would reflect Klee's documented glorifications of the artist's creative powers, the successful fulfillment of an ego ideal. Perhaps because of his father's jealousy, he could never allow himself to feel that he had attained it without suffering pangs of conscience and selfdoubts. Thus one may explain the element of selfmockery in his implied selfportraits, such as those of the genius (Specter of a Genius, 1922 [two versions], and 1923). The selfmockery in Klee's art and his noted emotional distancing and aloofness in life suggest an inner belief that the demons he had attempted to
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exorcise in his satirical and selfreferential early. engravings still remain. Through identification with Orpheus, he could symbolically transcend a mean self and reach a standard of perfection, achieving the goal that he had set for himself as early as 1911: "All things an artist must be—poet, explorer of nature, philosopher!" 29 William Tucker An attempt to repress libidinal instincts seems to characterize many images of Orpheus by artists who identify with the spiritual legendary singer who rejected women, in particular those artists inspired by Rilke's Orpheus, whom they perceive as the embodiment of their own aspirations. This tendency is most explicit in William Tucker's Orpheus II (1965; plate 11), which betrays, despite its lack of physicality, a sensuous central space as voluptuous as it is pregnant with feeling.30 The white, ostensibly ascetic, abstract form demonstrates Tucker's aim of a pure art—"an art for not touching," one that would be revealed to our perception visually, by light. He stated that art should and could "transcend the merely physical" if it is to become a metaphor for the human condition and to "recover the mythical," and he interpreted space as "the instrument of feeling."31 Although he now finds the Sonnets ''too romantic and mystical,'' in the mid1960s he enjoyed their "compression of lyrical feeling." The lyrical compression of space and undulating pulsations of volumes devoid of mass in Orpheus II call to mind Rilke's Orpheus, who represents the transformation of the world into rhythmic vibrations through the powers of feeling. Tucker's Orpheus II transcends the physical and expresses the spiritual potential and yearnings of both the modern artist and the legendary one represented. Tucker acknowledges that he was greatly impressed by Rilke's essay on Rodin (1903), Elegies, and Sonnets, and was "deeply into" the Sonnets in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1965 he had designed an abstract wooden square with curved corners, painted a leafy green, and with a square cut out of its center. He titled it Orpheus because it reminded him of a lyre. Shortly afterward, he created Orpheus II, similar in form, but with its curved sides divided into short segments of wood painted white and attached by links painted a gray violet (plate 11). From its conception this work was inspired by Rilke's Sonnets. As a poet and writer with artistic ideals at the time corresponding to the features associated with Orpheus's character, Tucker clearly must have felt a bond with the legendary father of song described by Rilke. Tucker also illustrated Sonnets I: ix, a translation of Rilke's verses by his friend, the poet Christopher Salvesen (London: R. Alistair McAlpine, 1971), and in 1974 Tucker devoted the introduction of his book Early Modern
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Sculpture to a discussion of Rilke's essay on Rodin. Tucker's drawings for Salvesen's translation of the Sonnets are akin to the poetry in their abstract simplicity lyricism, and abstruse symbolism. Accompanying each sonnet is a lithograph with a different arrangement of four straight lines drawn over two overlapping, rectangular forms that give the impression of tissuelike paper. As in the earlier Orpheus II, space is compressed, but not necessarily enclosed, within the configurations formed by lines; mass is absent and the effect is of pure transcendence. In these illustrations, Tucker tries to convey the essence of the verses through lines and overlapping planes suggestive of the moods and phrasing of the poetry. The illustration for sonnet 1 evokes the spirit of a temple and of upward reaching in Rilke's visual metaphor (plate 12): Still climbed the tree Pure reaching—and beyond Orfeo still is singing . . . Silence: but so the secrets grow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Once stood receiver, shelter, for such noise Now builds the temple, your voice, hearing, sound.
The drawing for sonnet 2 conveys a feeling of compression similar to Rilke's (plate 13): Earthsleep held her—she curled and laid within me Halfhidden, like her ear within her hair. Such faroff feeling; and the fields felt far in, Their inner seasons lie, to mine, always open.
In death, Eurydice is enclosed within the earth, and Orpheus embraces the whole but remains free. An ostensibly random quality to diverging lines symbolizes the freedom of Orpheus's spirit, implied in his wanderings in sonnet 5 (plate 14): And everywhere he roves, he searches, touches; Each avatar, an attar, to the roots. Orpheus, our song—synonymous; we need No other reassurance. He will stay (Although in passage, faint, a migrant always), Weathering out the withering of the blown bud.
Because Tucker creates a language of signs, his illustrations of the Sonnets are inherently closer in spirit to Rilke's written words than would have been a realistic, pictorial image. Disembodied of physical substance, like Rilke's Orpheus, they attain the state of purity toward which the artist himself aspires in his work.
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3 The Lyre Several modern artists who glorify Orpheus as a civilizing transformer have focused understandably on his lyre, at least partly responsible for his success because of the spiritually uplifting powers with which it had been credited since antiquity. In Plato's Phaedo (73de, 85e86d), Simmias compares a man's body to a lyre in order to illustrate his idea that the soul is a harmony of the body. The lyre was seen as the embodiment of harmony and was linked with wise moderation, clear perception, mental equilibrium, and calm; it was seen as "the chief, the divine instrument" and attribute of Apollo; it expressed the Apollonian side of Orpheus's nature and the Greek character. 1 Throughout history, interpreters of the myth of Orpheus have emphasized the importance of his lyre: in Aeschylus's Bassarae, the lyre occupied the ninth position among the stars; as a memorial to the dead Orpheus, Zeus installed his lyre among the stars as a constellation.2 Following the precedent set by Aeschylus, the lyre of Gérard de Nerval's Orpheus (El Desdichado, 1853) represented the harmony of the spheres and became a constellation at his death.3 To Ballanche the lyre symbolized the origins of property and social laws; it bore the soul toward a higher vision of the world of essences, toward a perception of unity, and toward the divine light underlying sound, the word, and poetry.4 In much twentiethcentury art and literature the lyre continues to grow in importance and grandeur and may even replace Eurydice as
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Orpheus's beloved and inspiration—for example, in Victor Segalen's Orphéeroi (Paris: G. Crès, 1921) and Jean Jules RogerDucasse's Orphée (Paris: Durand, 1913). Although painters and sculptors identify with Orpheus as a legendary, artist, his lyre signifies vastly more than the artist's tool. Whereas the lyre itself has elevating powers and continued to play on its own after Orpheus's death, the paintbrushes, hammer, and chisel are totally dependent on the imagination and skill of the artist. Hence the lyre of Orpheus is frequently exalted as a source of magical or transformative powers and portrayed independently in art by artists such as Dufy, Barbara Hepworth, and William Tucker. In contrast, the artist's tools are rarely represented themselves, and when they are—as in Jasper Johns's Painted Bronze (Savarin, 1960) 5—they remain simply implements of his craft. Orpheus's collaboration with his lyre and dependence on it for his success as an artist partly explain the fusion of man and instrument in works by artists such as Jacques Lipchitz, André Masson, and Ossip Zadkine. Hermes, who had invented the lyre, gave it to his brother Apollo (and another to Amphion). Apollo in turn presented it to Orpheus and taught him to play on it. The miraculous feats that Orpheus accomplished with his lyre revealed him to be "a double" of Apollo.6 In the Symposium (187ad), Plato states that harmony is the reconciliation not of opposite elements, but of elements that once disagreed and are now reconciled. As Apollo is the god of harmony and the lyre is the symbol of harmony, depictions of Orpheus with the lyre or of the instrument itself imply a distinct rapport between Apollo and Orpheus. The lyre becomes part of the body of the musician in images by Masson, Lipchitz, and Zadkine. They thus go beyond the identification implied in Marc's celebration of Orpheus's use of the lyre to attract animals. Marc's Orpheus suggests a perhaps unconscious desire to recapture a state of harmonious reconciliation with the father symbolized in the lyre that represents the higher nature of man and the fulfillment of the ego ideal. The fusion of body and lyre, on the other hand, appears to symbolize the complete incorporation of the ego ideal, and the final product represents the metaphorical ideal self. The artist may thereby unconsciously enhance his selfesteem and be liberated from tormenting feelings of inferiority, dependence, and conflict. Marcuse suggests that Orphic (and Narcissistic) images represent a refusal to accept separation from the libidinous object or subject (parent), a refusal that aims at liberation, and reunion with what was separated; Orpheus is the archetypal poet as liberator and creator.7 From the beginning of Le Bestiaire, Apollinaire makes evident the significance of Orpheus's lyre. Immediately after the first verse on Orpheus follows one entitled The Tortoise:
Page 36 From magical Thrace—delight! My sure fingers strum the lyre. Animals troop past to the sound Of my tortoise, of my songs.
Apollinaire's explanation states: "Orpheus was a native of Thrace. This sublime poet played a lyre given to him by Mercury. It was made of a tortoise's shell, with leather glued around the outside, two branches, and a bridge and strings made of sheep's gut. Mercury also gave one of these lyres to Apollo and one to Amphion. When Orpheus played and sang, the wild beasts themselves came to listen to his hymn." Apollinaire evidently confuses Hermes the inventor of the lyre with Apollo the donor of the lyre to Orpheus. Dufy illustrated this quatrain with a woodcut showing a large lyre made of a tortoise shell and with a decorative border of a tortoise in each corner of the picture (plate 15). This verse and its explanation emphasize Orpheus's magical powers as a musician; the ornate illustration of a fantastic lyre confirms that it was with an extraordinary instrument that the sublime poet accomplished magic and invented all the arts and the sciences. In this woodcut, the instrument stands for the man whose voice is heard in the accompanying quatrain, spoken in the first person to imply Apollinaire's selfidentification with Orpheus. 8 Because of its association with spiritualizing powers and its open form, the lyre has lent itself to abstract, incorporeal images by modern sculptors. For example, several works by Barbara Hepworth dating from 1956 consist of generalized, curvilinear shapes with taut lacings that are somewhat reminiscent of lyres and are titled Orpheus: three brass sculptures with strings (Orpheus [Maquette 1], Orpheus [Maquette 2], and Theme on Electronics [Orpheus]; plate 16) and a drawing in oil and pencil (Curved Form [Orpheus]; plate 17).9 The strong impression of the brilliant sunlight of Greece, which she had visited in 1954, and the overall importance of light to her as an element in sculpture, explain Hepworth's emphasis on effects of transparency and luminosity in her drawing Orpheus, representing a figure long associated with light. Theme on Electronics (Orpheus) demonstrates Hepworth's concern with the humanization of contemporary society possible through an artistic focus on abstract formal relationships that can express the poetic quality in culture (plate 16). Like Marc, she creates a vitalistic equivalent of ancient Orpheus, who symbolizes the ability of the artist in all eras to dominate his world—for Hepworth, the industrial age—by imposing beauty, grace, and rhythm on it. Hepworth's images of lyres titled Orpheus recall Tucker's in that both depend on constructivist principles: lines, shape, space, encompassing it instead of displacing it, and volumes are unencumbered by mass. Hepworth's and Tucker's harmonious curvilinear shapes reminiscent of lyres are
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devoid of reference to the human figure and, instead, through their carefully regulated rhythms evoke the effects of the disembodied, sonorous tones of Orpheus's music. Hepworth's Orpheus, shaped like the instrument of Apollo, quite likely constitutes an attempt, at least unconsciously, at satisfaction of the artist's ego ideal. These sculptures seem almost a symbolic tribute to her father, a kind and gentle man who displayed exemplar), selfcontrol and a perfect sense of proportion. A civil engineer, he was devoted to equality of education for his children of both sexes and imbued Barbara Hepworth with a love of mathematics crucial to her evolution toward abstraction; his technical designs paved the way for her appreciation of Russian constructivism. Thus, the full title of one of her sculptures is Theme on Electronics (Orpheus). Ossip Zadkine In Ossip Zadkine's Orpheus of 1948 (plate 18), the lyre becomes integrated with the figure's body, suggesting a desire for complete identification with the ego ideal. As early as 1930 Zadkine had carved a conventional wooden sculpture of Orpheus playing an instrument, which he viewed with much dissatisfaction on a visit to the Petit Palais, in Paris, in 1948. 10 Zadkine's postwar conception of Orpheus can be traced to his negative reaction to his earlier sculpture. "No," he had said to himself, "Orpheus is something other than a musician."11 Consequently, he created a bronze sculpture that would provide the prototype for all his later versions of Orpheus.12 From then on Orpheus became to him the creator of magiceffecting music and poetry. He was inspired by the power of Orpheus's music to change men from wild to wellmannered beings and was interested in the relation between the Orphic principle of poetry and music and the animation of the object. By 1960, after Zadkine had made several images of Orpheus, he stated, "Orpheus has always haunted me and I am not sure I have conjured away his spell over me."13 It is clear that he was unable to conjure away the spell of Orpheus because it had become an integral part of himself. Like other artists portraying Orpheus, Zadkine seems to have identified with Orpheus, for he saw himself and his art as conveying an Orphic message. Orpheus was more like an idea than a person to him; Orpheus was the embodiment of the concept of a magical art capable of movement—both physical motion and moving the spectator—as a sort of conflation of his abilities with those of the mythical musician Amphion, mythical artists such as Daedalus and Hephaestus, and the modern sculptor.14 This idea had personal significance for Zadkine, who was especially concerned with the capacity of his own sculpture to move, in both senses.
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Zadkine said that his sculptures of Orpheus starting in 1948 represented his attempt to recreate the Orphic event, the prehistorical beginning of music. His conception of Orpheus resulted from his fascination with archaic man's ability "to add sensitive cords to forked branches in order to fabricate the instrument that can express this confused world and cast a charming spell with noises." 15 He continued, "How, therefore, in our days to express the emotion that one feels at the memory of the Orphic event, if not by imagining the human metamorphosing himself into an instrument." After World War II, Zadkine strove to grasp the deep significance of myths and to design in bronze eternal elemental forms that would be symbols of his subjects and yet simultaneously integrated with them: "I try to reorganize the objective form of a legendary, figure, so as to create an allegorical form complete in itself, no longer requiring an attribute. The lyre becomes part of Orpheus."16 In his sculptures from 1948 onward, the lyre becomes increasingly inextricable from the body of Orpheus, as if confirming that a symbol postulates the possibility of an identity or identification.17 Zadkine's musical cycle, which included his Orpheus figures, was one of his lifelong preoccupations and reflected his endeavor to combine his three great enthusiasms: music, poetry, and sculpture. In his sculptures of poets—homages to individuals (including Paul Éluard, Comte de Lautréamont, Rimbaud, Alfred Jarry, and Apollinaire) and generalized images of The Poet—poems and musical instruments are integrated with figures of poets.18 The year before his first bronze of Orpheus, he created a monument to his long deceased friend, Apollinaire (1947), whose Le Bestiaire had also included an imaginative combination of the lyre and the legendary hero whom it represents (plate 9). Zadkine goes beyond Dufy's woodcut, explicitly identifying man with symbol. Considering the association of the lyre with Apollo, teacher and perhaps also father of Orpheus, it is possible that Zadkine's conception of Orpheus may involve the artist's unconscious desire to incorporate his ego ideal, representative of memories of his father, a Greek and Latin teacher at the seminary in Smolensk. Zadkine later described him as a generous, humanitarian idealist, one of the Russian intelligentsia interested in educating peasants and awakening their social consciousness.19 An intellectual devoted to the cause of dissemination of knowledge, he directed most of his energies toward educating his children (of whom Ossip was the eldest), toward his teaching, and toward his books. His consistent support of his son over the years seems to have wavered only once, and the event appears to have been traumatic for the young Zadkine. At the age of ten he had begun to develop what was to be a lifelong love of music and was given a present of a violin, which his
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exasperated father took away because the boy had "scraped the strings so continuously." Unaccustomed to such a harsh reprimand from his father, the child became upset and even ill. The later fusion of Orpheus with his lyre may have served a psychologically liberating function for Zadkine, who must have been overwhelmed by strong feelings of guilt and rejection, feelings that he may have repressed for years although he remembered the childhood incident vividly. By uniting the legendary singer with whom he identified and his lyre, it is as if Zadkine achieved a symbolic reconciliation with his father after their disagreement and the satisfaction of an integrated ego ideal. Through identification with Orpheus, Zadkine could effect a harmonious rapport with the ego ideal inherited from his idealistic father who had ultimately inspired him to convey an Orphic message in some form that would be able to raise consciousness. Orpheus, integrated with his lyre symbolizing harmony and representing the higher nature of man, thus becomes Zadkine's metaphorical ideal self, personification of psychological completeness and fulfillment. Philippe Diolé described Zadkine's Orpheus after an interview with the sculptor, in words that must reflect that interview: "Orpheus does not play the lyre. He is the lyre. He is split open, rent asunder in order to vibrate. . . . He achieves his form. He is complete."21 Although the fusion of the lyre with the body of Orpheus would have been personally satisfying to Zadkine, the invention of the motif was probably not his. He appears to have been impressed by André Breton's cycle of myths in the exhibition catalog for the First Papers of Surrealism (New York, 1942).22 The page titled "Orphée" (plate 19) is a montage of a drawing by Yves Tanguy of Eurydice, with her body and hair joined to a headless, trunklike Orpheus and lyre; above her a detail of François Boucher's Birth of Bacchus (1769) shows the infant surrounded by nymphs. To the left of Tanguy's drawing is a quotation from Apollinaire's "Le Musicien de Saint Merry": Et tandis que le monde vivait et variait Le cortège des femmes long comme un jour sans pain Suivait la rue de la Verrerie l'heureux musicien.
Breton's references to Orpheus are all oblique. Instead of showing a clear picture of the poet himself, Breton combines important components of his myth (with an emphasis on the female and erotic) as interpreted by artists and writers: a reminder of the Orphic myth of the golden age Dionysos, an image of male and female united with instrument, and a poetic allusion to Orpheus's traditional power to attract women. Even Breton's choice of Apollinaire's verse is oblique, as he could have selected an explicit description of Orpheus from Le Bestiaire but instead probably implies through the quote
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from "Le Musicien" a more veiled homage to Apollinaire as Orpheus. Tanguy's identification of body with instrument may have influenced not only Zadkine, but Lipchitz as well. Zadkine presents a variation of Jacques Lipchitz's Song of the Vowels (1931 ) and Henri Laurens's Amphion (1937), in which a man/lyre plays on himself. Zadkine's Orpheus is most closely related, however, to Lipchitz's Joy of Orpheus (1945, plate 20), in which the shape of the united figures of Orpheus and Eurydice resembles a lyre. 23 Zadkine and Lipchitz, like such surrealists as Tanguy, were most interested in Orpheus's ability to effect metamorphoses. One or both sculptors, as well as Tanguy, may have known Masson's drawing or his print of Orpheus (1932 and 1934, respectively), in which the musician's arm is transformed into a lyre (plate 57). Although the works by Lipchitz and Zadkine both display open fluid forms and triumphant upraised arms, contributing to a jubilant mood, Zadkine's slender, elongated sculpture contrasts strongly with the other more massive, volumetric creation. The rich metaphorical associations of birds also entered into Zadkine's image of Orpheus. He explained that Orpheus appeared to him less as a man than as an open branch with the head of a bird. To Freud the bird was a symbol of longing and to Carl Jung an emblem of wishful thinking.24 Virgil had likened Orpheus to a nightingale in order to demonstrate that his sense of loss is merely one manifestation of an experience shared by all creatures (Georgics 4.510).25 Metamorphosis into a bird is one of the most common Ovidian changes of form.26 The bird was a frequent motif in surrealist paintings by Joan Miró (such as Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers, 1941) and Max Ernst, who identified with a bird; in the early works of the abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and David Smith, the bird represented liberation and transcendence. Zadkine's Orpheus conveys the artist's own aspirations (Freud's longing or Jung's wishful thinking) for an elevating, transcendent art, as well as for personal psychological fulfillment. This poet/musician can transform even himself into nature through the power of his song. As partly man, bird, open branch, and musical instrument, Zadkine's figure embodies even more fully and integrally than those of Marc, Dufy, and Lipchitz the image of Orpheus as one of joy and fulfillment, a symbol of man united with nature. The allegorical form of an open branch as the body of Zadkine's Orpheus has many personal and literary associations. The conversion of trees into functional forms was basic to Zadkine's childhood memories: his maternal grandfather had cut timber in the dense forests surrounding his native town of Smolensk, and Zadkine's uncle, like their ancestors, built ships from wood. The transformation of old trees into sculpture was his special passion, and a longstanding artistic goal was the "complete transformation of nature."27
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Zadkine's use of the tree metaphor is reminiscent, once again, of the beginning of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus—"A tree ascended there. Oh pure transcendence!/Oh Orpheus sings!"—as well as of a later sonnet of the series: Branch upon branch crowds close, none of them free. . . . Keep climbing higher . . . higher . . . Still, though, they break. Yet this top one bends finally into a lyre. (part 1, sonnet 17)
Man, isolated and disconnected, an intruder into the harmony of creation, can be reunited with it by Orpheus, the poet whose song is a tree and who can transform even himself into nature (part 2, sonnet 26). 28 Shortly before Zadkine's first sculpture of Orpheus as an open branch, Pierre Emmanuel's Tombeau d'Orphée (1941) also described Orpheus as a tree, whose branches rise toward the creator sun.29 Zadkine's Orpheus, however, most closely evokes the imagery of Rimbaud, to whom we recall Zadkine had created a sculptural homage (1938). Rimbaud had likened himself to a tree and a branch: "From time to time my heart is like some oak/Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn" ("Evening Prayer") and "Lost branch spinning in a herd of hippocamps" ("The Drunken Boat").30 Through a variety of metaphors, including that of the tree, Rimbaud implied that man, and the poet in particular, can create and recreate himself; man is both creator and creature.31 Rimbaud shows man/poet in a state of becoming, changing as he becomes aware of himself. Zadkine's Orpheus similarly demonstrates the moment of Orphic revelation—of the artist becoming aware of himself at once as his own recreator and as creator of a new reality.
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4 The Orpheus of the Concert Hall Carl Milles Two contrasting works of art demonstrate how twentiethcentury artists have found the Orpheus myth appropriate for a civic structure devoted to music. Each sculptural ensemble suggests that the artist's need to enhance his own selfesteem was involved in the conception. The first is by the Swedish sculptor Carl Milles, who in 1926 won the preliminary competition for the design of the Orpheus Fountain to be placed in front of the Konserthus in Stockholm. He was not awarded the commission, however, until 1930, after his arrival in America and therefore created the work in his studio at the Cranbook Academy of Art, where he was the resident sculptor. The monumental fountain was finally installed in 1936 (plate 21). 1 The figure of Orpheus at the center of Milles's fountain towers approximately,, thirtyeight feet high, and is poised over the threeheaded dog Cerberus. Like several other artists attracted to the myth of Orpheus, Milles associated the classical musician with the mysterious hidden powers uniting and animating all of nature; hence, eight figures of shades respond in various ways to the sounds of the divine music emanating from Orpheus, who gazes downward as he raises them from the underworld. Through the power of his music, Milles's Orpheus (reminiscent of Ballanche's) awakens souls from the sleep of materialism and summons them to rise above their lower natures,
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symbolized by Cerberus. Once again the impact of Nietzsche is evident, particularly of his Thus Spake Zarathustra, emphasizing the polarity, between animal/materialistic self and true self. Recalling Plato and anticipating Freud, Nietzsche wrote that we resemble savages and gratify our impulses in our dreams. 2 After many years of bitterness and disappointment on the part of his father, who had long regarded Carl Milles as ''a physical weakling'' and "a dullard," the two were finally reconciled when the sculptor was in his late twenties and had finally convinced his father of his ability and stamina.3 Thus, Milles's image of a legendary artist with superhuman physical and spiritual powers, capable of awakening intellects and sensibilities, is a paradigm of the qualities that Milles seems to have demanded of himself, having assimilated his father's ideals. Perhaps still feeling himself insufficient after years of being reminded by his father of his inferiority, the artist still sought to satisfy an ego ideal, accomplishing this symbolically through identification with this Orpheus. In Milles's preliminary bronze study for the figure of Orpheus (plate 22),4 which received the prize of the Philadelphia Art Alliance in 1930, an even more dynamic, angular figure is precariously poised on a plant. The final work, with its greater emphasis on verticality, takes more into consideration the background of Ivar Tengbom's architecture, reflecting Milles's longstanding concern with architectonic structures. It also corresponds more closely to the humanistic theme of the fountain, which manifests visual and iconographic bonds with Zadkine's postwar conception of Orpheus, focusing on the ability of music, and in particular that of Orpheus, to elevate the thoughts of men. Milles's interpretation of Orpheus as a paragon of enlightenment is well suited not only to the milieu of a concert hall, but also to the nature of the fountain itself. Long associated with poetry, water is traditionally attributed a power of awakening, "the true eye of the earth."5 The word "fountain," derived from the Latin "fons," has traditionally been associated with "source" and with the flowing of creative, recreative, or transformative potentialities from depths to a superior level of existence. Fountains in classical antiquity might be sources of enlightening, purifying, rejuvenating, fructifying, or immortalizing powers. For the Greeks, inspiration was the role of Muses who were nymphs of springs that represented continuous birth. The fountain as a symbol of transcendence appears in modern poetry, such as Rilke's Sonnets, in which man must become a fountain basin in order to learn again how to speak (part 2, sonnet 15).6 The figures of shades around Orpheus represent different emotional responses to music, as well as individual rhythms, each of which is carefully developed to harmonize with those of the adjacent figures. The result is a lyrical progression, a melodic line connecting them. Through the organization
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of these rhythmically integrated forms, Milles embodies the essence of music, complementing the central theme of the elevating powers of Orpheus's divine music. The fountain reveals Milles as a humanist, emphasizing the expression of the strength and beauty of the human body and the dignity and variety of the human spirit. Richard Lippold Another sculptural ensemble intended for a concert hall, Richard Lippold's Orpheus and Apollo (1966; plate 23), suspended from the ceiling of the Grand Foyer of Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center, New York City, lends itself to a comparison with Milles's fountain. 7 Unlike the earlier narrative and explicitly figurative group, based from its inception on the myth of Orpheus, Lippold's two abstract, asymmetrical explosions of glittering bronze sheets acquired the identities of Orpheus and Apollo only after the initial stages of the work. Although he did not have Orpheus in mind when he conceived the model for this sculpture, Lippold's artistic and humanistic ideals, his deep commitment to music (he had seriously contemplated a career as a composer), and his strong enthusiasm for Rilke's Sonnets, which he had read years earlier, explain his ultimate adoption of its title and certain affinities between this image and those of other artists celebrating Orpheus. Lippold has said that he was not consciously thinking about the Sonnets when he designed this work, but acknowledges that "things do cook." In its transcendent, purified abstraction, Orpheus and Apollo demonstrates Lippold's strong spiritual inclinations. The two golden forms seemed to him like friendly gods, their splendor reflecting the splendor of man, which he identified with the total spirit of life, manifested in the spirit of architecture and the spirit of music.8 Elevated above ground, Lippold's glittering bursts of long, narrow metal sheets convey an otherworldly feeling of ascension somewhat related to that sought by Milles in his more realistic and material representation. Lippold achieves his aim of revealing an "insight into the world of the spirit."9 He has voiced his concern with the harmonious and transformational potential of the artist, qualities embodied in the conception of Orpheus as the ideal artist: "In dedicating himself primarily to the three dimensional values of humankind, the artist effects a transformation of these values into the fourthdimensional world of the spirit. He does not, because he cannot, set out to describe the Spirit. It is the fruit of his labors, not his motivation."10 Lippold's faith in his favorite material, space, both cosmic and sculptural, is essential to an understanding of his work. Recalling Tucker's Orpheus II, which enclosed a space pregnant with feeling, Lippold's bronze sheets sculp
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ture space (also devoid of mass), which he reveres because it "loves us all" and in it, modes of communication can "dissolve barriers of time and energy, of nations and races." 11 According to Lippold, the artist can conquer time (like Rilke's Orpheus), by using materials in space to attain ''the substanceless presence of the spirit."12 Reminiscent of the legendary musician who penetrated the secrets of the underworld, Lippold sees the preoccupation of the modern artist—the "total penetration'' of objects and all regions (of flesh, mind, and heart)—as possible through the conquest of space. Lippold chose the present title, after rejecting that of Castor and Pollux, because the associations with music of both Orpheus and Apollo were appropriate for the location and because as legendary father and son these figures had "a most tender affection for each other as well as for mankind."13 Lippold's ideas about the positive forces that should unite men, illustrated in the friendly relationship between Orpheus and Apollo who reach out to each other, were linked to his feelings about the forces that should unite architecture and sculpture, as manifestations of the spirit of the space age. The key to a full understanding of Orpheus and Apollo max, be found in Lippold's recollection of a friendship that he had developed with a pair of adolescent siblings shortly before beginning work on the sculpture: "There was something about it, the idea of strangers reaching out to one another across a generation, that touched me deeply, and I think now it may have influenced the form of my sculpture, with its two forms reaching out and its fatherson connotation in my mind."14 Evidently affected by his parents' longstanding disapproval of his career interests in sculpture and music, Lippold seems to make a symbolic attempt in Orpheus and Apollo at acceptance by them (especially by his father) through a metaphorical reconciliation of generations. Thoughts of his relationship with his father, a mechanical engineer, appear to underlie his statement that the artist, who considers himself a "loner," should collaborate and bravely "join hands" with engineer, scientist, and architect.15
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PART TWO THE CRITICAL SELFIMAGE
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Whereas certain modern artists appear to attempt to enhance their selfesteem by identification with an idealized Orpheus, others seem to use him as a critical mirror. Unlike the artists in part 1 who focus on his accomplishments as an artist, these (all male) artists consider his character as a man, seeing in him their own weaknesses, especially in relation to women. Through Orpheus they metaphorically confront and scrutinize their flaws, safely masking their own identities behind that of the mythical singer, avoiding further selfhumiliation. Their harsh criticisms of the legendary musician/artist may have had two unconscious therapeutic goals: a cathartic relief from feelings of inadequacy by projecting their own flaws on Orpheus and a sense of superiority over the very flawed character whom they condemn. Therefore, in a different manner from artists in part 1, these artists also may achieve a modicum of selfacceptance through their portrayals of Orpheus. A negative view of Orpheus, the poet, has important precedents in antiquity. Plato (Symposium 179d) wrote that Orpheus was a poorspirited, cowardly musician who had entered the underworld by trickery and music rather than by heroism and dying; and that consequently he was allowed to see only a wraith of his wife instead of the real woman and failed in his mission. According to Isocrates (Busiris 11.38 [Kern, test. 17]), as the prototypical poet, Orpheus was guilty of the most outrageous behavior and was torn to pieces in punishment for having told blasphemous stories about the gods. Ovid alludes to the dishonesty of poets when he makes Orpheus suggest that the poetic myth of the rape of Proserpina may be a lie (Metamorphoses 10.2829); more directly Ovid has Pythagorus call "the stuff of poets' tales" shadows and empty names (15.18283). In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche explicitly characterizes the poet as a vain liar and a deceitful magician; in The Birth of Tragedy, he condemns Socrates as "the new Orpheus who rose against Dionysus." 1 In nineteenthcentury selfreflexive poetry, particularly among the symbolists, the mythic mask of the selfdeprecating poet frequently assumes the characteristics of a clown or fool, fused with elements of Orpheus (or Pan).2 Virgil achieved a sense of the tragedy of human passion through a lover who loses all that he had attained and ultimately dies because of his "madness," for which his wife justifiably reproaches him—"quis tantus furor?" (Georgics 4.494) Madness, however, has been a basic
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requisite of the poet from time immemorial. One of the four types of divine madness that Plato describes in the Phaedrus (244245b, 265b) is that of the Muses, and the poet. Democritus had said, "There is no poetry without madness." 3 Martin Heidegger views the madness of the poet Friedrich Hölderlin as proof of the depth of his vision as a seer. He maintains that by seeing more clearly than his contemporaries, Hölderlin was driven insane or "received into the protection of the night of madness."4 Yet according to Plato, madness is of two kinds, one arising from human ailments and the other from divine disturbance. In Virgil's version of the myth, Orpheus evidently exhibits the first kind and is punished for it. Many artists and writers criticize him for this human weakness. Because he is a creative poet, however, Orpheus's madness as a human ailment inevitably blends with Plato's divine mania. It has been proposed that Virgil's association of Orpheus with Aristaeus the beekeeper is partly explained by Orpheus's excessive sweetness: through the charm of his melodious, honeyed voice, he obtains permission to retrieve Eurydice from the underworld, and from his mouth emerge sweet, honeyed sounds that attract all of nature.5 By inference, Orpheus confused seduction and marriage, because of his abundance of honey, and could not prevent himself from being the lover and seducer of Eurydice, from whom he should have known how to keep a proper distance as her lawful husband. According to this interpretation, the story is not of tragic love or unhappy passion, but the failure of a marriage because the couple was unable to establish a conjugal relationship allowing for proper distances. When Eurydice dies for the final time, Orpheus goes from excessive closeness and attachment to excessive distance from women. In Ovid's version of the thwarted relationship between Orpheus and Eurydice, love, conjugal affection, overcomes the musician, luring him to a transgression, "He, afraid that she might fail him, eager for sight of her, turned back his longing eyes" (Metamorphoses 10.5557).6 In this narrative Eurydice makes no complaint about her husband's fatal gaze. The reason for Orpheus's turn to look at Eurydice has been the subject of much debate: it may be viewed as a sign of his curiosity, of his need for reassurance (for empirical confirmation of speculative knowledge), with which several of the artists who portray Orpheus would sympathize. A unique bond exists between the visual artist and Orpheus precisely in the importance given to his gaze in the Roman version of his myth. Orpheus acts like a painter or sculptor, who
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experiences the world through his eyes and depends on his vision for his impressions of the world. It is not surprising, therefore, that visual artists have identified with the mythical musician forbidden to look at his beloved and have been especially moved by his plight. Although Virgil undoubtedly equated Orpheus with the poet, a rationale for his adoption by visual artists as a figure with whom to identify themselves may be found even in Virgil's description of Orpheus's action: "and vanquished in purpose, on Eurydice, now his own, looked back!" ("victusque animi respexit"; Georgics 4.491). In a different context, Norman Bryson has shown that the Western painter is like the historian in that both use the aoristic tense in disavowing the deictic reference; in Western painting the body disappears as the site of the image for both artist and viewing subject. 7 This artist depends on the gaze, which arrests the flux of phenomena, eclipsing the body as it freezes postures and gestures; action according to the aoristic gaze is seen from the viewpoint of history. The English word ''gaze," equivalent to the French "regard," similarly implies temporality, the viewer's attempt to look again, perseveringly, impatiently, and somewhat mistrustfully ("regarder'' = "reprendre sous garde" = to arrest), seeking to fix that which is about to escape or slip out of bounds. This viewer reveals a "strain or anxiety in the transactions between the self and the world."8 Virgil and Ovid emphasize that Orpheus turns back to look at Eurydice because he is fearful that she might fail him or slip from him: "when he, afraid that she might fail him eager for sight of her, turned back his longing eyes" ("hic, ne deficeret, metuens avidusque videndi flexit amans oculos"; Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.5657). By his gaze, therefore, Orpheus endeavors to freeze her gestures and prevent her departure. By "victusque animi respexit" (respicio = to look back, to gaze at, to regard), Virgil may suggest that the epic poet, like the historian, kills what he attempts to conquer by his gaze, by his mere consideration or rearresting of it. How the poet's attempt and failure might become transferred to the painter dependent on his gaze is easy to imagine. The artist typically tries to control his world: he "takes it in with his eyes" until he feels that he possesses it.9 Control over what the artist sees, however, inevitably results in the destruction of its reality along with a reconstruction of its image in the artist's invented recreation of nature. Thus, by the sudden disappearance of Eurydice when Orpheus gazes upon her, Virgil and Ovid may be read as directing a criticism at the painter and sculptor who, like Orpheus, destroy by their vision the very object that inspires them. The artist's sense of possessing the object of his vision that he feels
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he controls may be significant in this discussion, for possession, like control, helps to enhance selfesteem, one's feeling of omnipotence. Nevertheless, because people change continually, possession of another person can only be impermanent, as one must perpetually seek to control the new, changed person; possession of another individual permanently would mean denying that individual the right to change or, in effect, killing him/her. Albert Camus wrote, "Other people are always escaping us and we are always escaping them."11 Virgil's description of the second death of Eurydice visualizes this truth: in Orpheus's attempt to possess Eurydice forever by his gaze ("vanquished in purpose, on Eurydice, now his own, looked back!"), he unintentionally kills her in the act (''She spake, and straightway from his sight, like smoke mingling with thin air, vanished afar, and, vainly as he clutched at the shadows . . . never saw him more" [500504]). Orpheus may be seen as an impetuous seeker after knowledge or an impassioned, uncontrollable lover. His sudden turn backward may reflect what Freud called regression to a primitive state, evident in the tendency to an "immediate carrying out of intentions as they emerge."12 In 1955 Maurice Blanchot used the Orpheus myth to explore the nature of artistic creation—linking the artist's inspiration with regressive processes and interpreting Orpheus's gaze as the forgetting of all restraints, laws, and inhibitions in inspiration.13 Blanchot thinks of his gaze as his ultimate gift to the work that he creates as an artist. He suggests that Orpheus's turning to look at Eurydice is a betrayal necessary in the artist's quest for the unattainable infinite and demonstrates the paradoxical and transgressive nature of artistic creation∙ According to tradition, an inspired artist experiences rapture, a feeling of being driven by an external agent. One might say that at the moment of creation the artist lacks control, an important ingredient in the development of a healthy selfconcept. Newby interprets Monteverdi's Orfeo as an autobiographical exposition of the artist's desire and need for selfcontrol,14 as Virgil seems to have implied earlier. Whereas the artists in part one of this book symbolically enhance their selfesteem by identification with an idealized legendary artist/singer who controls all of nature and therefore himself, those in part two succeed in doing so by condemning a flawed artist who attempts to control his source of inspiration but fails because he cannot even control himself. The artist's dependence on a woman who, as a selfobject, represents fulfillment of his ego ideal may increase his selfregard as long as she continues to sustain him. Solitude is at first intolerable for Orpheus, as it generally is for the dependent individual. With a sense of the loss of
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the sustaining buttress the dependent individual feels utterly powerless, hopeless, and perhaps even suicidal. One may interpret Orpheus as overly dependent on Eurydice and unable to preserve his emotional equilibrium without the sustaining force of her love. He is therefore thrown into a suicidal form of grief at her loss and a total rejection of women. A recent study notes that suicidal individuals are commonly fastidious and reject sustaining relationships with people other than a lost one. 15 Orpheus may be regarded as a "love addict" prone to symptoms of withdrawal when deprived of the love of sustaining others. His very love for Eurydice seems to have involved a narcissistic object choice, for all that concerns him, in the versions of Virgil and Ovid, is the loving that she can provide him, an asset readily interchangeable with that of another mate; we know of nothing specific to her nature or character itself that is loved by Orpheus. Thus he pleads of Hades and Persephone merely, "The favor that I ask is but to enjoy her love" (Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.3839). According to Freud, "A person who loves has, so to speak, forfeited a part of his narcissism, and it can only be replaced by his being loved.... Selfregard seems to remain related to the narcissistic element in love."16 Although Orpheus's selfesteem becomes completely impoverished with the loss of Eurydice's love, he manages to survive by throwing himself into his work, dedicating his life to his art; work has been shown to be a sustaining resource that serves to maintain the equilibrium of some potentially suicidal people.17 For the most part, twentiethcentury artists who focus on Orpheus's weaknesses tend to be men who sense their overdependence on a woman, generally a mother, and perhaps also their tendency toward selfdeception (like Orpheus, unaware that he kills by his gaze that which he strives to preserve) and lack of selfcontrol. Modern artists interpret the tragedy of Orpheus in a variety of ways. For some, his ability to transform reality and mold a new one, which many artists praise, is perceived instead as his fatal flaw; the artist who does not realize that the world he creates through his imagination differs from the real one is seen as a tragic victim of selfdeceit. Memories are evoked of the rationalist attacks by Sir Francis Bacon and Samuel Johnson on the fabrications and lack of restraint of the imagination. More recently, Sartre voiced a related point of view in L'Imaginaire, stating that "the work of art is an unreality."18 To Sartre, imagination nihilates reality, paradoxically liberating man from reality only to entrap him in a fatalistic, povertystricken world of escapist images.
