orpheus critique essay

A Summary and Analysis of the Orpheus and Eurydice Myth

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

One of the great tragic love stories from Greek mythology, the tale of the musician Orpheus and his wife Eurydice features love, death, poetry, and the afterlife.

But as with the tale of Echo and Narcissus , this is a doomed love story made more famous through Roman writers (Ovid, Virgil) than Greek originals. Before we analyse the meaning of the Orpheus myth, it might be worth summarising the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Who was Orpheus?

Orpheus was a lyrist (a player of the lyre), singer, and poet. Thracian in origin, Orpheus is, in many ways, the archetype of the musician and poet in Greek mythology. He was said to live near Mount Olympus, and could often be found singing there. His singing was so beautiful that wild beasts would tamely follow him, seduced by the power of his song.

Indeed, so closely intertwined is Orpheus’ name with the tradition of lyric poetry (so named because it was originally sung to musical accompaniment courtesy of the lyre ), that a tradition later grew up that both Homer and Hesiod, the two greatest poets of ancient Greece, were descendants of Orpheus.

What is less well-known is that Orpheus was also one of the crew who accompanied Jason on his voyage to find the Golden Fleece : Orpheus was one of the fabled Argonauts.

What’s more, when the ship passed the island on which the Sirens sang and played their fatal melody, Orpheus sang loudly to drown out their song, to save Jason and the rest of the crew from running aground and becoming Siren-food, although one of the unfortunate Argonauts, Butes, did succumb and was whisked off by Aphrodite.

This story of Orpheus, however, is less well-known than the tragic love story involving his wife Eurydice.

Orpheus and Eurydice: summary

The lyrist Orpheus fell in love with the beautiful Eurydice, only for her to die shortly after; Orpheus made the journey into Hades, the Underworld, to try to bring his beloved back.

His wish was granted – but on the condition that he mustn’t look back at Eurydice as she followed him out of Hades, until they were both safely back in the land of the living. Orpheus couldn’t resist one quick glance … and Eurydice was lost to him forever.

This is the short version of the tale, but there’s a bit more to it than this. Eurydice was a nymph – a dryad, specifically (a nymph associated with the forests) who married Orpheus. One day, while she was out among the Thracian countryside, she was pursued by a shepherd, Aristaeus, who wanted her. As she fled from him, she stood on a serpent which reared up and bit her on the leg, killing her with its venom.

Orpheus grieved at the loss of the love of his life. But the one thing he had was his song, and so he went to the Underworld (or Hades, or, if you like, Hell) to beg for the return of Eurydice to the land of the living.

Orpheus used his lyre and his beautiful singing to charm the demons of the Underworld. His singing even charmed Hades, the god of the Underworld, and his wife (for half the year, anyway), Persephone, goddess of the Underworld.

Perhaps because Hades and Persephone knew, as husband and wife, what it was like to love someone, they were moved not only by Orpheus’ music but by his petition as well; they certainly agreed to his request, and allowed Eurydice to return with Orpheus to the land of the living. Orpheus’ song, and his perilous journey into the Underworld, were proof of his love and devotion to Eurydice.

However, Hades and Persephone imposed one condition: Orpheus was to lead the way out of the Underworld, with Eurydice following behind him – but on no account was Orpheus to turn back and look at his wife until they were clear of the Underworld and back in the world of the living.

Orpheus agreed, but as he was making his way back from the Underworld, he was gripped by a terrible doubt. What if Hades and Persephone had tricked him, and he was leaving his wife behind? What if she wasn’t behind him at all? Eventually – when he was not far from exiting the Underworld – Orpheus couldn’t resist any longer, and turned back to see his wife, Eurydice. He shouldn’t have doubted.

But in looking back, he had broken the one condition Hades and Persephone had laid down: not to glance back until they were both out of the Underworld. And so he had to watch in horror and despair as Eurydice was taken back down into the Underworld – all because he looked back at her. So, Eurydice died a second time – this time thanks to her husband.

Orpheus tried to return down into the Underworld to plead with the gods again, but he found the entrance to Hades barred – this time for good. Not even his song could gain him entry.

Orpheus and Eurydice: analysis

The Orpheus and Eurydice myth is often slightly simplified when told, and thus it loses some of its force and meaning. Why, when he has successfully negotiated the seemingly impossible – persuading the gods to bring his wife back from the dead – does Orpheus blow it all at the last moment by foolishly going against their instructions and looking back at Eurydice before they are safely back in the world of the living?

It’s often said that it’s devotion or love that is Orpheus’ downfall: he’s so desperate to take one quick, besotted glance back at his wife as she follows him out of the Underworld that he turns round and, in doing so, condemns her (back) to death.

But as the summary above reveals, it’s actually a far more understandable emotion that prompts Orpheus’ folly: doubt. Orpheus doubts whether his wife really is behind him on the return journey, and eventually this doubt eats away at him until he cannot resist turning back to check.

In many ways, his doubt is well-placed: the Greek gods and goddesses were not above tricking mankind. And Orpheus’ determination to bring his wife back from the dead was so great that he wanted to make sure he wasn’t leaving the Underworld without her.

After all, this is the Underworld we’re talking about: you can’t just pop back if you’ve forgotten something, like the supermarket.

So, in the last analysis, although his love for his wife played a part, Orpheus’ decision to turn and look back at his wife was born of a fear that if he did look back, his wife wouldn’t be there – and if that were the case, he didn’t want to return to life without her. Rather than curiosity or idle, naïve, love-stricken besottedness, the main emotion driving Orpheus was fear and doubt.

About Greek mythology

The Greek myths are over two thousand years old – and perhaps, in their earliest forms, much older – and yet many stories from Greek mythology, and phrases derived from those stories, are part of our everyday speech.

So we describe somebody’s weakness as their Achilles heel , or we talk about the dangers of opening up Pandora’s box . We describe a challenging undertaking as a Herculean task , and speak of somebody who enjoys great success as having the Midas touch .

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The Writing of Orpheus: Greek Myth in Cultural Context. Translated by Janet Lloyd

Radcliffe edmonds , bryn mawr college. [email protected].

Detienne’s Writing of Orpheus is not merely a translation of his 1989 L’écriture d’Orphée; it is a reworking of the earlier collection of essays with significantly different contents. Not only are there six new essays, but two of the essays from the French version are omitted. Even the essays that are in both versions are organized into different sections. Although many of the essays have therefore appeared in print in some form previously, this collection of exercises in the theory and practice of myth analysis by such a prominent proponent of structuralism provides an important contribution to the debates surrounding the interpretation of Greek mythology. Detienne performs his myth analysis in a set of dazzling virtuoso compositions, putting on display both the strengths and the problems of his method. Anyone with an interest in either the theory of myth interpretation or any of the particular mythic complexes D engages will find this a fascinating and provocative book.