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Whereas many artists, as suggested in part one, view Orpheus as an ideal representative of the primacy of the spiritual, others see him as a tragic figure punished for his lack of selfcontrol—his excess of passion and his brash refusal to recognize his human limitations. Although most artists consider him to be a paragon of calm and rationality, others emphasize that his succumbing to his "madness" (human weakness) is ultimately what caused his destruction. Like Virgil's Orpheus who lost Eurydice a second time because his passion overwhelmed his intellect, the flawed artist portrayed by such twentiethcentury artists as Max Beckmann, Oskar Kokoschka, and Isamu Noguchi finally sees the light and achieves the tense union of reason and emotion that Virgil (Eclogues 4.5557) had implied is the poet's inheritance from Orpheus. 19 Some artists emphasize his personal and artistic dependence on Eurydice, man's dependence on woman for his creativity. It is clear that certain artists use Orpheus in this manner to condemn these negative qualities in themselves but by blaming Orpheus for them are able to enhance their own selfesteem. Eliade indicated that the primitive could not conceive of unprovoked suffering and always saw a fault at the bottom of it.20 A major distinction between the idealizing and critical images of Orpheus lies in their opposing views of the cause of his suffering. According to one approach, the mythical artist consciously wills his self abnegation and renunciation; according to the other, Orpheus is an immature dreamer and a passive victim of suffering for which he is responsible by default. Andrea Mantegna, Giorgione, Titian, and other Renaissance painters established the precedent in art for viewing Orpheus as the representative of man's frailty—his inability to reach and to hold—as well as of the creative painter who suffers from lack of success or from the pain and inner turmoil associated with inspiration.21 The romantics expressed similar concerns, particularly with Orpheus's quest after the unattainable; the symbolists further conveyed the artist's anguish over his rejection by a hostile, increasingly technological society and his insufficiency in the face of dominant women. Although twentiethcentury artists voice similar attitudes through Orpheus, their images of the suffering artist differ from earlier ones—as well as from more optimistic modern portrayals of Orpheus—largely as a result of the influence of nineteenth and twentiethcentury philosophers and psychologists. To artists who focus on Orpheus's amorous failure, the myth often provides an outlet for expression of their own conflicts, anxieties, and disappointments in life and love.
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5 The Childish and Irrational Dreamer Johanes Guthmann and Max Beckmann Max Beckmann's lithographs for an epic poem titled Eurydikes Wiederkehr were among the first twentiethcentury works of art to portray the legendary artist as a fallible, even pitiful young man. Beckmann began his graphic production with this set of nine prints illustrating the three cantos of an epic poem written by Johannes Guthmann (18761956) and published by Paul Cassirer in Berlin in 1909. 1 In his diary, on 4 April 1909, Beckmann noted that Cassirer offered him the opportunity of illustrating the manuscript of a Herrn Dr. Guthmann. Beckmann decided that it "was not bad, and something could be made of it."2 Guthmann's interpretation of the myth appears to have had personal significance for Beckmann. As with other artists, his selfidentification with Orpheus may be partly related to Beckmann's love of music, especially that of Bach and Mozart. During this period Beckmann was using classical myths in such paintings as Mars and Venus (1908) and Battle of the Amazons (1911). Guthmann's melodramatic tragedy of Orpheus fortuitously appeared when Beckmann was also preoccupied with images of doom and catastrophe. When he received the commission for the illustrations he was in the midst of painting the Destruction of Messina; three years later he would be inspired by another tragedy to paint the The Sinking of the Titanic.
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Guthmann wrote in his autobiography fortyone years later that "Eurydikes Wiederkehr still waits for its day." He reminisces that Cassirer once brought out a sumptuous volume of the poem, stating to Guthmann: "You are my greatest disappointment. You have in your Eurydike something beautiful . . . something so completely of this time." There does not appear to be any critical discussion of Guthmann's epic, or of the iconography of Beckmann's accompanying set of lithographs, or of their relationship to ideas of the time. The few discussions of the illustrations are limited to three prints, considered out of the context of the whole set and the poem.4 Guthmann's epic begins with an elaborate description of Eurydice's solemn funeral (reminiscent of Gluck's opening of Orfeo ed Euridice), which Beckmann's first lithograph illustrates rather faithfully (plate 24), and then relates Orpheus's subsequent suffering. Although his journey to the underworld to retrieve his wife in the second canto is successful, by the end of the third canto he loses her again. Most revealing of the ideas underlying the poem are Beckmann's last illustrations of the first and third cantos (plates 26, 29). Both show Orpheus departing from his mother, who barely figures in traditional accounts of the myth. The significance of the mother is most evident in the passage in which she tries to restrain her son from going to the underworld. She urges him to return home, to heed the warning of the storm sent by the gods, and to do his duty: to take up the lyre from his father and play it for the people, in praise of the gods, the world, and himself. In her invocation, she reminds him that it was she who had passed on to him the lyre from a father whom he never knew.5 She beseeches in vain a "too feverish" Orpheus to recognize reality. Protesting that love calls him, he storms off into the thundering night, his figure illuminated by a blaze of lightning. As she watches, his mother recalls the hour of his conception, the night she had taken in a noble stranger, perhaps a god, who bore a lyre. Strong Romantic overtones are evident in Beckmann's third illustration of the first canto, depicting Orpheus Departing from His Mother to Go to the Underworld (plate 26). The mother, a dark silhouette set against a light landscape, gazes into the distance as the small figure of her son paves a diagonal path toward the horizon. Beckmann is characteristically concerned with portraying the relationship between insignificant man and endless space, bringing the individual into contact with the infinite. Guthmann often contrasts the common sense of the mother with the brashness and irrationality of Orpheus, who uses love and passion to justify all his actions, as the titles of the three cantos indicate: Lyre of Love, Lyre of Passion, and Lyre of Suffering. Toward the end of the epic, when Eurydice is about to die a second time, Orpheus acknowledges that his foolish and childish
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behavior causes her death. She likens herself to a butterfly attracted to the flowers of his art but then finding the fragrance too costly, "Your heart is too rich and I must languish." 6 With Eurydice's final departure, the sun rises, all is suddenly calm, and Orpheus's creativity is revived. In the morning light that brings new life, his mother appears (plate 29). Pleased to learn that Eurydice has gone, she sees her own life fulfilled and Orpheus's opportunity to get on with his business and return to his important work: "Orpheus, you greatest of all men, son from the race of gods, . . . I see your face illuminated in the brilliance of Fame! Orpheus! . . . my son!"7 Orpheus acknowledges her practical wisdom and foresight: "You revealed the light of the future to me, as others see it." But he also remarks that she does not understand what Eurydice's return meant to him. Corresponding to the text, Beckmann portrays Orpheus kneeling before his towering mother, asking her as her last duty of love to: "kiss my eyes, for no one will shut them for me in dying."8 In Guthmann's account, the mythical artist is totally dependent on woman for his creative production—woman/mother as superego and woman/wife/ lover as inspiration; only as it exists in spirit, however, can the second avoid being an obstacle to the very creativity it nourishes. As even the title implies, women are dominant in this interpretation of the Orpheus myth. It is clear that the childish Orpheus's closeness to a wise and dominant mother underlies Guthmann's version of the myth. Beckmann remains faithful generally to the narrative and in a loose, sketchy, graphic technique, which reveals only outlines of figures and not facial features, manages to suggest the prominence of the mother (plates 26, 29) and the helplessness of Orpheus by the contrast of their sizes. Beckmann and Guthmann show their heritage from the previous generation of the theme of the domination of woman, a different aspect of the symbolist interpretation from that which appealed to Apollinaire and Dufy. Instead of the alldevouring women in symbolist works by Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, and others—Salomé, Judith, and the murderer of Orpheus, for example—Guthmann's and Beckmann's dominant but benevolent women represent forces of rationality: the mother attempting to subdue the irrational element in her son and the wife finally overcome by precisely this element. The mother's prominence in these lithographs corresponds to Guthmann's text, but it is especially poignant considering Beckmann's relationship with his own mother and his despair over her death three years earlier. He clearly would have empathized with this Orpheus's closeness to the mother who had raised him. Beckmann had run away from boarding school in order to be with her; his father had died when he was ten years old. Beckmann grieved sorely over his mother's death in 1906 and may have identified, even if subconsciously, with Orpheus departing from his mother. Her large size relative to Orpheus may reflect not only the powerful role that the mother
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plays in the poem, but also that which Beckmann's mother had played in his life (plates 26, 29). The setting of Orpheus's first departure from his mother also has an autobiographical flavor. Beckmann focuses on evoking a sense of atmosphere; heavy clouds and a dazzling white landscape illustrate Guthmann's description of the foreboding violent storm with thunder and lightning that accompanied Orpheus's departure. The thunderstorm illustrated is like one that Beckmann had experienced and described in his diary entry of 23 August 1903: The whole sky was just shot through with lightning Oh, and it thunders so magnificently. . . . There they all are, unleashed, the fine grand forces of nature. Well go on, sky, thunder away, lightning away. Let me see more of your wondrous beauties. . . . Play your primeval world symphony just one more time so that all that is comic and petty may be dispelled for me. . . . I am waiting for the tear from above in the gray covering of the sky, through which I will be able to see into eternity. 9
The importance of Orpheus's mother in Guthmann's epic and Beckmann's illustrations does have some basis in the traditional myth, in which Calliope, Muse of epic poetry, is the mother of the singer and, therefore, at least partly responsible for his gifts, as we are reminded in the Eclogues (4.55). That he was the son of a Muse all the ancient sources agree, but his father's identity varies according to different versions of the myth. Although unusual in ancient and modern literature, reference to Calliope's role beyond merely giving birth to Orpheus does appear in literature after Virgil; for example, Pierre de Ronsard mentions her advice to Orpheus that his travels with the Argonauts will help rid him of the cares that result from "loving too much."10 Cassirer was correct in remarking to Guthmann that his book was "so completely" of its time, for several German psychological publications early in the century focused on the abnormal childhood relationships of artists and writers with their mothers. In 1908 and 1909 Isidore Sadger published psychological biographies of Heinrich yon Kleist, Nikolaus Lenau, and Conrad Ferdinand Meyer and studied the childhood attachments of homosexuals to their mothers.11 Freud, acknowledging Sadger's researches in his own study Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (Leipzig and Vienna: F. Deuticke, 1910), would note the strong feminine influence due to the small part played by the father in the development of male homosexuals; Dmitri Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky's psychological novel Leonardo da Vinci, where the same theme is explored, had been translated into German in 1903 (Berlin: T. Knaur). It is quite possible that Guthmann was aware of current psychological thought regarding the abnormal relationships of creative men with their mothers and appropriately applied it to a story about the legendary artist who
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originated homosexuality; the reader is led to speculate that Orpheus's sexual aberration may have resulted from his rearing by his mother and from his inability. to separate himself from her completely. Although Guthmann's denigration of Orpheus as a childlike, overemotional musician had long precedents, from Ovid through Jacques Offenbach (Orphée aux Enfers, 1858), undoubtedly the most significant influence on Guthmann's poem and on later critical interpretations of Orpheus as the flawed artist were Freud's early writings about the creative individual. His "Poet and DayDreaming" had been published in the Neue Revue, a literary periodical in Berlin, early in 1908. 12 Guthmann, a writer in Berlin, surely would have known of this essay published the year before his poem on Orpheus. In this article Freud likens the poet to "the dreamer in broad daylight." He suggests that in his daydreams the poet seduces us into enjoying the fulfillment of his childish and egocentric wishes, "The creative writer does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously."13 Freud remarks that the egocentric origins and quality of the imaginative writer's fantasies must be altered and disguised before the work can be considered art.14 In several of his early writings, Freud views the artist and writer as perilously close to the neurotic as a creator of illusory, unreal productions and himself involved with illusions and unable to cope with reality. In his Interpretation of Dreams, first published in 1900, Freud had stated: The artist has also an introverted disposition and has not far to go to become neurotic. He is one who is urged on by instinctual needs which are too clamorous; . . . like any other with an unsatisfied longing, he turns away from reality and transfers all his interest, and all his libido too, on to the creation of his wishes in the life of phantasy, from which the way might readily lead to neurosis. . . . It is well known how often artists in particular suffer from partial inhibition of their capacities through neurosis. . . But the way back to reality is found by the artist [through his art].15
He then describes the artist's ability to elaborate and disguise his fantasies, making them pleasurable to others. Several writers have noted that Freud's view of the artist/neurotic reflects his heritage from Plato's description of the divine madness of the inspired poet, Cesare Lombroso's theory of the insane genius, the romantic critical tradition, and Nietzsche's equation of art, fantasy, and dreaming.16 Beckmann clearly must have felt ambivalent toward Guthmann's Orpheus, in whom he would have recognized an image of the artistdreamer who represented the opposite of the ideal that he had described in his diary on 9 January 1909: "My heart is attuned rather to a rougher, more ordinary, more vulgar art. Not the kind that lives dreamy fairytale moods in a poetic trance, but which gives direct access to the frightful, vulgar, spectacular, ordinary,
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grotesquely banal in life: [but rather] an art that can always be immediately present to us where life is most real." Like Nietzsche (particularly in Thus Spake Zarathustra), whom he read avidly, Beckmann advocated a strong affirmation of life, with one's passions harnessed but not repressed in creative work. Unlike Orpheus, the legendary artist who tried to escape from the harshness of reality by seeking death, Beckmann focused on human disasters as a way of facing the realities of modern life. In his autobiography he would write on 19 May 1924, "Beckmann has been made ill by his indestructible preference for the defective invention called 'Life'."18 Marcuse emphasizes that images of the Orphic world are "unreal and unrealistic. They designate an 'impossible' attitude and existence." The picture of Orpheus is of an imaginary, ideal existence, which appears as an "impossible" reality and as an evasion of the truth to the uninitiated.19 By moving the inanimate with his song and traveling from the realm of life to death and back, Orpheus appears to us as representative of an impossible, fabulous world. Also unrealistic is his response to the loss of his wife (especially in Georgics 4), avoiding reality with a futile and ultimately suicidal grief that destroys his interest in life and eventually causes his death. Whereas some artists, like Beckmann's compatriot Marc, themselves seeking to shun a painful reality, were attracted to Orpheus because of the ideal world that he created by his art, Beckmann's determination to confront life leads him to combat this escapist tendency characteristic of the artist since romanticism, and to condemn it through the figure of Orpheus. Beckmann's moralistic concern with depicting the vitality of life undoubtedly would have led him to disapprove of the escapism from reality of Guthmann's Orpheus, who rushes headlong toward death. Characteristically judgmental, Beckmann may drastically diminish the size and significance of his Orpheus not only to correspond with the text, but also as his own statement of the unworthiness of this childish dreamer to be regarded as a hero. Even when he is portrayed alone, and relatively large, as in Beckmann's first illustration for the second canto, Orpheus in the Underworld Surrounded by Shadows (plate 27), Orpheus is defenseless against the forces enveloping him. A vast mass of loosely sketched, undifferentiated figures surrounding Orpheus in this print corresponds closely to Guthmann's image of the infinite multitude of shades confronting the hero in the underworld. Far from being the musician with magic in his notes who conquered the gods of the underworld, this nude and faceless Orpheus is the vulnerable artist blindly groping his way among hostile elements. This lithograph reveals the same combination of influences as Beckmann's contemporaneous Resurrection (plate 30): the central nude is reminiscent of figures painted by Hans von Marées, whereas the monumental pathos and grandeur, the dynamic fusion of bodies and levels of depth, call
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to mind Rubens—who painted Orpheus and Eurydice in Hades twice between 1635 and 1637 (plate 31). Although Beckmann's Orpheus steps forward like Rubens's, the twentiethcentury singer is less bold and leans backward as he is overwhelmed by surrounding forces. Considering Beckmann's affinities with Guthmann's Orpheus noted below, he may project his own lack of selfesteem and his ambivalence. Perhaps fighting against his own tendency toward withdrawal and isolation from the outside world, which critics have observed in his contemporaneous SelfPortrait with Minna Beckmann Tube (1909, Halle, Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg),21 he felt that he must condemn ever more vigorously Guthmann's mythical musician who represented the very qualities in himself that he rejected. One of Beckmann's most intense memories of his youth was of the loneliness of the sea.22 As a ''swirling eternity," however, it also offered solace. He wrote in 1915, "If I were king of the world, I would choose as my highest privilege to spend one month a year alone on the beach."23 Clearly Beckmann's second illustration for the first canto, of Orpheus lying on a beach and grieving over the death of Eurydice (plate 25), a motif invented by Beckmann and not in the epic, implies a correspondence between the loneliness of the artist, Orpheus, and of the comforting sea. Although the dark, sketchy style of late German impressionists, such as Lovis Corinth, may also be reflected in these lithographs, Beckmann's heritage from the subjectivism of the romantics predominates and corresponds to the mood of the poem. Christian Lenz has convincingly argued that the label "impressionistic" generally given to Beckmann's works before World War I should not be applied to the lithograph of Orpheus despairing over the death of Eurydice, as he lies on the seashore under the oppressive clouds of the heavens.24 In this image, nature and individual confront each other in a tensive relationship. Orpheus is man helpless against the forces of nature, withdrawing from society—"where life is most real"—into isolation, which part of Beckmann craves and against which he simultaneously fights. A striking contrast exists between Beckmann's insignificant, mournful Orpheus on a beach and Puvis de Chavannes's heroic, sorrowful singer lying in a rocky landscape (ca. 1883, New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery; plate 32). Both images conform to tradition, however, in that Orpheus's unadulterated lament, likened by Virgil to the nightingale's, appears to link him with all nature and to isolate him from human society. Guthmann's epic as a plea for realism ultimately follows in the tradition of Virgil's fourth Georgic, in which Orpheus loses Eurydice because of his overpowering love; Virgil's hero, however, is exclusively a lover, his love explains the magical powers of his song, and his father was the river god
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Oeagrus. Guthmann makes explicit Orpheus's inheritance of his superhuman powers from Apollo and implies that he is theologos when his mother urges him to return to his religious duties. These he had foresaken in his all too human submission to his passions and his characteristic tendency as an artist to shield himself from reality in favor of a world of fantasy. Beckmann's third illustration for the second canto, depicting Orpheus Embracing Eurydice in the Underworld (plate 28), can be best understood in the context of its derivation from Edvard Munch's Maiden and Death (produced in Berlin in 1894; plate 33), to which it is both visually and iconographically related.26 In different guises, death dominates both images. Orpheus, posed like the skeleton in Munch's print and enveloped by the shadows toward which he has hurled himself, is identified with death and darkness and embraces a Eurydice closely resembling the nude that Munch's Death grips. Beckmann had earlier turned to Munch for inspiration when creating another work based on death, reflecting his own despondency over the loss of his mother (Great Death Scene, 1906). Munch praised this tragic painting and encouraged Beckmann to continue in its direction.27 Munch had exhibited several important works focusing on death, in Berlin in 1908, shortly before Beckmann turned to Munch's print as a model for his own. Beckmann painted a Resurrection (Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie; plate 30) in 1909, the same year as the Eurydike illustrations. It has been justifiably proposed that his Resurrection paintings are ''antiResurrections."28 Unlike the legendary artist whom he portrays in Eurydikes Wiederkehr, Beckmann refused to believe in the possibility of life after death and to succumb to emotions that represent a denial of life. As he said in 1920: "There is nothing that I hate as much as sentimentality. The stronger my determination grows to grasp the unutterable things of this world, the deeper and more powerful the emotion burning inside me about our existence, . . . the harder I try to capture the terrible, thrilling monster of life's vitality and to confine it."29 The figures in his Resurrection of 1909, however, express doubts and fears and are unable to communicate with each other; the artist himself appears in it as an isolated and lonely individual. Like Virgil's Orpheus who sees the light at the end, Guthmann's ultimately enlightened Orpheus who states finally that no one would shut his eyes for him when he dies must have seemed a kindred spirit to Beckmann, who focused at this time on the loneliness of the individual at the moment of judgment. Although created contemporaneously, Dufy's woodcuts (190810) for Le Bestiaire, which were among the earliest twentiethcentury works of art glorifying Orpheus as the spiritualizing transformer par excellence, present a strong and telling contrast with Beckmann's equally autobiographical lithographs. Clearly, the comparison reveals totally dissimilar views toward the legendary
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hero and the creative artist. Both versions reflect their symbolist heritage, but the French interpretation appears to rely more on occult writings and the German on psychological ones. Clearly the French view of the artist is more positive and idealized, commemorating his ability to control his world: to create a new inner consciousness through art and to attain a mystical spirituality. The more pessimistic German attitude conceives of the artist as a tragically flawed individual—dependent on women for his creativity and unable to control his own feelings and, consequently, his fate. The net effects of the portrayals are similar, although the selfcritical German view is ostensibly more honest. By a projection of the artist's own flaws onto Orpheus, the critical view temporarily increases the artist's selfregard by means of comparison; through opposite means of selfidentification with an idealized Orpheus the French artist succeeds in enhancing his.
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6 Powerlessness and Dependence Oskar Kokoschka To convey his own feelings of despair and physical and emotional helplessness, Oskar Kokoschka created several works in which he identified himself with the mythical Orpheus: a play (191718), eight drypoint etchings (191718) intended for an illustrated edition of the play never published, and an oil painting (1918). 1 His play Orpheus und Eurydike shows him still suffering from the spiritual wounds inflicted by his tempestuous and almost disastrous love affair with Alma Mahler between 1912 and 1914 and from the bodily wounds incurred in World War I in September 1915. As Kokoschka lay on the battlefield, he stared into the eyes of death and, like Orpheus, descended into the underworld, hoping to bring back Eurydice/ Alma from the shadows after he had killed (or attempted to kill) her image within himself. In the field hospital of WladimirWolhynsk in Russia, he conceived the idea of a play based on the myth and wrote most of it during his convalescence in Dresden. Orpheus und Eurydike is the most autobiographical of Kokoschka's dramas; it is a record of his relationship with Alma Mahler, seen through the eyes of a man in pain, trying to find his way back to life from a shattered existence. In the play, Kokoschka uses myth—combining that of Orpheus with those of Cupid and Psyche, Hades, Persephone, and Demeter—in order to elevate
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his autobiography to art and universalize his personal experience through mythical characters. His conflation of myths is not entirely without precedent. In Ovid, Cupid is "the god wellknown in the upper world" who overcomes Orpheus (Metamorphoses 10.26); in Gluck's opera, Cupid also unites the lovers at the end. Hades and Persephone play important roles in the Roman version of the myth. Among Kokoschka's dramas, Orpheus und Eurydike is the most complex exposé of the conflict between the sexes and of the superiority of the female. He had already manifested his preoccupation with these subjects in Sphinx und Strohmann and Mörder Hoffnung der Frauen (1907), both of which echoed ideas expressed in works by an older generation of artists and writers (such as Félicien Rops, Munch, Arthur Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Johan August Strindberg, and Henrik Ibsen). Kokoschka's fatal attraction to women, notably to Alma Mahler, partly explains the focus of his early plays and etchings on the conflict between the sexes, the domination of men by women, and the vulnerability of the male artist, Orpheus. In this regard, he also recalls images by the symbolists Moreau and Redon, and later, Apollinaire and Dufy in their concern with sirens threatening the artist. Nearly consumed by his passion for Alma Mahler, Kokoschka felt that she could cause him to lose both his identity and his creative powers; he would later remark that she almost destroyed him, but that he had managed to liberate himself. In the play Orpheus und Eurydike, Kokoschka voices his own ambivalent feelings through Orpheus and those of Alma Mahler through Eurydice, whose Spirit in act 3, scene 3 asks, "Isn't it, rather, hate, this love?" 2 It is clear that Kokoschka was most attracted to the tragic quality of the myth, seeing in it a demonstration of the fundamental irreconcilability of man and woman—the decay of their physical desire into hate and the impossibility of happiness in love between them. As a child, Kokoschka had developed an almost hallucinatory fantasy so powerful that reality and dream were barely distinguishable. He believed in a cosmic influence on his nervous system and fantasized that the war between the sexes was a conflict between cosmic powers. Fantasy and hallucinations lay at the origins of his art and explain his reverence for what he called the divine powers of the imagination. "Imagination," he said, "is the only guide."3 Nevertheless, Kokoschka also realized the destructive potential of the imagination and, like Beckmann, used Orpheus to show that the very powers necessary for the success of the creative artist could also be his fatal flaws—his abilities to feel deeply and to transform reality imaginatively. Explaining that man and woman (Orpheus and Eurydice) are basically irreconcilable, Kokoschka has Orpheus say: "What is the tie that binds man and woman together? Our own imagination! What fools it makes of us!"4
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Orpheus is the artist who mistakenly believes in the reality of the products of his imagination. He imagines that he is joined to Eurydice, whereas he really has been in love with an illusory image; his strong belief in it ultimately causes his destruction. Like Kokoschka, Orpheus in the play feels the impossibility of artistic creation without the woman he loves, and when confronted with the choice between selfrenewal as an artist and his lover, Orpheus blindly chooses his illusory image of a woman instead of his art. Kokoschka's Orpheus, therefore, is reminiscent of Guthmann's and Beckmann's in that he favors his lover over his art, avoids facing reality, and plunges into darkness in search of Eurydice, herself identified with darkness in act 2 of Kokoschka's play and in later literary interpretations of the myth. 5 Kokoschka's hallucinatory fantasies when wounded in battle inspired his play Orpheus und Eurydike. Sometimes I was overcome with memories of the past: I saw the woman from whom I had so painfully parted standing there before me. I felt myself succumbing to her power of attraction, as if I could never part from her. The head wound had impaired my power of locomotion and my vision, but the words of my imaginary conversations with her phantom impressed themselves so vividly on my mind that without having to write anything down I could progressively expand them in my imagination to create whole scenes. My play Orpheus und Eurydike grew out of the repeated hallucinations I experienced in the camp at WladimirWolhynsk. I wrote it down from memory afterwards.6
As he lay wounded and could summon up only a phantom of Alma Mahler, Kokoschka surely knew that, according to tradition, Orpheus found only a phantom of his wife in the underworld. Although he may not have been cognizant of Plato's contention (Symposium 179d) that Orpheus was shown only a wraith of Eurydice instead of the real woman because he was a poorspirited coward, Kokoschka's own feelings of helplessness in face of the threat to his identity by the phantom of Alma Mahler led him to write a play that condemned the legendary artist for his weakness, uncertainty, and jealousy; he called the play "an attempt to rescue myself from my own chaos."7 In 1919, still trying to rid himself of his obsession, as well as to change a hostile reality of an empty present by creating a lifesize doll of Alma Mahler, Kokoschka was like Orpheus trying to summon Eurydice back to life—the romantic and postromantic Orpheus who represents the selfabsorbed artist in quest after the unattainable. Having determined to destroy Alma Mahler's effigy, Kokoschka and his friends decapitated it at a party after which a dustcart "carried away the dream of Eurydice's return. The doll was an image of a spent love that no Pygmalion could bring to life."8 Kokoschka's mother posed a major obstacle to his relationship with Alma
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Mahler. She thought Mahler was keeping her son from a great career and threatened several times to kill her if she did not release him. Until her death in 1934, Kokoschka's relationship with his mother was unusually close. In his early years he said he had read Johann Jakob Bachofen on matriarchy "with the same enthusiasm as others were reading Karl Marx." 9 Bachofen's Mutterrecht, originally published in 1861, had finally achieved recognition in Germany at the turn of the century. Bachofen praises the primitive matriarchal society before the custom of marriage, when woman was dominant. He describes the primitive mother extending her loving care to the preservation and improvement of her child's existence, "Woman at this stage is the repository of all culture, of all benevolence, of all devotion."10 Kokoschka writes of the greater significance of the mother than the father, of his love and devotion to his mother, and his guilt feelings when he hurt her by his preoccupation with Alma Mahler.11 He considered his mother and himself kindred spirits with clairvoyant powers; she, like her own mother, supposedly had the gift of second sight, a notion reinforced for Kokoschka by Bachofen's crediting women with the beginning of prophecy, and describing maternal love as the "divine principle" that informs even a violent world.12 The certainty of Orpheus's kinship with Calliope and poetic inheritance from her, in contrast to the uncertain identity of his father, conformed to Kokoschka's thoughts about the paramount importance of the mother. Donald E. Gordon pointed out the Freudian element in Kokoschka's play: Orpheus not only mistakes Eurydice for his mother, but also is jealous of Hades, whose husband Eurydice becomes in the play. This emotion evidently mirrors Kokoschka's sense of threat from the memory of Alma's deceased husband; the story resembles that of Oedipus and his motherwife, Jocasta.13 Alma Mahler, seven years Kokoschka's senior, had admired the headlong child in him and remembered Freud's words to her husband Gustav Mahler in 1910, "You seek your mother in every woman."14 Although Kokoschka's writings do not refer to Oedipus, in the artist's years in Vienna preceding World War I Freud's views were widely discussed; Kokoschka later acknowledged that Freud was the only psychotherapist whose ideas he respected, and he described expressionism as a contemporary rival of Freud's development of psychoanalysis.15 His own psychological problems may have led to a subconscious conflation of the Oedipus and Orpheus myths. In addition to being a disappointed lover and artist yearning for selfrenewal, Kokoschka had several other reasons for identifying himself with Orpheus. Like the legendary figure, he was subject to turbulent emotions and violent passions; he later described himself during his affair with Alma Mahler as "an immature youth with a tendency to run full tilt at brick walls."16 Similarly, in his play Orpheus und Eurydike, the musician is markedly headstrong and
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likened to a fool. In 1913, moreover, Kokoschka and Alma Mahler had visited an idyllic valley in the Dolomites called the Valle d'Orfeo. Kokoschka revisited the site during World War I, only to find it devastated by grenades and shells, and later wrote, "The music of Orpheus's harp, which tamed wild beasts, was something that had not been heard there for a long time." 17 In his early years, Kokoschka was also a poet, writing verse to express his feelings through tones and melodies. In 1908 he published a picturepoem called "Die träiumenden Knaben," and in 1913, in an attempt to rid himself of his obsession with Alma Mahler, wrote a poem titled ''Allos Makar,'' an anagram of the names Oskar and Alma meaning "another is happy."18 His idealization of music is evident in his autobiography, where he extols Mozart's operas as a "transcendental sphere of whispered emotions and passions . . . of nature rediscovered, something only a god could create"; in his painting The Power of Music (191819), he tried to achieve "an inner spiritual luminosity."19 Kokoschka's drypoint etchings and oil painting of Orpheus and Eurydice are sketchily handled and marked by swirling, agitated lines. As in his play, he focuses on the problem of relations between man and woman. The first etching, of Eurydice Waiting in a Garden, is light in tone and gentle and calm in feeling (plate 34). A timid Eurydice stands along a path of their garden waiting for Orpheus who enters in the left background from the dazzling light of the street. The second etching satirizes the first, as Eurydice is now proud and indifferent to her beseeching husband; idyllic love is impossible to maintain (plate 35). After the third etching, devoted to The Furies (plate 36), the fourth shows Eurydice in a white funeral garment, flanked on one side by the Furies bearing her to the underworld and on the other by Orpheus urging her not to go. In the fifth illustration, In Orcus, Orpheus, holding a lamp, searches for Eurydice in the underworld, while she, oblivious to his suffering, reclines luxuriously in delight. In the sixth etching, Eurydice Collapses While Leaving the Underworld, Eurydice is helplessly dependent on her lover who with somber expression attempts in vain to sustain her, realizing, as Kokoschka does, the impossibility of recapturing a lost love and his own inability, to provide emotional and physical support for a woman (plate 38). Dark tones heighten the solemn mood. Orpheus Leads Eurydice through the Forest is the seventh etching, not corresponding to any part of the play. Here a rather hideous Eurydice, evidently pleased to be guided by a clumsy, oversized Orpheus, smiles at him and extends her right hand, as if in agreement with the direction in which he points (plate 37). The last etching, with Psyche removing Cupid's blindfold in the background, represents a significant modification of act 3, scene 2 in which Eurydice had begged Orpheus for her freedom. The etching, however, focuses explicitly on Kokoschka's spiritual release from the bonds of physical desire, as Orpheus in the foreground
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kneels in supplication before the Spirit of Eurydice (plate 39). By submitting to the feminine spirit, like Cupid who is healed by Psyche in the distance, Orpheus, the artist, will achieve redemption. In the last three, heavily worked etchings it is clear that Orpheus is associated with darkness, death, and despair. The oil painting that Kokoschka created while writing the play shows a sad Eurydice seated opposite a naked and anxious Orpheus as he distractedly plays the lyre; this is the man who ignores his art in favor of his sexual desire (plate 40). The subject corresponds to a moment in act 2 of the play, when the couple is at the cavernous passage out of the underworld. Eurydice is pulled in different directions: her body turns toward Orpheus as she gazes despondently into the distance. The spiritual separation between man and woman, and perhaps also the boundary of Hades, are given visual expression by the heavy black line through the center of the painting. It seems quite probable that Kokoschka had seen Cassirer's highly prized volume of Guthmann's and Beckmann's, Eurydikes Wiederkehr, emphasizing the male artist's dependence on women. Cassirer had begun to exhibit Kokoschka's work in 1910 and would provide him with both moral and financial support for many years to come. As in Beckmann's lithographs, Eurydice is the dominant figure throughout the set of Kokoschka's etchings, although her dominance is not necessarily explicit in her characterization or size. She is the one to whom Orpheus comes in the garden, the one whom he beseeches, the one whom he tries to sustain and to lead, the one through whom he will receive redemption. That Orpheus is naked in Kokoschka's painting, whereas Eurydice is dressed, suggests his greater vulnerability; their crossed legs and lack of physical contact connote the irreconcilability of man and woman. Without the love of woman, Orpheus appears destined to eternal helplessness. By portraying him in such a manner and condemning the weak mythical artist for the very powerlessness with which he identified himself in relation to Alma Mahler, Kokoschka must have received strength; looking at the situation of the rejected lover as if as an observer he could distance himself from it and vicariously overcome it.
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7 The Mask of the Imagination George Balanchine and Isamu Noguchi George Balanchine produced two autobiographical ballets based on the myth of Orpheus with sets designed by famous artists. The first, derived from Gluck's opera and with sets and costumes created by Pavel Tchelitchev, was performed (and poorly received) at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City in 1936. Still fascinated by the symbolic poet/ musician's tragic destiny, Balanchine commissioned a "new, modern Orpheus" from Igor Stravinsky for the Ballet Society; it was performed at the New York City Center in 1948. 1 In this ballet Balanchine sought to make his audience identify with Orpheus, who expressed the grief of loss (of Eurydice); the spectator was then to be purged of his own grief and left with a sense of acceptance of his fate. Reflecting his own personal experiences, Balanchine viewed the story of Orpheus and Eurydice as the eternal domestic tragedy between artist and wife. Emphasizing the impossibility of real closeness between man and woman (as Kokoschka had stressed the futility of earthly love), he remarked that Orpheus and Eurydice are physically together as they rise from the underworld but "remote to each other—Orpheus, because he cannot see, Eurydice, because she cannot be seen by the man she loves."2 The decor and costumes for Balanchine's second Orpheus were designed by Isamu Noguchi, who was at the time especially receptive to Freud's and
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Jung's analogies between universal myths and the problems of modern man. Like many of his contemporaries, Noguchi had developed a personal and enigmatic interpretation of mythology, symbolic of the inner world of the mind. He later said that by 1948 he had become "steeped in the transformations of myth in my sculptures, in the ballet Orpheus, and with the Greek cycle of Martha Graham." 3 The props in Noguchi's bleak landscape complemented the magical powers of Orpheus: huge boulders transformed into lanterns as the scene changed from a sunlit realm to the underworld. Noguchi explained his interpretation of the myth of Orpheus: Never was I more personally involved in creation than with this piece which is the story of the artist. I interpreted Orpheus as the story of the artist blinded by his vision (the mask). Even inanimate objects move at his touch—as do the rocks, at the pluck of his lyre. To find his bride or to seek his dream or to fulfill his mission, he is drawn by the spirit of darkness to the netherworld. . . . Here, too, entranced by his art, all obey him; and even Pluto's rock turns to reveal Eurydice in his embrace (she has been married to Death, as in the Japanese myth of IzanagiNoMikoto and IzanamiNoMikoto). With his music, Orpheus, who is blinded to all material facts by the mask of his art, leads Eurydice earthward. But alas, he is now beset by doubts of material possession. He tears off his mask and sees Eurydice as she really is, a creature of death∙ Without the protection of his artistic powers, he is even weaker than ordinary mortals, and he is torn apart by the Furies. But his art is not dead; his singing head has grown heroic as his spirit returns; and as a symbol of this resurrection, a flowering branch ascends to heaven.4
It is clear that Noguchi feels ambivalent toward the legendary artist whom he sees as simultaneously heroic and family flawed. The sculptor uniquely combines the attitudes of artists who idealize Orpheus and those who condemn him. A consideration of the particular, unfortunate circumstances of Noguchi's childhood elucidates the duality of his point of view. Noguchi's special interest in this myth as the story of the artist suggests that he, like most other artists and writers who portray Orpheus, identifies himself with the legendary hero. As Dore Ashton indicated, Noguchi, a stone carver and "mover," is akin to the mythical musician who caused rocks to move when he played his lyre.5 Noguchi's father, a renowned Japanese poet who had written several monographs on artists and was regarded as an authority on art, had deserted Noguchi's mother (an American writer) and their twoyearold son. Even though Noguchi always remained close to his mother and felt strong hostility ("a moral loathing") toward his father as a man, he venerated him as a poet/artist. Despite the hostility that Noguchi felt toward the father who had abandoned him, he sought to emulate him as an artist in a different
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medium. In 1926 he said: "My father, Yone Noguchi, is Japanese and has long been known as an interpreter of the East to the West, through poetry. I wish to do the same with sculpture." 6 Noguchi's personal interpretation of the East to the West is evident in his analogy of the myths of Orpheus and Izanagi, an analogy that had also been made by Jung, whose comparisons of Eastern and Western traditions appealed to Noguchi.7 It is quite likely, that this Orpheus represents a conflation of Noguchi's identity with that of his poet father. By focusing on Orpheus's flaws, the sculptor is able to vent his hostility toward the man who had rejected him and his mother and perhaps as well to castigate himself for his own unworthiness, which as a child he probably believed was related to his father's departure. By identification with Orpheus he could achieve a symbolic reconciliation with his father, winning his acceptance as an artist and fulfilling the ego ideal. Noguchi's simultaneous praise and condemnation of the artist are distinctive. The gilded wooden mask (plate 41) which he created for Orpheus conveyed Balanchine's message about man's inability to communicate with the opposite sex, as well as Noguchi's own message about the artist's blindness to reality, a drawback of his imagination.8 Like Beckmann's and Kokoschka's images of Orpheus, Noguchi's artist is a dreamer attracted by the powers of darkness toward death. A creature of death, married to Hades, Noguchi's Eurydice is the deceptive female who lures man to selfdestruction. Like Plato's flawed poet, granted a woman who is not what he thinks she is, Noguchi's Orpheus does not recognize the true nature of Eurydice because of his inherent weakness as an artist. Noguchi's Orpheus, who suffers because he is unable to see reality, continues the tradition of the flawed, unrealistic artistdreamer, like Guthmann's musician who refuses to recognize what is real. Noguchi's Orpheus recalls Freud's paradigmatic artist, characterized by neurosis, a voluntary blindness that substitutes for direct gratification.9 Orpheus represses his painful memory of the death of Eurydice, gratifying his need for her through a fantasy magnified into a delusion—as a sort of variation of Freud's Gradiva created by Norbert Hanold and a favorite of the surrealists.10 Like Freud's artist, Noguchi's Orpheus finds his way back to reality when he embodies his fantasies in his art. Noguchi's artist is thwarted, however, by his own rational doubts of the reality of the illusion that his imagination creates. Tearing off the mask of the imagination that produces his art and protects him from reality by blinding him to it, he is able to see Eurydice as a creature of death. Without the protection of his imagination, the artist is unable to cope with reality ("weaker than ordinary mortals") and cannot survive. Noguchi is not alone among his contemporaries; Jean Anouilh conceives of Orpheus as the artist who creates an illusory, ideal image of his lover
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(Eurydice, 1942), but Death reveals her true face. The increasing tendency of artists and writers to be concerned with the selfdeception of Orpheus and the irrational workings of his mind undoubtedly reflects Freud's concern with man's selfdeception and penetrating beyond it to the unconscious self. Although couched in different terms from writers such as Anouilh and Guthmann, Noguchi's interpretation is similar in that blindness to reality is equated with artistic imagination, the very quality traditionally considered essential for artistic creativity and embodied in the transforming and prophetic powers of Orpheus. Orpheus's wooden mask metaphorically emphasizes his blindness, but by the supernatural aura emitted from its gilded abstract form, it also signifies the divine, magical powers of artistic imagination, despite the artist's human fallibility. In its dual associations, the mask represents Noguchi's longstanding conflicted feelings toward his father and himself. By concluding that the artist's creative powers triumph, he reveals the optimism and strong ego that ultimately sustain him.
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1. Franz Marc. Orpheus with the Animals, 19078. Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich.
2. Eugène Delacroix. Orpheus Bringing Civilization, 183847 Les Musées Nationaux. Le Palais Bourbon (photo: Marc Lavrillier).
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3. Raoul Dufy. First woodcut of Orpheus in Guillaume Apollinaire, Le Bestiaire ou cortèage d'Orphée, 1911 Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Louis E. Stern Collection.
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4. Raoul Dufy. Second woodcut of Orpheus in Le Bestiaire, 1911. Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Louis E. Stern Collection.
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5. Raoul Dufy. Third woodcut of Orpheus in Le Bestiaire, 1911. Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Louis E Stern Collection.
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6. Raoul Dufy. Fourth woodcut of Orpheus in Le Bestiaire, 1911. Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Louis E. Stern Collection.
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7. Giorgio de Chirico. Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire, 1914. Courtesy Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris.
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8. Cima da Conegliano. Orpheus Playing for the Animals, ca. 150510. Soprintendenza alle Gallerie, Florence.
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9. Paul Klee. Orpheus, 1929. Copyright 1989 ARS N.Y/Cosmopress
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10. Paul Klee. The Sultry, Garden, 1919. Copyright 1989 ARS N.Y /Cosmopress and Cosmopress, Genf. Paul Klee Foundation, Museum of Fine Arts, Bern.
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11. William Tucker. Orpheus 11, 1965. Courtesy, David McKee Gallery, New York. Reproduced by permission of the artist.
12. William Tucker. Illustration for Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets I. ix, sonnet 1. Reproduced by permission of the artist.
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13. William Tucker. Illustration for sonnet 2. Reproduced by permission of the artist.
14. William Tucker. Illustration for sonnet 5 Reproduced by permission of the artist.
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15. Raoul Dufy. Woodcut of a lyre in Le Bestiaire, 1911. Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Louis E. Stern Collection.
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16. Barbara Hepworth. Theme on Electronics (Orpheus), 1956. ©The Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Friends of Modern Art Fund.
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17. Barbara Hepworth. Curved Form (Orpheus), 1956. Private collection— Belgium. Reproduced by permission.
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18. Ossip Zadkine. Orpheus, 1948. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution. Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966.
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19. André Breton. Orphée, 1942. Photo: Helen Kelley.
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20. Jacques Lipchitz. Joy of Orpheus, 1945. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966.
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21. Carl Milles. Orpheus Fountain, 192636. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.
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22. Carl Milles. Preliminary study for Orpheus Fountain,192636. Courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery. Gift of the artist, 10 June 1936.
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23. Richard Lippold. Orpheus and Apollo, 1966. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc. Photograph by Bob Serating.
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24. Max Beckmann. The Funeral of Eurydice, lithograph in Johannes Guthmann, Eurydikes Wiederkehr, 1909.
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25. Max Beckmann. Orpheus at the Seashore, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr.
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26. Max Beckmann. Orpheus Departing from His Mother, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr. Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of J. B. Neuman.
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27. Max Beckmann Orpheus in the Underworld Surrounded by Shadows, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr.
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28. Max Beckmann. Orpheus Embracing Eurydice in the Underworld, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr.
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29. Max Beckmann. Orpheus's Final Departure from His Mother, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr.
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30. Max Beckmann. Resurrection, 1909. Courtesy, VG BildKunst, Bonn.
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31. Peter Paul Rubens. Orpheus and Eurydice in Hades, 163537. Courtesy, Museo del Prado. Used by permission.
32. Puvis de Chavannes. Orpheus, ca 1883 Yale University Art Gallery. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James W. Alsdorf.
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33. Edvard Munch. Maiden and Death, 1894. Courtesy, MunchMuseet, Oslo, Norway.
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34. Oskar Kokoschka. Etching of Eurydice Waiting in a Garden, 191718. Copyright 1989 ARS N.Y./Cosmopress.
35. Oskar Kokoschka. Etching of Orpheus Beseeching Eurydice, 191718. Copyright 1989 ARS N Y./Cosmopress.
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36. Oskar Kokoschka. Etching of The Furies, 191718. Copyright 1989 ARS N.Y./Cosmopress.
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37. Oskar Kokoschka. Etching of Orpheus Leads Eurydice through the Forest, 191718. Copyright 1989 ARS N Y./Cosmopress.
38. Oskar Kokoschka Etching of Eurydice Collapses While Leaving the Underworld, 191718. Copyright 1989 ARS N.Y./Cosmopress.
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39. Oskar Kokoschka. Etching of Psyche Removes Cupid's Blindfold, 191718. Copyright 1989 ARS N.Y./Cosmopress.
40. Oskar Kokoschka. Orpheus and Eurydice, 1918. Copyright 1989 ARS N.Y./Cosmopress.
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41. Isamu Noguchi. Mask of Orpheus, 1948 Courtesy of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation, Inc.
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42. Paul Klee. A Garden for Orpheus, 1926. Copyright 1989 ARS N.Y./Cosmopress.
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43. Cy Twombly. Veil of Orpheus, 1968. Courtesy, Leo Castelli Gallery. Reproduced by permission of the artist.
44. Barnett Newman. Song of Orpheus, 1945. Reproduced courtesy of Annalee Newman insofar as her rights are concerned.
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45. Bert Samples. Dawn of Orpheus, 1981. Private collection, Houston, Texas.
46. Robert Kushner. Orfeo, 1986. Courtesy Holly Solomon Gallery, New York.
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47. Mark di Suvero. Che farò senza Eurydice, 1959. Courtesy of Richard Bellamy and Mark di Suvero.
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48a. Mark di Suvero. Hand, 1960. Courtesy of Richard Bellamy and Mark di Suvero.
48b. Mark di Suvero. Hand, 1960. Courtesy of Richard Bellamy and Mark di Suvero.
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49. Cy Twombly. Orpheus, 1975 Photo: Mimmo Capone, Rome. Reproduced by permission of the artist.
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50. Cy Twombly. Orpheus, 1975. Photo: Franco Orlandi Rome. Reproduced by permission of the artist.
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51. Ethel Schwabacher. The Collision of the Andrea Doria and Stockholm or Che farò, 1956. Reproduced with the permission of Christopher C. Schwabacher.
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52. Ethel Schwabacher. Orpheus and Eurydice I, 1969. Reproduced with the permission of Christopher C. Schwabacher and the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
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53.
Ethel Schwabacher. Orpheus and Eurydice II, 1969. Reproduced with the permission of Christopher C. Schwabacher.
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54. Pablo Picasso. Orpheus Killed by the Maenads, etching in Ovid, Les Métamorphoses, 1931. ©Photo R.M.N.SPADEM.
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55. Pablo Picasso. Orpheus Killed by the Maenads, first state, 1930. ©Photo R.M.N.SPADEM.
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56. Pablo Picasso. Orpheus Killed by the Maenads, second state, 1930. Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Monroe Wheeler.
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57. André Masson. Orpheus, 193435. Copyright 1989 ARS N.Y./SPADEM. Print Collection, Miriam & Ira D Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.
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58. André Masson. Orpheus, 1934. Copyright 1989 ARS N.Y./SPADEM.
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59. Earl Staley. Death of Orpheus 4, 1985. Reproduced with the permission of Earl Staley and Betty Moody.
60. Earl Staley. SelfPortrait, 1981. Reproduced with the permission of Earl Staley and Betty Moody.
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61. Arnulf Rainer. Ecstasy in Black Fire (Orpheus), 197374. Courtesy of Atelier Arnulf Rainer, Vienna.
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PART THREE DEATH AND SUFFERING
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As several mythologists have indicated, the story of Orpheus in its very essence is a death myth. The original chthonic character of Orphism's Dionysian heritage was preserved in the concept of the cycle of births and the story of Orpheus's trip to the underworld. According to certain ancients, including Lactantius and Proclus, Orpheus's death caused by Dionysos, god of the vine and fruits of the earth, was a ritual act suggesting an aetiological story, with Orpheus as a form of the god Dionysos himself, torn to pieces according to the communion in his rites. 2 In antiquity, Orpheus was considered to be the originator of agriculture; because of his chthonic aspect, he may even have been worshiped as a vegetable deity. 3 The Greeks identified vegetable with chthonian deities, seeing a link between the spirit of the fruits of the earth and the underworld kingdom to which all life is taken by death. Wilhelm Mannhardt introduced the idea, popularized in James George Frazer's Golden Bough, that the ancient gods of the field and the vine—including Dionysos, Osiris, Pluto, Adonis, and Persephone—played double roles and symbolized the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. The impact of the Frazerian construct of a god of vegetation periodically reborn and with whom, in the form of Dionysos, Orpheus may be identified was of fundamental importance for twentiethcentury poets and artists interested in the myth. The concept of rebirth or resurrection for cult initiates or dying gods, however, was not always explicit—for example, Persephone returns to Hades regularly and Osiris stays with the dead, attaining transcendent life beyond death without returning to earthly life. 4 Orpheus supposedly possessed the secrets of the underworld, having melted the hearts of the infernal powers. Ovid's Orpheus pays homage to Ye divinities who rule the world below, Whither we mortal creatures all return, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To one abode; here one road leads us all; Here in the end is home; over humankind Your kingdom keeps the longest sovereignty. (Metamorphoses 10.2021, 3436)
Orpheus himself originally may even have been regarded an underworld
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spirit or as a Bronze Age shamanpriest connected with the cult of the Mother Goddess who was the central divinity of the religion taken over by the Mycenaeans and who grants continuing life; she was, therefore, like the earth with which she was associated, both tomb and womb, restoring the life that it takes. 5 The myth of Orpheus may, represent the universal unconscious instinct of selfdestruction, the death instinct. In his explanation of the death instinct, Freud proposed that all organic instincts are directed toward regression, a return to one's origins in the inorganic. 6 When life seems too bothersome, man regresses to a primitive state and expects to be magically united with the mother earth that created him. 7 As Orpheus plunges toward the underworld, performs a fatal transgression at least partly from a need for verification, and devotes his life to the memory of Eurydice, one could say that he manifests some (but not all) of the tendencies that have been associated with the necrophilous character: a desire to return to the darkness of the womb and a need for certainty and control over life only possible when life is transformed into death and oriented toward the past. 8 Freud proposed that the comfort provided by the death instinct may derive from the notion that we and our loved ones are merely subject to a universal law of nature. 9 The romantics' exaltation of death as an absorption into the living whole (an extension of the return to the womb) as a means of achieving true insight into the spiritual world partly explains the appeal of Orpheus to them, especially to Novalis and to his twentiethcentury counterpart, Franz Marc. Most artists interested in the death and immortality of Orpheus are also those who seek a return to origins in general, a unity of existence within nature that may be labeled as a form of regression—ultimately, an unconscious desire for death as a return to infancy, and union with the mother. 10 Certain artists who identify with Orpheus—such as Marc, Kokoschka, Jean Cocteau, Lipchitz, Pablo Picasso, and Arnulf Rainer—have been fixated on death, like Orpheus who was fatally attracted to it, and have had unusually close but ambivalent relationships with their mothers. For some, the morbid fascination with death is manifested in suicidal tendencies, which may underlie to some extent their identification with Orpheus, consumed by an ultimately suicidal grief. It may not be coincidental that they choose to focus on a mythical character whose chthonic aspect is a major part of his myth. Passage from being to nonbeing is hopelessly incomprehensible. In many archaic cultures, death is considered to be a necessary complement to life. Eliade maintains that everywhere in the traditional world death was regarded as a second birth, a beginning of a new, spiritual existence. In their ecstasies, shamans had access to spiritual worlds and, like Orpheus, descended to the underworld in order to bring back souls of dead people. Death was
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inconceivable if not related to some new form of being, whether rebirth, reincarnation, spiritual immortality, or resurrection of the body; by conferring a cyclic direction upon time, moreover, the primitive could annul its irreversibility. 11 The periodic resumption of one's former life was a basic dogma of Pythagoreanism. The concern with death and the afterlife of the cult with which Orpheus is associated is evident in the doctrines of reincarnation and transmigration that it espoused. In a vase painting reflecting Dionysiac beliefs, Orpheus is represented as mediator of otherworldly blessedness; Herodotus (2.81) linked Orpheus with Bacchic cult prescriptions pertaining to funerary customs. 12 Even if the mysteries did not guarantee a positive hope of an afterlife for the ancients (see p. 129 above), Orpheus's trip to the underworld and return from it and his bodily death but immortal song have provided artists and writers in the modern era with a means to express and mollify their own fears of death or explain their yearnings for it. The twentiethcentury artist uses Orpheus to justify and ease the pain of loss and death by praising them as necessary in the grand scheme of existence. If the creative impulse of the artist indeed springs from the tendency of man to immortalize himself, to protect himself against the transiency of experience, from mortality and decay, 13 Orpheus, the legendary artist, exemplifies this creative accomplishment. The myth of Orpheus has been the symbol of regeneration for the modern artist/poet, victim of inner turmoil or a brutal world—perhaps its materialism, a hostile audience, or an oppressive regime. Fundamental to modern art and poetry has been the quest for selfrenewal that Orpheus represents, attainable through a similar descent into depths, whether a confrontation with death, night, the unconscious, or the void. 14 For many, remembrance (the reawakening of the forgotten self) has been crucial to an achievement of selfrenewal. In ancient Greece, forgetting was equivalent to ignorance and death. Memory was venerated by the Orphics (and Plato), and in one of their hymns, initiates implored Mnemosyne, goddess of memory—''Awaken the memory of the solemn telete in the mystai''; the Pythagoreans valued memory most highly. 15 A modern "psychocritic," Charles Mauron, interprets Orpheus's descent into the underworld as a mythic statement of the creative process: he applies this myth to Antonin Proust's project of recreating the past through memos. "Le moi orphique," signifying the impulse to evoke the past, conveys for Mauron the goal of aesthetic creation—Orpheus's descent to recover his ability to sing, which he then uses to perpetuate Eurydice's memory. 16 Traditionally, artists have enjoyed special recognition as magicians who have power over memory and can eternalize human appearance. 17 Orpheus is the paragon of memory as he preserves in his songs memories of the origins of the world, and he remains forever faithful to the memory of Eurydice.
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8 Constancy and Continuity Time plays a poignant role in the threat of death, the hope of renewal, the consolation of memory. Traditionally, however, it lies outside the realm of the visual arts, arts of space rather than of time. 1 Whereas the concept of regeneration underlies most twentiethcentury visual interpretations of Orpheus's two deaths, a specific interest in the continuity of existence manifested by the mythical poetartist's conquest of time is evident among certain modern artists. Orpheus represents the ideals of those twentiethcentury, artists and writers who portray him—such as Klee, Lippold, Apollinaire, and Rilke—and themselves try to overcome time. Thus, for many the image of Orpheus is one of liberation from time. He (like Narcissus) reconciles Eros and Thanatos and "recalls the experience of a world that is to be emancipated, a releasing of the powers of Eros now bound in repressed and petrified man and nature: 'Orpheus masters death through liberation.'"2 In their attempts to nullify the transiency of life and the finality of death, several modern artists have focused on the Orpheus myth as a manifestation of the life cycle, the permanence and unity of existence, and the continuity between past, present, and future. Henri Bergson's theory of duration undoubtedly played a role in the evolution of this attitude. The primitive conception of a hero fatally attracted to death may be seen as an illustration of Freud's constancy and pleasure principles. 3 According to Freud, the dominant tendency of mental life, and perhaps all nervous life, is
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to try to keep the level of excitation as low as possible, or at least constant, thereby reducing internal tension. The living entity from the outset wishes to remain the same and in its conservatism seeks to restore an earlier state of things—the initial, inorganic state from which it had departed—to cancel out the tension that had been evoked. Hence, "the aim of all life is death." 4 Opposing the death instincts Freud cited selfpreservative sexual instincts. These are also conservative in their attempt to bring back an earlier state of living substance, but as life instincts they aim to prolong life. Continuity, therefore, is a major goal of the living being—whether continuity in organic or inorganic form. A further type of continuity has been remarked, that of the unconscious striving for continuity of personal character. 5 To acquire a sense of one's continuity, a sense of the constancy of one's identity, one must perceive unity and coherence in one's life purpose despite the diversity of actions and experiences over time. 6 Thus the human being seeks a sense of constancy of the personal self as well as of the physical being. Several artists discussed in this section regard the myth of Orpheus as a demonstration of the universal continuity of existence and identification with him gives a sense of continuity, a sense that may have overtones of regression. Not surprisingly, artists discussed in part 1 who seem to enhance their selfesteem by identifying with Orpheus also emphasize his ability to transcend the barriers of time. Guillaume Apollinaire and Raoul Dufy For Apollinaire, achieving a sense of wholeness or continuity of self by identification with Orpheus appears to have involved repression. Despite many traces of autobiography in his poetry, Apollinaire did his utmost to expunge references to his traumatic childhood—to reminders of schoolmates' taunts ("Wilhelm vilain") and of severely damaging humiliation by his mother. His father's desire to conceal his identity from the world resulted in a constant need for the son to prove his own identity; his mother's action in three times changing his legal name in an attempt to preserve both parents' anonymity must have added a further confusion. A sense of personal continuity was inevitably remote from Apollinaire's fragmented identity. Thus, in poems such as "La Chanson du malaimé" (19034) and Le Bestiaire the poet suffering from feelings of guilt and inadequacy and unable to bear confronting and divulging his past, understandably seeks to identify himself with a superhuman poet capable of projecting himself simultaneously into past, present, and future. As early as 1908, Apollinaire's writings reveal his awareness of Bergson's
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theory of duration, the indivisible continuity of experience to a consciousness that ceaselessly transforms its past into the present. For example, for Apollinaire, light metaphorically expresses the allembracing consciousness of the artist, his ability to triumph over time and space through the creative act, shaping a new, expansive, poetic universe that embodies his sense of the wholeness of his inner self. By focusing on the artist's metamorphosis of the past into a new present, as well as on his gift of prophecy, Apollinaire could absolve himself of any sense of guilt or shame over the past. Dufy's first illustration of Orpheus, corresponding to Apollinaire's description of line as the voice of light, transforms earlier dogma into individual expression. Orpheus is the artist par excellence, able to transpose the distant past into modern consciousness, as suggested in the juxtaposition of architectural symbols of ancient Egypt and contemporary Paris. As in his myth, Orpheus unites different temporal realms. In this regard he embodies the aspirations of Apollinaire, who dreaded the way time threatens the inner self, fragmenting the living continuity of consciousness into a series of externalized images of a dead past.8 The Orpheus with whom Apollinaire identified is thus a godlike figure who liberated himself from the menace of time by transforming past into present consciousness through his song. Apollinaire's emphasis on continuity suggests a further rationale for including the tomb of Osiris in Dufy's first woodcut of Orpheus for Le Bestiaire. Plutarch's narrative of the legend of Osiris—another of humanity's benefactors whose death links him with fertility traditions—offers a striking parallel with that of Orpheus.9 The tomb is important in the Osiris myth; trying to protect his dismembered body, Isis had each part buried in one of the many tombs of Osiris she had fashioned throughout Egypt, so that his brother Seth, searching to destroy him, might never be sure of finding the true tomb. The chthonic divinity Osiris could transmit life from the depths of the earth; union with him was accepted as a promise of eternal life. Ménard remarks that Osiris restored peace to the earth, achieving a regeneration comparable to that of Heracles and Dionysos.10 The presence of Orpheus in the garden of Rosamund (plate 4) may also have additional significance. Flying toward him at the right in Dufy's print is a large butterfly— traditional Christian symbol of the resurrected soul and ancient emblem of both the soul and the unconscious attraction toward light. At his left is a vase with branches of palm, ageold symbol of the righteous Christian's victory over death. Hence, this image places Orpheus—a mortal who survived death and had regenerative powers—in a setting reminiscent of the garden through which death came to Rosamund and hints at immortality. The musician surrounded by symbols of immortality in a garden shows that the creative act—the transformation of "a lousy herd" of creatures into wonderful
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beauty—allows the artist to vanquish temporality, as he also fulfills his ego ideal by changing his bestial nature into a higher, sublime one. Judging by a record of his earliest memory of his mother in a garden, Dufy may have identified the garden with her; he expressed a sense of being in almost complete harmony with nature. These themes together in his woodcut of Orpheus in a garden may represent an unconscious desire for regression. Rainer Maria Rilke and the Unity of Being The necessity of acting and being treated like a girl was probably linked in the young Rilke's mind with his parents' extreme overprotectiveness arising from his fragile health and their fear of his catching cold and dying: he was kept from school up to 200 days a year in order to avoid exposure to death. To Rilke, therefore, a childhood rejection of his male identity must have corresponded to a preservation of the present—"hemmed in between yesterday and tomorrow." When he tried to achieve a sense of his personal identity as a man, he understandably also strove to accept, even welcome, the possibility of his own death. Death, according to Hans Jürgen Tschiedel, is the essential theme of Rilke's Sonnets, and Orpheus, who bridges life and death, is the symbol of the unity of being. 11 Pervading the Elegies and the Sonnets is the idea that life and death are two interdependent states linked by the transforming powers of love and demonstrating the unity of existence. Rilke's mouthpiece, Orpheus, is the singing god of the double kingdom of life and death, who mediates between these states and between past and present, revealing all of man's experiences to be part of a single, timeless, cosmological event. Everywhere in the Sonnets Rilke changes transience into permanence, rooting out all temporal suggestions and transforming all of life into timeless being. Orpheus shows us that we, though ephemeral creatures, are nevertheless not confined in the world of time; we exist simultaneously in the past, the present, and the future (part 1, sonnet 19). Rilke wrote to his Polish translator in November 1925: In the "Elegies" affirmation of life and affirmation of death reveals itself as one. . . . Death is our reverted, our unilluminated, side of life. . . . It surprises me that the "Sonnets to Orpheus," which are at least equally difficult, and which are filled with the same essence, are not more helpful to you for the understanding of the ''Elegies." . . . We, local and ephemeral as we are, are not for one moment contented in the world of time nor confined within it; we keep on crossing over and over to our predecessors, to our descent, and to those who apparently come after us. . . . Transitoriness is everywhere plunging into a deep being. And therefore all the forms of the here and now
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are not merely to be used in a timelimited way, but, so far as we can, instated into those superior significances in which we share.
In the Sonnets, Rilke urges us to rid ourselves of the "ghost of the transient" by entering into a rhythmic relation—in which life and death, past and present, are felt to be continuous and one (part 2, sonnet 27). In Rilke's "Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes" of 1904, death (the realm of Eurydice) was impenetrable to the artist whose life and creations failed to transcend this world. This Orpheus could not achieve the state of inwardness (otherness) in which Eurydice existed, for the young Rilke realized his inability to attain the female ideal that his mother had instilled in him and to fully understand death. By 1922, when Rilke's new Orpheus comprehends and even transcends death, he also is able to incorporate Eurydice as part of himself ("she slept in me"). It undoubtedly required the experience of deathwithinlife during World War I and years of selfdoubt concerning his sexual identity before Rilke could reach the jubilant resolution of the Sonnets. Previously opposing parts of his self (male/female, life/death, external/internal) finally coincide and are transcended as individual states by a totality of feeling. Rilke's ideas about the unity of life and death appear to have had the strongest impact on the visual arts in images of Orpheus by Paul Klee and Cy Twombly. Paul Klee Klee's thoughts about the continuity of existence parallel those of Rilke, whom he recognized as a kindred spirit. Klee wrote: "The time element must be eliminated. Yesterday and tomorrow treated as simultaneous."13 As early as 1901, he had stated that death "perfects what could not be completed in life. The longing for death, not as destruction, but as striving toward perfection."14 Through his close observation of nature he hoped to unlock its hidden secrets, the divine mystery of organic existence, and then to recreate it symbolically. Klee tried to demolish the barrier between ego and cosmos and to reaffirm through signs and symbols the continuity of the universe and his place within it. His desire for continuity—a sort of combined postromantic and pseudoscientific oneness with nature—may represent a form of regression, a striving for the harmonious equilibrium within the womb. His strong attachment to his mother, who had encouraged his development as artist and musician, may be reflected in his equating a longing for death with a striving for perfection. A rhythmic relation with the universe, like that expressed by Rilke, finds expression in Klee's series of garden pictures dating from 1926, which includes A Garden for Orpheus (plate 42), Tower in the Garden (Kunstmuseum Bern), and Classical Garden (Bern, private collection).15 In these works a system of horizontal lines interwoven with ornamental arrangements of interlocking parallel bands is united in space by overlappings and interpenetra
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tions. Like his other garden and park pictures, Klee's drawing A Garden for Orpheus reflects his search for a rhythmically coherent formal structure inspired by the orderly divisions inherent in the garden, as well as his attempt to reduce the plant kingdom to archetypal forms and recurring patterns that demonstrate the inner laws of nature, itself a skillful geometrician. 16 Drawings such as A Garden for Orpheus demonstrate Klee's sense of the interrelationship of nature, music, and art. Believing that classical music could provide a formal guide for the invention of a system of pictorial harmony, he includes calligraphic symbols that resemble musical scores in drawings from this period.17 The parallelism, interweaving, and interlocking of lines in A Garden for Orpheus represent a development from the configurations inspired by Bach's fugues in his pictures of the early 1920s. Patterns of dark accents, white spaces, and varying line thicknesses in A Garden for Orpheus evoke simultaneously twodimensional rhythms and scenic depth. A Garden for Orpheus is distinguished from Klee's other contemporaneous garden images by its inclusion of a prominent cross above and slightly left of center and a sixpointed star at top center. The starsurmounted landscape calls to mind earlier, more realistic works by Klee, such as Mystical Landscape with a Worm in the Ground (1917, location unknown) and Cosmic Composition (1919, Düsseldorf, Kunstsammlung NordrheinWestfalen),18 in which heavenly and earthly realms meet. The cross and interlocking shapes in A Garden for Orpheus manifest Klee's concept of the fourfold unity of being. Arrows, indicative of fate to Klee, form the sides and top of the cross, suggesting the fate of the individual soul merged with the cosmos. The drawing represents the eternal cycle of life and the unities of existence: the fusion of life and death, existence on earth and in Heaven. Such ideas about the unity of being expressed in Klee's 1926 drawing may be considered in conjunction with those voiced by Rilke in the Sonnets to Orpheus published three years earlier. In A Garden for Orpheus, Klee joins spatial and temporal realms of existence, achieving his goal of a timeless state in which distinctions between past and present would be dissolved. Through this drawing, Klee himself reaches the higher reality that he grants to his angels, the supreme unity of life and death. Other drawings of 1926 confirm that Klee was thinking then of death and afterlife. In a watercolor from this year, Sie sinkt ins Grab,19 clearly also based on the Orpheus myth, a parodic despairing husband helplessly watches as his wife returns to the grave, and arrows pointing toward him forebode his own similar fate. Like Klee, Rilke had a profound love for gardens, which he commemorated in the Sonnets. Years before, in the Luxembourg Gardens, he had longed to have one of his own, "to sit before it when I am old, and turn it into words which contain everything I will know then."20 The Sonnets are permeated with
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images of flowers in a garden. To Rilke, the dismembered Orpheus was capable of various forms of metamorphosis, such as changing into a rose (part 1, sonnet 5), Rilke's favorite flower. He considered the rose a symbol of eternity and wished that someone would name a variety of a rose after him. 21 He praised the fabulous inaccessible gardens of Asia: Sing of the gardens, my heart, that you never saw; as if glass domes had been placed upon them, unreached forever. Fountains and roses of Ispahan or Shiraz— sing of their happiness, praise them: unlike all others. (part 2, sonnet 21)
Rilke suggests that we all become like flowers (part 2, sonnet 14). In a maudlin letter to his cousin, he compared himself to an anemone that has opened so far that it cannot close at night.22 Ironically, while tending his flowers in his cherished garden one day, he scratched his hand, and the resulting infection led to the discovery that he had leukemia, of which he died shortly afterward, in 1926. This was the same year that Klee created the pen drawing, A Garden for Orpheus, evocative of the fabulous gardens in his friend's Sonnets. As noted above (see p. 31), Klee probably included a selfportrait in The Sultry Garden (plate 10), showing himself bridging heavenly and earthly realms. Klee had long regarded himself as "an observer above the world" who remained aloof from emotionally entangling situations.23 In 1914 he wrote: I am in the depths, am far away. . . I am far away. . . I glow amidst the dead.24
Similarly, in 1916, when reminiscing about Marc (recently killed in battle) and comparing himself with him, Klee stated: In Marc, the bond with the earth takes precedence over the bond with the universe . . . . My fire is more like that of the dead or of the unborn . . . . Do I radiate warmth? Coolness?? There is no talk of such things when you have got beyond white heat. And since not too many people reach that state, few will be touched by me. There is no sensuous relationship, not even the noblest, between myself and the many. In my work I do not belong to the species, but am a cosmic point of reference.25
Klee's cosmic view of himself, above the earth and equated with extraordinarily radiant light (even as late as 1940, in Death and Fire, Kunstmuseum Bern, Paul Klee Stiftung) suggests his identity with the central star, which "glow[s] amidst the dead" in A Garden for Orpheus. Klee evidently valued this drawing highly, designating it for himself ("für mich"). This garden is reminiscent of Rilke's transformation of the world into
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rhythmic vibrations as well as of the OrphicPythagorean harmonia of the universe and unity of the cosmos. As a tribute to his dying or recently deceased friend (perhaps recalled in the cross), Klee may have designed a cosmological garden for the poet who identified with Orpheus (and likened himself to an anemone), suggesting through this drawing his own spiritual identification with both the ancient and the modern poet. In A Garden for Orpheus, symbols of the Orphic cosmogony of creation are combined with images of redemption in rhythmic patterns to show the very unity of life and death 26—"that infinite source of our own fervent vibrations" expressed in the song of Orpheus, as sung in Rilke's Sonnets. Klee and Rilke (both of whom had lived in France and admired French literature) may have known Apollinaire's Le Bestiaire, which included an illustration of Orpheus in a garden hinting of immortality (plate 4). Influence from the rather whimsical French book on either of the more profound German creations, however, is unlikely.27 Instead, the use of flower and garden imagery by both Apollinaire and Rilke probably merely reflects the poets' common French symbolist heritage. Although both Dufy's woodcut and Klee's drawing depict gardens that link creation and death—appropriate for Orpheus—the earlier, anecdotal work in bold light and dark patterns presents a composite of clearly recognizable traditional elements in an earthbound setting, whereas the later, more abstract and delicate drawing exhibits an array of abstruse symbols in a cosmological universe. Cy Twombly Among the works based on classical mythological themes that Cy Twombly has created since his permanent move to Rome in 1957 are several graphic equivalents of Orpheus, including the painting Veil of Orpheus of 1968 (plate 43) and a group of drawings dating from 1975 (plates 49, 50).28 Nine horizontal lines of varying density and length move slowly across the four panels of Veil of Orpheus with subtly modulated underpaintings; a tactile space appears to be separated into different levels, suggesting layers or veils of either materiality or light and of immeasurability.29 Adjacent to the lines are words such as "start," "stop," "nonstop," and numbers designated as feet or miles, implying exact distances in an elusive, ambiguous field. As in many of his other works of the period, Veil of Orpheus conveys Twombly's interest in perceptual ambiguity through an impenetrable language of numbers and words that seem like signs and symbols but are alogical and nonsequential; Twombly's art is rooted in the paradoxes inherent in perception and meaning.30 The numbers (perhaps inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's technical drawings),31 signs of a tangible reality, draw us into the vast field of Veil of Orpheus and into an exploration of space and time. In the mid
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1960s, Twombly was looking to Marcel Duchamp, the futurists, and Klee (as well as to Leonardo) for visual metaphors of infinity, movement, and relationships between time and space; Suzanne Delehanty noted that these interests manifested in Twombly's works of 1967 and 1968 had also been central to Klee's art. 32 With his slowly moving lines and accompanying numbers, Twombly creates an illusion of measurable distances within an infinite space, an image recalling the ancient OrphicPythagorean number theology and conception of a mathematical and musical universe, a harmonia. Veil of Orpheus is one of a group of paintings on which Twombly wrote "veil" several times next to trailing lines. He later called the veil a "timeline."33 Historians have pointed out that his veil combines several sources: Leonardo's drapery studies, Eadweard Muybridge's photograph of a veiled bride, Duchamp's bride, and a tune about Orpheus from the 1920s.34 The title Veil of Orpheus, moreover, is also perfectly suited to the legendary figure who has long been veiled in obscurity,35 an ambiguous figure linked with the living and the dead, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. In the mid1960s Twombly's attempt to visualize time and space led him to conceive of Orpheus and other mythological figures as abstract ideas. Like Zadkine earlier and Archie Rand later, he regarded Orpheus as more an idea than a person.36 The multiple levels on which Twombly's paintings exist, like layers of a veil, allow a plethora of meanings. It has been suggested that Orpheus embodies the paradox of time; he lost eternal time by lifting the veil of Eurydice in a fatal moment of human weakness.37 Because Orpheus had been granted the right to enter the realm of the dead and return from it, however, an achievement linking him with a few select heroes (Perseus, Heracles, Theseus, and Jason), he evokes, rather, Twombly's concept of the continuous, eternal time of a timeline. Twombly's title may also refer to Pierre Henry's dramatic cantata Le Voile d'Orphée (1953), which constituted the last act of the ballet Orphée (1958) by Henry and Maurice Béjart. Henry's Orpheus, inspired by Rilke's Sonnets, is the artist whose task it is to celebrate and who is possessed with knowledge that his audience disbelieves. He himself must die in order to convince them that death still does not win.38 If not directly inspired by Henry's composition, Twombly surely at least would have felt an affinity with the alogical, dreamlike, and spiritual qualities of Henry's musique concrète. Twombly's fascination with mythology is often based on his reading of ancient poetry and modern literary interpretations of classical themes. In 1967 he had painted Duino, which John Bernard Myers convincingly proposed was inspired by Rilke's Duino Elegies.39 Considering his manifest interest in the Elegies the year before he painted Veil of Orpheus, his possible inspiration from Henry's Le Voile d'Orphée inspired by Rilke's Sonnets, and his own
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explicit borrowing from Rilke's Sonnets in his later drawings of Orpheus (see pp. 15859 below), it is quite likely that Twombly was also thinking of the Sonnets when he painted Veil of Orpheus. Twombly's turn to the Sonnets in the drawings of 1975 shows the continued importance for contemporary artists not only of Orpheus but also of his descendants, the humanistic modern poets, and especially Rilke. Twombly's equation of a veil with a timeline and his association of this motif with Orpheus recall Rilke's concept of Orpheus as a sort of timeline, combining past, present, and future all in one. Twombly's interest in Rilke, as well as in the abstraction of movement, space, and time in the late sixties, may have led him to look to Rilke's Orpheus—the personification of a mysterious power capable of moving between spatial realms of living and dead and the temporal realms of past, present, and future—as the embodiment of timelessness. Twombly's artistic syntax is close in feeling to that of Rilke, whose poems are invocations to the object that he names and allows to unfold itself in language—in participle constructions, appositionally used nouns, and short, fragmentary clauses. Twombly similarly depends on a system of verbal denotations of events, facts, objects (for example, start, nonstop, veil). As Roland Barthes indicates, ''Twombly knows that the Name has an absolute (and sufficient) power of evocation." 40 Like Rilke's syntax, Twombly's language postulates a magical identification and juxtaposition in space rather than a logical sequence in time. For Rilke, existence embraces and transcends all discord: life and death are no longer opposites, and the contradiction of being is reconciled in participation. Twombly's art depends on a concord of contradictions—of measurement, fact, and events. Twombly uses Greek mythology to clarify his artificial system; myth serves as an intermediary in his development of personal style and as a betrayal of identity41 He undoubtedly identifies himself with Orpheus on many levels. Like Orpheus's veil, Twombly's own artistic identity may be viewed as a timeline, merging past and present, ancient civilizations and modern society. Like the figure of Orpheus, Twombly's art is rooted in paradoxes and his person is veiled in ambiguity. Following in the path paved by Klee, Twombly is also akin to Orpheus as an inventor of writing.42 In his evolution from abstract expressionism in the mid1950s, Twombly had developed a style dependent upon graphic marks and lines. The year before painting Veil of Orpheus, he proclaimed a new form of handwriting/painting reminiscent of the Palmer method of rhythmically fluid penmanship. His writing on canvas had expanded into larger symbolic rhythms by 1968. Writing lies at the basis of Twombly's art, which blends drawing and language, painting and poetry. As Myers remarked, in a discussion of Twombly's interpretation of Alexander
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Pope's translation of the Iliad, Twombly does not seem to object to the adage ut pictura poesis. Twombly's language, inspired by poetry, is itself a non illustrational, nonnarrative poetry of equivocal symbols and words. By including elements symbolic of transformation (such as a rose) and by his writinglanguage, which shifts from the static to the moving, from the intangible to the tangible, from the shapeless to the shaped,44 Twombly is like Orpheus, an artist whose transforming abilities reveal the continuity of existence. Barnett New Barnett Newman's interest in Orpheus, like that of certain other modern artists who focus on the legendary singer as an example of the continuity of self and existence, reflects his own intent to comprehend the inner workings and unity of nature. Newman turned to Orpheus as a subject shortly after having experienced an identity crisis as an artist, and in Orpheus he seems to find confirmation of the direction that he chose. Newman's Song of Orpheus is one of a group of drawings dating from the summer of 1945 and concerned with plant and seed growth (plate 44).45 Organic imagery—lively, lyrical gestures suggesting stems and new leaves, oval or egg shapes resembling sprouting seeds, rich earth colors—calls to mind the biomorphism of Arshile Gorky and of Wassily Kandinsky's early works. Through the seed metaphor, Newman conveys a celebration of fertility. These drawings were a direct result of his focus on natural sciences (botany, geology, and ornithology) in the early 1940s to verify the soundness of his approach to nature: "to study nature with science." In the summer of 1941, Newman had studied ornithology. at Cornell University. His images of the evolution of the seed reveal that his scientific observation of nature was part of a broader attempt to investigate the origins of life. Newman's selfidentification with Orpheus would be understandable in this context, for Orpheus taught men the arts of agriculture and, to Virgil, was the poet of science and mythology.46 Moreover, in the late 1930s and early 1940s Newman was probably even more active as a writer of essays and a poet than as a painter. Music had long played an important role in his life: he studied piano in his youth and regularly attended concerts and operas. We are told that he frequently sang entire scenes from Mozart, playing all the parts. Newman's symbolic portrayal of the regenerative powers of the song of Orpheus, which allowed the singer to penetrate the underworld and return from it, appears to be autobiographical and reflects the artist's fascination with death and resurrection at this time. He later said that he would generally give a title after the completion of a work, but that a title is "a metaphor that
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describes my feelings when I did the painting." The titles of his drawings from the summer of 1945 may show Newman commemorating his own return to picture making after a long period of gestation spent writing, studying, and talking about art.48 Such an interpretation of the myth of Orpheus was common at this time. For example, only a few years earlier Pierre Jean Jouve had used the death and resurrection of Orpheus to symbolize the renewal of the poet, the abandonment of earlier preoccupations, and the subsequent unfolding of new horizons.49 Newman's drawing associating Orpheus with the origins of life conforms to Eliade's observation that myths of the return to origins affirm the possibility of renewal and regeneration.50 As artist, poet, and musician, Newman's interest in Orpheus may also be considered in relation to the ideas that he expressed in his article "The First Man Was an Artist": "Speech was a poetic outcry rather than a demand for communication. Original man, shouting his consonants, did so in yells of awe and anger at his tragic state, at his own selfawareness and at his helplessness before the void."51 Newman's concept of the original man who expressed a poetic outcry against his tragic state makes his association of Orpheus with the creative artist seem inevitable. His view of the artist as defiant against his condition surely was involved in his choice of Orpheus and Prometheus as subjects, both creator heroes who defied the gods. Newman's mythological drawings, like the contemporaneous paintings of his friends Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, also reflect the artist's defiance of the tragic state of the modern world—the chaos and inferno of the war—and his hope for a rebirth of what was human in Western culture. That Newman chose a vegetal motif celebrating fertility to symbolize the song of Orpheus manifests not only his study of nature and concern with the origins of life, but also his awareness of the chthonic aspects of Orpheus, which linked him with Dionysos. Newman's interest in the vegetal fertility god Dionysos is explicit in 1949 when he dedicates his only mythological title of that year to him. The earlier drawing, the Song of Orpheus, calls to mind the ancient belief in the corn spirit that dies each year in autumn, returns to subterranean regions in winter, and is reborn with new shoots in spring. Other related drawings from the summer of 1945 confirm Newman's fascination with the chthonic. One is titled Slaying of Osiris, referring to the Egyptian god, also associated with agriculture, who was murdered by his brother, cut into pieces scattered over the land, and resurrected to rule in the underworld, the Field of the Reeds. It is clear that the cult of the chtonic Dionysos was at least partly dependent on that of Osiris;52 and the similarities between Osiris and Orpheus were undoubtedly evident to Newman. Another drawing by Newman from this period, Gea, refers to the goddess of the earth reigning in the underworld, who was also the first being to emerge from Chaos.