Section I, “From Myth to Mythology” consists of four short essays on the themes of D’s earlier work, The Creation of Mythology. 1 In the first three essays, “The Genealogy of a Body of Thought,” “What the Greeks Called ‘Myth’,” and “Mythology, Writing, and Forms of Historicity,” D presents again in more condensed form the genealogy of the ideas of myth and mythology among both the ancient Greeks and modern scholars, although he brings in some new excursuses on particular figures, notably Thucydides and Lévi-Strauss, who received less attention in the larger work. The essay, “Le mythe, en plus ou en moins,” from the French version might have made a nice addition to this section, bringing in the contributions and problems from the Christian theologians who grappled with Scripture and myth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nevertheless, as an articulation of some of D’s perspectives on the history of mythology, these essays can serve as an introduction to the ideas in D’s important, influential, and difficult Creation of Mythology.

One of the essays from the fourth section, “The Double Writing of Mythology (between the Timaeus and the Critias )”, might have fit better in this first theoretical section, since D here theorizes on the place of writing in mythology. This essay seems to be D’s response to Brisson’s 1982 Platon: les mots et les mythes (translated into English as Plato the Mythmaker in 1999), which was written as a critique of D’s Invention de la Mythologie/Creation of Mythology. Although D does not respond directly to Brisson’s charges of “inexistentialism”, he does engage with Brisson’s more positive account of the nature of Greek myth, providing a salutary warning not to put as much trust as Brisson does in Plato’s account of the transmission of the Atlantis story as a transparent account of the way the mythic tradition worked.

In the final essay of the first section, “The Practice of Myth Analysis,” D launches a defense of the structural method of myth analysis against its recent critics and against other kinds of semiotic analyses that also look to Lévi-Strauss for inspiration. He argues that structuralist analysis does not merely reduce myths to “a small number of skeletal oppositions” (p. 30), but instead enriches the myths.

“Contrary to the perceptions of those who have neither practiced it nor understand it, the structural analysis of myths involves not only the myths themselves but also an understanding of the concrete circumstances of the relevant societies and experimentation with their intellectual structures, sometimes in a limited local context, sometimes in a wider one. The analyst needs to work using several levels of meaning; at each level, latent properties may be extracted from the domain under investigation that allow it to be compared to other domains” (p. 30).

D thus identifies the true object of myth analysis as the entire system of thought; the particular message of any given teller of myth is dismissed as dross to be stripped away, leaving exposed to the view of the analyst the “‘crystalline parts’ — that is, the parts that confer a more regular structure or ‘a greater symbolic meaning’ upon a traditional story” (p. 31).

D here articulates the theory he puts into practice in the other essays of the collection, and this theoretical section reveals both the strengths and the problems of his method. D emphasizes the richness of the mythic tradition and argues that the analyst must make use of a wide variety of evidence. Most importantly, D rejects the old idea that some products of the mythic tradition are somehow less authentic than others; all forms of expression can yield valuable information to the analyst. 2 On the other hand, the focus on the system rather than the particular text creates problems because, however coherent the Greek mythic tradition might be, there were nevertheless significant shifts over time and variation between places. When D claims that, “Mythology as a framework consists of a system of thought that is revealed, or rather reconstructed , by structural analysis” (p. 32), his correction of “revealed” to “reconstructed” points up the problem. Pulling together pieces from different places and time to create a coherent whole, an analyst can at best only construct a snapshot image of a fluid and dynamic system that will illuminate and enrich our understanding of the products of that mythic tradition. However, even if the analyst successfully isolates the ‘crystalline parts’ from the dross, the construction may not in fact reflect the state of the system at the particular place and time in which a given text was produced. At worst, the reconstruction may not correspond to the system at any point, creating distortions when the interpretations are applied to any text.

The second and third sections consist of essays on a variety of topics within the Greek mythic tradition. Four essays somewhat loosely gathered under the rubric of gender make up section II, entitled “Does Mythology Have a Sex?”. The first three, “The Danaids Among Themselves: Marriage Founded upon Violence”, “A Kitchen Garden for Women, or How to Engender on One’s Own”, and “Misogynous Hestia, or the City in Its Autonomy”, fit better under this rubric of gender than “Even Talk Is in Some Ways Divine”, although the personification of Talk as a goddess in the French title, “La Rumeur, elle aussi, est une déesse,” perhaps explains the grouping. Section III, “Between the Labyrinth and the Overturned Table” includes four essays with no real thematic grouping: “An Ephebe and an Olive Tree,” on the relations of Athens’ olive and its citizens; “The Crane and the Labyrinth,” on the twists and turns that recur in the Theseus myths; “The Finger of Orestes,” on bloodshed and purification; and “At Lycaon’s Table,” on sacrifice and social relations. These last two essays are new in the English edition, while the others in these two sections appeared in the French, along with another essay, “Puissance du jaillissement. A l’entour des Champs Phlégréens,” which is omitted without explanation from the English edition.

All of these essays demonstrate what D might call his “experiments in the field of polytheism,” 3 and they display D’s artistry and brilliance in his chosen medium. D is a master at weaving together ideas and setting up harmonious correspondences, and he plays with an amazingly wide range of sources — visual and textual, literary and philosophical, from archaic poetry to Byzantine scholia. The result is often illuminating, provoking fresh consideration of all the themes and ideas of the myths. One is left, however, to wonder how well these variegated and beautiful structures D cunningly reconstructs actually might apply to some of the texts he makes use of. Since the object of his inquiry is not the texts but the system, D might reject such a concern as irrelevant, but anyone whose objects of study are the particular texts would do well to take care and examine his enchanting reconstructions with caution.

For those interested in Orpheus and Orphism, the two essays on Orpheus in section IV, “Writing Mythology”, reveal some of the problems with D’s method. “An Inventive Writing, the Voice of Orpheus and the Games of Palamedes” examines Greek ideas of writing and writers through the mythic figures of Palamedes and Orpheus. In this essay, D defines Orphism as a particular approach to writing, for he notes that not only is the voice of Orpheus credited with great power, but the writing of Orpheus is also seen as potent. In “Orpheus Rewrites the City Gods,” D develops his construction of Orphism further, adding to the voice and writing of Orpheus two other components: the story of the life of Orpheus and the Orphic life of renunciation. D creates an elaborate image of Orpheus and Orphism in these essays, but his treatment of the evidence is often problematic, resulting in a deeply flawed reconstruction.

An example of D’s treatment of evidence may illustrate some of the problems. In discussing the relation of Orpheus, writing, and the Orphic life, D mentions a particular image. “An Etruscan mirror, now in Boston, depicts a box of books lying at the feet of an Orpheus surrounded by animals drawn out of their world of silence. The box contains a piece of writing entitled the Initiation and also a Telete designed to be recited or chanted, which recounts how the child Dionysus is lured by the Titans and then put to death in the course of a most horrible sacrifice” (p. 154). The image conveniently pulls together a number of separate themes in D’s study — the magical voice of Orpheus, the association of Orpheus with writing, and the association of Orpheus with ritual. Upon reflection, however, one is struck by the thought that there must be an enormous amount of detail on that mirror! D provides no citation for someone wishing to see the mirror; he merely asserts its contents and elaborates upon their meaning, weaving the themes together into his own writing on Orpheus.