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All these drawings given mythological titles involve the emergence of life from death in nature, represented by Newman as the new seed emerging from its flower as old growth (the dried flower) blows away. Inspired by Baruch Spinoza's praise of "immediate knowledge, based on the functions of reason, but obtained through intuition to 'the essence of things'," Newman sought to investigate metaphysical secrets. 53 His focus on the chthonic aspect of Orpheus is, therefore, comprehensible, for the gods of the cornfield and the vine themselves were patrons of religions that sought to probe the secrets of the afterlife. Newman wrote between 1943 and 1945 that his art was religious, manifesting an attempt to penetrate the world mystery and to capture through symbols "the basic truth of life, which is its sense of tragedy." The modern artist, according to Newman, expresses his concern with the mystery of life and death, "like a true creator delving into chaos."54 Although Newman had a deep sense of the tragic, feeling as he did the utter confusion, absurdity, and despair of man's existence, his writing is optimistic. He admired the religion of the ancient Egyptians, believing that their gods resulted from a need to comprehend and symbolize abstract mysteries like that of death. He thought that Greek literature, but not Greek art, masterfully emulated the tragic subject matter of the Egyptians.55 His interest in the chthonic aspect of Orpheus undoubtedly reflects his readings of the Greek tragedians, in particular Euripides, who was fascinated by the religion of Dionysos and who stressed the success of Orpheus's song in freeing his bride from the underworld: If I had the words and music of Orpheus to enchant Persephone or her husband, charming them with songs to take you out of Hades, then down I would go, and neither Pluto's dog nor Charon, the dead man's guide, leaning on his oar, could stop me before I raised you back to the light. (Alcestis 35762)56
Similarly, Newman's strong ego and sense of continuity of self seem to underlie the Song of Orpheus, in it the artist's characteristic optimism triumphs over even his tragic sense. Bert Samples The treatment of the Orpheus myth as a demonstration of the continuity of existence seems in many cases to reflect a will to understand nature in order to become one with it in a symbolic regression. In a painting by the
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Houston painter Bert Samples, however, the focus on continuity with an aim at regression takes an unusual form. At the time of his painting Dawn of Orpheus (1981; plate 45), Samples was reading Jung's Man and His Symbols, along with Symbols of Transformation. Jung's stress on the continual cycle of life and his observation that the Orphic mysteries ''kept alive the old Dionysiac religion rooted in the art of agriculture" 57 led Samples to view the myth of Orpheus as symbolic of the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth in nature and as applicable to the artist's own life. By identifying with the hero, the artist could symbolically return to the bliss of early childhood. The Dawn of Orpheus represents the coming of an age—a modern version of the return to the golden age—inspired by the birth and young childhood of Samples's nephew, standing at the right. To Samples, he seemed to embody the spirits of both Orpheus and a rooster, who heralds the dawn and is associated with the sun. The atypical identification of the child with Orpheus calls to mind the worship among the Orphics of the divine child Dionysos, heightening Samples's emphasis on the chthonic nature of the legendary hero. The child wears the mask and wings of a rooster, as if playing a game that Samples equates with a primitive ritual. He relates that the child signifies a continuum between generations and eras, linking himself with the child and with Orpheus; the artist himself had played the parts of various animals when he was a child growing up in the rural environs of Houston. To Samples, the ram and falcon appearing at the left are symbols of power and virility, which he saw as keys to social esteem. Jung mentions that the ram appears as a symbol of the rising sun in the Orpheus frescoes in the cemetery of Domitilla.58 The ram's horns and the wheels are important, according to Samples, because they reinforce the idea of the continuity of life—as do the circular arrangement of animals and child and the juxtaposition of a tortoise (associated not only with the lyre of Orpheus, but also with antiquity) with a symbol of youth. Samples translates the ideas of rebirth and transformation linked with Orpheus into a rural American vocabulary: the plow horse, broken away from his plow (implied by the wheels), has discovered a new identity, "as if having experienced a ritual baptism of the reborn." Samples is interested in myths as archetypes and in the resemblances among gods in ancient religions. A constantly recurring motif in his work is the image of a god in various civilizations who has access to the upper and lower worlds. One of these was Hermes who knew the way to the underworld and led souls there; on a famous Orpheus relief, Hermes gently places his hand on Eurydice to lead her back forever to the realm of the dead.59 The chthonic Hermes was invoked at libations to the dead, and graves were placed under his protection. In this painting Samples symbolizes the upper and lower
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worlds by the high plains and the low valley in the distance; he likens the ram's horns to the serpent of Hermes's caduceus, the traditional symbol of chthonic transcendence. Thus Samples focuses on the similarity of Orpheus to Hermes, as another figure who traveled between the two worlds. 60 Samples is like Dufy and Newman in his concern with the chthonic aspect of Orpheus and his preoccupation with connections between Greek and Egyptian mythology, as is evident in his conflation of Orpheus with Hermes, both Greek figures with strong Egyptian links. Samples's situation as a black artist may explain some distinctive aspects of his use of the Orpheus myth. He identified consciously with the dark side of Hermes, not in literal reference to his own color, but as a recognition of his craft as a trickster. Similarly, by identifying with Orpheus, the artist characterizes himself as a magician who can return at will to an earlier state of bliss associated with early childhood. When he stresses the shared myths and feelings among diverse peoples in different periods—an idea obviously dependent on Jung's theory of the universal unconscious—and identifies with a conflation of Orpheus and Hermes, Samples may also be revealing his need as a black for acceptance as a member of humanity, not merely a particular ethnic group. Thus, his desire for continuity, symbolized in Orpheus's ability to travel freely between two worlds is as much spatial as temporal—an attempt, through Orpheus, to bridge geographical, ethnic, and other barriers, so that the artist becomes citizen of a universal realm. Samples's narrative painting shows the strong tendency of many contemporary artists to interpret ancient myths according to their own modern experience, incorporating recognizable images of either themselves (Arnulf Rainer) or their environments (Robert Kushner). Like several other artists turning to mythological themes in the 1980s, Samples combines mythic and experiential elements in his representation of Orpheus, not only to fulfill psychological needs symbolically, but also to make meaningful to a wide audience the artist's own experience of the regression and regeneration the Orpheus myth reflects. Robert Kushner A clear example of the use of the legend of Orpheus to express the artist's unconscious desire for regression to the happiness of childhood is Robert Kushner's metal sculpture Orfeo (1986; plate 46), an exposition of memory and continuity.61 In 1986 Kushner wrote that his figures "are images yearning for a more tender, pacific era, with their iconography and robustness suggesting a findesiècle symbolism. . . . Orpheus plays on his carhorn pipe, while Euridice fades away, illuminated by the faintest Roman oil lamp."62
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Classical subjects offer him the excitement of rediscovering the vitality of his own past, when as a child he was fascinated by Greek mythology. Orfeo is one of several works showing Kushner's concern with the continuity and renewal of the individual/artist and culture. Continuity and change are realized through the act of remembering. Kushner's Orpheus is a musician reminiscing and playing to the memory of Eurydice. According to Kushner, it is the memory of the man in action—as in the BhagavadGita—with which the viewer is encouraged to identify a subjective remembering universalized. Orpheus is the modern artist who with the tool of his craft, here a car horn, tries to preserve the beauty of a waning past culture, the classical civilization symbolized in its artifact, a Roman oil lamp. Like Eurydice to Orpheus, that culture is now only a remembrance. Kushner, therefore, comes to a different conclusion from Kokoschka, whose interpretation of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice revealed to him the impossibility of reviving a dead past. Demonstrating the possibility of reviving the past (and symbolically the artist's childhood) and continuing it into the present so that the two are simultaneous, Kushner's reading of the Orpheus myth seems a further extension and transformation of Rilke's. Continuity is basic to an understanding of Kushner's art and may elucidate somewhat his selfidentification with Orpheus. He resembles his Orfeo in his own appropriations from cultural traditions, deferentially and optimistically endeavoring to preserve them for the modern day. A sense of continuity also underlies his dependence on art historical prototypes, namely the mythological subjects of Puvis de Chavannes, Redon, Moreau, John Singer Sargent, and Paul Manship. Kushner's conscious identification with Orpheus may further be explained by his longstanding desire to be a musician and his background as a writer of performance scripts. In his effort to continue the past into the present, Kushner interprets myths in contemporary utilitarian forms—"always linking the mythic subject matter of the sculpture to the more utilitarian aspects of our lives. 63 Although he was thinking of Gluck's opera when working on Orfeo in 1986, Kushner's initial inspiration for the metal sculpture was provided by his discovery of a car horn from the 1940s. This is what Orpheus plays instead of a lyre. At first Kushner conceived of the reclining onehalf length figure as a shepherd playing a pipe or an angel playing a horn; both merged in the final image of Orpheus. Then the artist added a copy of a Roman oil lamp, partly contained within a sheet of dark iron incised with the outline of the face of Eurydice, "as if reflecting on the inside who she is." Kushner describes his image of Orpheus as positive line—a bronze grille—and Eurydice as the opposite, negative line—an iron cutout. An intricate, weaving contour unites
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the two and harmonizes with those of the stems and leaves of fresh flowers in a vase at the right of Orpheus. In Orfeo, Kushner celebrates the unities of existence. Orpheus, a man of action, is linked with the vitality of nature, flowers, whereas Eurydice, silent and dark, is a haunting image of the past. As in Tanguy's drawing (plate 7) discussed above, Eurydice is representative of night, death, and dreams; 64 Orpheus attempts to keep the past alive in the present. Woman, Eurydice, identified with the past, also represents the deepest, most fundamental, natural part of living man, Orpheus, which he tries to preserve. With his optimistic attitude, the artist appears to envision that the artist's memory and creativity can effect a return to the comfort of the womb, to keep alive a past that is dead in reality. As a human being, Orpheus is a fragile transient creature, like the flowers with which he is united; as a creative artist, he confers immortality on the past, like nature that eternally dies and is reborn. Like Orpheus, Kushner may be able to revive the past symbolically even in his life as an artist; through art he may recapture a lost childhood when art was one of the bonds that linked him to his mother, a painter who introduced him to art and beside whom he began painting. In Orfeo, man and nature are united through art, and man and woman are joined by their mutual combinations of spirituality and sensuality. The image of Eurydice identified with an iron enclosure implies woman as container, a mysterious, erotic female who paradoxically appears only as a "negative line" of a face, devoid of body, for she is a phantom, existing only in spirit. Kushner reverses traditional sex roles, presenting woman, Eurydice, as a voyeur gazing at man, Orpheus. Such sexrole reversal occurs in some other contemporary artists, generally women—such as Alice Neel, in her portrait of John Perrault (1972; New York, Whitney Museum of American Art). Orpheus, although the embodiment of spirituality, also resembles a Pan, his halflength figure shown reclining hedonistically in nature. This resemblance of Orpheus to Pan evokes the traditional fusion and comparison of the two mythological figures, often considered to be representatives respectively of the Apollonian and Dionysian forces in poetry65 Kushner's treatment of the legendary artist—initiator of homosexuality and creator of a sweet, gentle music that tamed wild beasts—shows that the myth lent itself easily to the artist's sociopolitical aims. As in his other work, in Orfeo one finds a blurring of male and female, an erosion of sexual differentiations and boundaries. Through the creation of androgynous figures and an art that declares decoration to be not solely the product of a feminine sensibility, Kushner achieves his aim of subverting stereotypes.66 In Orfeo, woman is hauntingly severe in her simplicity, monumental in her grandeur, and yet also dark and mysterious in her associations with death and as a sensual receptacle.
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Man is active, colorful, richly decorative, identified with the life force. Donald B. Kuspit has indicated that Kushner's art is reparative of the lost erotic, with its feeling of happiness—the pleasure of the unity of being. 67 He also remarks that "beauty is the ultimate civility, because it successfully resolves conflict." Kushner's art celebrates the voluptuous; it "reinvents virginity, showing us just how voluptuous it is."68 As in the work of other sculptors who commemorate the spirituality of Orpheus, Kushner's incorporeal forms in Orfeo present another reminder of the ritual purification of ancient Orphism. The flatness of the work may be viewed as a purification akin to the catharsis described by Plato.69 In Orfeo, the body of the musician, although sensual in pose, remains in reality dematerialized; purified of physical substance, the spirit is liberated. Kushner's emphasis on the spiritual aspect of Orpheus reflects the origins of his Orfeo in the precedent set by Moreau: having recently completed a series of paintings of angels, and in search of new ideas, he looked to Moreau, whose Angels of Sodom (ca. 1890; Paris, Musée Gustave Moreau) he considered awesomely transcendent and whose images of Orpheus seemed supremely spiritual. To Kushner, Orpheus is like an angel in that both represent guides—one to beauty, the other to perfection. Orpheus, as the guide to beauty, embodies Kushner's own ideals as a creative artist. Although himself the virginal embodiment of spirituality, Orpheus shows us the beauty, sensuality, and voluptuousness of the past, of contemporary culture, of nature, and of art. Kushner's art is often likened to that of Matisse in its expression of happiness, its glorification of decoration, and its luxurious sensuousness. He honors Matisse (as well as the Middle East) by inserting an anemone bloom in Orfeo whenever it is exhibited. The anemone is a traditional symbol of death: in Ovid's Metamorphoses (10.73537), Orpheus describes the anemone's generation from the blood of the dead Adonis, referring to the continuity of life in the phenomena of death and rebirth. The anemone, therefore, is fitting in an image of Orpheus that reveals the unity of existence and the continuity of past and present, life and death.
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9 Liberation from Guilt Freud proposed that the tension between the demands of conscience (prohibitions and injunctions from parents, especially the father, maintained in the ego ideal) and the actions of the ego is expressed as a sense of guilt. 1 The problem of dealing with one's conscience and sense of guilt seems to have been integral to Virgil's interpretation of the myth of Orpheus. Eurydice's exclamation—"What madness, Orpheus, what dreadful madness hath ruined my unhappy self and thee?" (Georgics 4.49596)—sounds like the voice of Orpheus's conscience condemning him to overwhelming feelings of guilt and despair. By focusing on Orpheus's experiences of death and suffering and by identifying themselves with them, modern artists plagued by the sense of guilt have been able to liberate themselves and to emerge with self esteem enhanced and creative urge renewed. That these artists may manifest suicidal tendencies is understandable when one considers suicide as a form of escape in the hope of finding new life in death, of destroying one's inner evil, and of achieving righteousness.2 Suicide may be a retreat to a pure, instinctive life or a transcension of one's self to return to continuing values, the spiritual harmony of the universe. Its goal of a cleansing in preparation for a higher form of life may be seen as related ultimately to the ritual purification and selfabnegation of the Orphics. Many artists have interpreted the myth of Orpheus as illustrating the traditional belief that art can emerge after the experience of death/suffering—and
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even, according to some, only as a result of it. These ideas have provided consolation to the suffering artist, just as renunciation as a necessity for salvation once appealed to the humiliated man adhering to the Orphic life, and correspond to the ageold concept of the positive function of death: to transform man into a form of spirit and lead to a new mode of existence. 3 Paradoxically, most artists who focus on the death of Orpheus are like those who stress his spiritualizing and metamorphosing powers in that both groups consider the artist to be, ultimately, the controller of his fate; he transforms the wild into the tame and death/suffering into creation. Oskar Kokoschka Kokoschka evidently became obsessed with a desire for death as a result of devastating feelings of guilt and inadequacy and of a consuming desire to return to the womb; he was tormented by guilt over his betrayal of his mother in his infatuation with Alma Mahler, as well as by a sense of worthlessness after his lover rejected him. His play Orpheus und Eurydike reveals the very essence of the myth as a death myth; Kerényi even wrote that ''Kokoschka swims in the element of death."4 Kokoschka became preoccupied with Orpheus's death shortly after the battle in which he had longed for his own death. He later insisted that he had died in Lutek, where he had felt a Russian bayonet pierce his flesh: "but my terror gave way before a strange sense of desire, as though it were a woman."5 In 1950, he described himself at the time he wrote Orpheus und Eurydike, "I . . . whispered deliriously, ecstatically, sobbed out, cajoled, howled fervently at death's door."6 Kokoschka's suicidal tendencies, like those of Marc, have been considered in relation to his closeness to his mother and his regressive wish to return to her in death;7 unlike Marc, however, Kokoschka reveals his suicidal tendencies in his treatment of the Orpheus myth. As Meerloo states, "death means for him the magic union with what created him."8 Lying on the battlefield, Kokoschka's guiltridden thoughts turned to his mother; he recalled their farewell and his promise to be home by a certain date and imagined that it was time to return to his mother. Thoughts of rejoining her blended with deliriously joyful fantasies of death: "Then suddenly I felt quite light and a wave of happiness—never since then in all my life have I felt it so physically. . . . So this was all there was to dying?"9 His first outing from the hospital was to see his mother. At that time he requested a necklace that Alma Mahler had given him. His mother handed it over "triumphantly, as if secretly pleased that she had been proved right . . . Suddenly I felt cured of my tragic love, and embraced my mother. 'That's all over, I'm alive, I'm back, just as I promised you'."10
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The association in Kokoschka's experience between death and the mother to whom he was so close made Bachofen's writings especially congenial to him, for there also an emphasis on matriarchy is combined with meditations on the link between love and death. Kokoschka wrote that he owed his understanding of the Greek ideas of Eros and Thanatos to Bachofen and that in his early years "one thing was certain—the instinct for selfpreservation which begins with the first moment in the womb and ends with death." 11 Viewing his injury in battle as a physical death and the termination of his relationship with Alma Mahler as an emotional death, Kokoschka considered his own death, like that of Orpheus, to be a necessity for artistic creation. Moreover, returning to his mother after both types of death meant a return to a source of fertility, as well as of love and comfort; union with it would result in a new, enriched embodiment of biological and artistic creativity. Not surprisingly, in Kokoschka's play Orpheus calls Eurydice "mother." He mistakes the Spirit of Eurydice for the "Mother of Death." Orpheus favors death over life as he digs deeper into the earth, despite the voice's reprimands.12 In a lithograph of 1915, based on his poster of 1909 for Mörder Hoffnung der Frauen, Orpheus and Eurydice are posed like Christ and Mary in a Pietá. Renewal of creativity after suffering/death, as well as the transformation of the physical into the spiritual (traditionally attributed to Orpheus and glorified in twentieth century representations of him), in Kokoschka's play are only possible through Psyche, the feminine spirit. The liberation and ultimate triumph of the feminine spirit occur in the epilogue, when the Spirit of Eurydice, who Mils Orpheus in an attempt to free herself from the enslavement of physical desire, is transformed into Psyche, bearing the emblems of Demeter, the Earth Mother: ears of corn and bundles of flowers. In the ultimate union of Eurydice and Psyche, carrying the lyre of Orpheus, is suggested the transcendence of physical torment and tragedy by spiritual awareness—the artist's own hope for salvation and renewed creativity. The final union of Orpheus and Eurydice in Kokoschka's play has precedents in the early Greek version of the myth according to which Orpheus was successful in retrieving his wife, as well as in later interpretations, such as that by Gluck. However, the triumph of the feminine spirit containing the attributes of Orpheus even more closely calls to mind his traditional gentleness, sweetness, and homosexuality. The conflation with the myth of Demeter may be appreciated, for the goddess of grain, the basis of civilized life, initiated mysteries promising a happy afterlife; in The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche transferred the idea of the ritual drama (dromena) of Demeter and Persephone to the "Orphized 'mysteries of Dionysus'."13 At times Kokoschka likens Orpheus to the chthonic Dionysos, who was to some the son of Persephone. Like the myth of Orpheus with which it is joined, the story of Persephone
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was used to explain the annual cycle of death and rebirth of the crops. Kokoschka evidently knew that the name Eurydice means "wideruling," a term originally belonging only to the queen of the underworld, to whom Orpheus descended in search of his wife. 14 Hence, it is appropriate, especially considering Kokoschka's own conflation of lover, mother, and death, that Eurydice/Persephone in his play is transformed into a feminine spirit with the emblems of Demeter the Earth Mother. Kokoschka also follows tradition in his use of light and dark symbolism: Orpheus first appears as a representative of light in his Apolline associations and then in act 3 changes to darkness which he craves, like death, and plunges toward the underworld and selfannihilation. Reminiscent of Guthmann's poem and Beckmann's illustrations, the play ends in the brilliance of the rising sun, implying the spiritual awareness and renewed creativity that dispel the darkness. Jacques Lipchitz Jacques Lipchitz's childhood memories revolve around his relationships with an overpowering father who berated and belittled his son for his failure as a scholar and for enjoying work with his hands and with a protective and sympathetic mother whom her son resembled in his sadness and sensitivity. His early impression that he had disappointed both parents, but particularly his father, may lie at the root of Lipchitz's overwhelming feelings of insufficiency and of lack of selfcontrol. Hence, his identification with Orpheus may partly stem from his continuing views of himself as a victim of uncontrollable passion—like Virgil's Orpheus—and as an alien from his world despite his desire to be part of it. His Joy of Orpheus (1945; plate 9)15 showing Orpheus and Eurydice embracing, like his earlier Couple, may emanate from his need for kinship, his yearning to reach out and embrace the rest of humanity and overcome his feeling of separation from it. Identification with a legendary musician would be one of many symbolic means that Lipchitz used to liberate himself from years of selfimposed guilt. Music had first appeared in his sculpture as a voice expressing his tragic grief over the loss of loved ones who had suffered while he thrived—in his bronzes of The Harp Player (1928) and The Harpists (1930).16 The music of nature (more than the compositions of men) evoked melancholy in him, a sense of confronting a mortal terror impotently and hopelessly. Moreover, Lipchitz later suggested that the sculptured string instruments that pervade his art and the real ones lining the walls of his studio divulge the guilt that he felt over having committed a crime against music as a child, angering his parents who punished him when he smashed a violin over an instructor's head.17 By identifying with Orpheus, himself transformed into a bronze lyre, Lipchitz is
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able to reconstruct symbolically the instrument that he had destroyed in his youth, absolving himself of longstanding guilt feelings, and to satisfy the ego ideal representative of disapproval by incorporating a symbol of that instrument. Lipchitz's Joy of Orpheus of 1945, created in New York where he had fled four years earlier upon the German invasion of France, celebrated France's liberation. It expresses the artist's hope for the liberation of all Europe from Nazi tyranny when victory and an end to the war seemed imminent. His sculpture perfectly illustrates Marcuse's interpretation of Orpheus as a culturehero whose image is "of joy and fulfillment." As a figure of peace, Orpheus was well suited to represent Lipchitz's ideals. In the same year, Lipchitz said to James Johnson Sweeney, "I am a partisan for the liberty, of art through the ages, the liberty of personality, the liberty of creative expression." 18 His humanistic orientation had long been evident in his art, and his metaphorical references to the horrors of Nazism had been revealed in other classical mythological subjects, such as Prometheus (1937, 194344) and the Rape of Europa (1938, 1941).19 These sculptural groups anticipate Lipchitz's later use of the Orpheus myth to symbolize a hope for personal and universal renewal after the destruction caused by World War II. The work's jubilant mood is evoked by the embrace of two open, fluid, anthropomorphic forms and by the triumphant, raised arm of one of the figures. Whereas Lipchitz could have chosen from any number of mythological heroes who attain happiness on earth, it is significant that he selected Orpheus, whose joy comes only after death when he is finally reunited with Eurydice in the underworld. Lipchitz seems to recall Ovid's description of the second descent of Orpheus to the underworld after his own death, where he "found Eurydice and took her in his arms with leaping heart" (Metamorphoses 11.6364). In contrast, Beckmann's illustration of Orpheus's first descent, with the lovers' embrace veiled in darkness, evoked impending doom (plate 28). Lipchitz suggests that joy and rebirth await humanity after the death and destruction wrought by World War II. Similarly, in Eurydice (1942), Anouilh, also affected by the war, had reunited his lovers past the threshold of death in a happy eternity. In the nineteenth century, for example in Ballanche's writings, the fate of Orpheus was seen as evidence that it was necessary to die to things of this world before knowing true love.20 The Joy of Orpheus is the product of a man who not only knew the destruction of World War II, but also had experienced a lifetime colored by death: as a child he had been fascinated by death, imagining what it would be like to lie under the earth, and in Poland in 1912, when he was mistaken for a revolutionist and thrown into prison, he experienced the sensation of death. Upon his liberation he suddenly understood the meaning of freedom and felt
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22
enriched by his living death. From the time of his father's demise in 1927, Lipchitz felt that he always ''lived in the full stream of death." Out of despair at his father's death and his sister's terminal illness, Lipchitz designed his first monumental sculpture, the Joy of Life (1927), consisting of an ecstatically dancing figure with a musical instrument and showing his determination that "life must go on." Shortly thereafter, the embracing figures of The Couple, also deriving from his grief, carried the same message of the need to move forward. Lipchitz had long believed that man must reconstruct his world with the awareness that a haunting sorrow underlies the gladness in life; sadness always nourished his art. Similarly, sadness and guilt over the loss of most of his family surely underlay the creation of the Joy of Orpheus. In the fusion of Orpheus and Eurydice one may infer that art emerges triumphantly after death and union with the female, a symbolic return to the womb. In a shape reminiscent of a lyre and identified with harmony and evidence of the higher nature of man, Lipchitz seems to have finally liberated himself from feelings of inadequacy by reconciliation with his ego ideal, and Orpheus's music resounds eternally. Rainer Maria Rilke In this context, Rilke again has provided the major source of inspiration for several artists. Through his exhortations to us—"demand change," "will transformation"—in the Elegies and the Sonnets, he offers a promise of salvation deserved only by those who experience suffering, renunciation, and death. Selftorment, a kind of flagellation, could achieve pardon for early flaws, even having been born the wrong sex. This was evidently part of the selftherapy that he had favored over Freudian analysis. A complete transformation of our way of being necessitates reversing negation into promise. Death for Rilke takes on a Hegelian affirmation, a "negation of the negative.23 Moreover, reversals of relationships and states are indigenous to mythic thinking.24 Like Orpheus who descended into the underworld, according to Rilke, we must plumb the depths of despair in a descent into the self reminiscent of the romantics, anticipate death, and overcome negative experiences in order to gain insight, liberation, and creativity. Echoes of Nietzsche's exhortation in "On the Way of the Creating One" are evident: "But thou wouldst go the way of thine affliction, which is the way unto thyself? Then show me thine authority and thy strength to do so."25 Rilke's Orpheus exemplifies the persuasive and deeply rooted notion that power may be gained from suffering.26
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Mark Di Suvero Mark di Suvero, like another contemporary sculptor, William Tucker, responded to Rilke's world of feeling in the Sonnets to Orpheus, but to its universe of unabated grief rather than its lyricism. He responded most to Rilke's invocation to the poet to follow Orpheus, who visited the dead, by descending into the underworld of the soul and plumbing the depths of despair in order to gain insight. Di Suvero's Che farò senza Eurydice of 1959 is composed of wooden beams attached by bolts and pipes and visually connected by ropes extended from a relatively simple projecting beam to two more complicated tall structures on either side (plate 47). 27 The three main sections are joined at the base on which the piece is mounted. The work is usually discussed for its formal qualities, as the first, most conventional and closely knit of di Suvero's early constructivist sculptures.28 John R. Klein has discussed the metaphorical associations and expressive potential in di Suvero's later sculptures based on classical myths and mentioned that the meanings in his early constructions were largely personal.29 He remarked that di Suvero's spiritual orientation, surfacing in such works as Praise for Elohim Adonai (1966), could be traced back to his expressionist bronze sculptures of large distorted hands dating from the late 1950s and early 1960s (plate 48a, b). These "imaged dreams of human anguish and torment" revealed the "protest against inhumanity that would become a persistent theme in his sculpture."30 Considering the consistency of di Suvero's humanistic concerns and the contemporaneity of the bronze hands with Che farò senza Eurydice, it seems odd, however, that this wooden construction has generally been considered merely in formalistic terms. Only Phyllis Tuchman recently pointed to the ''sentimentality" of the title, which comes from the most famous aria in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice.31 Gluck's opera is noted for its strong emotional and expressive power achieved through simple means. The role of Orpheus was designed for the castrato Gaetano Guadagni, who emulated David Garrick's dynamic and emotional acting style and was reputed for the persuasive feeling with which he sang the simplest of music. The aria that di Suvero represents is Orpheus's lament after having lost Eurydice a second time. He sings: To what depths of destruction Am I now through my passion condemn'd? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I have lost her forever. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Page 157 What can remain for Orpheus, Now she is gone, but despair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How can I bear to live, Since fate has dealt this blow? (act 3, scene 1) 32
Like Gluck, di Suvero uses the most elementary tools and materials to build a monument heroizing Orpheus's despair; the horizontal orientation of the piece conveys a sense of the heaviness of his emotional burden. As Gluck contains Orpheus's emotions within a musical form and a language of deceptive accessibility, distancing his restrained utterances through formality and simplicity of line, di Suvero tempers his hero's lament through a constructivist form that allows psychological relief from the hero's suffering, and for some viewers even an avoidance of it. Thus the sense of strain, of "agonized" reaching—in di Suvero's derivative bronze hands with fingers outspread in anguish33—may be seen to also permeate the abstract, more original product of the same creative sensibility—the contemporaneous Che farò senza Eurydice with outspread, heavy wooden beams. Di Suvero has affirmed the strong autobiographical and sexual basis of this work, which he considers a "straight out Cubist sculpture, but with a strong sense of lament."34 He had just ended a love affair with a young painter and was very moved by Gluck's opera—particularly the one aria—to which his sister had introduced him. The title Che farò senza Eurydice reflects the conception of the sculpture and was determined as the work was in process. Although Gluck's opera was his most immediate source of inspiration, di Suvero had read Rilke's Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus shortly before, in college, and still had them in mind. He has said that he found Rilke a "great mental explosion" in the 1950s; the Elegies and Sonnets seemed to him "absolutely great and electrifying." The Orpheus who presumably sings "Che farò senza Eurydice" in di Suvero's work personifies the loneliness and dependency of the human condition immortalized in Rilke's Elegies and Sonnets ("Lonelier now, dependent on one another/utterly, though not knowing one another at all''; part 1, sonnet 24). Di Suvero commemorates the life of suffering and anguish that Rilke considered a necessity, for creativity. He himself had the experience of living with suffering as a child of Italian parents in Tientsin during the invasion of the Japanese army and therefore empathized with this view of life and beauty in it. Following ultimately in the tradition of Virgil, whose Orpheus was a helpless, suffering lover ("What could he do, where go, his wife twice taken from him?/What lament would move Death now?''; Georgics 4.504, 505), di Suvero obviously feels unable to create without his lover, knowing at the same time that his very misery, over her loss is necessary to
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spark his creativity. His despair bore fruit in his first constructivist, abstract sculpture to express humanistic ideals. Di Suvero has stated that "after much suffering [he] still respects Rilke on a poetic basis [as is evident in his dedication of a work to the poet in 1975], but not as a way of living." His continuing interest in music, poetry, and myths of renewal as inspiration for his art is evident in his later works. In 1975, for example, he dedicated a sculpture to George Frederick Handel, and in 1978 he named a work after Isis. Of modern artists, di Suvero comes closest to the trap into which modern writers such as Anouilh and Tennessee Williams have fallen, 35 but without succumbing. Focusing mainly on love and loss, these writers deemphasize the aspect of artistic regeneration in the ancient myth. By effecting a rebirth of sculpture in a vital and original form, di Suvero preserves the very essence of the myth. Cy Twombly Whereas di Suvero's Che farò senza Eurydice is permeated with a sense of the suffering that Rilke advocated in the Sonnets, two drawings of Orpheus dating from 1975 (plates 49, 50) show Twombly immortalizing Rilke's sense of liberation—the human spirit rising above doubt and despair—and his acceptance of the totality of human existence. Twombly's Orpheus drawings are akin to several modern literary portrayals of Orpheus in their basic intention—to show that all descents into the darkness of selfexamination require selfdestruction and selfabnegation for the rebirth of a new being.36 Twombly openly affirms his indebtedness to the Sonnets in quotations below the two drawings: Be ever dead in Eurydice, mount more singingly Mount more praisingly back into the pure relation Fire, among the waning, be in the realm of decline, be a ringing glass that shivers even as it rings. (part 2, sonnet 13)37
Rilke distinguished this sonnet as the "closest to him and perhaps the most valid of all."38 He adjures the reader to have a rebirth from within, to anticipate death as Orpheus did when he "died in Eurydice." Her departure made him the singing god, the transformer of death. It so deeply affected him that her death became his. Thus, in the sonnet, "Be ever dead in Eurydice,'' Rilke urges us to make the death of a beloved become part of our own lives; our hearts deeply impressed with grief will burst into song. From Orpheus's supreme suffering his music arose. By anticipating death, or by dying in Eurydice like
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Orpheus, we can complete the eternal cycle of being; life exists only because death exists. Sheffield noted that Twombly turns "almost obsessively" to the subject of the dead hero in the 1970s and "seems to identify, himself with culture and with its creators, Apollo and Orpheus. 39 The verse he quotes from Rilke creates a vivid visual metaphor of Orpheus as both dead hero and artist: as the glass that rings even as it is shattered (or as it shivers under a blow?), he represents not only the unity of being, the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, but also the artist capable of transforming pain, suffering, and even death into art. Considering that selfabnegation and selfassertion have long been concerns of Twombly's, it is understandable that he responded to Rilke's message in the Sonnets: that constant reversibility and transformation are within the artist's power and that abnegation of the self can effect an assertion of the self. In one of Twombly's drawings of Orpheus from 1975, the hero's ascending name and a parallel line suggest the poet/musician who mounts from "the realm of the decline" "singingly" and "praisingly,'' knowing the importance of death to the rhythmic relation of existence and creation (plate 49). Graphic mark and written word are signifiers of Orpheus's transcension, physicality transformed into pure spirituality. In another drawing (plate 50), two almost parallel lines convey the empathy, the complete participation, which Rilke advocates in "be ever dead in Eurydice.'' An analogous relationship exists in depth between the two levels of writing, with Orpheus's name superimposed as a signature over the text. Like Rilke's passage, Twombly's drawing exemplifies the basis of the Sonnets in reversal, the turning of a negation into a promise. Twombly's lines move along the horizontal and suddenly change direction, seeming to enter into the realm of the decline, like the ringing glass that shivers—in the scribble at lower left—and then to reverse themselves, to mount singingly and praisingly. The graphic marks signify the artist's ability to change direction, to reverse negation into a promise and death and grief into song. In JanuaryFebruary 1975, Twombly wrote "ORPHEUS (brings order and beauty) to DIONYSUS" on four other sheets of paper. In still other contemporaneous drawings he symbolized Dionysus by the same phallic shape that represents violence and aggression in Achaeans in Battle (part of the tenpanel painting Fifty Days at Ilium, 1978). Thus, Twombly uses Orpheus to transform another negation into a promise, ameliorating the Dionysiac aspect of humanity with the Apolline. Ethel Schwabacher Ethel Schwabacher spent many years in psychoanalysis with little success at altering her deep depressions and low selfesteem. She had undergone
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psychoanalysis first in Vienna in the 1920s with Helene Deutsch, who had written on the psychology of women, and later in New York City with Marianne Kris, a friend of Anna Freud and wife of the psychoanalyst Ernst Kris, trying to finally work out longstanding problems after her tragic, premature loss of her husband in 1951. Schwabacher's fascination with Freudian psychology. and the unconscious became part of her art. Her analysis brought to the surface early death wishes directed toward both parents and feelings of rejection by a selfhating mother. The resultant overwhelming feelings of guilt and insufficiency she projected onto the mythological figures with whom she identified and through whom she temporarily attained relief and selfacceptance. An emphasis on affirmation, as in Rilke's Sonnets, pervades Schwabacher's series of paintings of the Orpheus myth (Orpheus and Eurydice I and II [plates 52, 53] and Orpheus and Apollo) dating from 1969. 40 Her representations of the legend express her guilt feelings over the personal sacrifices she had made as an artist and mother, ambivalence over separation from a loved one and, finally, an optimistic hope of a positive outcome after tragedy. She was convinced that "a work of art is an affirmation of the permanence of the human spirit, rather than the body, and should and could transcend physical and emotional pain."41 Schwabacher at first identified with Orpheus (plate 52) and then with Eurydice (plate 53), who sinks into an abyss when Orpheus gazes at her; in her writings Schwabacher used the term "abyss" to refer to death, separation, loss of love, and feelings of anxiety and loneliness. Orpheus, with red cloak reminiscent of Apollo, reaches toward Eurydice with one arm and holds out his lyre with the other, evidently torn between his love and his art. Eurydice succumbs because of Orpheus's lack of control; a snake about to bite Orpheus is controlled by Apollo in Orpheus and Apollo. Schwabacher interpreted Orpheus as both male and female and identified with both of his sexual identities. For a woman to identify with Orpheus is unusual, but her explicit obsession with the coexistence of masculine and feminine reveals her conscious androgyny. She identified with Orpheus as a victim of strong passions who suffered the tragic, premature loss of a spouse. Like Orpheus, an artist and a bereaved survivor, she threatened suicide to be reunited with her deceased spouse. An accomplished writer, Schwabacher regarded herself as a poetpainter and was inspired by both music and poetry. She compared her careful positioning of figures to convey messages in paintings to the poet's positioning of words. She explained, for example, that she used the diagonal to designate divisions between abstractions: stability, and instability, life and death, danger and control.
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Schwabacher interpreted the Orpheus myth and Rilke's Sonnets in accordance with her guilt feelings over having killed, in her mind, the very husband whose death had left her devastated because she resented her own dependence on him for her selfesteem. She read Rilke as implying that Eurydice was suicidal, and that Orpheus and Eurydice represented "parts of the self—male/female, reason/drive, love/death." 42 Schwabacher thought that Rilke's Sonnets revealed his own death wishes, his rejection of sex and fertility and his desire to have Eurydice die. In her interpretation, Eurydice must have sensed that Orpheus (Ethel Schwabacher) unconsciously wished to be rid of her (her husband) in order to be an artist. Like Picasso and some other modern artists, she understood the death of Orpheus as the "destruction of art by orgy"; for "the instinct of sex destroys art."43 Orpheus died as punishment for ''nondesire," not an excess of desire. Schwabacher pointed out, however, that art triumphs over death, for the Thracian women destroy only Orpheus's body, not his song: his head continues to sing and his lyre to play. Schwabacher's ambivalence toward her husband and her conflict between her roles as wife and artist are evident in her consideration of death as abandonment and yet her belief in the necessity to kill one's beloved in order to survive as an artist: "To become an artist he [Orpheus] felt unconsciously he had to leave her even though this separation meant death to his beloved. He killed her that he might live forever in art. . . .He seemed to seek her but he sought (unconscious hate) only her death."44 Paradoxically, love is a necessity for art, but one must detach oneself from love if art is to prevail. Schwabacher remarks that life and love finally triumph, as Orpheus recovers Eurydice in the underworld. Schwabacher's conception of her paintings Orpheus and Eurydice dates to November 1967, when she had a vision of blueness ("a strange mystic blue") and the jaws of Hell. Later she imagined Orpheus's head with golden hair floating on water. Finally, in January 1968, she envisioned the underworld as a large black gorilla with gaping mouth and Eurydice disappearing into the blueness of a tunnel as Orpheus cries out, "Che farò senza Eurydice?"45 Clearly her early studies of the meaning of the myth correspond to her attempts to understand the significance for her of her husband's death, which she resented as an abandonment. To Schwabacher, Eurydice represents the rejected and suppressed pulse of life. Orpheus descends into the underworld in search of the love and completion of self signified by Eurydice but eventually loses his love and his life—as the artist had so depended on her husband for her sense of self and with his loss felt deprived of her own being.46 In Schwabacher's mythological paintings, loss is generally offset by a gain; after the death of Eurydice, Orpheus resumes creating poetry, for freed from the guilt and
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resentment associated with dependence, the artist can create. In Orpheus and Apollo, the god protects the dead body of his legendary son, assuring him of immortality despite his physical death and threat of defilement by a snake. Like most other artists who focus on the myth of Orpheus, Schwabacher is concerned with feeling: "The individual is conditioned by the emotional." 47 In the 1950s in particular, she had allied herself with twentiethcentury artists and writers who depended solely on signs and symbols to convey an impression of pure feeling. In 1956 she first experimented with the Orpheus myth, combining it with modern subject matter and an abstract expressionist handling (The Collision of the Andrea Doria and Stockholm or Che farò, 1956; plate 51). Ancient and twentiethcentury themes associated with death and despair are portrayed in angry, violent brushstrokes and colors—blood red dominates and interacts with cold blue and icy whites. Like di Suvero's sculpture of three years later (plate 47), inspired by the same lament of Orpheus in Gluck's opera, Schwabacher uses abstract means to convey a mood of despair, rather than presenting a literal illustration of the myth. Like di Suvero, Samples, and other contemporary artists, Schwabacher borrowed from several sources to produce a personal interpretation of a myth. As visual models, she turned to a variety, of Greek vases with paintings of lyres, Apollo and Artemis, and Dionysos and to a Pompeian wall painting with a cithara. Her understanding of the Orpheus story, she said, depended on Ovid, Gluck, John Milton, Rilke, and the mythologist Elizabeth Sewell. Although initially inspired by Gluck's opera and intrigued by his androgynous Orpheus—whose part was written for a castrato—she ultimately rejected Gluck's version, turning back to Ovid's story. She read Orpheus's descent into the underworld in Milton's Paradise Lost as meaning the ego's search into the id. Sewell's Orphic Voice (1960) led her to view the journey as a voyage into the self, accomplished by merging with the beloved.48
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10 The Death of Orpheus Dismemberment is so violent and brutal that Wilhelm Hegel chose it to represent the most devastating death: The life of the Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive, which closes its eyes to the negative . . . on the contrary, Spirit is the power only by looking negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being. 1
In contemporary literature about Orpheus, Maurice Blanchot most clearly enunciates a postHegelian view of the necessity to experience depths in order to attain creativity and interprets the story of Orpheus as a version of Hegel's labor of the Negative. The lost Eurydice and the scattered Orpheus are symbols of Hegel's "utter dismemberment." Thus, Blanchot wrote: Yes, this much is true: only in the song does Orpheus have power over Eurydice, but in the song Eurydice is also already lost and Orpheus himself is the scattered Orpheus, the "infinitely dead" Orpheus into which the power of the song transforms him from then on. He loses Eurydice because he desires her beyond the measured limits of the song, and he loses himself too, but this desire, and Eurydice lost, and Orpheus scattered are necessary to the song, just as the ordeal of eternal worklessness is necessary to the work.2
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If one accepts the views of several psychoanalysts that myths reveal to us universal workings of the unconscious, then the fate of Orpheus may be regarded as an expression of unconscious fears common to primitive and modern humankind. Certain interpretations of the suffering and death of this hero may be characteristic of artists especially disturbed by these fears. Orpheus made a narcissistic choice when he selected Eurydice as his wife. With her death Orpheus appears to have withdrawn the narcissistic libido he had invested in her back into his own ego, which identified with the lost object—Eurydice—and began to form homosexual relationships. 3 The utter despair Orpheus felt at the loss of Eurydice was an expression of the fragmentation of self he experienced upon the loss of a selfobject and the need he felt to restore a sense of cohesion to his fragile self. Fragmentation of the self, a loss of its cohesion, is typically experienced with feelings of depression, deadness, possibly anxiety and panic, and severe disturbance of selfesteem.4 The adoption of homosexuality in a heterosexual world is inevitably accompanied by fears of criticism and punishment by society—equivalent to parental criticism, the ego ideal—and feelings of guilt. Freud proposed that hidden behind the ego's dread of the superego is the fear of conscience, centered ultimately on the dread of castration that the superior being, transformed into the superego, once had threatened.05 He maintained that the fear of death, like the fear of conscience, also develops from the fear of castration. When the ego feels itself hated and persecuted by the superego, which protects as well as punishes and whose love is necessary to live, the ego gives up on itself and lets itself die. As castration anxiety involves fears of loss and mutilation of parts of the body, not merely the genitals,6 the dismemberment of Orpheus by maenads may constitute primitive man's unconscious expression of punishment by the superego (society's ideals embodied in the parents) for homosexuality. That Orpheus passively succumbs in Ovid's narrative with barely a defensive gesture, suggests the helplessness of the ego that "gives up on itself" and "lets itself die" when abandoned or even tormented by the superego. Beheading, a commonly accepted Freudian symbol of castration equating head with genital,7 would amplify the Oedipal aspect of the myth to which artists like Cocteau, Picasso, and Schwabacher refer. The art of Orpheus triumphs over even castration as his head continues to sing. Most twentiethcentury artists do not allude, however, to the subsequent suppression of its oracle by Apollo. Several modern artists seem to suggest that Orpheus's castration/dismemberment, which they experience symbolically, is necessary for the creation of art—whether to justify their fears, to rationalize their homosexuality, or to attempt to bridle their strong libidinal instincts.