The absence of citation is indeed a recurring problem throughout the essays in this collection; too often one has little choice but to accept D’s assertion of the existence of a piece of evidence and of its particular meaning. Although the essays in the second and third sections are fairly well documented, none of the essays in the first section has notes. “An Inventive Writing” is, as the author puts it, “unburdened by the references that will have to be supplied” when it is published as part of a larger work on writing. The reader is also spared the burden of any but minimal notes in “Orpheus Rewrites the City Gods.” Of course, the burden of tracking down casual references is left to the reader who wants to know more. With the help of an Etruscan expert, I managed to find the mirror D mentions, whose details differ significantly from D’s description. 4 In the first place, although the lyre-playing figure is unlabeled, the editors identify him as Apollo, who also often appears with animals, rather than as Orpheus. A box nearby does indeed seem to contain two scrolls, but there is no title on either of them. As for the contents of the writings, an initiatory ritual that involves reciting a myth of the Titans’ murder of the infant Dionysus in a perverted sacrifice, they are entirely a fabrication, something that could never have been depicted on a mirror, even by the most gifted of Etruscan artists.

Although a reasonable case could be made to identify the figure as Orpheus instead of Apollo (or even as Orpheus connected to Apollo by the iconography), the significance of the image changes if it is not actually Orpheus associated with the writings. If Orpheus is taken as the author of the writings, then Initiation is a possibility for a title, since there is indeed evidence for Teletai attributed to Orpheus. 5 However, many writings were attributed to Orpheus — accounts of the Argo’s voyage, cosmologies, hymns, incantations, oracles, treatises on the magical powers of stones and other substances. Orpheus depicted singing a hymn to Apollo for an audience of animals would not, however, make D’s connection between the voice of Orpheus and his rituals. Even were one to imagine that the scrolls did contain the instructions for a ritual, there is no reason to believe that the ritual contained a recitation of the myth of Dionysus Zagreus rather than purificatory formulas and prayers — unless, of course, one were trying to establish the connection with the Orphic rejection of blood sacrifice and belief in original sin. 6

These leaps of creative imagination, covering gaps in the evidence, may be found in all of D’s essays, even if not all are quite as inventive as the description of the mythic texts on the mirror. Some are more plausible than others; some have more evidence that could back them up, even if D does not actually cite it but all are persuasively presented in D’s artful and enchanting style. In the preface, D is careful not to claim too much authority for his reconstructions. “It seems to me to go without saying that the interpretations that I have suggested under the sign of Orpheus need to be checked out, reconsidered, and challenged from different perspectives” (p. xv). Nevertheless, there is always the danger that the unwary reader may be seduced into accepting D’s assertions about, e.g., “the Pythagorean tradition, a practice from which the Orphics liked to distance themselves” (p. 162) or “the Orphic tradition, which is consistently misogynous” (p. 164). Both of these claims generalize from a dubious interpretation of a few pieces of (uncited) evidence and put forth a misleading image of Orphism as a concrete religious sect with consistent doctrines, a path of déviance clearly separated from Dionysiac or Pythagorean traditions. 7 As he develops his ideas on Orphism in these two essays, moreover, D seems to have recreated the Orphics in his own image. “In the space of Orpheus and the writing of his disciples, the sole purpose of the eschatological vocation that prompts them to write is knowledge, real knowledge of the genesis of the gods and of the world, knowledge that extends to the extreme isolation of the individual” (p. 136). Just as scholars at the beginning of the last century imagined Orpheus and his followers as Protestant reformers, so now at the beginning of this century the Orphics can be imagined as existential deconstructionists, playing with polyphonic writing. Such an activity is far closer to what Detienne himself is doing in this collection of essays than what the author of the Derveni papyrus, who mentions making sacrifices and consulting oracles on behalf of his clients, was engaged in.

It may indeed perhaps be best to view D’s essays in his own terms, as the work of a bricoleur, a specialist learned in the lore of the mythic tradition, who, as he performs his art, creatively reworks the traditional material. Often he illuminates or brings fresh depth to familiar themes; sometimes he enriches them with obscure variants; and at times he innovates, weaving in his own ideas. D’s own Writing of Orpheus thus resembles his descriptions of the writing of Orpheus. D, as he himself says of Orpheus, “invites us to recognize that mythology as a framework of thought must be understood in its connection to polytheism and the system of relations that obtains among the various divine forces” (p. xi). So too, like the song of his Orpheus, D’s art “generates interpretations, gives rise to exegetic constructions that become or are an integral part of the … discourse. This is polyphonic writing, a book with several voices” (p. 135). D’s exegetic constructions in these essays will no doubt prompt further discourse on these topics, his harmonizations calling forth a chorus of responding voices. For the critical reader, there is much to be gained from these thought-provoking études, but one must be cautious not to be lulled by D’s artistry into a passive absorption of his performance, like animals at the feet of Orpheus.

1 . Detienne, Marcel, The Creation of Mythology, trans. Margaret Cook, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. First published as L’Invention de la mythologie (Paris, 1981).

2 . “There is no reason to imagine any deep cleavage between, on the one hand, ‘real’ myths that are bound to rituals deeply anchored in beliefs, and, on the other, stories that have become literary and seem no longer to have anything to do with the mythological tradition.” pp. xiii-xiv.

3 . See his “Experimenting in the Field of Polytheisms,” in Arion 7, no. 2 (1999), pp. 127-149, as well as his Apollon le couteau à la main (Paris, 1998).

4 . Corpus Speculorum Etruscorum , U.S.A. 2:14. The image also may be found in LIMC as Apollo/Aplu 88. Thanks to Jean Turfa for the guidance.

5 . Although Kern doubts it, “At num Orphei liber, cui T. titulus est, unquam extiterit, dubium est.” (Kern, Otto, Orphicorum Fragmenta, Berlin 1922, p. 315.) Orpheus was certainly credited with the invention of rituals, however, and the myth imagined by D could possibly have played a part in some of them. The blame for the separation of the titles “Initiation” and “Telete” into two separate works must be laid on the translator, since the French version correctly treats “Initiation” merely as a translation of the original Greek “Telete”.

6 . I have critiqued the idea of an Orphic doctrine of original sin and the way the evidence has been reconstructed for the myth of the murder of the infant Dionysus in my “Tearing Apart the Zagreus Myth: A Few Disparaging Remarks on Orphism and Original Sin,” Classical Antiquity 18.1 (1999), pp. 35-73.