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Jean Cocteau In his play Orphée (1925) and his films Orphée (1949) and Le Testament d'Orphée (1961) Cocteau presented a mythic hero clearly synonymous with himself; Le Testament is a virtual record of his own life and accomplishments. He stated that his Orpheus is not a priest, but a famous poet. 8 Cocteau identified with the reputed initiator of homosexuality whose Christlike resurrection from the dead was similar to his own postopium returns to life and creativity. His search for purity as a necessity, for attaining immortality found a parallel in Orphism's doctrine of ritual purity. Through the discontinuity, of the imagery in his films Cocteau tried to achieve the "marvelous," an atmosphere of magic and discovery that would enchant his audience, as Orpheus had used the magic of his music to charm his listeners. Cocteau's play and films were inspired by Rilke, whom Cocteau had revered since 1912 and whose writings he emulated. Cocteau was most interested in the death and rebirth of Orpheus, which he expressed in the phoenix, his favored heraldic symbol for his own life and art; without specifically linking it with Orpheus, Cocteau's friend Apollinaire had used the phoenix as a symbol of himself in his poem "Le Pyrée" of 1908, contemporaneous with his earlier version of Le Bestiaire. This aspect of the myth provided a means by which Cocteau could express his belief that all true poets should live precariously balanced between this world and the next. Because of his growing fixation on death, he turned increasingly to the myth of Orpheus. As he stated in the preface of Orphée, his most acclaimed film, "The poet must die several times in order to be reborn."9 He is reborn as he materializes his artistic creations, eventually becoming immortal. Death, to Cocteau, also designated the poet's transit from the outer world to the realm of the beyond, the poet's inner night or inner angel; that is, the poet must expire in order to be inspired, to express what is deep within him. Orpheus had taken a similar journey to the beyond, and Eurydice's two deaths were necessary for his inspiration. Further the poet tries to achieve the expiration of his viewers, who die as their spirits are raised to a poetic union with the beyond. Death is thus a complex metaphor for the poet's inspiration and his mission to humanity; but also for his sacrifice at the hands of his critics. Cocteau viewed Orpheus as a symbol of the modern poet, as a martyr suffering at the hands of an uncompromising public. Cocteau once said, "I came from a family that liked perfection."10 By metaphorically killing himself several times, he could readily satisfy and even surpass the ego ideal, representative of his father (also possibly a homosexual), whose suicide had been a traumatic event for his son.
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Cocteau's play Orphée of 1925 was one of the first of many works between the 1920s and 1940s to present Orpheus—who taught men the arts of civilization and abstinence from killing—as a paragon of peace, able to counter the continuing threat Cocteau identified as German brutality and destruction. The beauty of Orpheus's music with its civilizing and purifying powers he saw as an antidote to war, cruelty, and the savage passions associated with Germany, birthplace of the "bête sauvage, violence." 11 Between the world wars the conception of Orpheus expressed in French literature changed radically under the impact of Freudian psychology. Literary depictions of the myth began to reflect an increasing interest in selfanalysis—a descent into a hell of the unconscious, of memory, or of suffering—and a demonstration of the primordial hostility between the sexes.12 Pierre Jean Jouve (Matière céleste, 1937),Jean Anouilh (Eurydice, 1942), and others influenced by Freudian psychology in the 1930s and 1940s stressed the death wish of the unconscious in their depictions of the Orpheus myth. The surrealists, in particular, were preoccupied with the deaths of Orpheus and Eurydice, for they equated the mythical singer's entry into the underworld in search of his wife with a Freudian exploration of the unconscious. Lipchitz was undoubtedly affected by the French surrealists' focus on Orpheus's entry into the world of the dead, though he may not have accepted the Freudian equation of it with the realm of the unconscious13 Cocteau's treatment of the myth of Oedipus in La Machine infernale, written in 1932, clearly alludes to the Freudian ideas that were in the air. His Orphée of 1925 reveals the impact of Freud more subtly, emphasizing the poet's need to reach his inner night, like the Freudian surrealists attempting to attain direct access to the unconscious. In Le Testament d'Orphée, Cocteau recapitulated the "phoenixology" of the poet. From the flames of a campfire materialized a photograph of Cégeste, a character from the earlier film Orphée, reincarnated to present the poet with a red hibiscus flower; Cégeste explains that as an expert in phoenixology it is his job to revive the flower. Later in the film the poet dies with eyes wide open and smoke curling from his mouth, only to rise to his feet afterward and walk away. The poet's death and the mingling of his life's blood with the hibiscus flower lead to his resurrection and achievement of immortality. His death and rebirth are clearly equated with Christ's, traditionally symbolized by the phoenix. The poet in Le Testament d'Orphée states: "Dali invented a very lovely term: phoenixology. It is the science of dying many times in order to be reborn. The legend of the Phoenix desires that he die and be reborn endlessly. It's also the role of the poet. To suffer endlessly, to die a number of times to be reborn. The poet burns to become ashes. And, in their turn, the ashes change him into himself, thanks to this phenomenon of phoenixol
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ogy." The cycle of phoenixology allows the poet to bring about poetic (artistic) creation. Among modern literary interpretions of the Orpheus myth, Cocteau's appears to have had the greatest impact on visual artists, after Rilke's. Although Arnulf Rainer is the only major contemporary artist who openly acknowledges inspiration from Cocteau in his images of Orpheus, Archie Rand has said that Cocteau's films on Orpheus fascinated him as a child.15 During Lipchitz's early years in Paris, Cocteau had become a close friend; Lipchitz modeled his portrait in about 1920 and undoubtedly knew Cocteau's Orphée well. Its emphasis on the artist's need to die in order to be reborn in his artistic creations appears to find a later variation in Lipchitz's Joy of Orpheus. Picasso surely knew the interpretation of Orpheus that Cocteau, close friend and former collaborator, had presented in his famous drama of 1925. The name of a character in the play had been inspired by a hallucination Cocteau had on the way to visit Picasso, in the elevator to his fiat on the rue de la Boétie.16 Pablo Picasso Picasso's etchings for the Skira edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses included illustrations of Eurydice Bitten by a Serpent Dying in the Arms of the Naiads (book 10) and Orpheus Killed by the Maenads (book 11; plate 54).17 He turned appropriately to GrecoRoman sculpture for models and used a lyrical linear style that recalls ancient Greek vase paintings. The figure of the classical hero is based on that of Aegisthus on ancient Roman Orestes sarcophagi,18 with a bull added as a support for the dying Orpheus. In Ovid's narrative, the most complete that we have of the death of Orpheus, the Thracian women wear "skins of beasts" and turn "their bloody hands on Orpheus": like "a pack of hounds round a doomed stag," they throw leafdressed lances and stones at him and tear him to pieces as he pleads with hands outstretched to no avail. Picasso characteristically transforms the classical text. His etching hardly conveys the mad frenzy of the maenads tearing Orpheus limb from limb. Even Ovid had softened the savage character of the myth, for the cannibalistic maenads undoubtedly had devoured Orpheus's raw flesh in the original legend.19 Picasso's maenads pounce on Orpheus, but barely touch him with their hands or lances, and are graceful, beautiful, alluring nudes, rather than wild, primitive murderesses. In another sense, however, Picasso preserves the mood of Ovid in that both, unlike Virgil, refuse to immerse themselves in tearful renditions of the event. This is clearly Picasso's personal interpretation of the myth and, like much of his art, reflects his thoughts and feelings about the women in his life. The
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face (in triplicate) of his young mistress MarieThérése Walter, whom one would expect to be Orpheus's inspirer, is recognizable in the maenads killing Orpheus. Although Picasso may not have known it, this alteration of the myth had a precedent in Offenbach's Orphée aux enfers, in which Eurydice transformed herself into a Bacchante. Like Beckmann earlier and Schwabacher later, Picasso presents a psychological portrayal of a weak artist, unable to reach his full creative potential until he frees himself of his sexual and romantic dependence on woman. The unusual absence of the lyre (still present in the first and second states; plates 55, 56) 20 universalizes Orpheus's identity, to that of man and artist, not merely musician. It also frees him of the constraints, and the protection, of the symbol of the ego ideal. Picasso's identification with Orpheus may have been reinforced by the fact that in the early 1930s he was writing poetry, although he was still too reticent to show it to friends.21 In his representation of the death of Orpheus, Picasso reveals many of the psychosexual conflicts implicit in his contemporaneous works, particularly his engravings of 1931, also inspired by his relationship with MarieThérèse, and later constituting part of the Vollard Suite. Like the bearded sculptor in these engravings, Orpheus conveys the artist's feeling that his creativity is hampered by the distraction of his sexual relationships. In this respect his use of the myth resembles that of Apollinaire, Kokoschka, and Schwabacher. Blatantly exposing his genitalia to the pointed spears of the woman above, however, Picasso's mythical artist passively allows a symbolic castration, but with his hand protects the eye—indispensable tool of the visual artist—of the bull. In addition to being Picasso's wellknown pictorial alter ego, the bull was also a favorite symbol of Dionysos, with whom Orpheus was united in his death. Dionysos revealed himself to the devout as a bull more than in any other form. Because of its vitality and generative powers, as well as its dangerous frenzy, the bull has been a giver of life as a symbol of fertility and a destroyer; it is significant that the bull was Dionysos's sacrificial animal, and on the island of Crete the ritualistic rending of a living bull was intended to recall the dismemberment of the child Dionysos by the Titans.22 In the Bacchae, Euripides affirms that the maenads devoured the bulls that they tore apart. In Picasso's print, the bull, the artist's unbridled sexuality, must die (apart from its eye) and is forced to the ground. The rejected second plate for the print shows the bull speared in his chest along with Orpheus (plate 56), who cups his hand in the bull's horn, paradigmatic symbol of masculine sexuality. In the first rejected plate the bull's horn is held by a maenad as she distinctly spears it (plate 55). Picasso gives his interpretation a characteristically ironic twist: as Orpheus was responsible for the second death of Eurydice and ultimately for his own
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death because he gazed at her, Picasso reverses the situation, making the artist's beloved (MarieThérèse) his murderer by her gaze. Whereas in the earlier states of the print, more faithful to Ovid's narrative, Orpheus is brutally pierced by the spears of the ferocious Bacchantes, in the final state Picasso focuses on the erotic creative and destructive potential of the eye. The women kill by their gaze at least as forcefully as by their spears, while the artist preserves his creativity by protecting the eye of the bull. In the final print, the link between sexual and visual creativity is clear in the vertical alignment of the eye of the bull and Orpheus's genitalia. The erotic associations of the eye, as well as the surrealist theme of the violence of the erotic game, had been explored by Georges Bataille in L'Histoire de l'oeil, par Lord Auch (Paris, 1928). Bataille equates the eye with egg, sun, and testicle; the doctor in his narrative points out that human testicles are in the ovoid shape of eyes. 23
Moreover, Picasso was surely aware, from the surrealists, of Freud's association of fears of castration with morbid anxiety about the eyes and blindness, expounded in his studies of the Oedipus myth in The Interpretation of Dreams and The Uncanny (1919). Picasso's image is akin to contemporary literature on Orpheus, which also reflects the impact of Freud's writings. Although Picasso may not have been familiar with Kokoschka's play Orpheus und Eurydike, the conflation of elements of the myths of Oedipus and Orpheus by both artists suggests at least an unconscious awareness of the fundamental human fears and urges that unite various myths and ancient and modern man. Picasso's own longstanding fear of blindness, first manifested in his Blue period and continuing in his selfidentification with blind minotaurs in the 1930s,24 is evident in this print. Nevertheless, a corresponding symbolic castration, psychological rather than physical—in the form of an eradication of sexual interests—is seen as a necessary good for artistic creation. The image of Orpheus Killed by the Maenads is particularly complex in view of Picasso's longstanding dread of death and his preoccupation in works of the late 1920s and early 1930s with Freudian metaphors of the castration fear.25 Freud had described the fear of death as a derivative of castration anxiety. The ancient sacrifice of the bull, devoting great attention to the dying bull's genitals, reveals that castration was a major focus in the mysteries of Demeter; precisely through its radical negation, sexuality was an obsession.26 Similarly, Picasso's fear of castration and ostensible desire for it as a ritual purification are integrally linked with his focus on the psychological and physical realities of sexuality in his work during this period. His portrayal of the presumed founder of ancient Orphism is appropriate, for the cult appears to have been exclusively masculine and to have espoused masculine purity, an aspect not present in Pythagoreanism. Picasso undoubtedly knew Cocteau's message that the artist must die in
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order to materialize his artistic creations, as well as Cocteau's selfidentification with Orpheus as a homosexual and as a proponent of purity, sexual and aesthetic but not religious. 27 Picasso presents a form of ritual purification related to Cocteau's through a portrayal of the desexualization necessary for the salvation of the artist. Orpheus's repute as the legendary initiator of homosexuality, as an artist whose creativity reached fullest fruition only after the death of his wife and his rejection of other women, would have had special appeal to Picasso, considering his own psychosexual conflicts. Although not a homosexual like Orpheus or Cocteau Picasso was conscious of his own passivity and implies it in this image of Orpheus, who does not resist his female aggressors.28 Picasso always considered himself a victim of women and was a sort of ''tragedy addict," continually choosing controlling women somewhat reminiscent of his tyrannical mother. His characteristic ambivalence toward women is reflected in the murder of the mythical artist by beautiful maenads resembling the mistress who inspired Picasso's creations in the early 1930s. Even at this time when most inspired by the beauty of MarieThérèse, his very attraction to her is felt as detrimental to his art. The image clearly recalls the prevailing surrealist idea that although the female principle governs creation, the woman also represents the destroyer.29 Picasso emphasizes the gentleness and softness of Orpheus, corresponding to his legendary image as not only a figure of peace but also the founder of pederastic love, according to the late Greek version perpetuated by Ovid. Considering Picasso's strongly ambivalent feelings toward women, his decision to illustrate Ovid's account of the death of Orpheus rather than another aspect of the myth is understandable, for Ovid attributes Orpheus's death to his misogyny and introduction of pederasty, for which the Thracian women punish him; Plato had alluded to his misogyny in the Republic (620a). The misogyny of the Orphists, moreover, is quite explicit. For example, Orphic texts repeat the formula: "nothing more bitchy than a woman."30 The wellestablished distinction by Freud and other psychotherapists between masculine as active and feminine as passive, and the concomitant assumption that a greater or lesser mixture of these traits exists in every individual,31 may partly explain Picasso's portrayal of the homosexual Orpheus as passivewith a preponderance of female character traits. Picasso had earlier spoken of himself as "like father's little girl." Historians, notably Meyer Schapiro, in discussing the Woman with a Fan (1905, Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art)32 have even seen Picasso's likeness in the faces of women he portrayed. According to John Berger, Picasso finds himself in women. Most of his images of women, Berger writes, are composite creatures, themselves and Picasso together.33 In this regard, Picasso's interpretation of the death of Orpheus also recalls Kokoschka's—and later Schwabacher's—use of the Or
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pheus myth to affirm the union of masculine and feminine spirit as necessary for renewal of creativity. As in the Young Girl Before a Mirror (1932, New York, Museum of Modern Art), also inspired by MarieThérèse, woman has both male and female qualities and is associated with both life and death. That Picasso attributes some masculine characteristics to the female murderers of Orpheus is clear, as the bull's leg which he caressingly grasps for support is ambiguously located where one would expect to see the right leg of the woman seen in threequarter view. The subtle androgynous implications correspond both to the legendary homosexuality of Orpheus and to the related interest in conflations of sexuality and species Picasso displays in numerous works from this period. 34 André Masson André Masson's Orpheus (plate 57) is one of a series of drawings done in 1932, engraved in 1934, and published with Georges Bataille's text as Sacrifices, les dieux qui meurent (Paris: Éditions G. L. M., 1936).35 Ferocious women with animal heads violently tear apart a helpless Orpheus in a frenzy akin to those in Masson's contemporaneous paintings of Massacres, which similarly reveal his fascination with the Dionysiac orgies described by Frazer. In The Golden Bough, as in Ovid's narrative, the Thracian Orpheus is ''torn limb from limb by the Bacchanals," as Dionysus had been before him.36 Masson undoubtedly refers to the struggle between Apollonian and Dionysian described by Nietzsche, to whose writings he explicitly alluded in other works of this decade.37 With poet's wreath on his head and large tears streaming from his eyes, this Orpheus is the model of Apollonian spirituality; he has even incorporated the symbol of Apollo into his body as an extension of his hand. Whereas Picasso's Orpheus passively endures his death by sensual beauties as a desexualization beneficial to his art, Masson's hero is the sensitive poet, also hopelessly weak, struggling against the barbaric female members of a Dionysiac society to preserve himself and his Apolline art. As Nietzsche claimed that the future of art depends on the opposition of Apollonian and Dionysian forces, Masson presents an antagonistic unity in which we know the Dionysiac triumphs and art will be reborn. Although Masson is ostensibly horrified at the act of Dionysiac violence, his extensive study of mythology would have told him that Orpheus was not the opponent or victim of Dionysos, but of the Thracian women's wild excesses, the exaggerated outcome of their worship of the wine god.38 Frazer emphasized, moreover, Orpheus's kinship with the chthonian Dionysos. Masson's fascination and identification with the chthonic is clear: he later described his Telluric pictures of the 1940s as "chthonic, belonging to subterra
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nean forces" and had long portrayed a fusion of man and earth in his art. Sartre implied that the Dionysiac had long been Masson's focus when he stated that Masson after 1948 "reveal[ed] to us his Dionysiac myth in all its purity."40 The ritual killings in his Massacres, contemporaneous with his images of Orpheus, are clearly celebrations rather than condemnations of Dionysiac orgies. Like his Massacres, Masson's print and his painting Orpheus (1934; Paris, Galerie Louise Leiris; plate 58)41 reflect his obsession with the death struggle and his belief that an interaction between eroticism and death lies at the foundation of all life. Believing that all things contain their opposites, Masson viewed death as always inherent in life and life as always potential in death and understood that the ritualistic death of Orpheus implies new life for song. Thus, in his Orpheus painting, a skeleton with leaflike ribs and crown strums the lyre. Life and death blend in this artist who reveals at the center of his creation the frightful hand of death. Masson's thinking is close to that of his friend Bataille for whose Sacrifices, Orpheus served as an illustration. Bataille sees the presence of death in life and typically likens death to the anguished ecstasy of eroticism. He regards the divine disorder of a festival inaugurated by sacrifice, by ritual murder, as a transcendent experience uniting the community through the contagion of violence. "Sacrifice," Bataille asserts, "is the remedy to a world devoid of transcendence. . . . The impossible is liberated through a crime, its locus now unveiled."42 Through the ritual murder of Orpheus, transcendence is attained. The reasons for Masson's probable selfidentification with Orpheus are numerous and varied. Since childhood Masson had been contemplative and introspective, a dweller in a world of dreams. In 1972 he described the intention that he and Joan Miró had had of becoming painterpoets: "It was obvious that for Miró as for myself, poetry (in the broadest sense of the term) was of capital importance. Our ambition was to be painterpoets . . . painters purporting to work from poetic necessity."43 Lanchner has convincingly proposed that Masson metaphorically implies himself as the dreamerpoet in two paintings titled Sleeper (192324, University of Iowa Museum of Art; 192425, Paris, private collection).44 Like Klee and Twombly, Masson was an inventor of writing. He said of his new technique of automatic drawing, "It's also a kind of writing."45 Fundamental to his conception of the human condition was the surrealist idea of metamorphosis, of which Orpheus was a supreme example. In the print Orpheus, the hand of the musician is metamorphosed into an organically flowing lyre, uniting man with his attribute, as Lipchitz and Zadkine were to do later. The heads of the Thracian women are transformed into those of wild beasts. It seems especially likely that Masson would have identified with Orpheus
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in the early 1930s when, still distraught over his breaks with his wife and the surrealists in 1929, he retreated into isolation: he would thus have empathized with the suffering legendary poet who cut himself off from society. To many modern writers, such as Anouilh, the myth of Orpheus is "asocial," a myth of solitude. 46 In most of Masson's Massacres dating from 1932 to 1934, women are victims. He stated, "I can't believe that they grow out of some misogyny of mine that I'm unaware of."47 Created shortly after his divorce, however, and in a period of deep depression, these Massacres, as well as the murder of a gentle legendary male artist by ferocious females, must express—at least on a subconscious level—Masson's hostility toward "la femme aimée." He said at this time: My sleep . . . must have been troubled, by intimate conflicts I can't discuss. And by the break with the surrealist group . . . . After having, for the first time in my life, agreed to be gregarious, I found myself back in a solitude I had known since childhood. . . I had truly a feeling of deliverance. But the feeling was probably hiding a depression, a feeling of dereliction, solitude, and despair. I had severed something.48
Like Picasso's etching, Masson's projects the artist's deeprooted psychological conflicts and reflects the impact of Freud. As in earlier representations, the death of Orpheus symbolizes the sexual strife between male and female. Further, Masson may also suggest in the death of Orpheus the destruction of the artist by philistines (the surrealists) and his triumph over death. Finally, Masson's image of the death of Orpheus mirrors not only the artist's personal struggles, but also the general feeling of anxiety in the air about the threatened future of humanity. Masson's violent portrayal is in strong contrast to Picasso's final, lyrical treatment of the subject, though reminiscent of his earlier, rejected states. It corresponds in its fury to literary interpretations of this myth and others in France during the 1930s, reflecting current political and economic disturbances. The tragedy of Orpheus served as one of the most frequently used mythical expedients for expressing fears and despair over the course of events leading up to World War II. Whereas in the 1920s Orpheus had symbolized an effective, civilizing antidote to German savagery, his counterparts in the 1930s acquired a more helpless, passive character in response to the increasing threat of brutality. In 1931, the year before Masson's drawing of the death of Orpheus, Léon Daudet's novel Les Bacchantes appeared, describing the Dionysiac frenzy of women who murder Ségétan, a modernized Orpheus. The creation of Masson's Orpheus coincided with the birth of the Third Reich in 1933 and Hitler's declaration of himself as Führer in 1934. When Masson's print accompanied Bataille's text Sacrifices in 1936, the etching's closeness to
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the current mood of impending doom was clear. The poet Jouve, to whose Sueur de Sang (1933) Masson had contributed an etching, singled out his print of Orpheus for praise in 1940; in 1936, when Jouve wrote his poems about Orpheus, including the "Orphée agonisant" in his Matière céleste (1937), he clearly identified the maenads with forces of tyranny. 49 Earl Staley Earl Staley's "Orphic paintings" date from the summer and fall of 1985, when he was completing his threeyear stay at the American Academy in Rome, where he studied the old masters and the antique.50 In accordance with his usual practice of creating a number of variations on a subject, he painted different aspects of the myth of Orpheus. Characteristically, he chose the most dramatic moment, focusing in several paintings on the hero's violent death. For example, Death of Orpheus 4 shows four ferocious, muscular women attacking the helpless musician on a beach before an incoming tide. The setting suggests a sea—perhaps the Mediterranean—rather than the river Hebros in the ancient accounts (plate 59). Staley has said that he was aware of literary and musical treatments of the myth but was not directly inspired by them. His fierce image of the death of Orpheus forms a striking contrast with the print by Picasso, the twentiethcentury artist whom Staley admires most. Like Samples, another figurative painter from Houston, Staley interprets classical mythological themes under the influence of the writings of Jung and Joseph Campbell. His fascination with the darkly mysterious, the deeply psychological, the complex, and the fantastic may be thought of as rooted in the Southern sensibility earlier manifested by writers such as William Faulkner and recently by a number of visual artists. .51 Staley and Samples both modernize myths, placing them in the context of the world they know and revealing their relation to it. Staley has said that he paints myths because "they function as a basis for depicting and explaining my life." When he began painting mythological subjects in 1974, he declared that they stemmed from his autobiographical impulse; through Jung he had learned to consider his personal condition as part of a broader human one and to express it symbolically through myths that represent universal archetypes but still retain their "personal origins.".52 His images of Orpheus exemplify Staley's statement that the message in all his paintings is "the enjoyment of life and the mystery of death." His constant concern with the archetypal lifeanddeath struggle is a translation of his personal experience. 53 He treats the death of Orpheus as a symbol of the death the artist must undergo in order to be reborn through his art—an interpretation somewhat reminiscent of Cocteau. Staley had earlier voiced his
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belief in rebirth after death in his explanation of the personal symbolism underlying a series of paintings of skulls dating from 1975. The subject conveyed his feelings that one life of his was dying at the time of his divorce; however, rebirth offered him new life as an artist. . 54 The beasts with which Staley's heroes struggle signify, the "other" in us, the primitive, uncivilized part of the human psyche at war with the conscious, rational, civilized part, which is generally victorious. .55 Staley explicitly represents the two sides of his character in a SelfPortrait (1981; Houston, Texas, collection of the artist and Watson/de Nagy Gallery; plate 60), in which the rational part appears as a man wearing glasses and conservative dress and the wild one is manifested in the mask of Bacchus that he dons. Staley celebrates the Dionysiac in several paintings from the early 1980s titled Bacchanal and Triumph of Bacchus and, indirectly, in his painting style of bold brushstrokes, vivid colors, and powerful light and dark contrasts. Expressionist paintings appeal to this side of his personality. Staley has remarked that he views Orpheus as "both human and divine, [the] artist as hero, as both Apollo and Dionysos, as [the] hero fatally flawed via love." In his paintings of the Death of Orpheus we view an autobiographical confrontation with the artist's self. The artist as hero is given both Apolline and Dionysiac qualities, even more distinctly than in Masson's image of the ritual murder (plate 57). Staley's dying Orpheus, clearly a selfportrait, with lyre reminiscent of Apollo beside him, is being attacked by "the other" with which he identifies—followers of Dionysos who punish the artist for his Apolline characteristics and yet are akin to him as Orpheus is a form of Dionysos himself, being murdered in a Dionysiac rite. Like Masson, Staley pictures a Nietzschean antagonistic unity of Apollonian and Dionysian forces in which is implied the rebirth of art. The frenzied Orpheus (who looks like Staley), with contorted face and wild hair, anything but an image of Apolline calm, is appropriately joined in symbolic struggle and unity with maenads that resemble his fellow Texan Tina Turner, the ''spectacular queen of pop.'' .56 The ecstatic frenzy of the maenads, one of whom triumphantly steps on Orpheus's lyre, may be associated with rapturous, exhilarating Dionysiac music of which pop music is a descendant; the Dionysiac element in pop music corresponds to the wild, primitive side of Staley's paintings. The death of Orpheus allowed Staley to make a personal statement in universal terms about the birth of his art and the side of his nature from which it emerges, as well as the relation of his art to contemporary music. Arnulf Rainer Like Lipchitz, who always "lived in the full stream of death," the Austrian painter Arnulf Rainer has long been obsessed with death. He has created
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several images of Orpheus, including an overpainted photograph titled Ecstasy in Black Fire (Orpheus) (197374; plate 61), all inspired by Cocteau's film interpretations of the myth. 57 Since early in his career, Rainer has been fixated on death and a sort of cycle of phoenixology, in which death is necessary, for resurrection through survival of the spirit. As early as 1949 he had created a drawing of a blackened face titled Dying Rainer (Fragment), and later, a series of self portraits in the form of death masks (such as SelfPortrait as Dead Man, 1955) and crosses (such as SelfBurial, 196974) .58 In accordance with the ageold Christian tradition that resulted in images of the dance of death, Rainer believes that an orientation toward death and anticipation of it can lead to an enrichment of life. Man shows his true face in death; his live face is a mask, a lie, whereas his death mask is his true face. .59 Himself a sort of phoenix and the embodiment of spirituality, Orpheus appears as a fitting symbol of Rainer's ideals. Ecstasy in Black Fire (Orpheus) shows the artist with strawlike hair and blood dripping down his head and chest, as if suffering mortal wounds, and eyes and mouth partly open, as if his spirit already communicates with a divine presence. The work is an example of Rainer's continual search for spiritual rebirth and his constant dialectic of negation and existence. Negation in his art involves mutilation, humiliation, and degradation of the self, in emulation of ancient rituals. Like Orpheus, embodiment of eternal metamorphoses, Rainer subjects himself to endless transformations in his overpainted photographs, which he creates by photographing his face distorted in various ways and then painting and drawing over the most successful images, that is, those revealing the most intense facial transformation. When he draws or paints over the photographs, he modifies them further, trying "to discover new, more important, more meaningful lies."60 Each photographic distortion represents an attempt at the destruction of the worldly veneer and a move toward the authentic, the demonic, the primitive—man's most basic expressive nature buried beneath the wrappings (even regressing to the infantile, as Donald Kuspit indicates). This process is equivalent to the death advocated by Cocteau, that is, the artist's transit to his inner angel. During his many transformations—like Cocteau, under the influence of mindaltering drugs—Rainer tries to lose himself "in the possible." In this form of death, the artist is unable to find ("grab hold of'') himself until forms become strictly defined and enunciated. His identity now seems certain, only to become soon a cage from which the artist must escape again, in still another death. Rainer's heritage from Nietzsche is evident in his closeness to "On the Way of the Creating One" in which Nietzsche writes: "But the worst enemy thou canst meet, wilt thou thyself always be; . . . Thou lonesome one, thou goest
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the way to thyself! . . . Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou become new if thou have not first become ashes! . . . I love him who seeketh to create beyond himself, and thus succumbeth." 61 Painting, Rainer has said, is "denial and religion."62 By overpainting photographs of himself, attempting to destroy his worldly image, the outer "pseudosocial wrappings" of the self, he endeavors to release the inner, spiritual, most authentic self. It is not surprising that the work of an Austrian painter should display the impact of Freud's theories, his stress on penetration beyond selfdeception to the unconscious self. His emphasis on the spiritual and his desire to destroy the external image to release its inner energy. also reveal the influence of mysticism and Eastern philosophies on Rainer, as on a number of other nineteenth and early twentiethcentury artists and writers who represented Orpheus. As Kuspit notes, however, Rainer never completely gives up the image of the self, which would be "metaphoric suicide," and his photographs, therefore, remain "on the side of life.'' 63
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CONCLUSION For twentiethcentury artists, Orpheus remains an important mythological hero because his story touches on numerous wellsprings of human behavior. He has personified the artist concerned with civilizing the bestial nature of man, an individual grappling with the vital questions of life and death, and the many dilemmas involved in creativity. In the twentieth century, artists have used Orpheus to express their profound searches into their inner beings to explain their ideals, fears, self doubts, and situations. Because painters and sculptors generally project themselves into their representations of him, a study of their treatments of Orpheus allows a further means of comprehending artists' motivations and ideals. Whether modern artists glorify or criticize Orpheus, they regard him, like themselves, as a humanitarian through whose charity humanity receives the gifts of poetry and music or art and a heightened sensitivity to spiritual beauty. Delaunay regarded Orpheus as a guide in his own search for purity and truth; for Zadkine and Milles the musician awakened man from his primitive, bestial state; Klee's Orpheus demonstrated the harmony of the universe and the unities of life and death. All use him to symbolize the extraordinary, magical powers of the artist, which are either celebrated for their ability to transform a prosaic world or blamed for blinding the artist to the realities of that world. Beauty as the ultimate goal of the artist is exemplified by Orpheus, who may be either praised or condemned for his imaginary creation of a pure, ideal world. He is the artist who evades some element in his environment with which he struggles—whether it be a hostile public, the destructive effects of time, the inhumanity of industrialized society, or unhappiness in love. His evasion may be considered to be a beneficial transformation of an antagonistic world into a purified, perfect one. For example, to Apollinaire and Dufy, Orpheus could transform a "lousy herd" of insects into awesome creatures, and Tucker's Orpheus demonstrates that art can "transcend the merely physical." In contrast, he may be the failed artist who tries to transcend his human limitations, succumbs to base instincts, and creates an ineffectual world of illusion. This is Beckmann's childish dreamer and Noguchi's musician blinded by the mask of his imagination. In his despair, Orpheus evades reality by retreating into solitude, isolating himself from humanity and living instead in perfect communion with nature. Marc, Beckmann, Masson, and Lipchitz reveal an affinity with his sense of isolation, as they yearn for kinship and unification with the greater universe to escape from their selfimposed solitude.
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The anguish of Orpheus is that of modern man divided against himself, but unified by his art, his song. Orpheus embodies the opposition and union of Apollonian and Dionysian, intellect and instinct, passive and aggressive, the craving for truth and its substitution by illusion. He thus personifies the internal conflicts manifested by many of the artists discussed in parts two and three of this book. His obsessive need for Eurydice and yet his revived creativity after her final death correspond to the ambivalence of the male artist toward the source of inspiration on whom he depends and yet whom he regards as a destructive obstacle to his creativity. Whether modern artists see Orpheus as needing to be rid of woman (as do Picasso, Noguchi, and Schwabacher), or as incapable of functioning without her (like Beckmann, Kokoschka, and di Suvero), or as the tragic victim of frenzied maenads, the primordial hostility between the sexes is basic to these interpretations of the myth. Humanity's attempt to confront and perhaps transcend the limitations of time is also fundamental to an understanding of most modern treatments of Orpheus as a death myth: man tries, often in vain, to regain a lost past and to preserve the memory of love. Kokoschka tried to revive Alma Mahler through Orpheus; Kushner tries to preserve the beauty of the past through Orpheus. Or he succeeds in conquering time and space through art and love, as suggested by Lippold, Lipchitz, and Twombly. Revealing and mollifying their own terror of the ultimate end, some twentiethcentury artists—Newman in reaction to World War II and Rainer inspired by Eastern mysticism—see Orpheus as assuring the renewal of creativity and purification of the spirit through death. The continuing focus on Orpheus in modern art and literature may be viewed as a countercurrent to declarations, like that of Roland Barthes, of the death of the poet/artist. In modern art, even when the focus is on Eurydice, she is seen in relation to Orpheus and reflects the artist's preoccupation with his or her own inwardness, inspiration, and aspirations. The artist never disappears or is disassociated from the work or its origins; the emphasis, rather, is continually on his regeneration as a creator. That Orpheus represents at once joy and lament, fidelity to woman and misogynism, and the productive and frustrated artist has made him appeal to a broad range of artistic temperaments. Underlying all visual images of the singer is a sense that the modern artist uses him, the embodiment of metamorphosis, to transform symbolically the chaos, emptiness, or inadequacy of the inner and outer worlds.
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NOTES SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX
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Notes Introduction 1. W. K. C. Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966), 25, writes that "the appeal of Orpheus . . . has always been much more universal than that of most other great figures of legend." Two books on Orpheus have appeared recently: Charles Segal, Orpheus. The Myth of the Poet (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), with a chapter on Rilke and part of a chapter on Orpheus in twentiethcentury literature; Dorothy M. Kosinski, Orpheus in NineteenthCentury Symbolism (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989), with a final chapter on twentiethcentury art. Although I have found some of Kosinski's references useful, our basic approaches are different. Kosinski gives an enumeration of artists' treatments of the Orpheus myth, trying to be inclusive in her discussion, whereas I have not attempted to survey every reference to Orpheus in modern art, but to focus on the ways in which the Orpheus myth has expressed artists' professional and personal dilemmas. 2. Among the recent literature, see: Norman Bryson, Word and Image. French Painting of the Ancien Régime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology. Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 3. Rensselaer W. Lee, "Ut Pictura Poesis": The Humanistic Theory of Painting (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), 3. 4. See Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Trattato dell'arte de la pittura (Milan: P. G. Pontio, 1584; reprint, Hildesheim: George Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1968), 1089 ("Della necessità del moto"), 28184 ("Della necessità della pittura"). 5. See Sir Joshua Reynolds, "Discourse 3: Delivered to the Students of The Royal Academy, on the Distribution of the Prizes, December 14, 1770," Discourses on Art, ed. Robert R. Wark (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 42, 50. 6. From JeanPaul Sartre, Situations, 4 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 194764), 2:63. 7. Poets on Painters: Essays on the Art of Painting by TwentiethCentury Poets, ed J. D. McClatchy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988). 8. See Suzanne Langer, Feeling and Form (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953), 28; Bryson, Word and Image, 70. Although Orpheus has also provided inspiration for twentiethcentury composers, most notably Igor Stravinsky (Orpheus, 1948)—as well as Darius Milhaud (Les Malheurs d'Orphée, 1926) and Pierre Henry (Orphée and Le Voile d'Orphée, 1953; Le Tombeau d'Orphée, 1958)—this book deals mainly with works by selected visual artists. 9. Contemporary writers following in the tradition of Leonardo da Vinci, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and others include Ernst H. Gombrich and Nelson Goodman. ryson,
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Word and Image, 5, notes that the persistence of such conventions as the inscription reminds us that language still shapes and delimits our reception of images. Segal, Orpheus, 3, extends the meaning of Orpheus's power of song to include the power of language in general and writes, "If . . . stress falls on the failure of the poet, the myth expresses the intransigence of reality before the plasticity of language." 10. The classical sources for the Orpheus myth are found in Ivan M. Linforth, The Arts of Orpheus (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1941) and Guthrie. The abbreviations Kern, test. and frag. refer to the testimonia and fragmenta in Otto Kern, Orphicorum fragmenta (Berlin: Weidmann, 1922) On Oiagros as Orpheus's father, see Pindar frag 1399 (Carmina cum fragmentis selectis, ed. Otto Schroeder [Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1930]); on Apollo, see Scholia in Pindari Pythia 4.313 (Scholia vetera in Pindari Carmina, ed. Anders Bjön Drachmann [Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 190327]). 11. Sources include: Simonides 567 P; Aeschylus Agamemnon 162930; Euripides Bacchae 56263; Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica 1.2627; Pseudo Eratosthenes Catasterismi 24; Virgil Eclogues 3.46, Georgics 4.510; Lucian Adversus indoctum 12. 12. The first evidence of Orpheus's presence (but not Eurydice's) among the dead appears in underworld scenes painted by Polygnotus, according to Pausanias 10.30.6 (Kern, test. 69). See also Euripides Alcestis 357 (Kern, test. 59); Plato Symposium 179d (Kern, test. 60), Virgil Georgics 4.471, 48788; Ovid Metamorphoses 10.40, 49; Horace Carmina 21, Seneca Hercules oetaeus 1067, Hercules furens 578. 13. See, for example, Ovid Metamorphoses 10.8384; Hyginus Astronomia 2.7; Philargyrius ad Virgil Georgics 4.520 (cited in Kern, under "Amor puerorum"), all of which appear to follow the precedent set by the Alexandrian poetry of Phanocles frag. 136 (Collectanea alexandrina, ed. John Undershell Powell [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925], 1067). Otto F. Gruppe, in Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, 6 vols (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 18841937), 3.1159, first suggested that Virgil and Ovid depended on a now lost, late Alexandrian poem. 14. For the more established account, see Ovid Metamorphoses 10.8384; the other had been offered by Aeschylus in the lost Bassarae, the earliest description of Orpheus's death of which we have evidence (recorded in PseudoEratosthenes Catasterismi 24 [Kern, test. 113]) See also Euripides' Bacchae and Virgil's Georgics 4, which modifies Aeschylus's account by attributing the murderous Bacchic frenzy of the women to their rejection by Orpheus. Cf. Pausanias (9.30), who cites a Greek story, which he considers fictitious, relating Orpheus's death as a suicide; Alcidamas (fourth century B.C.) mentions that one of the epitaphs on Orpheus's tomb states that he was struck by a thunderbolt of Zeus (see Kern, testt. 12325). 15. Phanocles frag. 1.11; Virgil Georgics 4.524; Ovid Metamorphoses 11.52; Philostratus Heroicus 5.3; Lucian Adversus indoctum 109; Philostratus Vita Apollonii 4.14. 16. See Maurice Bowra, "Orpheus and Eurydice," The Classical Quarterly 2 (1952). 11326; Jacques Heurgon, "Orphée et Eurydice avant Virgile," Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire 49 (1932): 660. On similar medieval interpretations of the myth, see Peter Dronke, "The Return of Eurydice," Classica et mediaevalia 23 (1962): 200; John Block
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Friedman, Orpheus in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1970), 116, 128, 16566, 175. 17. Ephorus in Diodorus Siculus 5.64.4 (Kern, test. 42); Plato Republic 364e and Laws 3.677 d; Aristophanes Frogs 1032; Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.494. 18. Unless otherwise noted below, the following information on Orphism is based mainly on Walter Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, trans. John Raffan (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 296301; idem, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 3334,4647, 8789; Marcel Detienne, Dionysos Slain, trans. Mireille Muellner and Leonard Muellner (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 6894. 19. See Walter Burkert, "Kynaithos, Polycrates, and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo," in "Arktouros": Hellenic Studies Presented to Bernard M W Knox on the Occasion of His Sixtyfifth Birthday, edited by Glen W. Bowersock, Walter Burkert, and Michael C. J. Putnam (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1979), 57. On the poems, see M. L. West, The Orphic Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). 20. See Walter Burkert, Love and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, trans. Edwin L. Minar, Jr. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University, Press, 1972), 121; idem, 1985, 299, n. 34 on Aristotle, n. 35 on Xenophanes. 21. Quoting from an apocryphal work attributed to Pythagoras, Iamblichus (De vita Pythagorica 28 14547) concluded that Pythagoras learned his doctrine of the gods and his number theology from Orpheus; Ion of Chios, Epigenes, and Diogenes Laertius 8.8 (Kern, test. 248) are among those who assert that Pythagoras and his followers wrote several of the poems attributed to Orpheus. 22. Kern, test 79; Burkert, Greek Religion, 302. Detienne, 6061, indicates that the Pythagoreans compromised by not considering pigs and goats to be meat. 23. Detienne, Dionysos Slain, 17. 24. See, for example, Virginia Spate, Orphism: The Evolution of NonFigurative Painting in Paris, 19101914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 76. 25. See Herodotus 2.81 (Kern, test. 216), on the Orphics and Pythagoreans as a single group; Edward A. Lippman, Musical Thought in Ancient Greece (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 8, considers the Pythagoreans to be an Orphic sect. On the two as distinct but similar sects, see Karl Kerényi, Pythagoras und Orpheus: Präludien zu einer zukünftigen Geschichte der Orphik und des Pythagoreismus, 3d ed. (Zürich: RheinVerlag, 1950), pt. 1; Linforth, 49. On Orphism and Pythagoreanism as two sides of one philosophicreligious system, see Guthrie, 129. 26. Burkert, Greek Religion, 300. 27. For example, Diodorus Siculus 4.25 (Kern, test. 97, 169); Eusebius Caesariensis Praeparatio evangelica 1.6, p.18 A; 10.4, p.469 B (Kern, testt. 98, 99a). 28. See Lippman, 4748. 29. See Salomon Reinach, Cultes, mythes, et religions (Paris. Ernest Leroux, Éditeur, 1906), 2:122, and Karl Kerényi, The Heroes of the Greeks, trans. H.J. Rose (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), 281. 30. For instance, on Orpheus as a BronzeAge shaman see Robert Böhme, Orpheus: Der Sänger und seine Zeit (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1970), 195, 222, 286, 303, 334; on
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Orpheus as a Thracian priest, see Guthrie, 2930; Linforth, 16473, completely denies his existence and that of an Orphic religion. 31. See note 14 above. 32. See Eleanor Irwin, Colour Terms in Greek Poetry (Toronto: Hakkert, 1974), 178, 18287. 33. Guthrie, 41. Detienne, Dionysos Slain, 117, n.139, argues against the conclusion of Ulrich yon WilamowitzMoellendorff's statement in, Der Glaube der Hellenen, 2d ed. (Basel. B. Schwabe, 1959), 2:190, that the murder of Orpheus by followers of Dionysos is evidence that ancient Orphism was more Apollonian than Dionysian. Martin Persson Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, 2d ed. (Berlin: C. H. Beck, 1955), 68687, more plausibly views the episode as illustrative of the tension between the two movements. See Burkert, Greek Religion, 297. 34. This summary of Orpheus in the Middle Ages is based on Friedman. 35. On Orpheus in the Renaissance, see: Elizabeth A. Newby, A Portrait of the Artist: The Legends of Orpheus and Their Use in Medieval and Renaissance Aesthetics (New York: Garland, 1987); Giuseppe Scavizzi, "The Myth of Orpheus in Italian Renaissance Art," in Orpheus: The Metamorphoses of a Myth, ed. John Warden (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 13646; D. P. Walker, "Orpheus the Theologian and the Renaissance Platonists," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 16 (1953): 100120. 36. See Walker, 100 n. 8. 37. Walter A. Strauss, Descent and Return. The Orphic Theme in Modern Literature (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971), 9, 12, 269. See also Segal, Orpheus, 16869. 38. Nietzsche mentions Orpheus only twice in this book. He likens him to Socrates, the opponent of Dionysos. "The new Orpheus who rose against Dionysus and although he is destined to be torn to pieces by the Maenads of the Athenian court, he still put to flight the powerful god himself" (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann [New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1967], 86). He states (p 115) that the "inventors of the recitative" used the "stilo rappresentativo" to explain the "enormous influence of an Orpheus, an Amphion, and even of Greek tragedy.'' 39. M. S. Silk and J. P. Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1981), 17578, 180. 40. Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, 74. 41. Silk and Stern, 177. 42. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization. A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 165. Part One. The Fulfillment of an Ego Ideal 1. See Frederick M. Ahl, Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and Other Classical Poets (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), 214. Ahl, 59, indicates
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that Orpheus's powers of transformation are central to Ovid's Metamorphoses, for Ovid animates nature as Orpheus had done, "ORPHeus' audience is metamORPHosed as is the backdrop to his narrative of metamorphosis." See also Segal, Orpheus, 7072, 85. 2. See Lippman, 45. 3. See Ernst Kris, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art (New York: International Universities Press, 1952), 5152. 4. Otto Rank, Art and Artist.. Creative Urge and Personality Development, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Agathon Press, 1975), 41. 5. See Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id, trans. Joan Riviere, rev. and ed. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton, 1962), 2627. 6. Stéphane Mallarmé, letter to Verlaine (1885), in Correspondance, ed. Henri Mondor and Lloyd James Austin (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), 2:66. 7. On this topic, see Milton C. Nahm, The Artist as Creator: An Essay of Human Freedom (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), especially 1216. 8. Hans Arp et al., "Poetry is Vertical," Transition 21 (March 1932): 14849. 9. See Johannes H. Birringer, "Constructions of the Spirit: The Struggle for Transfiguration in Modern Art," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 42, no. 2 (Winter 1983): 3750, especially 145. 10. Ibid. 11. See Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), 24. 12. See Hermine B. Riffaterre, L'Orphisme dans la poésie romantique. Thèmes et styles surnaturalistes (Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1970), 1115. Hence, in the catalog introduction for an exhibition of contemporary Italian art based on m mythological themes, Helmut Friedel writes. "Orpheus, the artist, is also the mediator who creates the link between the unknown and the light of reality; who for us and himself goes to Hades, even if his attempt is doomed to failure. The dream of Orpheus is that vision of the selfevident contrast between myth and reason." See Der Traum des Orpheus. Mythologie in der italienischen Gegenwartskunst, 1967 bis 1984 (Munich. Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 1984), 13. 13. Eva Kushner, Le Mythe d'Orphée dans la littérature française contemporaine (Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1961), 73, makes this point regarding twentiethcentury literature. 14. On this subject, see Gwendolyn Bays, The Orphic Vision.. Seer Poets from Novalis to Rimbaud (Lincoln, Nebraska. University of Nebraska Press, 1964), especially 3435. Cf. Strauss, 220, who remarks that Rimbaud approaches the Orphic vision for only a brief moment, most notably in Les Illuminations. He indicates, 81, that Novalis and Nerval placed a new emphasis on the visionary and prophetic mission of the Romantic poet. 15. Conversation with the artist in October 1987. 16. Marcuse, 162. 17. See Eleanor Winsor Leach, Vergil's "Eclogues": Landscapes of Experience (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974), 23839. 18. See Strauss, 13, 22, 257.
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1. Orpheus the PreWar Hero 1. Oil on canvas, 29 1/3 × 52 7/8 in. Munich, Städtische Galerie. The copy after Marc's lost design was probably made by Annette von Eckardt or Friedrich Michael Pfeiffer. The Gobelin tapestry executed after it was formerly in the collection of Annette yon Eckardt. See Klaus Lankheit, Franz Marc: Katalog der Werke (Cologne: Verlag M. DuMont Schauberg, 1970), no. 884. 2. Franz Marc, Briefe 19141916 aus dem Felde (Munich. List, 1966), 133. 3. Frederick S. Levine, The Apocalyptic Vision. The Art of Franz Marc as German Expressionism (New York: Harper and Row, Icon Editions, 1979), 37. 4. Letter from Marc to Marie Schnür on 17 June 1906, quotation from ibid., 39. 5. On the frequency of the theme in earlier periods, see Konrat Ziegler, ''Orpheus in Renaissance und Neuzeit," in Form und Inhalt: Kunstsgeschichtliche Studien, Otto Schmitt zum 60. Geburtstag am 13 Dezember 1950, dargebracht von seinen Freunden (Stuttgart: Hans Wentzel, 1950), 246. On representations of Orpheus among the animals in ancient art, particularly in mosaics, see Felix M Schoeller, Darstellungen des Orpheus in der Antike InauguralDissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der philosophischen Fakultät der AlbertLudwigsUniversität zu Freiburg im Breisgau (Freiburg: Robert Oberkirch oHG, 1968), 2330. Newby, 34. notes that the myth of Orpheus. "stands as one of the central symbolic statements in the history of Western musical philosophy for man's search for a definition of the meaning and function of music." 6. From Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare (Paris: Nelson Éditeurs, n.d.), 39. Jean Coman, Orphée Civilisateur de l'humanité (Paris: Zalmoxis, 1939), maintains that Orpheus's pacification of savage beasts with his music implies his aim of awakening man's intelligence and sensibilities and subduing his primitive instincts. 7. See Klaus Lankheit, Franz Marc Sein Leben und seine Kunst (Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 1976), 45. 8. Ibid., 44, cites Marc's letter of 30 April 1910. 9. Quotation in Levine, 44. See also Peter Selz, German Expressionist Painting (Berkeley and Los Angeles. University of California Press, 1974), 201. 10. E. Kushner, 76, makes this observation regarding Novalis. See also Strauss, ch. 2. 11. Iamblichus (De anima; Kern, frag. 9697) labels as Orphic the belief in a world soul pluralizing itself in animals. 12. This phrase is translated from Marc's essay "Die 'wilden' Deutschlands," in Der Blaue Reiter, ed Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc (Munich: Reinhard Piper, 1912), 31. Among the writers who discuss this subject, see especially Robert Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko (New York. Harper and Row, Icon Editions, 1975), 139. Marc describes an "animalization" of art in a letter of 8 December 1908 to Piper. 13. Mark Rosenthal, Franz Marc: 18801916 (Berkeley: University Art Museum, University of California, 1979), 8.
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14. Letter of 2 August 1898, in Klaus Lankheit, ed., Franz Marc im Urteil seiner Zeit (Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 1960), 25. 15. Freud, Ego and Id, 27. 16. Aaron T. Beck, Depression, Causes and Treatment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967), 6. 17. Quotation in Marion Wolf, "Biblia Omnii: Timeliness and Timelessness in the Work of Franz Marc," Art Journal 33, no. 3 (Spring 1974): 226. 18. From Alois J. Schardt, Franz Marc (Berlin: RembrandtVerlag, 1936), 28. 19. Levine, 13. 20. Quotation in Klaus Lankheit, Watercolors, Drawings, Writings (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1959), 14. 21. E. Kushner, 20. See also Kosinski, who views the symbolist Orpheus as a fusion of interests in the occult, the spiritual, the theory of correspondences (the synaesthetic ideal), and music as the artistic paradigm. 22. Philippe Renaud, "'Ondes,' ou les métamorphoses de la musique," in Journées Apollinaire de Stavelot, acts du colloque (Stavelot: Éditions "Les Amis de G. Apollinaire," 1967), 22. 23. See Spate, 61; from Guillaume Apollinaire, La Poésie symboliste Trois entretiens sur les temps héroïques (Paris, 1908). 24. Guillaume Apollinaire, Le Bestiaire ou cortège d'Orphée (Paris: Deplanche, 1911). The original (unpaginated) edition of 120 had thirty inset plates and was signed by Apollinaire and Dufy. Scholars generally agree, however, that Apollinaire also implies Orpheus in Alcools (Paris: Mercure de France, 1913) and Le Poète assassiné (Paris. Bibliothèque des curieux, 1916). 25. Letter from Apollinaire to Dufy on 29 August 1910, quoted in Marcel Adèma, Apollinaire, trans. Denise Folliot (New York: Grove Press, 1955), 134. Apollinaire had originally approached Picasso, whose woodcuts of animals had inspired the poet in 1906 to write quatrains on fabulous creatures accompanying them. 26. From the unpublished subscription form printed by GautierVillars in Adéma, 13435. 27. For instance, see: four versions of Homage to Mozart (1915, private collection; 1915, Tokyo, Gallery Art Point; 1930, Alex Hillman Family Foundation; 1951, Tokyo, Gallery Art Point) and Orpheus Charming the Animals (1939, New York, Perls collection). See Brian Robertson and Sarah Wilson, eds., Raoul Dufy, 18771953 (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, Hayward Gallery, 1983), nos 43, 44, 107, 139, and 122, respectively On the omnipresence of music in his life, see Jacques Lassaigne, Dufy Biographical and Critical Studies, trans. James Emmons (Geneva: Éditions d'Art Albert Skira, 1954), 80. 28. The only exceptions are brief discussions of two of the plates—on one, see Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco, "De Chirico in Paris, 19111915," in De Chirico, ed William Rubin (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1982), 27, and on the other, see Gèrard Bertrand, L'Illustration de la poésie à l'époque du cubisme, 1909 1914 Derain, Dufy, Picasso (Paris: Klincksieck, 1971), 54.
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29. All quotations from Le Bestiaire are based on the English translation in Guillaume Apollinaire, Le Bestiaire. Ou, Cortège d'Orphée, trans. Lauren Shakely (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1977), unp. 30. See William McC. Stewart, "Peuton parler d'un 'Orphisme' de Valéry?" in Cahiers de l'association internationale des éudes françaises (Paris: CAIEF, 1970), 188. See also Georges Cattaui, Orphisme et prophétie: Chez les poètes français, 18501950 (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1965), 15377. Dora PerezTibi, "Raoul Dufy: The Book Illustrations," in Robertson and Wilson, 117, suggests that Orpheus's flowing drapery with "windswollen pleats" symbolizes the flight of poetry. 31. On Valéry's analogy of Orpheus with Amphion, see Stewart, 190; Strauss, 23537. Several ancient writers, including Pausanias 6 20.18 (Kern, test. 54), had earlier likened Orpheus to Amphion; see Guthrie, 19. On Orpheus as a founder of temples, see Kern, test. 108, 109. 32. See Francis A Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), 6. Nerval had evoked the traditional association of Orpheus with Egypt in a decidedly ambivalent statement; see Strauss, 71. 33. See Francis J. Carmody, The Evolution of Apollinaire's Poetics, 19011914, University of California Publications in Modern Philology 70 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963), 3, 4445. 34. See Louis Ménard, Hermés Trismégiste. Traduction compléte, précédée d'une étude sur l'origine des livres hermétiques, trans., ed., and intro. by Louis Ménard, 2d ed (Paris. Librairie Académique, Didier et Cie., LibrairesÉditeurs, 1867; 1st ed. 1866), xxiii, xxvii, xxviii. 35. See Pierre Simon Ballanche, Oeuvres de M. Ballanche, de l'académie de Lyon, vol. 4, Essais de palingénésie sociale: Orphée (Paris: Librairie de J. Barbezat, 1830). 36. See Margaret Davies, Apollinaire (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1964), 158. 37. Apollinaire, "Modern Painting," in Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews, 19021918, ed. Leroy C. Breunig, trans. Susan Suleiman, The Documents of TwentiethCentury Art (New York: Viking Press, 1972), 27071; translated from Der Sturm 14445 (February 1913). 38. See Brian Juden, "Particularités du mythe d'Orphée chez Ballanche," Cahiers de l'association internationale des études françaises 22 (May 1970): 14243. 39. See Lassaigne, 11, 17. 40. Ibid., 1314. 41. See Walker; see also Yates, 78. 42. For the fragment (from "Patrizzi" 20:51), see Hermes Trismegistus, bk. 4 ("Fragments des livres d'Hermes à son fils Tat"), ch. 7, in Ménard, 28081. 43. On the religious origins of Egyptian monuments, Ménard, lxxviii, cites [Jacques Vicomte] de Rougé, Notice sommaire sur les monuments égyptiens du Louvre. On the hieroglyphics see Yates, 420; see also Hermes Trismegistus, bk. 3 ("Fragments du livre sacré"), ch. 1, in Ménard, 199. 44. According to William J Malley, Hellenism and Christianity Analecta Gregoriana (Rome, 1978), 210 239, the Contra Julianum dates from either 434437 or 439441 A.D.
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45. See William S. Heckscher, "Bernini's Elephant and Obelisk," The Art Bulletin 29 (1947): 179 and n. 127. 46. Ménard, xliii. See also Hermes Trismegistus, bk. 2, ch. 6, in Ménard, 128. 47. Hermes Trismegistus, bk. 4, "Les Définitions," ch. 2, in Ménard, 29396. 48. On Virgil's Orpheus, see David O. Ross, Jr., Virgil's Elements. Physics and Poetry in the "Georgics" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 22627. On the roles of artists and poets in the Renaissance, see Kris, 4748. 49. Robert Guiette, "Rosemonde," in Journées Apollinaire, 36. 50. For example, by Clement of Alexandria in the first chapter of Protrepticus (Exhortations to the Greeks). See André Boulanger, Orphée. Rapports de l'orphisme et du christianisme (Paris: F. Rieder, 1925); Friedman, Orpheus in the Middle Ages, 1336; Eleanor Irwin, "The Songs of Orpheus and the New Song of Christ," in Warden, 5162; Dronke, 20610. 51. Delphi, Museum. See Guthrie, pl. 2. 52. New York, private collection. See Peter Selz, Max Beckmann (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1964), 9798. See also Carla SchulzHoffmann and Judith C Weiss, eds., Max Beckmann. Retrospective (St. Louis: St. Louis Art Museum; Munich. PrestelVerlag; New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 37. 53. The earliest extant literary reference to Orpheus among the Argonauts appears in Pindar Pythia 4.2078. See also Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica 1.2335, 494, 54043, 915, 1134; 2.161, 685, 713, 928; 4.90510, 1159, 140928, 154749; Philostratus Imagines 2.15; Diodorus Siculus 4.43.1; Phanocles frag 1.129. On the close affinity between the poetic impulse and water, see Charles Segal, "Death by Water: A Narrative Pattern in Theocritus (Idylls 1, 13, 22, 23)," Hermes 102 (1974): 2122. See also ch. 4 below. Jacob Stern, "Phanocles' Fragment 1," Quaderni urbinati di cultura classica 32, n.s. 3 (1979): 141, indicates that Phanocles' frag. 1 also links water with death and poetic creativity. 54. See Spate, 7677. 55. See Lassaigne, 56. 56. Apollinaire explains his inclusion of sirens in this book: "Navigators, hearing the female halycon sing, prepared to die, except toward midDecember, when the birds build their nests and the sea was thought to be calm As for Eros and the Sirens, these marvelous birds sing so harmoniously that, for those who listen to them, life itself is not too high a price to pay for such music." 57. Apollonius Rhodius, The Argonautica, trans. R. C Seaton (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 357. Several French editions would have been available to Apollinaire. 58. On the autobiographical conflict in "Lul de Faltenin," see Davies, 13233 Apollinaire was probably also expressing his ambivalence toward prostitutes, whom he pitied and with whom he felt he had demeaned himself. Bertrand, 54, remarks that this illustration shows one of the winged sirens, or temptresses, who, according to Apollinaire, lie in wait for the poet. Bertrand further observes that the siren is characteristic of the "stylevolute" dear to Dufy; Pierre Courthion, Raoul Dufy (London: Faber and Faber, 1955), 28, had used this term to describe the artist's style. One recalls
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Virgil's association of Orpheus with Odysseus, whose descent he evokes without the aspects of the earlier "wisdom" tradition; see Segal, 158. Correspondingly, Apollinaire's one brief mention of Eurydice in Le Bestiaire, in the poem "Le Serpent," likens her to the other notorious temptresses Eve and Cleopatra. 59. See Lassaigne, 105. 60. Dufy, quoted in William H. Wilson, Raoul Dufy: A Retrospective (Sarasota: Ringling Museum of Art, 1978), 7. 61. See, for example, Jean Cassou, Raoul Dufy, 18771953, trans. G. Morley (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Art, 1954), 9. 62. Oil on canvas, 32 1/8 × 25 5/8 in. Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou. See Rubin, De Chirico, 161. Willard Bohn, "Phantom Italy: The Return of Giorgio de Chirico," Arts Magazine 56, no. 2 (October 1981): 112, maintains that this painting was not originally intended as a portrait of Apollinaire, because de Chirico did no metaphysical portraits of living persons. He suggests that the original title may have been Return of the Poet, corresponding to a lost painting cited in an inventory of 1914. 63. Fagiolo dell'Arco, 2728. The fish may allude to further reasons for Apollinaire's, Savinio's, Giorgio de Chirico's, and Jean Cocteau's selfidentifications with Orpheus The de Chirico brothers called themselves Argonauts, for they came from the Thessalian shores from which the Argonauts had sailed; Savinio compared Cocteau, a selfdeclared Orphic poet, to an Argonaut, saying that he [Cocteau], from the stern of the Argo, was able to convert silent fishes into musical maniacs. De Chirico painted the Argonauts several times (such as The Departure of the Argonauts, 1918). He also returned often to the motif of Orpheus, as in his designs for the curtains and costumes for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino's presentation of Monteverdi's Orfeo. The designs are currently in Florence, Teatro Comunale. see Pia Vivarelli, Giorgio de Chirico, 18881978 (Rome: Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, 1981), 1:21415. 64. See Apollinaire, "Modern Painting," in Apollinaire on Art, 291. 65. From "Les Commencements du cubisme," Le Temps (Paris), 14 October 1912. Apollinaire was referring to Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and possibly also Frank Kupka. With the exceptions of Delaunay and Picabia, the other artists disliked Apollinaire's designation of them as Orphists and remarked that he little understood art. It may also be noted the Belgian artist Ferdinand Louis Berckelaers's adoption of the pseudonym Michel Seuphor (an anagram of Orpheus) in 1918 corresponded to a move toward abstract painting. 66. As Spate, 68, indicates, Apollinaire's statement in support of the Orphists in June 1908 is quite close to Matisse's ideals published later that year ("Notes d'un peintre," La Grande Revue 52, no. 24 [25 December 1908]: 73145), although Apollinaire was less direct and the two men differed in their attitudes toward transience. 67. Davies, 234. 68. From F. JeanDesthieux, "Considerations sur la poétique de demain," La Vie des lettres ([Paris] October 1913): 514. 69. In "Modern Painting," Apollinaire speaks of "Delaunay's Orphism," and as late as 1957, Waldemar George calls Delaunay ''le nouvel Orphée", see Waldemar George, "Robert Delaunay, ou le nouvel Orphée,'' Prisme des arts 13 (1957): 2829
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70. Quotation from Delaunay's letter to Marc (Paris, 11 January 1913), in The New Art of Color. The Writings of Robert and Sonia Delaunay, trans. Arthur A. Cohen and David Shapiro, ed. Arthur A. Cohen (New York. Viking Press, 1978), 12122. 71. Apollinaire, "Modern Painting," in Apollinaire on Art, 291. 72. Robert Delaunay, "First Notebook of 1939," in New Art of Color, 23. 73. See, for example, Delaunay's letters to August Macke (Berlin, 1912) and Marc (Paris, 1912), ibid, 11416. 74. Apollinaire, "Modern Painting," in Apollinaire on Art, 291. See also Delaunay's "Light," in New Art of Color, 8186 (from Der Sturm 14445 [February 1913]). 75. Delaunay, "Construction of Reality," in Writings, 9495. 76. Ibid. 77. See Delaunay, "Orphism," in New Art of Color, 104. 2. Rainer Maria Rilke and the Artist As Transformer 1. Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading. Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust (New Haven: Yale University: Press, 1979), 20. 2. On the drawing see Peter Humfrey, Cima da Conegliano (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 174, no. 192. 3. This description is based on Strauss, 17576, and Stephen Mitchell, The Sonnets to Orpheus (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), 8. All verses quoted from Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus are based on Mitchell's translation. Occasional differences in the translations used by visual artists should be kept in mind in studying their interpretations of the Sonnets. In 1904 Rilke had written a more traditional, narrative poem titled "Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes," also focusing on the artist's emotional experience but more pessimistic than the mood of the Sonnets 4. See Donald Prater, A Ringing Glass. The Life of Rainer Maria Rilke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 237. 5. See Magda von Hattingberg, Rilke and Benvenuta, trans. Cyrus Brooks (London: William Heinemann, 1949), 22. 6. Rilke, quoted in Prater, 219. Much of this information about the Sonnets is based on the following sources: Hans Egon Holthusen, Rainer Maria Rilke: A Study of His Later Poetry trans. J. P. Stern (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952); Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, intro., trans., and notes J. B. Leishman, 2d ed. (London: Hograth Press, 1946); Mitchell; and Hans Jürgen Tschiedel, "Orpheus und Eurydice, ein Beitrag zum Thema: Rilke und die Antike," Antike und Abendland 19, no. 1 (1973): 6182. 7. Quotation from Rilke's letter to his Polish translator in November 1925; in Leishman, 22. 8. G. Karl Galinksy, Ovid's "Metamorphoses": An Introduction to the Basic Aspects (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), 183. 9. On Dionysos's association with trees, see Walter F. Otto, Dionysus: Myth and Cult, trans. and intro. Robert B. Palmer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965), 87, 157. 10. From Charles Baudelaire, Les Paradis artificiels (Lausanne: Clairefontaine, 1947),
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77. Further, Baudelaire compared the music of a lyre to the song of a tree. See also Bays, 25. 11. Strauss, 75, and Mitchell, 12, are among the few who do mention it however. 12. See Holthusen 4142; de Man, Allegories of Reading, 23. Segal, Orpheus, 126, suggests that Rilke's Orpheus is language reaching toward transcendence. 13. Erich Heller even called Rilke the "St. Francis of the will to power," and likened Rilke's Orpheus to Nietzsche's Dionysos (The Disinherited Mind [Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes, 1952], 105); Strauss, 17172, however, proposes that Nietzsche's Dionysos is to Rilke's angel as superman/Zarathustra is to Orpheus. On the will to power, see Walter Arnold Kaufmann, Nietzsche. Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), ch. 6 ("The Discovery of the Will to Power"). See Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, pt. 1, sec 22 ("The Bestowing Virtue"): pt. 2, sec. 34 (''SelfSurpassing"); pt. 4, sec 73 (''The Higher Man"), all forthcoming quotations are from trans. Thomas Common, intro. Henry David Aiken (New York: Heritage Press, 1967), 6872, 106 9, 27484. Rilke's antiChristian aspect, his playing off of Orpheus against Christ, has also been cited as one of his affinities with Nietzsche: see Holthusen, 34 14. Rilke discusses Klee in a letter to Lou Balladine on 23 February 1921. Klee's statement is recorded in his diary in 1915. See Paul Klee, The Diaries, 1898 1918, ed. and intro. Felix Klee (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964), 959. 15. On Rilke's angels, see Holthusen, 31, for a comparison of his and Klee's angels, see Will Grohmann, Paul Klee (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1954), 357. 16. A Garden for Orpheus, 1926, 181½ ×× 12 5/8 in., is in the Kunstmuseum Bern, Paul Klee Stiftung. Orpheus, 1929, 19¼ × 9 in., is in a private collection See Grohmann, Paul Klee, 376, 400 (no. 131), respectively 17. Quotation from Klee, ibid., 198. 18. Klee writes, "A picture can often be compared to something. Then it becomes a symbol, and symbols by their very nature mean many things at once. Then perhaps one is reminded of something else Something poetic, poetic I say, not literary, something that also seems to speak symbolically, as though a certain diffidence stopped it from putting things the way they are. To write poetry means to choose words and arrange them in such a way as to produce balance and impressive images. To this is added the freedom of creating. The connection is not clearly defined, but also has a symbolic character" (Paul Klee, Notebooks, trans. Ralph Manheim, ed. Jürg Spiller[London: Lund Humphries, 1961], vol. 1, The Thinking Eye, 430). 19. See Grohmann, Paul Klee, 26. 20. Ibid., on the importance of music to the artist during his Dessau period. On the significance of music in general for him, see Andrew Kagan, Paul Klee. Art and Music (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983) 21. See Werner Haftmann, The Mind and Work of Paul Klee (New York: Frederick A Praeger, 1967), 179. 22. For example, see Klee, Notebooks, trans. Heinz Norden, ed. Jürg Spiller (New York: George Wittenborn, 1973), vol. 2, The Nature of Nature, 356.
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Klee regarded the polyphony of painting as superior to that of music, because painting demonstrates the concept of simultaneity—hence his interest in Delaunay's article "La Lumiére," which Klee translated into German and that described reality as a "rhythmic simultaneity" and art as ''rhythmic as Nature, that is to say, eternal"; see Delaunay, The New Art of Color, 81. For Klee's translation, see "Über das Licht," Der Sturm (Berlin) 3, no. 14445 (January, 1913): 25556. 23. See Klee, The Thinking Eye, 22. 24. See Gert Schiff, "Klee's Array of Angels," Artforum 25, no. 9 (May 1987): 126. 25. Quotation from Klee's letter to Lily, Grohmann, Paul Klee, 273. 26. For example, ibid., 25; Michele Vishny, "Paul Klee's SelfImages," in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Art, ed. Mary Mathews Gedo (Hillsdale, N.J.: Analytic Press, 1985), 13764. See Vishny's discussion of the selfportrait drawings. 27. Quotation from Klee, in Grohmann, Paul Klee, 97 28. Klee, The Nature of Nature, 33536; Diaries, no. 1104 (year 1918). 29. Klee, Diaries, no. 895. 30. My information about the evolution of Tucker's Orpheus sculptures is based on a conversation with the artist on 21 November 1987. Orpheus II (53 3/8 × 48 × 11 7/8 in.) is illustrated in a brochure by Jennifer Licht, British Artists. Six Painters, Sic Sculptors (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1968), unp. 31. See William Tucker, "Modernism, Freedom, Sculpture," Art Journal 37, no. 2 (Winter 197778): 156. On space as the instrument of feeling, see Norbert Lynton, William Tucker. Sculptures (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1977), unp., quoting Tucker's statements in a series of three talks entitled "Space, Illusion, Sculpture," given in 1974 at St. Martin's School of Art (London). 32. See William Tucker, Early Modern Sculpture. Rodin, Degas, Matisse, Brancusi, Picasso, Gonzalez (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 913. Tucker had read "The RodinBook: First Part," in Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Works (London: Hogarth Press, 1954), vol. 1, Prose, 95135. 3. The Lyre 1. Curt Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments (New York: W. W. Norton, 1940), 129. On this topic, see also Emmanuel Winternitz, "The Curse of Pallas Athena," in Studies in the History of Art, Dedicated to William E. Suida (London: Phaidon Press, 1959), 18695; reprinted in idem, Musical Instruments and Their Symbolism in Western Art (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), 15065; Lippman, 36 Homer mentions the lyre in the Iliad, sometimes calling it phorminx, and at other times a kítharis. Sachs, 13031, notes that later writers erroneously interpret these as equivalent to the more recent lyra, a loosely connected, simple lyre, whereas Homer specifically refers to the bulging form and costly decoration of his lyre—clearly the kithara (a Syrian lyre) used by early bards to accompany their epic songs. The more recently devised but more primitively formed lyra, used by beginners and amateurs, was a retrogressive version of the Syrian lyre, the invention of which was wrongly attributed by the Greeks to the Thracians.
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2. See introduction, note 14 above. 3. Correspondingly, Nerval considered titling this poem "Le Destin." 4. See Jacqueline Bellas, "'Orphée' aux XIXe et au XXe siécle: interférences littéraires et musicales," Cahiers de l'association internationale des études françaises 22 (May 1970): 229. See also Juden, 146 On the lyre of Orpheus in Nerval, see Albert S. Gérard, "Images, structures et themes dans 'El Desdichado'," Modern Language Review 58 (1963). 50715. 5. Johns's Painted Bronze (collection of the artist; on loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art) is illustrated in Richard Francis, Jasper Johns (New York: Abbeville Press, 1984), 6. 6. See Kerényi, Heroes, 279. 7. Marcuse, 170. 8. Apollinaire had two important earlier precedents: Théodore de Banville had identified Orpheus with the lyre in the poem "Cariatides, la voie lactée" (1842) and Charles Baudelaire, in an article dedicated to Banville, said that the lyre. "expresses that almost supernatural state, that intensity of life at which the soul sings, at which it is constrained to sing like a tree, a bird, and the sea"; see Léon Cellier, "Le Romanticisme et le mythe d'Orphée,'' Cahiers de l'association internationale des études françaises 22 (May 1970). 14445. 9. For Orpheus (Maquette 1), 16½ in. high, edition of eight, Orpheus (Maquette 2), 24 in. high, also edition of 8, and Theme on Electronics (Orpheus), 47 in. high, see J. P. Hodin, Barbara Hepworth (London: Lurid Humphries, 1961), nos. 22123. For the drawing (30 × 28 in.), idem, appendix (k), and color plate in A. M. Hammacher, Barbara Hepworth (London: Thames and Hudson, 1968), 113. 10. On Zadkine's early versions, see Ionel Jianou, Zadkine (Paris: ARTED, Éditions d'Art, 1964), 88. Two figures (one in plaster, the other in elmwood), both 117 × 39 7/8 × 30 in. and dating from 1930, are in the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. A bronze (23 5/8 × 11 7/8 × 5½ in), from 1933, is in the estate of the artist 11. From part of Zadkine's statement about Orpheus in Ossip Zadkine, Le Maillet et le ciseau. Souvenirs de ma vie (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1968), 18184. 12. Ibid., 102. The bronze from 1948 (81¼ × 29½ × 23 5/8 in.) exists in an edition of five: Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne; Rotterdam, Boymansvan Beuningen Museum; Caracas, collection of Inocente Palacios; Byram, Conn., collection of V. List; Duisburg, Städtisches Kunstmuseum. 13 For the later versions (1956, 1960, and 1961), ibid., 107, 109, see also Christa Lichtenstern, Ossip Zadkine, 18901967: Der Bildhauer und seine Ikonographie (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1980), 14445, pls. 18992. 14. On the legendary magical powers of mythical artists, see Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist: A Historical Experiment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 6190 ("The Artist as Magician"). 15. Zadkine, Souvenirs, 182. 16. Zadkine, quoted in E. Roditi, "Orpheus as a Lyre," The Observer (London), 8 May 1960. 17. See Paul de Man, "The Rhetoric of Temporality," in Interpretation: Theory and
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Practice, ed. Charles S. Singleton (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), 191. 18. On The Poet, Homage to Éluard (195254, bronze), see Lichtenstern, 15762, pl. 202. For the Project of a Monument for Guillaume Apollinaire (1937; Stavelot, Musée Guillaume Apollinaire [plaster version], ParfondruyStavelot and Brussels, collection G. Naellens [bronze versions]), see Jianou, 93, pl. 50 For the Project of a Monument for Arthur Rimbaud and the Project of a Monument for Lautréamont (both 1938, plaster; estate of the artist), ibid., 94, pls. 51, 52. For the Project of a Monument for Alfred Jarry (1938, plaster and bronze; estate of the artist), see ibid., pl. 49. On The Poet (1938, bronze, estate of the artist; 1941, marble, New York, collection of Ruth and John Stephan; 1954, bronze, New York, collection of B Rose; and Winnipeg, collection of John MacAulay), ibid., 9596. For the Orpheus painted by Marc Chagall (ca. 191314, formerly New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), another friend of Apollinaire, see Kosinski, fig. 7.5. Although Zadkine knew the work of his fellow Russian emigré, their images of Orpheus are quite different. 19. See Jianou, 2425. 20. Ibid. 21. From Philippe Diolé's "Dans l'atelier de Zadkine," Les Nouvelles littéraires, no 1517 (Paris), 27 September 1956. 22. See Lichtenstern, 14850, on the relationship of Zadkine's sculpture to Breton's Orphée and the sculptures by Lipchitz and Laurens. The catalog was published by the Coordinating Council of the French Relief Societies, with credit given to Breton for the hanging and to Marcel Duchamp as his twine. 23. On Lipchitz's sculpture, see further pp. 15355 below 24. For example, see Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. and intro. A. A. Brill, 3d ed. (London: George Allen, 1913), 239, who writes, "In the case of other female dreamers, the dream of flying had the significance of a longing: if I were a little bird." See also C G Jung, Symbols of Transformation: An Analysis of the Prelude to a Case of Schizophrenia, trans. R. F. C. Hull, vol. 5 of Collected Works (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), Bollingen Series 20, 2d ed., 246 n. 71 ("The bird is a symbol of 'wishful thinking'"). 25. Segal, Orpheus, 4546, suggests that Orpheus, whose task as a poet involves beauty rather than work, is sympathetic with the nightingale because it is a victim of man's unfeeling work upon nature. 26. See Ahl, 191. 27. See Zadkine's remarks quoted in Jianou, 38. 28. See Leishman, 185. 29. Mais Orphée n'estil point l'Arbre des départs aux racines aiguillonnant les troupeaux sombres du plus massif futur. O Roi! son élan pur brisant la transparence, il monte. Arbre léger fût de l'antique Nuit. Les branches de son chant reçoivent leur rosée des astres.