7 . Detienne cites his “Les chemins de la déviance: orphisme, dionysisme et pythagorisme,” in Orfismo in Magna Grecia: Atti del quattordicesimo Convegno di Studi sulla Magna Grecia, Arte Tipografica: Napoli, 1975, pp. 49-79. Burkert, however, has shown that Orphism is better understood as a classification for a type of religious craftsman, and that a more useful metaphor for the relation between Orphism, Pythagoreanism, and Dionysiac religion is not one of separate parcels or paths but of interlocking circles in a Venn diagram. See Burkert, Walter, “Craft Versus Sect: The Problem of Orphics and Pythagoreans,” in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, vol. 3: Self-Definition in the Greco-Roman World, ed. Ben Meyer and E.P. Sanders, Fortress Press: Philadelphia, 1982, pp. 1-22, and Burkert, Walter, “Orphism and Bacchic Mysteries: New Evidence and Old Problems of Interpretation,” in Protocol for the Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture: Colloquy 28, 1977, pp. 1-10.

The Psychology of Orpheus: Why Do We Look Back?

The human experience of doubt provides some insight into the myth of orpheus..

Posted November 14, 2020 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

You know the song—it’s not Greek Mythology’s most popular track, but it’s definitely on the greatest-hits album. The singer Orpheus, son of the solar god Apollo, weds his beloved Eurydice. She dies. She dies young, too young, and Orpheus isn’t having it. So Orpheus descends into the underworld, charming the Stygian horrors that block his path using only his voice and lyre. Hades himself is so moved that he offers Orpheus an unheard-of deal: He may take his bride back to the land of the living, but only if he completes the journey without once looking back at her.

He tries. He really does. He almost makes it. But almost doesn’t count for much in the underworld.

The Orpheus myth is unusual because it lacks the defining narrative arc that drives Greek tragedy: a hero undone by his fatal flaw. Arrogant King Oedipus ignored the advice of the oracle and persisted in his investigation into his parentage. Hercules, the alpha bro originator of toxic masculinity, pissed off the wrong gods with his frat-house antics. But Orpheus lacks such an obvious tragic flaw. His fateful mistake, losing his faith and turning back, does not develop from what we are shown of his actions and character.

Without a clear canonical explanation, Orpheus’ motives must be supplied by the storyteller. Ovid's Metamorphoses , for instance, flatly states that Orpheus looked back simply because he was "[a]fraid she was no longer there, and eager to see her." Virgil's Georgics elaborates on this: “sudden madness seized the incautious lover, one to be forgiven, if the spirits knew how to forgive : he stopped, and forgetful, alas, on the edge of light, his will conquered he looked back, now, at his Eurydice.”

Plato's Symposium , on the other hand, condemns Orpheus as a coward for trying to cheat death instead of accepting its inevitability: He "showed no spirit ... did not dare like Alcestis to die for love, but was contriving how he might enter Hades alive; moreover, they afterwards caused him to suffer death at the hands of women, as the punishment of his cowardliness."

More recently, Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels depict Orpheus overcome by suspicion, who concludes he's been tricked by Hades and ultimately looks back in anger .

With so many varying interpretations, one wonders: Why did Orpheus really look back? And what, if anything, can we mortals learn from his tragedy?

It’s tempting to approach myth as a symbolic puzzle, an entry in our collective dream journal that can be analyzed and, ultimately, decoded. I'd like to avoid this. Myth endures because it is elusive, protean, protoconscious; reducing it to a particular pathology cheapens and demeans it. (Evidence: the tragic case of Oedipus and his German psychoanalyst .) Instead, I will attempt to consider the myth more broadly, not as allegory but as a narrative exploration of human experience.

The essentially human experience of doubt provides some insight into the myth of Orpheus. In Anaïs Mitchell's album Hadestown , later adapted into the Tony-winning 2019 musical, Orpheus' doubt isn't really a personal flaw, because doubt is inevitable, insidious, an instinctive acquiescence to the passage of time and entropic decay. "Doubt comes in / And strips the paint," sing the Fates, "Doubt comes in / And turns the wine."

Mitchell’s insights are supported by modern psychology. The human mind is made profoundly vulnerable during a long journey with an uncertain outcome. "Rethinking Rumination" by Susan Nolen-Hoeksema et. al charts the course from well-meaning reflection on one’s self and circumstances into total dysphoria: " Self-regulation theories (Carver & Scheier, 1998; Duval & Wicklund, 1972; Martin & Tesser, 1996; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987) argue that self-focused rumination is initiated by perceived discrepancies between one's current state or situation and a goal or desired state … [and] leads to negative affect when it involves perseverating on self-discrepancies." "When one is rendered powerless in any significant area of life," Gershen Kaufman writes in The Psychology of Shame , "one becomes susceptible to depression , hopeless, and, eventually, despair... If prolonged, powerlessness threatens one’s ability to sustain courage and hope. The combination of helplessness and hopelessness is psychologically toxic for the self."

An idle human mind, deprived of interesting or meaningful external engagement, will turn its formidable powers of analysis inward, questioning its own priorities, dismantling itself. The journey out of Hell is long, undertaken in silence and total darkness; the mind wanders.

But the very real psychological toll of a long journey in darkness does not explain why the character of Orpheus, specifically, makes this particular choice in response to his circumstances. Why, for example, doesn't Orpheus just lay down and give up? Or, possessed by the self-destructive resolve of the depressed, direct his frustration against his own perceived weakness and drive himself to the surface? How does Orpheus, in this state of total despondency and depletion, not only manage to invert the momentum of his journey—and overcome the inertia that must tempt him to surrender entirely—but purposefully choose the most effortful option and reverse his course of action?

The answer is that, in the human mind, "go forward" and "go back" do not exist independently of one another, but are intrinsically and inextricably connected. As infants, one of our very first tools for understanding the world is by identifying distinct objects as opposites. Niklas Törneke writes that "comparative relations often include a relation of opposition. For example, if something is heavier than something else, you might say that this implies a form of opposition: One object is heavy as opposed to the other object, which is light. This might indicate that the natural learning sequence involves learning the arbitrary relation of opposition before learning to put stimuli in a comparative relation" ( Learning RFT ). Our relational cognitive machinery demands that "for a verbally competent human being ... things are always related to their opposites, as well as to a number of other things." Up implies down; life implies death .

The command "I must not look back" encapsulates its own undoing; it is literally impossible to read that sentence aloud without simultaneously speaking its negative. Every time you repeat "I must not look back," you are forced to say: "look back."

So perhaps the fatal flaw of Orpheus is that, in accepting Hades’ offer, he refuses to accept the psychological cost of the undertaking. His journey so far, after all, has been a relatively easy one. For his entire life, Orpheus’ gift has proven devastatingly effective at persuading others; his voice charms Eurydice, Cerberus, Hades himself. But climbing out of the underworld, restless and uncertain, Orpheus is forced to negotiate with the one mind he cannot influence through song: his own. Alone with his thoughts, the great singer finds himself troubled by ideas he cannot simply dismiss with song. Orpheus cannot charm himself.