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(Pierre Emmanuel, Tombeau d'Orphée [Paris: Pierre Seghers, 1941], 16.) 30. See Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works, trans. Paul Schmidt (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), 69, 122. 31. See Georges Poulet, Exploding Poetry: Baudelaire/Rimbaud, trans. and intro. Françoise Meltzer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 112. 4. The Orpheus of the Concert Hall 1. The final models for the fountain were completed in 1934. An iron replica of the head (28½ in. high) in New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, was cast in Stockholm by Herman Bergman in 1936. See Preston Remington, "Orpheus by Carl Milles," Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 36, no. 3 (March 1941): 5859. A bronze replica of the head, dating from 1941, is in a private collection. On the sculptural ensemble see Meyric R. Rogers, Carl Milles: An Interpretation of His Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), 2829, pls. 92108. 2. See especially Nietzsche, Zarathustra, prologue 4; pt. 2, sec. 1 ("The Soothsayer"), sec. 31 ("The NightSong"); pt. 4, sec. 70 ("Noontide''), sec. 79 ("The Drunken Song"). Richard Chessick, A Brief Introduction to the Genius of Nietzsche (New York: Latham, 1983), 45, discusses the presence of Freudian concepts in Nietzsche's writings. 3. See Rogers, 56. 4 See Charles Nagel, Jr., "Yale's Orpheus," Bulletin of the Associates in Fine Arts at Yale University 7 (February 1937): 4345, and cover. 5. On the association of water with poetry, see chapter one, note 53 above. The quotation is from Gaston Bachelard, Water and Dreams. An Essay on the Imagination of Matter, trans. Edith R. Farrell (Dallas. Pegasus Foundation, 1983), 3133. Similarly, Bachelard, 2122, writes: "The mirror a fountain provides, then, is the opportunity for open imagination. . . . A poet who begins with a mirror must end with the water of a fountain if he wants to present a complete poetic experience." Cf. Ziegler, 25556, and Darrell A. Amyx, "The Orpheus Legend in Art," Archaeological News 5, no. 2 (Summer 1976): 38, who consider Milles's fountain evidence that the narrative and dramatic content of the myth were no longer significant in modern representations of it. On the fountain, see also Richard W. Thurn, "Fountain," in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade (New York. Macmillan, 1987), 15:4012. 6. On the fountain in Rilke, see especially Geoffrey H. Hartman, The Unmediated Vision. An Interpretation of Wordsworth, Hopkins, Rilke, and Valéry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), 9294. 7. Orpheus and Apollo consists of 190 bars suspended from the ceiling by steel wires. The whole sculpture weighs five tons and is 39 × 19 × 190 ft. Unless otherwise noted, statements from the artist are based on a conversation with the author on 29 November 1987. The most complete description of the history of the work is in Calvin Tomkins, "Profiles, a Thing Among Things: Richard Lippold," New Yorker, 30 March 1963, 47107. 8. See Richard Lippold, "Projects for Pan Am and Philharmonic," Art in America 50, no. 2 (Summer 1962): 55.
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9. See Richard Lippold, "To Make Love to Life," Graduate Comment, Wayne State University, 3, no. 1 (October 1959): 2. 10. Ibid., 3. 11. Richard Lippold, in Fifteen Americans, ed. Dorothy C. Miller (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1952), 28. 12. Richard Lippold, "Orpheus and Apollo," Time 81 (4 January 1963): 30 13. Lippold, "Projects," 55. 14. Quotation from Lippold, in Tomkins, 49. 15. Lippold, "To Make Love to Life," 4. Part Two. The Critical SelfImage 1. See, for example, Nietzsche, Zarathustra, pt. 2, sec 39 ("Poets"); pt. 4, sec. 65 ("The Magician"). See also idem, Birth of Tragedy, sec. 12. 2. See Dorothy Zayatz Baker, Mythic Masks in SelfReflexive Poetry: A Study of Pan and Orpheus, University of North Carolina Studies in Comparative Literature, no. 62 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), especially 56. 3. See Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the PreSocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948); from the tenth and eleventh Tetralogies. On this subject, see also Kris and Kurz, 3860 ("Deus artifex—divino artista"). 4. See Martin Heidegger, Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung, 4th ed. (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1971). Among the many interpretations of Heidegger's essay, see: David Halliburton, Poetic Thinking: An Approach to Heidegger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), Paul de Man, "Heidegger's Exegeses of Hölderlin," in Blindness and Insight, 2d ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 24666; Christopher Fynsk, Heidegger. Thought and Historicity (Ithaca, N.Y.. Cornell University Press, 1986), 174229; Jennifer Allen, "Madness and the Poet," Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry 16 (197879): 7280. 5. See Marcel Detienne, "The Myth of 'Honeyed Orpheus'," in Myth, Religion, and Society, trans. and ed. R. L. Gordon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 95109. Cf. John Scott Campbell, "Initiation and the Role of Aristaeus in Georgics Four," Ramus 11 (1982): 10515; Jacques Chomarat, "L'Initiation d'Aristée," Revue des Etudes Latines 52 (1974): 185207; Segal, Orpheus, 7980. Claude LéviStrauss had earlier designated Eurydice as the mistress of the honeymoon; see From Honey to Ashes, trans. John and Doreen Weightman, vol. 2 of Introduction to a Science of Mythology (New York: Harper and Row, Harper Torchbooks, 1974), 403 n. 17. On the other hand, Jacob Stern (pp. 136, 139, 143) proposes that Phanocles' frag. 1.36 implies that Orpheus's futile pederastic passion for the inaccessible Kalais lies at the origins of his poetry and demonstrates that the genesis of song is in the physical and emotional passion of the lover who strives after the unattainable. 6. See Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. A. D. Melville, intro. and notes E. J. Kenney (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 226. All forthcoming quotations from the Metamorphoses are from this edition.
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7. See Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), especially "The Gaze and the Glance," 8796. 8 Ibid., 93. 9. See part one, introduction, note 3 above. 10. See Sigmund Freud, "On Narcissism. An Introduction," Standard Edition 14:98. See also Strauss, 3637. 11. Albert Camus, "Art in Revolt," Partisan Review (1952): 274. 12. See Sigmund Freud, "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego," Standard Edition 18:122. 13 Maurice Blanchot, The Gaze of Orpheus and Other Literary Essays, trans. Lydia Davis, ed. P. Adams Sitney (Barrytown, N.Y.: Station Hill Press, 1981), 101 3. See Strauss, 25157, on Blanchot's Orpheus, particularly on his "transgression necessary, to assure the continuity between art and reality." Baker, 1819, suggests that Blanchot's Orpheus destroyed the creative process when he looked upon his creative ideal (Eurydice), for he saw Eurydice through the eyes of a lover and husband rather than a poet; Segal, Orpheus, 19596, similarly analyzes Blanchot's focus on the desire of the artist. Paul Diel, Symbolism in Greek Mythology, trans. Vincent Stuart, Micheline Stuart, and Rebecca Folkman (Boulder: Shambhala, 1980), 11219, emphasizes Orpheus's, the artist's, secret desire for a multitude of women: "The constancy of his soul's capacity to form a lasting union which characterizes Orpheus, a symbol of the artist. To incur the danger of this particularly pronounced fickleness is the lot of the man dedicated to art" (p. 113). See Kris, 59, on artistic inspiration and regressive processes. 14. On Monteverdi's Orfeo, see Newby, 30137. 15 See John T Maltesberger, Suicide Risk. The Formulation of Clinical Judgment (New York: New York University Press, 1986), especially 18, 2627. 16. Freud, "On Narcissism," 98. 17. Maltesberger, 24. 18. JeanPaul Sartre, L'Imaginaire: Psychologie phénoménologique de l'imagination (Paris: Gallimard, 1940), 239. 19. See Michael C. J. Putnam, Virgil's Pastoral Art: Studies in the "Eclogues" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 13. Among modern writers about Orpheus, Elizabeth Sewell, The Orphic Voice. Poetry and Natural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), most strongly emphasizes his union of logical and intuitive. 20. See Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965), Bollingen Series 46, 9798 Nevertheless, Eliade further remarks, 101, that suffering was never final, for every defeat was annulled and transcended by final victory. 21. See Scavizzi. 5. The Childish and Irrational Dreamer 1. See Curt Glaser et al., Max Beckmann (Munich: R. Piper, 1924), nos 19; Klaus Gallwitz, ed., Max Beckmann: Die Druckgraphik—Radierungen, Lithographien, Holzschnitte (Karlsruhe: Badischer Kunstverein, 1962), unp., no. 3. See also Adolph
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Jannasch, Max Beckmann als Illustrator, vol. 1 of Monographien und Materialien zur Buchkunst (NeuIsenburg: Verlag Wolfgang Tiessen, 1969), pls. 13. The paper size is 25 × 21 cm. Sixty examples exist. An etching from 1901 by Beckmann (then seventeen years old) is generally not considered to be a serious endeavor in graphics. Figures of Orpheus in the later Departure and Argonauts triptychs (193233 and 194950, respectively) have been fully discussed in the literature on Beckmann and therefore do not need interpretation here; see, for example, Charles S. Kessler, Max Beckmann's Triptychs (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), chs. 1 and 9; Gert Schiff, "The Nine Finished Triptychs of Max Beckmann, Marginalia for Their Interpretation," in Max Beckmann, the Triptychs (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 1980). On Guthmann, see Max Beckmann, Leben in Berlin. Tagebücher, 19081909, 19121913, ed. Hans Kinkel (Munich: R. Piper, 1983), 6062 2. Beckmann, Tagebücher, 19081909, 38. According to James Hofmaier ("Max Beckmann als Graphiker," in Max Beckmann, ed. Siegfried Gohr [Cologne: JosefHaubrichKunsthalle, 1984], 145), Beckmann probably mistrusted Cassirer initially and also may have been reluctant to take time and energy from his painting Destruction of Messina. 3. See Beckmann, Tagebécher, 19081909, 61. 4. For these brief discussions, see Jannasch, 5, 13; Christian Lenz, "Images of Landscape, 19001916," in SchulzHoffmann and Weiss, 111, 114. 5. Der Liebe Leier zerbrach dem Jüngling, doch aus Glut und Schmerzen erwacht zu neuer Tat, dem Phönix gleich, der Mann und überstrahlt sein altes Werk mit neuem Ruhme. Diese Harfe hier schickt dir durch mich dem Vater, den du nie gekannt: für seine grösste Stunde hatte er sie dem künftigen Sohn bedeutungsvoll bestimmt, mit überirdischer Gewalt des Lieds den ganzen Weltkreis zu erschüttern. Hier ist sie, Orpheus.—Und vernimm noch mehr: Das Volk, das dich als seinen Grössten ehrt, erwartet sich von dir zum nahen Feste der WeiheHymne heiliges Gedicht zum Preis der Götter und der Welt—und deiner. Die Stunde schlug: Dein Vater segnet dich!
(statement by the mother in Johannes Guthmann, Eurydikes Wiederkehr [Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1909], 3738) 6. Nein, Orpheus, nein. Wohl war ich einst der Schmetterling, der um die süsse Blüte deiner Kunst und Liebe entzückt geflogen ist; jetzt abet ist der Duft zu herb für mich—vielleicht zu köstlich.
Page 202 Ich weiss, dein Herz ist überreich—und dennoch muss ich verschmachten
(statement by Eurydice, ibid., 88) 7. Versteh'ich recht? Darf ich dein Schweigen in erhabnem Sinne deuten? . . . Ist Eurydike hin? Gehört dein Geist nun ganz dem hohen Werk, es zu vollenden? So segn'ich dich mit heiligem Schauer, Orpheus, dich aller Menschen Grössten, Sohn aus dem Geschlecht der Götter, segn'ich dich, wenn du zu Uberirdischem dich machtvoll nun erhebst. Ich sehe Stirne leuchten im Glanz des Ruhmes' Orpheus! Du—mein Sohn!
(statement by the mother, ibid., 91) 8. Hier kniee ich: küss mir die Augen, Mutter, es sei dein letzter Liebesdienst an mir, denn keiner wird sie mir im Sterben schliessen.
(statement by Orpheus, ibid., 92) 9. From Peter Beckmann, ed., Sichtbares und Unsichtbares, intro. Peter Selz (Stuttgart: C. Belser, 1965), 4546. 10. See Pierre de Ronsard, "Le Bocage royal," pt 2, in Les Oeuvres de Pierre Ronsard, texte de 1587, intro. and notes Isidore Silver (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 2:377. 11. See Isidore Sadger, Heinrich yon Kleist. Eine pathographischpsychologische Studie (Wiesbaden: Bergmann, 1910); idem, Aus dem liebesleben Nicolaus Lenaus (Leipzig and Vienna: F. Deuticke, 1909); idem, Konrad Ferdinand Meyer. Eine pathographischpsychologische Studie (Wiesbaden: Bergmann, 1908), idem, Belastung und entartung. Ein Beitrag zur Lehre vom kranken Genie (Leipzig: 1910); idem, Neuforschungen zur Homosexualitä (Berlin. 1915) 12. Neue Revue 1, no. 10 (March 1908): 71624. On 6 December 1907 Freud had delivered a lecture on creative writers and daydreaming, which was summarized in the Viennese daily Die Zeit the next day. 13. See Sigmund Freud, "Creative Writers and DayDreaming," in Standard Edition 9:144. 14. Ibid., 153. 15 Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, 327. See also idem, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality', trans. James Strachey (London: Imago, 1952. original German edition Vienna: F. Deuticke, 1905), 115, in which sublimation is given as one of the origins of artistic activity: "And. according to the completeness or incompleteness of the sublimation, a characterological analysis of a highly gifted individual, and in particular of one with an artistic disposition, may reveal a mixture, in every proportion, of efficiency, perversion, and neurosis." 16 See, for example, Rank, Art and Artist, 42; Kris, 25; Ellen Handler Spitz, Art and
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Psyche. A Study in Psychoanalysis and Aesthetics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 1415, 2629; Lionel Trilling, "Art and Neurosis," in Art and Psychoanalysis, ed. William Phillips (Cleveland: World, Meridian Books, 1963), 50213. 17. Beckmann, Tagebücher, 19081909, 21 . 18. See Peter Beckmann, Max Beckmann: Leben und Werk (Stuttgart: C. Belser, 1982), 52. 19. Marcuse, 165. 20. See August L. Mayer, Meisterwerke der Bedeutendsten Galerien Europas, vol. 11, Des Prado in Madrid (Munich: Franz Hanfstaengl, 1922), 263, 58081, nos. 1588, 1667. 21. See Carla SchulzHoffmann, "Bars, Fetters, and Masks: The Problem of Constraint in the Work of Max Beckmann," in SchulzHoffmann and Weiss, 20, fig. 6. 22. See Max Beckmann, "Beckmann erzählt," in Max Beckmann. Die frühen Bilder, edited by Klaus Gallwitz and Ulrich Weisner (Bielefeld: Kunsthalle, 1982), 37. From Reinhard Piper, Nachmittag: Erinnerungen eines Verlegers (Munich: R. Piper, 1950), 2829. 23. From Max Beckmann, letter of 16 March 1915, in Briefe im Kriege, comp. Minna Tube, 2d ed. (Munich: Albert Langen/Georg Müller Verlag, 1955), 25 24. See Lenz, 11112. He also justifiably states that these lithographs show Beckmann to be concerned with figurative and narrative content, rather than merely landscape. Cf. Glaser, 12. 25. See Gary B. Miles, Virgil's "Georgics": A New Interpretation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 273, on Virgil as merely a lover. 26. Stephan Lackner, "Max Beckmann als Dichter," in Gohr, 145, 160 n. 16, suggests a derivation in Munch's Kiss (1895), which, however, is not as closely related to Beckmann's composition as Maiden and Death. 27. See Selz, Beckmann, 15. 28. See Charles W. Haxthausen, "Beckmann and the First World War," in SchulzHoffmann and Weiss, 78. 29. See Voices of German Expressionism, trans. and ed. Victor H Meisel (Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall, 1970), 109; from Max Beckmann, "Schöpferische Konfession," in Tribüne der Kunst und der Zeit 13, 2d ed. (Berlin, 1920) 6. Powerlessness and Dependence 1. The painting, oil on canvas, 28 × 20 in., is in New York, private collection. The play was first performed at the State Theatre, FrankfurtamMain, on 2 February 1921. On these works, see mainly J. P. Hodin, Oskar Kokoschka, the Artist and His Time A Biographical Study (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1966), 139, 14849, 163; Henry I. Schvey, Oskar Kokoschka: The Painter as Playwright (Detroit. Wayne State University Press, 1982), 89115; Hans Maria Wingler and F. Welz, eds., Oskar Kokoschka. Das drückgraphische Werk (Salzburg: Galerie Welz, 1975), 11619 2. Eintönig Lied der Erde— Was wir umringen, ewig Glück ist anders— Ob es Hass ist, solche Liebe?
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(Oskar Kokoschka, Dichtungen und Dramen [Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1973], 169) 3. Oskar Kokoschka, My Life, trans. David Britt (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), 118. 4. Geh! Geh! Sag ich Du sollst nichts begehren von Orpheus. Ich sage! Noch eine Begierde, was ist das? Was für ein Band bindet Mann und Weib zu sammen.—Unsre eigene Einbildung! Ihre Narren, die wit sind!
(Orpheus, in Kokoschka, Dichtungen und Dramen, act 3, scene 3, p. 163) 5. See p 7172 below. 6. Kokoschka, My Life, 96. 7. From Heinz Spielmann, Oskar Kokoschka (Hamburg: Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, 1965), 48. 8. Kokoschka, My Life, 118. 9. Ibid., 26. 10 Johann Jakob Bachofen, Myth, Religion, and Mother Right. Selected Writings of J. J. Bachofen, trans Ralph Manheim, preface George Boas, intro Joseph Campbell (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), Bollingen Series 84, 79. The original title of Bachofen's book was Das Mutterrecht: Eine Untersuchung über die Gynaikokratie der alten Welt nach ihrer religiösen und rechtlichen Natur (Stuttgart: Krais and Hoffmann, 1861). 11. See Kokoschka, My Life, 89, 1314, 75; Hodin, 50, 58, 127. 12. Bachofen, 8687. 13. See Donald E Gordon, Oskar Kokoschka and the Visionary Tradition, McNaster Colloquium on German Literature (Bonn: Bouvier, 1981), 47. 14 See Alma MahlerWerfel, Mein Leben (FrankfurtamMain: Fischer, 1960), 4647 15. See Kokoschka, My Life, 66. 16 Ibid., 73. 17. See Oskar Kokoschka, A Sea Ringed with Visions (London: Thames and Hudson, 1962), 26. 18. For ''Allos Makar," see Kokoschka, Dichtungen und Dramen, 2528. 19. Quotations from Kokoschka, My Life, 121. For The Power of Music (Eindhoven, Stedelijk Museum), see Hodin, pl. 23. Much of the following two paragraphs is based on Schvey 7. The Mask of the Imagination 1. The principal parts in this ballet of three scenes were danced by Nicholas Magallanes (Orpheus) and Maria Tallchief (Eurydice). According to Lincoln Kirstein, quoted in Nancy Goldner, The Stravinsky Festival of the New York City Ballet (New York: Eakins Press, 1973), 168, Stravinsky confirmed at the first Stravinsky Festival on 27 April 1937 that a sequel to Balanchine's first Orpheus was necessary
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2. See George Balanchine, Balanchine's Complete Stories of the Great Ballets (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977), 257. 3. See Isamu Noguchi, Isamu Noguchi: A Sculptors World, foreword by R. Buckminster Fuller (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 29. 4. Ibid., 131. See also Noguchi's interview with Tobi Tobias, New York Public Library Dance Collection, Oral History Archives (January/February 1979), 145. 5. Dore Ashton, Noguchi (New York: Pace Gallery, 1983), 6. 6. Noguchi, Sculptors World, 17. See also Sam Hunter, Isamu Noguchi (New York. Abbeville Press, 1978), 34. 7. See, in particular, Jung, Symbols of Transformation, 341 n. 62. 8. Interview with Noguchi, 4445. 9. See ch. 5, n. 15 above. 10. Among the works of art that may be cited are Masson's Metamorphosis of Gradiva (1939), Salvador Dali's series of GalaGradiva (beginning in 1939), and Breton's essay written in conjunction with the opening of the Surrealist Galerie Gradiva, in Paris in 1937. See Sigmund Freud, Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's "Gradiva," and Other Essays, ed. and intro. Philip Rieff (Boston: Beacon Press, 1956). On the influence of Gradiva in art, see Jack J. Spector, The Aesthetics of Freud. A Study in Psychoanalysis and Art (New York and Washington: Praeger, 1973), 15659; Whitney Chadwick, "Masson's Gradiva The Metamorphosis of a Surrealist Myth," The Art Bulletin 52, no 4 (December 1970): 41522. 11. Published in Jean Anouilh, Pièces noires (Paris: CalmannLévy, 1942); see idem, Eurydice, suivi de Roméo et Jeannette (Paris, La Table Ronde, 1971). Part Three. Death and Suffering 1. See, for example, Kerényi, Orpheus und Eurydike, 7071. 2. For example, De fluvius 3.4 (Kern, test. 122) wrongly attributed to Plutarch; Lactantius Divinae Institutiones 1.22; Proclus In Platonis rempublicam commentarii 1 174. On Orpheus's early association with the "fertility tradition," as opposed to the "wisdom tradition" suggested by Virgil, See Raymond J. Clark, Catabasis: Virgil and the Wisdom Tradition (Amsterdam: Grüner, 1979). 3. Themistius 30.349B (Kern, test. 112) sees a correspondence between the rites of Orpheus (who charmed animals by his song and replaced the hunter's wild life with the farmer's tranquil one), which used the farmer's domestic products, and the practice of farming. Otto Kern, Orpheus: Eine religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Berlin: Weidmann, 1920), 32, suggests that Orphic poems with agricultural themes underlie the belief in Orpheus as the founder of agriculture. See Guthrie, 5456, on Orpheus as a vegetable deity. 4. See Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), 99, 101; idem, Ancient Mystery Cults, 7476 5. See Guthrie, 29. Adolf Primmer ("Das Lied des Orpheus in Ovids Metamorphosen," Sprachkunst, Beiträge zur Literaturwissenschaft 10 [1979]. 13435) suggested
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that the delight of Ovid's Orpheus in "a double death" (Metamorphoses 10.39) indicates a new recognition of the irresistibility of death 6. Sigmund Freud, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" (1920), in Standard Edition 8:3640. Supporters of Freud's controversial theory of the death instinct include: Juliette Boutonier, Normon O. Brown, Paul Federn, Paula Heimann, Melanie Klein, and Karl Menninger. 7. Joost A. M. Meerloo, Suicide and Mass Suicide (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1962), 5, writes: "When life becomes too bothersome man regresses easily to the state of a primitive being. In his primitive rage man reverts to primitive magic ideas and expects somehow in death to be reunited with mother earth. Death means for him the magic union with what created him." 8. See Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil (New York. Harper and Row, 1964), Religious Perspectives Series 12, 4142. 9. Freud, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," 45. 10. Levine, 13, discusses this form of regression among the expressionists. 11. See Mircea Eliade, "Mythologies of Death: An Introduction," in Religious Encounters with Death. Insights from the History and Anthropology of Religions, ed. Frank E. Reynolds and Earle H. Waugh (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1977), 1415, 2021. Idem, Myth of the Eternal Return, 89, 120. 12. Plato (Republic 363c,d) mentions the rewards and punishments believed by the Orphics to be given in the next world. On the vase painting, see Margot Schmidt, Arthur Dale Trendall, and Alexander Cambitoglou, Eine Gruppe apulischer Grabvasen in Basel. Studien zu Gehalt und Form der unteritalischen Sepulkralkunst (Basel: Archäologischer Verlag, 1976), 3235, pl. 11. See also Burkert, Love and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, 12728. 13. Rank, "Life and Creation," in Phillips, 3078. 14. See Strauss, 10. 15 See Eliade, Myth and Reality, 119; Burkert, Greek Religion, 294; idem, Ancient Mystery Cults, 89. Moreover, Strauss, 1213, emphasizes the important theme of reminiscence in modern Orphism as part of the legacy from the romantic quest for the lost or forgotten self. 16. Charles Mauron, Des métaphores obsédentes au mythe personnel. Introduction à la psychocritique (Paris. Librairie José Corti, 1962), 134. 17. See Kris, 48. 8. Constancy and Continuity 1. It may not be coincidental that artists began to identify with Orpheus the musiciansinger in the Renaissance, when theoreticians were attempting to have painting, a spatial art, also viewed as a temporal one able to accomplish the same Aristotelian unity of action as poetry. On this subject, see Lee, 6163. 2. Marcuse, 164, 171. 3. See Freud, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," especially 811, 29, 3945. 4. Ibid., 38.
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5 See Erik H. Erikson, "The Problem of Identity," American Journal of Psychoanalysis 4 (1956): 57. See also Strauss, 14447. 6. Similarly, Albert Camus writes: "Looking at these existences from the outside, one lends them a coherence and unity which, in truth, they cannot have, but which appears evident to the observer. He sees only the outline of these lives, without taking account of the complicating detail" ("Art in Revolt," 275). 7. Spate, 1822, discusses the strong influence of Bergson on Apollinaire's contemporaries (in particular, the Orphists) at this time. She notes (p. 20) that Bergson's philosophy was very widely accepted and accessible—and that his lectures at the College de France were open to the public, and many articles focused on him. 8. Ibid., 62. 9. See Plutarch, Plutarch's "De Isolde et Osiride", trans., ed., and intro. J. Gwyn Griffiths (Cambridge: University of Wales Press, 1970) See also Reinach, 121 n. 2. 10. Hermes Trismegistus, in Ménard, 147; idem, xcii. 11. Tschiedel, 73. 12. Letter from Rilke, quoted in Leishman, 1821. 13 Klee, statement of 1917, in The Thinking Eye, 520. 14. Klee, Diaries, no. 143. 15. See Jürgen Glaesemer, Paul Klee: Die farbigen Woke im Kunstmuseum Bern (Gemälde, farbige Blätter, Hinterglasbilder, und Plastiken (Bern: Verlag Kornfeld, 1976), fig. 148b and pl. 118, respectively. 16. See Richard Verdi, Klee and Nature (New York: Rizzoli, 1984), 79. 17. For example, View of a Mountain Shrine, 1926; see Will Grohmann, Paul Klee: Drawings, trans. Norbert Guterman (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1960), pl. 10. 18. See Verdi, figs. 159, 160, respectively. 19. See Glaesemer, pl. 114. 20. Quotation from Rilke, in Prater, 357. 21. Rilke also mentions flowers in pt. 1, sonnet 5; pt. 2, sonnets 57, 14, 21. See pt. 2, sonnet 17, for another reference to a garden. On the rose as a reconciliation of opposites for Rilke, see Strauss, 21415. 22. See Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. and notes A. Poulin, Jr. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 204. 23. See Vishny, 142, 146; Klee, Diaries, nos. 71314. 24. Klee, Diaries, no. 931. 25. Ibid., no. 1008. 26. As Grohmann, Paul Klee, 265, interprets it, the drawing presents "symbols of Orphic mysteries, hexagrams and Orphic cosmogony, Pythagorus and redemption. And from there the road leads to Golgotha." 27. One also notes a comparison with Kokoschka's first etching, in which the garden of Eurydice is a tranquil setting of domestic security. 28. Veil of Orpheus (1968; New York, Lone Star Foundation) consists of four canvas panels, each 901/8 × 48 in., covered with housepaint, crayon, and pencil. See Roland Barthes, Cy Twombly: Paintings and Drawings, 19541977 (New York. Whitney Museum of American Art, 1979), 5859. For the drawings illustrated here,
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see Yvon Lambert, Cy Twombly: Catalogue raisonné des oeuvres sur papier, vol. 6. 19731976 (Milan: Multhipla Editions, 1979), 131, no. 134 (oil, greasy crayon, and pencil on paper, 100 × 70.9 cm.; private collection); 130, no. 133 (oil, greasy crayon, and pencil on papers, 140.9 × 100 cm.; Rome, collection of the artist). For three of Twombly's contemporaneous drawings dedicated to Orpheus, see 131, no. 135; 132, nos. 136, 137. For four drawings pairing him with Dionysos, see 13941, nos. 14952. 29. On the impression of layers or veils, see Margaret Sheffield, ''Cy Twombly: Major Changes in Space, Idea, Line," Artforum 17, no. 9 (May 1979): 4445. 30 See Suzanne Delehanty and Heiner Bastian, Cy Twombly: Paintings, Drawings, Constructions, 19511974 (Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1975), 20. Robert PincusWitten, "Cy Twombly," Artforum 12, no. 8 (April 1974): 61, had suggested that the introduction of conceptual schemata into Twombly's work underscores its "conceptual shortfall" and his lack of a "systemic framework," which his symbols are meant to demonstrate. 31. Franz Meyer, Cy Twombly—Zeichnungen, 19531973 (Basel: Kunstmuseum, 1973), 11, suggests this derivation. 32. Delehanty, 22. 33. Ibid., 26—28. 34. See Meyer, 1112; Delehanty, 2627; Sheffield, 45 n. 13. 35. See Kerényi, Pythagoras und Orpheus, 54. 36. In 1987, Archie Rand painted a series of twentynine selfportraits, each designated as a visual commentary on a specific sonnet in Rilke's twentynine Sonnets to Orpheus. Rand remarked (in a conversation with the author on 15 January 1988) that Orpheus represents the concept of the meaninglessness of life which one realizes in "brushes with death." 37. See Delehanty, 28. 38. See Bellas, 245. On Pierre Henry, see Ernst Koster, "Konkrete Musik zum Tanz," in Musica 13, no. 10 (1959). 63942. 39 John Bernard Myers, "Marks: Cy Twombly," Artforum 20, no. 8 (April 1982): 5152. As Myers remarks, Twombly is akin to Rilke in that he ruminates over his ideas, which may gestate for several years; Twombly was deeply moved by his Mediterranean environment, as Rilke had been inspired by the marine ambience of Duino, along the Adriatic. 40. Barthes, 11. 41. Delehanty, 20. 42. PincusWitten, 61, observed that Twombly's development of writing and counting from "a sensibilitybased calligraphy" descends ultimately from a tradition born in Klee. 43. Myers, 55. 44. See Demosthenes Davvetas, "Cy Twombly's 'Zographike'," in Cy Twombly: Paintings, Works on Paper, Sculpture, ed. Harald Szeemann (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1987), 23. 45. On the drawings, see Thomas B. Hess, Barnett Newman (New York: Museum
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of Modern Art, 1971), 4647; Harold Rosenberg, Barnett Newman (New York: Abrams, 1978), 4749. 46. See Virgil, Eclogues, ed. Robert Coleman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 183. Coleman remarks that Orpheus, as the poet of science and m mythology, provides the model for Silenus in his recital in Eclogues 6.2686. 47. Newman, quoted in Hess, 80. 48. Ibid. 49. See E. Kushner, 296, on Jouve's Matiére céleste (Paris: Gallimard, 1937). For Matiére céleste, see Pierre Jean Jouve, Poésie (Paris: Mercure de France, 1964), 1:20782. 50. See Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality, World Perspectives (London: George Mien and Unwin, 1964), 79. 51. Barnett Newman, "The First Man Was an Artist," Tiger's Eye 1 (October 1947): 5760. 52. According to Diodorus Siculus (1.23.1), Orpheus transferred from Egypt the rites of Dionysos, who was a sort of epiphany of Osiris. Burkert, Greek Religion, 298, suggests that the origins of the cult of the chtonic Dionysos and beliefs in rewards and punishments in the nether world are at least partly dependent on the Egyptian cult of Osiris. 53. See Hess, 23, 38. 54. See Barnett Newman, "The Plasmic Image," quoted in Hess, 38. 55. See Barnett Newman, "The New Sense of Fate," in Hess, 4143. 56. Euripides, Alcestis, trans. Charles Rowan Beye, Greek Drama series (Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall, 1974), 28. 57. This discussion is based mainly on a conversation with Samples on 17 December 1985. See Joseph L. Henderson, "Ancient Myths and Modern Man," in Man and His Symbols, ed. Carl Jung (New York: Dell Publishing, 1968), 142. 58 See Jung, Symbols of Transformation, 107 n. 70. Correspondingly, Mallarmé (following George W. Cox) described the Orpheus myth as a solar myth in Les Dieux antiques. Nouvelle mythologie d'aprés George W. Cox et les travaux de la science moderne (Paris: J. Rothschild, 1880), 19192. The title Dawn of Orpheus calls to mind Mallarmé's discussion of the primitive sense of the myth of Orpheus, although Samples seems to have been unaware of it. 59. From the altar of the twelve gods, in the agora, Athens. See Walter Herwig Schuchhardt, Das OrpheusRelief (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1964), Wermonographien zur bildenden Kunst, no. 102. 60. Mallarmé, Les Dieux antiques, 192, says that the legend of Orpheus, which he equates with the Indian name of the sun, combines two notions: the idea of morning—with its beauty of short duration, "as in the legend of Hermes"—and the idea of dawn. The tortoise, from which Hermes made the lyre, is especially appropriate here because it frequently appears near images of Hermes as the divine child. This association also may not have been intentional on Samples's part The central importance of the child in the painting recalls the significance of the divine child (Dionysos)
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worshiped by the Orphics and linked with immortality as he is reborn after his murder by the Titans 61. Unless otherwise noted, quotations from Kushner and information about him are based on a conversation with the artist in November 1987. 62. Robert Kushner, Robert Kushner (New York: Holly Solomon Gallery, 1987), 9. The artist recalls that his interest in the Orpheus myth was rekindled by his reading of Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962). 63. R. Kushner, 9. The work of Varujan Boghosian, another contemporary artist who combines disparate materials in interpretations of Orpheus that also express the continuity of existence may also be noted here. 64. See Lichtenstern, 149. 65. See Baker, especially 22. 66. See Janet Kardon, Robert Kushner (Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1987), 16. 67. Donald B. Kuspit, "Robert Kushner's Happy Consciousness," in ibid, 25. 68. Donald B. Kuspit, "Robert Kushner, Holly Solomon Gallery," Artforum 24, no 3 (November 1985): 104. 69. Kuspit, in Kardon, 28 n. 15. 9. Liberation from Guilt 1. Freud, Ego and Id, 27. 2. Meerloo, 68. 3. Eliade, "Mythologies of Death," 18 4. See Schvey, 95, on Kokoschka's interpretation of the story as a death myth; see also Kerényi, Orpheus und Eurydike, 32. 5. Kokoschka, quoted in Hodin, 146. 6. From Oskar Kokoschka, Schriften, 19071955, ed Hans Maria Wingler (Munich: Albert Langen/Georg Müller Verlag, 1956), 43233. 7. See Gordon, 50. 8. See introduction to part three, note 7 above. 9. Kokoschka, My Life, 9495. 10. Ibid., 97. 11. Ibid., 27. 12. "Mutter, hu! Wie heisst's—/Du sollst nicht töten" (Orpheus, in act 3, scene 3; see Kokoschka, Dichtungen und Dramen, 169). See also the interpretations in Gordon, 47, and Schvey, 91. 13. On the mysteries at Eleusis, see George Emmanuel Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961). 14. Eurydice's name first appears in literature in the lament for Bion (Kern, test. 62). Rilke's Orpheus poem of 1904 also links Eurydice with Persephone. 15. Bronze, 18 3/8 × 10 × 7Ç in. See Karl Kilinski, Classical Myths in Western Art: Ancient through Modern (Dallas Meadows Museum and Gallery, Southern Methodist
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University, 1985), 88; Bert van Bork, Jacques Lipchitz: The Artist at Work (New York: Crown Publishers, 1966), 182, who gives the height as 20½ in. 16. See Hammacher, pls. 96, 99. 17. See Patai, 12829. 18. Lipchitz's statement to James Johnson Sweeney, in 1945, quoted in Irene Patai, Encounters. The Life of Jacques Lipchitz (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1961), 344. 19. See Nicole Barbier, Lipchitz: Oeuvres de Jacques Lipchitz, 18911973, catalogue (Paris: Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1978), 8083; Van Bork, 16772, A. M. Hammacher, Jacques Lipchitz, trans. James Brockway (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975), pls. 39, 112, 113, 128, 139. 20. See Juden, 142. 21. See Patai, 98101. 22. Ibid., 246. 23. See de Man, Allegories of Reading, 24, 50. Cf. Segal, Orpheus, 120, who regards de Man's approach as "too negative and narrow." This reversal of negation into a promise clearly recalls Mallarmé's poetry; on Mallarmé, see Strauss, 17. 24. Claude LéviStrauss, The View from Afar, trans. Joachim Neugroschel and Phoebe Hoss (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 73. 25. Nietzsche, Zarathustra, pt. 1, sec. 17, p. 57. 26. On this subject, see Lionel Trilling, "Art and Neurosis," in Phillips, 508. 27. 84 × 104 × 91 in.; New York, Oil and Steel Gallery. See James K. Monte, Mark di Suvero (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1975), 2425. 28. See, for example, Sidney Geist, "A New Sculptor: Mark di Suvero," Arts Magazine 35, no. 3 (December 1960): 41. 29. John R. Klein, "Idealism Realized: Two Public Commissions by Mark di Suvero," Arts Magazine 56, no. 4 (December 1981): 84. 30. Ibid. 31. See Phyllis Tuchman, Mark di Suvero: TwentyFive Years of Sculpture and Drawings (Mountainville, N.Y.: Storm King Art Center, 1985), 4. 32. Christoph Willibald Gluck, Orpheus, trans. Edward J Dent (London: Oxford University Press, 1941 ), 18. On the opera, see Patricia Howard, C. W. von Gluck. "Orfeo" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), especially, 1013 The libretto was written by Ranieri da Calzabigi. 33. See Carter Ratcliff, "Mark di Suvero," Artforum 11, no. 3 (November 1972): 35. 34. Conversation with the artist on 31 July 1986. The following information is based on this interview. 35. For this criticism of these writers see Strauss, 234; Segal 17173. 36. Strauss, 86, describes the descent into darkness in the context of his discussion of Mallarmé. 37. Twombly evidently misread either a translation of the Sonnets or his own notes from a translation, for his "Fire" should be "Here," in accordance with Rilke's "Hier." Most English editions translate Rilke's ''zerschlug'' as "shatters," although the less precise "shivers," does sometimes occur (e.g. Leishman, 113). 38. See Heinz Frederick Peters, Rainer Maria Rilke. Masks and the Man (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1960), 167.
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39. See Sheffield, 45. 40. My information on Ethel Schwabacher's Orpheus paintings derives mainly from conversations with her children, Brenda Webster and Christopher Schwabacher, during the fall of 1988 and the following sources: Ethel Schwabacher, The Tortoise and the Angel: The Journals of Ethel Schwabacher, ed. Judith Emlyn Johnson and Brenda S. Webster, typescript, pt. 1, pp. 1366; idem, "Formal Definitions and Myths in My Paintings," Leonardo 6 (1973): 5355; Greta Berman and Mona Hadler, Ethel Schwabacher: A Retrospective Exhibition (New Brunswick, N.J: Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, State University of New Jersey, 1987). 41. See Schwabacher, Tortoise and Angel, 16, 45, 60. 42. See Berman, 18. 43. Schwabacher, Tortoise and Angel, 33. 44. Ibid., 3637. 45. Ibid., 30 46. Ibid. Certain similarities to poems by twentiethcentury women writers based on the myth appear to be the result of the common experiences of women, not of particular influence. Schwabacher, her children have affirmed, does not seem to have especially admired the works of or to have known personally Hilda Doolittle ("Eurydice"), Adrienne Rich ("I Dream I'm the Death of Orpheus," 1968), Muriel Rukeyser ("Orpheus,'' 1951; ''The Poem as Mask: Orpheus," 1968), and Edith Sitwell ("Eurydice," 194247). 47. Ibid. 48. Schwabacher, Tortoise and Angel, 3132. 10. The Death of Orpheus 1. Wilhelm Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans A V Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 1819. 2. Blanchot, 101. See also the afterword by P. Adams Sitney, 186. On the other hand, Ihab Hassan, The Dismemberment of Orpheus. Toward a Postmodern Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 56, suggests that the dismembered Orpheus is a prophet only because when he was alive he combined aspects of antithetical gods; when dismembered, Orpheus no longer has control over his song, which lives on despite his physical inability to sing: "The singing body of Orpheus holds, then, a contradiction—between the dumb unity of nature and the multiple voice of consciousness—that the song itself longs to overcome." 3. This interpretation is based on Heinz Kohut's early approach to the psychology of the self, which furthered Freud's ideas. Correspondingly, Segal, Orpheus, 57, observes that Ovid shifts the emphasis from Phanocles's causal sequence of Orpheus's homosexuality and death to the singer's emotional life. 4. See Richard D. Chessick, Psychology of the Self and the Treatment of Narcissism (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1985), 84; Heinz Kohut, "Forms and Transformations of Narcissism," Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 14 (1966): 24372. 5. Freud, Ego and Id, 47.
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6. Maltesberger, 3. 7. Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1916), Standard Edition 1516:339. 8. See, Jean Cocteau, Three Screenplays (l'éternel retour, Orphée, la belle et la bête), trans. Carol MartinSperry (New York: Grossman, 1972), 188. On Cocteau's treatments of Orpheus, see: Lydia Crowson, The Esthetic of Jean Cocteau (Hanover, N.H.: University, Press of New England, 1978), especially, 2930, 6970; Arthur Evans, Jean Cocteau and His Films of Orphic Identity (Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1977); Wallace Fowlie, Jean Cocteau. The History of a Poet's Age (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966), 6164; E. Kushner, 177223; Roger Pillaudin, Jean Cocteau tourne son dernier film (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1960); Francis Steegmuller, Cocteau: A Biography (Boston: David R. Godine, 1986), 36873,47884. Although Cocteau created several visual works of art about Orpheus, none has had the impact on other visual artists that his literary works have, and therefore they are not discussed in this context Certain writers, including Strauss, 235, consider Cocteau to be one of the few modern dramatists who avoids modifying the outline of the myth—in comparison with Jean Anouilh in Eurydice (1943), Tennessee Williams in Orpheus Descending (1958), and Marcel Camus in Orfeu negro (1958). 9. Cocteau, 188. 10. Cocteau, in Steegmuller, 8. Kosinski, 266, suggests that the Orpheus myth represents Cocteau's desire to recapture the love of his father who died when Cocteau was eight. 11. See E Kushner, 221. Cocteau had earlier expressed a related nostalgic desire for peace, in his series Discours au grand sommeil (1915) 12. E. Kushner, 347. 13. See E. Kushner, 2223. In Jouve's "Orphée agonisant" (1937), Orpheus died in order to be reborn consecrated to his art, of which Eurydice was the inspirer. 14. Cocteau, from Pillaudin, 84. 15. See ch. 8, n. 36 above. 16. See Steegmuller, 34950; Fowlie, 62. 17. Ovid, Les Métamorphoses, trans. Georges Lafaye (Lausanne. Albert Skira, 1931), with thirty etchings (12 3/4 × 10¼ in.) by Pablo Picasso, printed in black, edition of 145. See Pierre Mornand, Vingt artists du livre, intro. Raymond Cogniat (Paris: Le Courtier Graphique, 1950), 228; Sebastian Goeppert, Herma GoeppertFrank, and Patrick Cramer, Pablo Picasso. Catalogue raisonné des livres illustrés (Geneva: P. Cramer, 1983), 54—56; Susan Mayer, "GrecoRoman Iconography and Style in Picasso's Illustrations for Ovid's Metamorphoses," Art International 23, no 8 (December 1979): 2835; Christian Zervos, "Les Métamorphoses d'Ovide, illustrées par Picasso," Cahiers d'Art 5, no. 19 (1930): 51112. 18. See Mayer, 3334. 19 See Reinach, 8990, on the murder and Ovid's treatment of it. On dismemberment and the madness of the maenads of Dionysos, see Otto, 1089. 20. See Bernhard Geiser, Picasso, peintregraveur. Catalogue illustré de l'oeuvre gravé et lithographié, 18991931 (Bern: Chez l'auteur, 1933), 1. nos. 173 (3 September 1930), 174 (16 September 1930).
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21. See Roland Penrose, Picasso. His Life and Work, 2d ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 1962), 250—51 See also Clive Bell, "Picasso," New Statesman and Nation 11 (30 May 1936): 85758; reprinted as "Picasso's Poetry," in Picasso in Perspective, ed. Gert Schiff (Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall, 1976), 8687. 22. See Otto, 16567. Among the vast literature on the related associations of the bull in Picasso's work, see Martin Ries, "Picasso and the Myth of the Minotaur," in Picasso in Perspective, 9496; reprinted from Art Journal 32, no. 2 (Winter 197273): 14345. 23. As John Golding emphasizes ("Picasso and Surrealism," in DanielHenry Kahnweiler et al., Picasso in Retrospect, edited by Roland Penrose and John Golding [New York: Praeger, 1973], 1089), Picasso was clearly more drawn to surrealist literature than painting. 24. On Picasso's fear of blindness, see Penrose, 24849; idem, "Beauty and the Monster," in Penrose and Golding, 176; John Berger, The Success and Failure of Picasso (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966), 4344; Mary Mathews Gedo, Picasso: Art as Autobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 5355, 156. 25. On this subject, see Theodore Reff, "Themes of Love and Death in Picasso's Early Work," in Penrose and Golding, 1147; Robert Rosenblum, "Picasso and the Anatomy of Eroticism," in Studies in Erotic Art, edited by Theodore Bowie and Cornelia V Christenson (New York: Basic Books, 1970), 34041. 26. See Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, 1067. 27. See Evans, 7576, on reasons for Cocteau's selfidentification with Orpheus. 28. On Picasso's passivity and ambivalence toward women, see Gedo, 9, 46, 79, 25556. 29 See Whitney Chadwick, "Eros or Thanatos—the Surrealist Cult of Love Reexamined," Artforum 14, no. 3 (November 1975): 4650. 30. See Clement of Alexandria's statement that Orphic texts make this remark, in Kern, test. 234. 31. For example, see Freud, Three Essays on Sexuality, 8586. 32. See Meyer Schapiro, "Picasso's Woman With a Fan: On Transformation and SelfTransformation," Essays in Archaeology and the Humanities, In Memoriam Otto J. Brendel, edited by Larissa Bonfante and Helga von Heintze, with Carla Lord (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1976), 24954; reprinted in idem, Modern Art, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Selected Papers (New York: George Braziller, 1978), 11120. 33. Berger, 162. 34. Rosenblum, "Picasso," 343, however, remarks that the androgyny is generally confined to single figures. 35 Bataille's manuscript is dated "summer 1933." G. L. M also published the review Acéphale. See Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927 1939, ed. and intro. Allan Stoeckl, trans. Allan Stoeckel with Carl R Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie, Jr., Theory and History of Literature 14 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 26061. 36 James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 3d ed., 12 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1963), 6:99.
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37. In addition to the Massacres, see, for example, Daphne and Apollo, Tragedy (1933), and Dionysos (1934). Masson lavishly praises Nietzsche in his writings, such as: André Masson, Vagabond du surréalisme, ed. Gilbert Brownstone (Paris: éditions SaintGermaindesPrès, 1975), 4142; idem, Mythologie d'André Masson, ed. and notes JeanPaul Clébert (Geneva: Pierre Cailler, éditeur, 1971), 20; idem, Le Rebelle du surréalisme: écrits, ed. Françoise WillLevaillant (Paris: Hermann, 1976), 7273. Chadwick, Myth in Surrealist Painting, 59, observes that, in addition to Nietzsche's, Otto's Dionysos is also a "guiding spirit" for Masson during these years. Moreover, Bachofen's description of matriarchal societies made a strong impact on Masson (see Masson, Mythologie, 3839; idem, Rebelle du surréalisme, 55 n. 78), who specifically refers to the ideas of this philosopher in Oedipus Flayed (1938). Bachofen (p. 112) associated Orphism with the malephallic principle and pointed out (p. 103) that the danger of Orphism's defeat increased as it moved closer to the old feminine mysteries. He also wrote (p. 203) that Orpheus was the enemy of the primitive religious stage (as represented by the Thracian women). 38. See Kerényi, Heroes of the Greeks, 284. 39. See Gilbert Brownstone, André Masson (Milan: Galleria Schwarz, 1970), 27. See also Rubin, "André Masson and TwentiethCentury Painting," in Rubin and Lanchner, 59. 40. JeanPaul Sartre, Situations, 4:4056; from idem, "André Masson," in Vingtdeux dessins sur le thème du désir (Nice: Editions La Diane Française, 1961) On Sartre's discussion, see Howard Bauer, Sartre and the Artist (Chicago: University Press, 1969), 13544. 41. On Masson's painting Orphée see Carolyn Lanchner, "André Masson: Origins and Development," in William Rubin and Carolyn Lanchner, André Masson (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1976), 137; Whitney Chadwick, Myth in Surrealist Painting, 19291939 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1980), 59 42. From Georges Bataille, Oeuvres complètes, intro. Michel Foucault, 10 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1970—), vol. 5, La Somme athéologique, 3 vols. in one, L'Expérience intérieure, méthode de méditation, postscriptum, 1953, le coupable, l'alleluiah, ed. Paule Leduc (1973), 1:207. 43. Letter from Masson to Rosalind Krauss and Margit Rowell on 19 April 1972, in Rosalind Krauss and Margit Rowell, Joan Miró: Magnetic Fields (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1972), 40; also cited in Lanchner, 87. 44. Ibid., 1012. 45. From Masson, Mythologie, 33. 46. See E. Kushner, 237, 239, 28586. 47. From Masson, Mythologie, 41. See also Lanchner, 13336. 48. Ibid., 4344. 49. See ch. 8, n. 49 above. See also Pierre Jean Jouve, "Les Dessins d'André Masson," in JeanLouis Barrault et al., André Masson (Rouen: L'Imprimerie Wolf, 1940), 65. Like Masson, Jouve and his disciple Pierre Emmanuel (Tombeau d'Orphée, 1941; Les Orphiques, 1943) are preoccupied with the erotic in their symbolic portrayals of destructive forces in Europe—although Emmanuel adds a strong religious component.
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50. Unless otherwise noted, information about Earl Staley is based on communications from the artist on 10 February 1986 and 24 November 1987. 51. See Marcia Tucker, "Earl Staley: Myth, Symbol, Dream," in Linda L Cathcart and Marcia Tucker, Earl Staley∙ 19731983 (Houston: Contemporary, Arts Museum; New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1983), 27. Michael Brenson ("Earl Staley: 197383 [New Museum of Contemporary Art]," New, York Times, 20 April 1984) suggests that Staley's love of mythology reflects the impression made on him by American Indian rituals as a child raised in the Southwest. 52. Tucker, 27. 53. See Cathcart, "Earl Staley: A Classical Vocabulary," in Cathcart and Tucker, 15, 18. 54. Ibid See also Ed Hill and Suzanne Bloom, "Houston: Earl Staley, Watson/deNagy and Co.," Artforum 23, no 10 (Summer 1985), 11314. 55. See Tucker, 28. 56. See Hill and Bloom, 114. It max, also be noted that Henry, Malcolm, Generation of Narcissus (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 45, writes, "It is no wonder. . that the bard Orpheus should become a culture hero, resembling the endless array of rock musicians." 57. Communications from Arnulf Rainer on 3 December 1986 and 3 September 1987. On Ecstasy in Black Fire, see also Anne Albertini, "Rainer ou le leurre de la mort," in Alfred Pacquement, Arnulf Rainer Mort et sacrifice (Paris: Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1984), 5657. Another Orpheus (1971; 104 × 78 cm.) is mentioned in Arnulf Rainer, Selbstdarstellungen (Fotoübermalungen, 196872 (Munich: Galerie Van de Loo, 1972), no. 106. 58. For the Dying Rainer (Fragment), Vienna, collection of Helmut Weis, see Otto Breicha, Arnulf Rainer. Zeichnungen, 194751 (Vienna: Galerie Ariadne, 1969), no. 22; Armin Zweite, "Du Visage éternel à la grimace mortuaire," in Pacquement, 10, 77. For SelfBurial, Düsseldorf, Galerie Heike Curtze, ibid., 24, 77; for Dead Painter, ibid., 77. See also the overpainted photographs SelfPortrait, Dead (1955), ibid., 11. 59. On Rainer's ideas, see Erika Billeter, Mythos und Ritual in der Kunst der 70er Jahre. Kunstverein in Hamburg, 7 November 1981—3 Januar 1982 (Zürich. Kunsthaus, 1981), 23; Gary Indiana, "Report from Paris," Art in America 72, no. 5 (May 1984): 36. It may be noted that Jannis Kounellis also refers to Christian tradition in his combination of Orpheus with fire in Traum des Orpheus, 1975, Naples, Bernardo collection (see Helmut Friedel, Der Traum des Orpheus: Mythologie in der italienischen Gegenwartskunst, 1967 his 1984 [Munich: Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, 1984], 101). 60. Arnulf Rainer, Arnulf Rainer. Overpainted Rainers (Neb, York: Gallery Ariadne, 1974), unp. 61 Nietzsche, Zarathustra, 59. 62. Rainer, in Pacquement, 5. 63. On Rainer's transformations and interest in mysticism, see Donald B. Kuspit, "Arnulf Rainer. SelfExposures," Art in America 75, no. 4 (April 1987): 17078.
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Theory and History of Literature, vol. 14. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985. Bellas, Jacqueline. "'Orphée' aux XIXe et au XXe siècle: Interférences littéraires et musicales," Cahiers de l'association internationale des études françaises 22 (May 1970): 22946. Carmody, Francis J. The Evolution of Apollinaire's Poetics, 19011914. University of California Publications in Modern Philology, vol. 70. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963. Cattaui, Georges. Orphisme et prophétie: Chez les poètes français, 18501950. Paris: Librairie Plon, 1965. Cocteau, Jean. Three Screenplays (l'eternel retour, Orphée, la belle et la bête). Translated by Carol MartinSperry. New York. Grossman, 1972. Crowson, Lydia. The Esthetic of Jean Cocteau. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1978. Davies, Margaret. Apollinaire. London: Oliver and Boyd, 1964. Davies, Robertson. The Lyre of Orpheus. A Novel. London: Viking, 1988. Décaudin, Michel, ed. Apollinaire et la musique. Journées Apollinaire de Stavelot, acts du colloque, 2729 août 1965. Essays by Robert Guiette, S. I. Lockerbie, and Philippe Renaud. Stavelot: éditions "Les Amis de G Apollinaire," 1967. De Man, Paul. Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Emmanuel, Pierre. Tombeau d'Orphée. Paris: Pierre Seghers, 1941. Evans, Arthur. Jean Cocteau and His Films of Orphic Identity. Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press, 1977. Fischer, Friedhelm W. Max Beckmann. Translated by P. S. Falla. London: 1973. Fowlie, Wallace. Jean Cocteau. The History of a Poet's Age. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966. Guthmann, Eurydikes Wiederkehr. Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1909. Holthusen, Hans Egon. Rainer Maria Rilke: A Study of His Later Poetry. Translated by J. P. Stern. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952. Jouve, Pierre Jean. Poésie Paris: Mercure de France, 1964. Kushner, Eva. Le Mythe d'Orphée dans la littérature française contemporaine. Paris: A. G. Nizet, 1961. Lee, M. Owen. "Orpheus and Eurydice: Some Modern Versions," The Classical Journal 56, no. 7 (April 1961): 30713. Libertson, Joseph. Proximity Levinas, Blanchot, Bataille, and Communication. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982. McIntyre, H. G. The Theatre of Jean Anouilh. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1981. Prater, Donald. A Ringing Glass. The Life of Rainer Maria Rilke. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Rave, Klaus. Orpheus bei Cocteau: Psychoanalytische Studie zu Jean Cocteaus dichterischem Selbstverständnis. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1984. Richman, Michèle H. Reading Georges Bataille: Beyond the Gift. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.
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Rilke, Rainer Maria. Sonnets to Orpheus. Translated by James Blair Leishman. 2d ed. London: Hogarth Press, 1946. ———. Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus. Translated by A. Poulin, Jr. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. ———. The Sonnets to Orpheus. Translated by Stephen Mitchell. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. Sewell, Elizabeth. The Orphic Voice. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960. Steegmuller, Francis. Cocteau: A Biography. Boston: David R. Godine, 1986. Strauss, Walter A. Descent and Return. The Orphic Theme in Modern Literature. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971. Tschiedel, Hans Jürgen. "Orpheus und Eurydice, ein Beitrag zum Thema: Rilke und die Antike." Antike und Abendland 19, no. 1(1973): 6182.
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Index Note: Page number of plates are in boldfaced type. A Achaeans in Battle (Twombly), 159 Animals, taming of, 8, 9, 10, 68, 148 Anouilh, Jean, 5, 72, 73, 154, 166, 173; Eurydice, 73, 154, 166 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 1112, 13, 14, 15, 16, 1720, 2123, 24, 13334, 191n.58; La Chanson du malaimé, 133; Le Musicien de SaintMerry, 21, 39, Le Pyrée, 165; Lul de Faltenin, 20, 21; Realité: peinture pure, 23; Tortoise, The, 3536 Apollo, xvii, xviii, xx, xxi, 14, 16, 34, 35, 4445, 62, 159, 162, 164, 175 Aristotle, xv, xix, xxii; On the Soul, xix; Poetics, xv Arrows, symbolism of, 137 Artist (PoetPainter), The (Klee), 31 B Bach, Johann Sebastian, 13, 55, 137 Bacon, Sir Francis, xxii, 53 Balanchine, George, 70, 72 Ballanche, PierreSimon, 15, 16, 34, 154; Orptée, 15, 16 Bataille, Georges, 169, 171, 173; L'Histoire de l'oeil, par Lord Auch, 169; Sacrifices les dieux qui meurent, 171, 173 Battle of the Amazons (Beckmann), 55 Baudelaire, Charles, 5, 27 Beckmann, Max, 19, 54, 55, 59, 72, 153, 154, 168, 178, 179; Battle of the Amazons, 55; Destruction of Messina, 55; Funeral of Eurydice, The, lithograph in Johannes Guthmann, Eurydikes Wiederkehr, 56, 95; Great Death Scene, 62; Mars and Venus, 55; Orpheus at the Seashore, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr, 61, 96; Orpheus Departing from HIS Mother, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr, 5658, 97; Orpheus Embracing Eurydice in the Underworld, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr, 62, 99, 154, Orpheus in the Underworld Surrounded by Shadows, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr, 60, 98; Orpheus's Final Departure from His Mother, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr, 5658, 100; Resurrection, 60, 62, 101; SelfPortrait with Miriam BeckmannTube, 61; Sinking of the Titanic, The, 55 Bejart, Maurice: Orphée (Henry and Bejart), 140 Bergson, Henri, 23, 132, 13334 Birds, symbolism of, 40 Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche), xxiii, 49, 152 Blanchot, Maurice, 6, 52, 163 Blindness, symbolism of, 72, 73 Breton, André, 3940; Orphée, 39, 90 Bull, symbolism of, 168 Butterfly, symbolism of, 134 C Caduceus, symbolism of, 146 Calliope, xvii, 58, 67 Cassafer, Paul, 55, 56, 69 Castration anxiety, 164, 169 Chavannes, Puvis de, 11, 147; Orpheus, 61, 102 Che farò senza Eurydice (di Suvero), 112, 156, 157, 158, 162
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Chirico, Giorgio de: Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire, 21, 80 Classical Garden (Klee), 136 Cocteau, Jean, 130, 164, 16567, 16970, 174; La Machine infernale, 166; Le Testament de'Orphée, 166; Orphée (1925), 165, 166; Orphée (1949), 165 Collision of the Andrea Doria and Stockholm, The, or Che farò (Schwabacher), 116, 162 Concert halls, 4245 Conegliano, Cima da: Orpheus Playing for the Animals, 27, 81 Constancy principle, 13233 Contact of Two Musicians (Klee), 31 Continuity, 136, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149. See also Constancy principle Cosmic Composition (Klee), 137 Couple, The (Lipchitz), 153, 155 Creative Credo (Klee), 31 Cupid, 64, 65, 68, 69 Curved Form (Orpheus) (Hepworth), 36, 88 D Daudet, Leon, 173; Les Bacchantes, 173 Dawn of Orpheus (Samples), 111, 145 Dead Sparrow, The (Marc), 7 Death and Fire (Klee), 138 Death instinct, 130, 133 Death of Orpheus 4 (Staley), 124, 174, 175 De gloria Atheniensium (Plutarch), xv Delacroix, Eugène, 9; Orpheus Bringing Civilization, 8, 75 Delaunay, Robert, 11, 13, 21, 22, 2324, 178; Windows, 24 Demeter, 64, 152, 153 Destruction of Messina (Beckmann), 55 Die träumenden Knaben (Kokoschka), 68 Dionysos, xvii, xviii, xix, xx, xxixxii, xxiii, 27, 129, 143, 168, 175 Dismemberment, xvii, xx, xxi, xxv, 134, 138, 163, 164, 168 Doctrine of immortality. See Immortality Doctrine of transmigration of souls. See Transmigration of souls Dufy, Raoul, 1215, 17, 1920, 21, 35, 57, 62, 65, 13435, 146, 178; Le Bestiaire ou cortège d'Orphée, first woodcut of Orpheus, 13, 14, 16, 76, 134; Le Bestiaire ou cortège d'Orphée, second woodcut of Orpheus, 13, 18, 77, 134, 139; Le Bestiaire ou cortège d'Orphée, third woodcut of Orpheus, 13, 19, 22, 78; Le Bestiaire ou cortège d'Orphée, fourth woodcut of Orpheus, 13, 20, 79; Le Bestiaire ou cortège d'Orphée, woodcut of a lyre, 36, 86 Duino Elegies (Rilke), 26, 29, 140, 157 Duino (Twombly), 140 Dying Rainer (Fragment) (Rainer), 176 E Early Modern Sculpture (Tucker), 3233 Eclogues (Virgil), 54, 58 Ecstasy in Black Fire (Orpheus) (Rainer), 125, 176 Ego ideal, 3, 10, 11, 13, 72, 150, 154, 155, 164, 165, 168 See also Superego Elegies (Rilke), 135, 155 Eliade, 54, 130, 143 Entseelung (Klee), 30 Eros, 132, 152 Euripides, xxi, 168. Hippolytus, xxi Eurydice, xvii, xxii, 39, 50, 5153, 5657, 6469, 72 Eurydice (Anouilh), 73, 154, 166 Eurydice Bitten by a Serpent Dying in the Arms of the Naiads (Picasso), 167 Eurydice Collapses While Leaving the Underworld, etching of (Kokoschka), 68, 106 Eurydice Waiting in a Garden, etching of (Kokoschka), 68, 104 Eurydikes Wiederkehr (Guthmann), 55, 62, 69
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Falcon, symbolism of, 145 Fantasies, 59, 65, 66, 72, 151 Fifty, Days at Ilium (Twombly), 159 First Man Was an Artist, The (Newman), 143 Frazer, James George, 129, 171; Golden Bough, 129, 171 Freud, Sigmund, 3, 53, 59, 130, 13233, 150, 164, 169; Interpretation of Dreams, The, 59, 169; Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of HIS Childhood, 58; Poet and Daydreaming, 59; Uncanny, The, 169 Funeral of Eurydice, The, lithograph in Johannes Guthmann, Eurydikes Wiederkehr (Beckmann), 56, 95 Furies, The, etching of (Kokoschka), 68, 105 G Garden for Orpheus, A (Klee), 29, 30, 109, 136, 137, 138, 139 Gea (Newman), 143 Georgics (Virgil, xviii, xx, 6, 61 Golden Bough (Frazer), 129, 171 Great Death Scene (Beckmann), 62 Guthmann, Johannes, 5557, 5859, 60, 6162, 72, 73, 153; Eurydikes Wiederkehr, 55, 62, 69 H Hades, 64, 65, 67, 69, 72, 129, 144 Hand (di Suvero), 113, 156 Harmonia, xix, 6, 23, 139, 140 Harpists, The (Lipchitz), 153 Harp Player, The (Lipchitz), 153 Henry, Pierre, 140; Le Voile d'Orphée, 140; Orphée (Henry and Bejart), 140 Henryson, Robert: Orpheus and Eurydice, xxii Hepworth, Barbara, xvi, 35, 3637; Curved Form (Orpheus), 36, 88; Orpheus (Maquette 1), 36; Orpheus (Maquette 2), 36; Theme on Electronics (Orpheus), 36, 87 Heracles, 134, 140 Hermes, 35, 36, 145, 146 Hermetica (Trismegistus), 15, 17 Herodotus, xix, xxi, 20, 131 Hippolytus (Euripides), xxi Homer: Iliad, 142 Homerica, xviii Homosexuality, xvii, xx, xxv, 58, 59, 148, 152, 164, 165, 170, 171 I Iliad, 142 Immortality, xix, xxv, 130, 131, 134, 139, 148, 162, 165, 166 In Orcus (Kokoschka), 68 Interpretation of Dreams, The (Freud), 59, 169 J Jouve, Pierre Jean, 143, 166, 174; Matière céleste, 166, 174, Sueur de Sang, 174 Joy of Life (Lipchitz), 155 Joy of Orpheus (Lipchitz), 40, 91, 153, 15455, 167 Jung, Carl, xxiv, 40, 71, 72, 145, 146, 174; Man and His Symbols, 145; Symbols of Transformation, 145 K Kandinsky Wassily, 22, 142; On the Spiritual of Art, 22 Klee, Paul, xvi, 2932, 178, 194nn.18, 22; Artist, The (PoetPainter), 31; Classical Garden, 136; Contact of Two Musicians, 31; Cosmic Composition, 137; Creative Credo, 31; Death and Fire, 138, Entseelung, 30; Garden for Orpheus, A, 29, 109, 13639; Magical Experiment, 31; Mystical Landscape with a Worm in the Ground, 137; Orpheus, 29, 30, 82; PoetDraughtsman, 31; Sie sinkt ins Grab, 137; Specter of a Genius, 31; Sultry Garden, The, 31, 83, 138; Tower in the Garden, 136 Kokoschka, Oskar, 54, 6469, 70, 72, 130, 15153, 168, 169, 170, 179; Die
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träumenden Knaben, 68; Eurydice Collapses While Leaving the Underworld, etching of, 68, 106; Eurydice Waiting in a Garden, etching of, 68, 104; Furies, The, etching of, 68, 105; In Orcus, 68; Mörder Hoffnungder Frauen, 65, 152; Orpheus and Eurydice, 64, 68, 107; Orpheus Beseeching Eurydice, etching of, 68, 104; Orpheus und Eurydike, 65, 151, 169; Power of Music, The, 68; Psyche Removes Cupids Blindfold, etching of, 69, 107; Sphinx und Strohmann, 65 Kushner, Robert, 5, 179; Orfeo, 111, 14649 L La Machine infernale (Cocteau), 166 Laws (Plato), xix Le Bestiaire ou cortège d'Orphée (Apollinaire), 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 21, 3536, 38, 133, 139, 165; first woodcut of Orpheus (Dufy), 13, 14, 16, 76, 134; second woodcut of Orpheus (Dufy), 13, 18, 77, 134, 139; third woodcut of Orpheus (Dufy), 13, 19, 22, 78; fourth woodcut of Orpheus (Dufy), 13, 20, 79; woodcut of a lyre (Dufy), 36, 86 Le Chanson du malaimé (Apollinaire), 133 Le Musicien de SaintMerry (Apollinaire), 21, 39 Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (Freud), 58 Leonardo da Vinci (Merezhovsky), 58 Le Pyrée (Apollinaire), 165 Les Bacchantes (Daudet), 173 Le Testament d'Orphée (Cocteau), 166 Le Voile d'Orphée (Henry), 140 L'Histoire de l'oeil, par Lord Auch (Bataille), 169 Libidinal impulses, 5, 59, 164 Light, symbolism of, 13, 14, 16, 21, 24, 138, 153 L'Imaginaire (Sartre), 53 Lipchitz, Jacques, xvi, 6, 35, 130, 166, 172, 175, 178, 179; Couple, The, 153, 155; Harpists, The, 155; Harp Player, The, 153; Joy of Life, 155; Joy of Orpheus, 40, 91, 15355, 167; Prometheus, 154; Rape of Europa, 154; Song of the Vowels, 40 Lippold, Richard, xvi, 4, 132, 179; Orpheus and Apollo, 4445, 94 L'Orfeo (Poliziano), xxii Lul de Faltenin (Apollinaire), 20, 21 Lyre, 3441 M Maenads, xvii, xxi, 168, 174, 179 Magical Experiment (Klee), 31 Mahler, Alma, 64, 65, 6668, 69, 151, 152, 179 Malden and Death (Munch), 62, 103 Mallarmé Stéphane, 4, 5, 6, 13, 21, 24, 209n.60 Man and His Symbols (Jung), 145 Marc, Franz, 5, 6, 711, 12, 19, 23, 26, 35, 60, 130, 138, 151, 178; Dead Sparrow, The, 7; Orpheus with the Animals, 7, 8, 75 Marcuse, Herbert, xxv, 6, 60, 154 Mars and Venus (Beckmann), 55 Marx, Karl, 67 Mask of Orpheus (Noguchi), 72, 108 Massacres (Masson), 171, 172, 173 Masson, André, 35, 17374, 178; Massacres, 171, 172, 173; Orpheus (1934), 123, 172; Orpheus (193435), 40, 122, 171, 175; Sleeper, 172 Matière céleste (Jouve), 166, 174 Matisse, Henri, 149 Memory, 131, 132, 166 Menard, Louis, 15, 16, 17 Merezhovsky, Dmitri Sergeyevich, 58; Leonardo da Vinci, 58 Metamorphoses (Ovid), xviii, xxi, 3, 149, 167 Metamorphosis, 134, 138, 151, 172, 179
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Milles, Carl, 44, 178, Orpheus Fountain, 41, 42, 92; Orpheus Fountain, preliminary study for, 43, 93 Misogyny, 170, 173, 179 Mörder Hoffnung der Frauen (Kokoschka), 65, 152 Moreau, Gustave, 11, 57, 65, 147, 149 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 13, 55, 68, 142 Munch, Edvard, 65; Maiden and Death, 62, 103 Musica, xvi Musique concrete, 140 Mystical Landscape with a Worm in the Ground (Klee), 137 N Narcissism, xxv, 164 Neuroticism, 3, 59, 72 Newman, Barnett, 5, 146; First Man Was an Artist, The, 143; Gea, 143; Slaying of Orpheus, 143; Song of Orpheus, 110, 14244 Nietzsche, Friedrich, xxiii, 9, 10, 28, 43, 59, 60, 65, 152, 155, 171, 175, 176; Birth of Tragedy, xxiii, 49, 152; On the Way of the Creating One, 155, 176, Thus Spake Zarathustra, 28, 43, 49, 60 Noguchi, Isamu, 54, 7073, 178, 179; Mask of Orpheus, 72, 108 Novalis, Friedrich, 5, 6, 9, 10, 19 Numbers, in painting, 139, 140 O Obelisk, symbolism of, 15, 16, 17 Oedipus, 67, 169 Offenbach, Jacques, 59, 168; Orphée aux Enfers, 59, 168 On the Soul (Aristotle), xix On the Spiritual in Art (Kandinsky), 22 On the Way of the Creating One (Nietzsche), 155, 176 Orfeo (Kushner), 111, 14649 Organic imagery, 129, 142, 143, 144, 152 Orphée (Ballanche), 15, 16 Orphée (Breton), 39, 90 Orphée (Cocteau, 1925), 165, 166 Orphée (Cocteau, 1949), 165 Orphée (Henry and Bejart), 140 Orphée aux Enfers (Offenbach), 59, 168 Orpheus. and ancient Orphism, xviixxiii; death of, 12931; in twentiethcentury art, xxiiixxv Orpheus (de Chavannes), 61, 102 Orpheus (Klee), 29, 30, 82 Orpheus (Masson, 1934), 123, 172 Orpheus (Masson, 193435), 40, 122, 171, 175 Orpheus (Twombly), 114, 115, 139, 158, 159 Orpheus (Zadkine), 37, 89 Orpheus and Apollo (Lippold), 4445, 94 Orpheus and Apollo (Schwabacher), 160, 162 Orpheus and Eurydice (Henryson), xxii Orpheus and Eurydice (Kokoschka), 68, 107 Orpheus and Eurydice I (Schwabacher), 117, 160, 161 Orpheus and Eurydice II (Schwabacher), 118, 160, 161 Orpheus and Eurydice in Hades (Rubens), 61, 102 Orpheus at the Seashore, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr (Beckmann), 61, 96 Orpheus Beseeching Eurydice, etching of (Kokoschka), 68, 104 Orpheus Bringing Civilization (Delacroix), 8, 75 Orpheus Departing from His Mother, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr (Beckmann), 56, 57, 58, 97 Orpheus Embracing Eurydice in the Un
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derworld, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr (Beckmann), 62, 99, 154 ''Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes'' (Rilke), 136 Orpheus Fountain (Milles), 41, 42, 92; preliminary study for, 43, 93 Orpheus in the Underworld Surrounded by Shadows, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr (Beckmann), 60, 98 Orpheus Killed by the Maenads, etching in Ovid, Les Métamorphoses (Picasso), 119, 167, 169; first state, 120, 168; second state, 121, 168 Orpheus Leads Eurydice through the Forest, etching of (Kokoschka), 68, 106 Orpheus (Maquette 1) (Hepworth), 36 Orpheus (Maquette 2) (Hepworth), 36 Orpheus Playing for the Animals (da Conegliano), 27, 81 Orpheus St Final Departure from His Mother, lithograph in Eurydikes Wiederkehr (Beckmann), 56, 57, 58, 100 Orpheus II (Tucker), 32, 33, 4445, 84 Orpheus und Eurydike (Kokoschka), 65, 151, 169 Orpheus with the Animals (Marc), 7, 8, 75 Orphic/Pythagorean concept, 30, 139, 140 Orphism, ancient, xviixxiii Osiris, 15 17, 129, 134, 143 Ovid, 3, 27, 50, 51, 53, 154, 167, 16970; Metamorphoses, xviii, xxi, 3, 149, 167 P Peinturepoésie, xvi Persephone, xvii, xviii, 64, 65, 129, 144, 15253 Phaedrus (Plato), xvi, xxi, 14, 50 Phoenixology, 16667, 176 Picasso, Pablo, 130, 161, 164, 17071, 173, 174, 179; Eurydice Bitten by a Serpent Dying in the Arms of the Naiads, 167; Orpheus Killed by the Maenads, etching in Ovid, Les Métamorphoses, 119, 167, 169; Orpheus Killed by the Maenads, first state, 120, 168; Orpheus Killed by the Maenads, second state, 121, 168; Woman with a Fan, 170; Young Girl Before a Mirror, 171 Pimander (Trismegistus), 14, 15 Plato, xvi, xviii, xix, xxi, 5, 9, 14, 17, 34, 35, 49, 50, 59, 66, 72, 149, 170; Laws, xix; Phaedrus, xvi, xxi, 14, 50; Republic, 170; Symposium, 5, 35, 49, 66; Timaeus, xxi Pleasure principle, 13233 Plow horse, symbolism of, 145 Plutarch, xv, 134; De gloria Atheniensium, xv Pluto, 71, 129 Poet and Daydreaming (Freud), 59 PoetDraughtsman (Klee), 31 Poetics (Aristotle), xv Poliziano, Angelo, xxii; L'Orfeo, xxii Pope, Alexander, 14142 Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire (de Chirico), 21, 80 Power of Music, The (Kokoschka), 68 Praise for Elohim Adonai (di Suvero), 156 Prometheus (Lipchitz), 154 Psyche, 64, 68, 69, 152 Psyche Removes Cupid's Blindfold, etching of (Kokoschka), 69, 107 Psychoanalysis, 67, 15960, 164 Pyramid, symbolism of, 16, 17 Pythagoreanism, xix, xx, 6, 15, 23, 131, 169 R Rainer, Arnulf, 130, 146, 167, 17577, 179; Dying Rainer (Fragment), 176; Ecstasy in Black Fire (Orpheus) 125,
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176; SelfBurial, 176; SelfPortrait as Dead Man, 176 Ram, symbolism of, 145, 146 Rand, Archie, 140, 167 Rape of Europa (Lipchitz), 154 Realité: peinture pure (Apollinaire), 23 Rebirth, 129, 131, 140, 145, 148, 153, 154, 158, 165, 166, 17475 Redon, Odilon, 11, 57, 65, 147 Regeneration, 142, 143 Regression, 130, 133, 136, 144, 145, 146 Renaissance, xv, xvi, xviii, xxii, 15, 17 Repression, 4, 5, 133 Republic (Plato), 170 Resurrection. See Rebirth Resurrection (Beckmann), 60, 62, 101 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, xvi Rilke, Rainer Maria, xxiixxiii, 5, 6, 2529, 132, 13536, 13738, 139, 140, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 165, 167; Duino Elegies, 26, 29, 140, 157; Elegies, 135, 155; "Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes", 136; Sonnets to Orpheus, 2526, 41, 43, 13536, 13738, 139, 140, 141, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161 Rimbaud, Arthur, 5, 19, 41 Romanticism, 5, 9, 56, 60 Rooster, symbolism of, 145 Rose, symbolism of, 138, 142 Rubens, Peter Paul: Orpheus and Eurydice in Hades, 61, 102 S Sacrifices les dieux qui meurent (Bataille), 171, 173 Samples, Bert, 14446, 162, 174; Dawn of Orpheus, 111, 145 Sartre, JeanPaul, xvi, 53, 172, L'Imaginaire, 53 Schwabacher, Ethel, 159, 164, 168, 170, 179; Collision of the Andrea Doria and Stockholm, The, or Che farò, 116, 162; Orpheus and Apollo, 160, 162. Orpheus and Eurydice I, 117, 160, 161; Orpheus and Eurydice II, 118, 160, 161 Sculpture, 32, 3641, 4245, 167 Seed, symbolism of, 142 SelfBurial (Rainer), 176 Selfconcept. See Selfesteem Selfesteem, xv, 34, 8, 10, 54, 61, 133, 150, 159, 161, 164 SelfPortrait, (Staley), 124, 175 SelfPortrait as Dead Man (Rainer), 176 SelfPortrait with Minna BeckmannTube (Beckmann), 61 Sexuality, xviii, xix, 133, 148 Sie sinkt ins Grab (Klee), 137 Simultaneism, 22, 23 Sinking of the Titanic, The (Beckmann), 55 Sirens, symbolism of, 20, 21 Slaying of Orpheus (Newman), 143 Sleeper (Masson), 172 Song of Orpheus (Newman), 110, 142, 143, 144 Song of the Vowels (Lipchitz), 40 Sonnets I. ix, illustration for sonnet 2 (Tucker), 3233, 85; illustration for sonnet 5 (Tucker), 33, 85; sonnet 1, illustration for Rainer Maria Rilke (Tucker), 33, 84 Sonnets to Orpheus (Rilke), 2526, 41, 43, 13536, 13738, 139, 140, 141, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, origins of, 2728; translations of, 3233 Specter of a Genius (Klee), 31 Sphinx und Strohmann (Kokoschka), 65 Staley, Earl: Death of Orpheus 4, 124, 174, 175, SelfPortrait, 124, 175; Triumph of Bacchus, 175 Sueur de Sang (Jouve), 174 Suicide, 130, 150, 151, 160, 165, 177 Sultry Garden, The (Klee), 31, 83, 138 Superego, 3, 11, 20, 57, 164 Surrealism, xvi, 39, 72, 166, 169, 170, 172, 173 Suvero, Mark di, 157, 179, Che farò
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senza Eurydice, 112, 156, 157, 158, 162; Hand 113, 156; Praise for Elohim Adonai, 156 Symbols of Transformation (Jung), 145 Symposium (Plato), 5, 35, 49, 66 T Teletai, xviii, xix, xxi Testament (Diatheke) of Orpheus, xxii Thanatos, 132, 152 Theme on Electronics (Orpheus) (Hepworth), 36, 87 Theologos, xviii, 19, 62 Thracians, xvii, xxiii, 161, 167, 170, 171, 172 Thus Spake Zarathustra (Nietzsche), 28, 43, 49, 60 Timaeus (Plato), xxi Titans, xviii, xix, 168 Tortoise, symbolism of, 145 Tortoise, The (Apollinaire), 3536 Tower in the Garden (Klee), 136 Transmigration of souls, xix, xx, 9, 131 Tree, symbolism of, 2728, 4041 Trinity, 16, 17 Trismegistus, Hermes, 15, 16, 17; Hermetica, 15, 17; Pimander, 14, 15 Triumph of Bacchus (Staley), 175 Tucker, William, 4, 35, 36, 156, 178; Early Modern Sculpture, 3233, Orpheus II, 32, 33, 4445, 84; Sonnets I. ix, illustration for sonnet 2, 3233, 85; Sonnets I: ix, illustration for sonnet 5, 33, 85; Sonnets I: ix, sonnet 1, illustration for Rainer Maria Rilke, 33, 84 Twombly, Cy, xvi, 13942, 172, 179; Achaeans in Battle, 159; Duino, 140; Fifty Days at Ilium, 159; Orpheus, 114, 115, 139, 158, 159; Veil of Orpheus, 40, 110, 139, 141 U Uncanny, The (Freud), 169 Unconscious, xxiv, xxv, 73, 130, 131, 133, 160, 164, 166, 169, 177 Ut pictura poesis, xv, xvi, 142 V Valery, Paul, 14, 15 Veil of Orpheus (Twombly), 110, 13940, 141 Vinci, Leonardo da, 24, 139, 140 Virgil, xviii, xx, xxiii, 6, 50, 5152, 53, 58, 61, 62, 142, 150, 153; Eclogues, 54, 58; Georgics, xviii, xx, 6, 61 W Walter, MarieThérèse, 168, 169, 170 Water, symbolism of, 198n.5 Windows (Delaunay), 24 Woman with a Fan (Picasso), 170 Words, in painting, 139, 141 World War I, 68, 136 World War II, 154, 173, 179 Y Young Girl Before a Mirror (Picasso), 171 Z Zadkine, Ossip, 35, 37, 140, 172, 178, Orpheus, 32, 89
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Judith E Bernstock is Assistant Professor of Art History at Cornell University, where she teaches modern and contemporary art. She is the author of Joan Mitchell, and articles on Robert Rauschenberg and the use of classical mythological themes in modern art. She has also written several articles on Italian and French Baroque art, specifically on the work of Gianlorenzo Bernini, Guercino, and Nicolas Poussin. In addition to her doctorate in art history she holds a master of fine arts degree in painting and drawing and has extensive professional experience as an artist.