Why did Orpheus look back? You can ask Ovid or Plato or Vergil, or Gaiman, or Mitchell—but you’ll get a range of contradictory explanations. The only conclusive answer, of course, is “ask Orpheus”—but that immortal decapitated head has proven elusive as of late. Again, I don’t think it’s useful to look for definitive psychological explanations of ancient mythology. It’s not that you can’t, or you’re wrong for trying; it’s just not an approach I personally find helpful. I believe in a descriptive rather than a prescriptive approach, humbly observing how mortal storytellers and immortal stories exist in conversation with our everyday human concerns. The son of the god of light and reason still has wisdom to impart. The song persists.

Copyright Fletcher Wortmann, 2020.

You may also be interested in my columns exploring memes :

"Why Did I Think That? Your Internal Memes"

"Infohazard Warning: How Internal Memes Infect Your Brain"

"Internal Memes: Parasites and Predators of the Mind"

Gershen Kaufman, The Psychology of Shame: Theory and Treatment of Shame-Based Syndromes . Springer Publishing Co., New York, NY, 1989. p. 84.

Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Blair E. Wisco, and Sonja Lyubomirsky. “Rethinking Rumination.” Perspectives on Psychological Science , Vol 3, Issue 5, pp. 400—424.

Ovid, Metamorphoses Book X , trans. A. S. Kline. The Ovid Collection, University of Virginia, 2001. < https://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Ovhome.htm&gt ;. Accessed Sept. 25, 2020.

Anaïs Mitchell, “Doubt Comes In.” Hadestown , Brooklyn Recording Studio, NY, 2010.

Plato, Symposium , trans. B. Jowlet. Project Gutenberg, 2013. < http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1600/1600-h/1600-h.htm&gt ;. Accessed Sept. 25, 2020.

Niklas Törneke, Learning RFT: An Introduction to Relational Frame Theory and Its Clinical Application , Context Press, 2010. pp. 79, 135.

Virgil, Georgics Book IV , trans. A. S. Kline. Poetry In Translation, 2001. < https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/VirgilGeorgicsIV.php&gt ;. Accessed Sept. 25, 2020.

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Orpheus , ancient Greek legendary hero endowed with superhuman musical skills. He became the patron of a religious movement based on sacred writings said to be his own.

Traditionally, Orpheus was the son of a Muse (probably Calliope , the patron of epic poetry) and Oeagrus, a king of Thrace (other versions give Apollo ). According to some legends , Apollo gave Orpheus his first lyre . Orpheus’s singing and playing were so beautiful that animals and even trees and rocks moved about him in dance.

Orpheus joined the expedition of the Argonauts, saving them from the music of the Sirens by playing his own, more powerful music. On his return, he married Eurydice , who was soon killed by a snakebite. Overcome with grief, Orpheus ventured himself to the land of the dead to attempt to bring Eurydice back to life. With his singing and playing he charmed the ferryman Charon and the dog Cerberus , guardians of the River Styx . His music and grief so moved Hades , king of the underworld, that Orpheus was allowed to take Eurydice with him back to the world of life and light. Hades set one condition, however: upon leaving the land of death, both Orpheus and Eurydice were forbidden to look back. The couple climbed up toward the opening into the land of the living, and Orpheus, seeing the Sun again, turned back to share his delight with Eurydice. In that moment, she disappeared. A famous version of the story was related by Virgil in Georgics , Book IV.

Orpheus himself was later killed by the women of Thrace. The motive and manner of his death vary in different accounts, but the earliest known, that of Aeschylus , says that they were Maenads urged by Dionysus to tear him to pieces in a Bacchic orgy because he preferred the worship of the rival god Apollo. His head, still singing, with his lyre, floated to Lesbos , where an oracle of Orpheus was established. The head prophesied until the oracle became more famous than that of Apollo at Delphi, at which time Apollo himself bade the Orphic oracle stop. The dismembered limbs of Orpheus were gathered up and buried by the Muses. His lyre they had placed in the heavens as a constellation.

The story of Orpheus was transformed and provided with a happy ending in the medieval English romance of Sir Orfeo . The character of Orpheus appears in numerous works, including operas by Claudio Monteverdi ( Orfeo , 1607), Christoph Gluck ( Orfeo ed Euridice , 1762), and Jacques Offenbach ( Orpheus in the Underworld , 1858); Jean Cocteau’s drama (1926) and film (1949) Orphée ; and Brazilian director Marcel Camus’s film Black Orpheus (1959).

A mystery religion based on the teachings and songs of Orpheus is thought to have eventually arisen in ancient Greece, although no coherent description of such a religion can be constructed from historical evidence. Most scholars agree that by the 5th century bc there was at least an Orphic movement, with traveling priests who offered teaching and initiation, based on a body of legend and doctrine said to have been founded by Orpheus. Part of the Orphic ritual is thought to have involved the mimed or actual dismemberment of an individual representing the god Dionysus, who was then seen to be reborn. Orphic eschatology laid great stress on rewards and punishment after bodily death, the soul then being freed to achieve its true life.

The Orpheus Myth: A story that's always happening

2500 years later, the ancient love story of orpheus and eurydice still resonates.

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*This episode originally aired on October 14, 2021.

The myth of Orpheus is a love story, a ghost story, and a story about how art is made. This is how these old myths work: they never stop telling us what it means to be alive and human, even thousands of years later. 

"He was a reformer, he was a philosopher, he was a leader, a musician, a poet," said Alexander Batchvarov, whose family owns Villa Gela — a hotel in the Bulgarian village of Gela. The hotel is located in the Rhodope Mountains where according to the story, Orpheus once lived, known in the ancient world as Thrace.

"There are areas very close to our house where there are remnants of Thracian fortresses, fortifications, temples and sanctuaries," Batchvarov explained. These remnants go back as far as 5000 B.C. 

Don't look back

Orpheus was the son of Apollo and the muse Calliope. An accomplished musician, he played the lyre, a harp-like stringed instrument.

According to the story as Roman poet Ovid told it, in Metamorphoses, one day Eurydice, a young nymph, heard him play. They met and fell in love at once, and were soon married. But myths never end happily, at least not at first glance: the gods would see to it. Eurydice, while celebrating her love for Orpheus, danced in the fields, but was suddenly bitten by a venomous snake, and died. 

Orpheus was heartbroken. He refused to play his lyre. But the people of the village had an idea: find your way to the underworld, they told Orpheus, and play your lyre. The gods will be so charmed that they'll give you back your love, Eurydice. So he went to the mouth of a deep cave. 

"It is known as the Devil's Throat cave," Batchvarov told IDEAS . "The name comes from the fact that anything that the river brings in, does not come out." 

"He descends to the underworld, the abode of death, to retrieve her," said Allan Pero, an associate professor of Writing and English Studies at Western University in London, Ontario.

"He's granted his wish, but with one proviso: that he not look back upon her, as he leads her back into the world of light of life."

Spoiler alert: even the sons of gods are still only human, with all the baggage and hubris that entails. Given a prohibition, humans — we're reminded through stories and legends — will usually do what Lot's wife did when told not to look back at Sodom, or what Pandora did after she was told not to look into the box, or what Eve did with the forbidden fruit. 

An artist's gaze  

So on their way out of the underworld, Orpheus can't resist. He looks back, and loses Eurydice forever. 

"He can't help himself," said Ann Wroe, obituaries editor of The Economist, and author of Orpheus: The Song of Life. This fatal look, she says, "symbolizes the way the artist, when he's suddenly inspired, when he sees beauty, when something really speaks to him, he loses it when he tries to seize it." 

This is something the philosopher Maurice Blanchot has written about, in his essay The Gaze of Orpheus : the quest for art is a dark and mysterious — even dangerous — pursuit.

"There is no direct line to the masterpiece," said Pero. "If only there were, right?"

Artists can only look at their inspiration obliquely, never directly, or else they risk losing it altogether, the way Orpheus lost his love Eurydice by looking at her in the underworld, when he was told not to.

Ask any poet: the lines she has written down never quite match what she had in her head, not exactly. All art is a makeshift representation of its own idea, although some of it, say the music of Gluck or Monteverdi (who both wrote operas about Orpheus) come close.

Resurrection 

Another way of looking at the myth in our own time is to view the story as a creation of art, and how, in the end, whatever the artist brings back from the imagination, it's never quite perfect. It's never Eurydice. 

It's a familiar story, when you look for it in contemporary poetry and opera and film, including the films of Alfred Hitchcock, who was particularly interested in what happens in the dark, in the underworld, not as portrayed in haunted house stories, but in the darker corners of the mind. His triumph is Vertigo (1958), based on the novel D'entre Les Morts ( From Among the Dead ) by Boileau-Narcejac.

"Vertigo [starring James Stewart and Kim Novak] is about getting somebody back from the dead, or trying to get somebody back from the dead," said Steve Vineberg, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities at College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Massechusetts.

For Vineberg, the film embodies what he calls "the failed project of resurrection." In the film, the obsessed detective Scotty (Stewart), presses Judy (Novak) to look, sound and act like the missing Madeleine. This is a desperately flawed summary of a complex psychological thriller, but enough to say: he is Orpheus and she is Eurydice, and he cannot help himself from looking, even at the risk of death. 

As Ovid told it, the myth doesn't end well for Orpheus. Having lost Eurydice twice, he's abject, miserable and then, to add fatal insult to injury, is torn to shreds by the women of Thrace, who expected more music and less moping from the famous son of Apollo.

But his severed head goes on singing, as it floats down the river in which it's been thrown. And on certain nights in Bulgaria, it's been said, it can still be heard singing. There are also pink flowers at the mouth of Devil's Throat cave, native to the region, known as the Resurrection Plant, but also thought of locally as the Blood of Orpheus. Even after drought they always spring back to life.

"Again," says Batchvarov, "the theme of life, death, duality and continuity."  

Guests in this episode:

Alexander Batchvarov's family runs Villa Gella Hotel in Gela, Bulgaria. The hotel is located in the Rhodope Mountains, in what was once known as Thrace, the legendary birthplace of Orpheus. The villa isn't far from the Devil's Throat cave, once seen as a portal to the underworld, where Hades and Persephone dwell. 

Matthew Aucoin is the composer of The Orphic Moment, a  dramatic cantata for countertenor, and Eurydice , an opera opening at The Metropolitan Opera in November 2021. 

Monica Cyrino is a professor of Classics at the University of New Mexico. 

Ann Wroe  is an obituaries editor for The Economist, and the author of Orpheus: The Song of Life , published by Pimlico. 

Allan Pero  is an associate professor of Writing and English Studies at Western University in London, Ont. 

Armand D'Angour is a professor of Classics at the University of Oxford.

Callum Armstrong  is a musician who plays the aulos. 

A.S. Hamrah is a film critic for Baffler magazine.

Steve Vineberg is a Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities at College of the Holy Cross. 

Jane Cahill , University of Winnipeg Classics, retired. Along with analysis, Jane recited the story of Orpheus and Eurydice by heart.

Poem:  Eurydice by Carol Ann Duffy, from the collection The World's Wife , 1999. Faber and Faber. 

* Written and produced by Tom Jokinen.

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Orpheus: Through a Glass, Amorously

By Mark Polizzotti

Aug 30, 2011

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“I t is much less a film than it is myself,” Jean Cocteau wrote to a friend at the time he was making Orpheus (1950), “a kind of projection of the things that are important to me.” As with many of Cocteau’s programmatic statements, this one is both obvious—what filmmaker couldn’t say the same?—and deceptively slippery. In his various artistic pursuits, Cocteau made no secret, nor spared the use, of things that were important to him, to the point where his personal obsessions (the snowball fight, the handsome bully, the talking statue) have taken on a whiff of the ridiculous. In this regard, Orpheus stands as one of the great exceptions in Cocteau’s oeuvre, a summa in which he managed to take time-trodden elements, from the legend on which it is based to the auteur-director’s well-rehearsed private mythologies (the poet, the mirror), and recombine them into something both unabashedly idiosyncratic and widely accessible. It is fitting that a work so preoccupied with mirrors and reflections should send back the image not only of its maker but, more than any of Cocteau’s other films, of its viewer as well.

The Orpheus myth, as every schoolchild knows, speaks of a troubadour so gifted that he could charm men and beasts with his song. When Death steals his wife, Eurydice, Orpheus ventures into Hades to win her back. There, his artistry sways the netherworld denizens into releasing her, on one condition: Orpheus must not gaze on his beloved until they are back in the land of the living, on pain of losing her forever. Unable to resist, the poet looks behind him, Eurydice vanishes into the shadows, and the grief-stricken Orpheus is torn limb from limb by the Furies.

As with several other modern adaptations, most famously Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus (1959), Cocteau transplants the ancient poet into a contemporary setting without so much as a by-your-leave. Where he departs from tradition is in shifting the emotional center of the myth. In his telling, Eurydice is not so much the love of the poet’s life and loins as (in her own estimation) a “very ordinary” domestic companion, fraternally cared for, sometimes barely tolerated. Played by Marie Déa, who had starred as the pure-hearted Anne in Marcel Carné’s 1942 classic Les visiteurs du soir (another role in which guilelessness must contend with the supernatural), she is the cliché of the celebrity’s wife, a figurine in a toy marriage.

The crux of the drama for Cocteau lies in the relationship between Orpheus and Death itself. Cocteau’s ars poetica revolves around a dialectic of rot and renewal in which the poet must depart the mortal coil and pass into the “beyond” of true inspiration, then return to spread the word. As an artist who experimented with numerous forms and styles (novels, poems, plays, memoirs, drawings, paintings, films), Cocteau had undergone more than his share of these deaths and rebirths in an endless quest for creative transfiguration. In his career as a film director—notable mainly for the Orphic Trilogy of The Blood of a Poet (1930), Orpheus (his most acclaimed cinematic work, which took the International Film Critics Award at the 1950 Venice Film Festival), and its sequel, Testament of Orpheus (1959)—he often brought the theme front and center; the whole of The Blood of a Poet was in fact built around it. But whereas in the earlier work this theme was “played with one finger,” as Cocteau wrote, in Orpheus, he “orches­trated” it. And not only orchestrated but gave it a distinctly erotic edge.

In Orpheus, Death is figured as an imperious woman (the princess), played by the Spanish-born Maria Casarès. It is hard to imagine more apt casting: fiercely emotive, intelligent, and politically committed, Casarès enjoyed a mystique stemming from her theatrical work during the war, as well as from her offstage involvement in the Resistance and her storied affair with Albert Camus. By 1949, when Orpheus was filmed, she had under her belt lead roles in Carné’s Children of Paradise and Robert Bresson’s Les dames du bois de Boulogne (both 1945). Her ability to project an alluring mix of severity and passion, to “burn like ice,” as Orpheus emotes, is central to her command of the scene, and to our grasp of the poet’s fatal attraction. As for Orpheus himself, Cocteau cast his onetime protégé and, it was widely known, ex-lover in the title role, having already directed him in Beauty and the Beast (1946), L’aigle à deux têtes, and Les parents terribles (both 1948) and scripted his lines in L’éternel retour (Jean Delannoy, 1943). Charismatic, classically handsome, frequently high-strung, Jean Marais was already something of a matinee idol—more on the strength, one suspects, of his Nordic good looks than his acting chops. Nonetheless, his heightened, melodramatic style (his scenes with Eurydice are as drama-queeny as the highlighted pompadour he sports throughout) somehow fits with the image of the poet that Cocteau is out to present: self-absorbed, oblivious to others, attuned to a reality that hovers above the daily mire of “baby clothes and bills.”

The casting of the leads was more apposite than most viewers realized: Ten years younger than Déa, who was thirty-seven at the time, Casarès was well on her way to becoming, as one newspaper put it, “the most outstanding French tragic actress of her generation.” The fact that she was both an emotional rival on-screen and a professional one offscreen adds an extra shading of pathos to Eurydice’s confused anguish. Marais, meanwhile, had recently been replaced in Cocteau’s not so private life by Edouard Dermithe, who appears in the role of Jacques Cégeste (himself inspired by the poet Raymond Radiguet, whose premature death a quarter century earlier still haunted Cocteau). The upstaging of the waning idol Orpheus by the hot young Cégeste (“He’s eighteen years old and adored by all”) mirrors this extracurricular standing—most economically conveyed by the contemptuous snort the drunken Cégeste gives Orpheus shortly before Death’s flunkies whisk him away.

Cocteau conceived of his films as poetry on celluloid, putting such traditional cinematic tools as plot and mise-en-scène in the service of a dense, absorbing overall atmosphere. In a classic poetic move, Orpheus achieves this effect partly by combining unsettling avant-garde tropes with accessible imagery. Such motifs as the poetry-spouting car radio, the princess’s motorcycle henchmen, and the shabby grandeur of the Zone (the no-man’s-land between life and death, shot in the ruins of the bombed-out Saint-Cyr military academy) at once derive from our everyday world and stand outside of it. And there are other touches throughout, disorienting but immediately graspable: the negative landscape outside the car window; Casarès’s black gown suddenly blazing white in her moments of fury; the fluid juxtaposition of disparate Parisian sites when Orpheus chases the princess all over town (literally). “The closer you get to a mystery, the more important it is to be realistic. Radios in cars, coded messages, shortwave signals, and power cuts are all familiar to everybody and allow me to keep my feet on the ground,” Cocteau wrote in 1950. He also noted that Cégeste’s cryptic radio messages were based on coded broadcasts from England during the occupation (and admitted poaching the phrase “The bird sings with its fingers” from the poet Apollinaire—a touch of plagiarism that neatly mirrors the accusation leveled against Orpheus by Cégeste’s friends). Moreover, anyone who’d been subjected to a French Communist Party inquest—notably, the postwar purges of “collaborationist” intellectuals, which Cocteau himself had narrowly avoided—could easily identify the obtuse judges and makeshift courtroom of the underworld tribunal, while Heurtebise’s self-defense (“I was her aide”) smacks, four short years after the fact, uncomfortably of Nuremberg. Pauline Kael once noted how Cocteau in this film “uses emblems and images” of recent European history “and merges them with other, more primitive images of fear.”

Like poetry as well, the film expresses a number of personal conceits—the most resonant of these being the artist’s despair over public incomprehension, evident in the contentious dynamic between Orpheus and the younger generation. A facile inventor with a keen desire for acceptance, Cocteau was the darling of the cautiously adventurous beau monde but the bane of the harder-core experimentalists—the surrealists chief among them—who reviled him as an artistic fashion plate, a Jean-of-no-trades who aped whatever was trendy and had long since become yesterday’s news. It doesn’t take much imagination to substitute Cocteau’s own conversations for the dialogue between Orpheus and a café doyen at the start of the film, or to hear echoes of his private fears when Orpheus complains that his “life had begun to pass its peak . . . stinking of success and of death.” Nor is it surprising that Cocteau would identify with both Orpheus, the master enchanter, and that other great symbol of death and resurrection Jesus Christ, one more oracle crucified by a vengeful, fickle audience. (Cocteau’s first adaptation of Orpheus, a theater piece from 1926, had in fact begun as a play about Joseph and Mary, until he decided that “the inexplicable birth of poems would replace that of the Divine Child.”) It may be pure coincidence that Christ, Cocteau, and Cégeste all share a monogram, but it’s an intriguing coincidence nonetheless.

As Cocteau wittingly or instinctively knew, there is a voluptuousness to martyrdom. The figure of Jesus nailed to the cross, the image of Orpheus being savaged by a horde of frenzied women, are not only powerful and enduring emotional symbols but also potent sexual motifs. Admittedly, in the film, Orpheus’s death is much less spectacular than in the original story, more a street brawl gone wrong than an epic orgy of violence, but the encounters between the poet and his Death (his mirror, his twin) are unmistakably erotic.

Erotic and, at the same time, sweetly romantic, for at its heart Orpheus is a classic story of doomed passion. When, in the end, the princess pays the price for returning Orpheus to the world of the living, the film reconnects with outsize tales of love and self-sacrifice, from Tristan and Isolde to Romeo and Juliet to The Matrix —not to mention the Western world’s ur-myth, the story of Christ’s self-abnegation so that humanity might be granted eternal life. “The Death of a poet must sacrifice itself to make him immortal,” Cocteau intones in voice-over. Here, Death, in a final bid to save her beloved, willingly embraces the ultimate punishment, erasure even from the afterlife. The poet, meanwhile, awakes from the nightmare of his underworld quest into a fantasy of domestic bliss. This denouement is the least convincing and most blatantly artificial part of the film, for we know that Orpheus, for all his billings and cooings to Eurydice, is still in love with the princess. Though the memory of this love may have been wiped clean, in the recesses of his creative unconscious, he will continue, as he says, to speak of Death, sing of her.

Perhaps one has to be in love to truly make sense of this film; perhaps one has to be in that wondrous and all-too-fleeting suspension of emotional remove, when nothing is too corny and “no excess is absurd.” When I first saw Orpheus as a teenager, in the wake of a dramatic separation, I immediately understood it as a film about unrequited longing, about love lost and henceforth unattainable. The sorrow of that parting abated long ago, but the sense of yearning remains in all its universality, ever and unexpectedly renewable. It is this aspect, which transcends gender and time, artistic fashion and self-conscious artifice, that preserves the freshness of Orpheus and its emotional impact. Without entirely knowing why, the poet will continue to sing of Death, to seek her out, until the day he goes to his own eternity—and even then he will not find her.

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Orpheus and Eurydice review: a bold reimagining through circus and opera

Paul Eliadis Chair of Classics and Ancient History Deputy Head of School, The University of Queensland

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Orpheus and Eurydice, directed by Yaron Lifschitz, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

The story of Orpheus’ descent into the underworld to retrieve his beloved Eurydice has fascinated people for centuries.

Plato wasn’t a fan . He thought Orpheus took the easy way out. He reasoned if Orpheus really wanted to be with Eurydice, he should have just killed himself and joined her in death forever. Descending into the underworld, so he could recover his wife and still enjoy an earthly existence, showed only half-hearted devotion. He saw it as a case of Orpheus wanting to have his cake and eat it too.

It was the Roman poet Ovid who made this tale into the romantic story we know today . In his version, the god of love refuses to let Orpheus reconcile himself to the death of his wife and inspires him to make the journey to the underworld. Orpheus charms the rulers of the underworld and their attendant Furies with his passionate song. They weep tears for his loss, and allow him to take Eurydice back into the sunlight.

Read more: Guide to the classics: Ovid's Metamorphoses and reading rape

The only proviso was the famous interdiction: Orpheus must never look back as he undertakes the treacherous climb to the mortal realm. Despite this warning, overcome by his passion and fearful he might lose his beloved, Orpheus makes the fatal mistake of turning to look at his wife. In doing so he loses her for eternity.

On many levels, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice doesn’t make sense. Why throw away at the last minute everything you’ve struggled so hard to get? The composer Offenbach memorably thought the story fundamentally absurd and lampooned it in his comic opera Orpheus in the Underworld, an opera best known these days for giving us the music of the can-can.

Offenbach’s is just one of dozens of operas based on the Greek myth. But the most enduring is by 18th century composer Christoph Willibald Gluck.

An exploration of tragedy

Underpinned by Ovid’s version of the story, Gluck’s opera is on now in Brisbane in a radical reinvention by Opera Queensland and Circa. It is raw, physical, and confronting.

Gluck is famous for adding a happy ending to Ovid’s tale. In his opera, the goddess of Love is so moved by Orpheus’ despair at his double loss she violates the laws of Hell and reunites him with Eurydice at the end.

This production resists such moments of unadulterated joy. This version is interested in exploring the tragedy implicit in this story. Is this myth about the power of love or the triumph of death? This production argues it is both.

The opera may be called Orpheus and Eurydice, but this opera is no two-hander. The dramatic centre of the opera is the figure of Orpheus, played with intense vulnerability, passion and desperation by British countertenor, Owen Willetts.

This concentrated focus on the figure of Orpheus is reinforced in this production by the decision to set the opera in a stark, bare asylum. At times, there is nothing on stage but white walls and Orpheus’ anguish.

Orpheus’ descent into Hell is envisaged as a descent into madness. Staging the opera as a form of psychodrama permits a clever casting move in allowing Circa artistic director Yaron Lifschitz to combine the roles of Love and Eurydice. This creates a much more substantial female role that serves to balance Orpheus. The twin roles are sung by a highly assured Natalie Christie Peluso.

Orpheus and Eurydice is not an opera traditionally associated with powerful physicality, so the decision to pair opera singers with circus performers is an interesting one. On the whole it is a successful partnership, but at times the novelty of the acrobatics threatens to draw attention away from the singing and the drama.

It is hard to lament for the death of Eurydice when you also want to applaud the triple somersault you’ve just caught out of the corner of your eye. The vibrant athleticism of the circus performers also has a tendency to show up the chorus. As they roll, tumble, leapfrog, and pirouette on stage, the circus troupe makes the largely static chorus look decidedly flat-footed.

Yet, as the opera progresses, the value of the collaboration begins to show itself. Watching Orpheus and Eurydice physically clamber up the bodies of the acrobats and stumble as they take each precarious step – balancing on shoulders, heads and outstretched arms – powerfully evokes the physical demands of descending into the underworld.

The final act in which chorus, principals and circus performers combine to stage the twin triumph of love and death, is a remarkable piece of performance. Completely captivating and deeply moving.

Lifschitz and his production team should be applauded for attempting to take this story seriously. In situating this opera between the opposing poles of love and death, they have produced a cerebral drama that invites us to reflect on what it means to be mortal.

Orpheus and Eurydice plays until November 9

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Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus: Philosophical and Critical Perspectives

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Rilke’s “Sonnets to Orpheus”: Philosophical and Critical Perspectives sheds new light on the philosophical significance of Rilke’s late masterpiece The Sonnets to Orpheus (1923), which Rilke wrote during an intensive period of inspiration in the winter of 1922. While the Duino Elegies (completed during the same period) have historically received more critical and philosophical attention than the Sonnets , this volume serves to remedy the relative neglect and illustrates the unique character and importance of the Sonnets as well as their significant connections to the Elegies . The volume features eight essays by philosophers, literary critics, and Rilke scholars, which explore a number of the central themes and motifs of the Sonnets as well as the significance of their formal qualities. An introductory essay (coauthored by the editors) situates the book in the context of philosophical poetics, the reception of Rilke as a philosophical poet, and the place of the Sonnets in Rilke’s oeuvre. The book’s premise is that an interdisciplinary approach to poetry, and more specifically to Rilke’s Sonnets , can facilitate crucial insights with the potential to expand the horizons of philosophy and criticism. The wide-ranging essays elucidate the relevance of the Sonnets to phenomenology and existentialism, hermeneutics and philosophy of language, philosophical poetics, philosophy of mythology, metaphysics, modernist aesthetics, feminism, ecocriticism, animal ethics, and philosophy of technology.

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Orpheus in the Underworld

Essays on music and its mediation.

Theodor W. Adorno

300 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2024

The German List

Music: General Music

View all books from Seagull Books

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending

Analysis of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 15, 2020 • ( 0 )

Orpheus Descending (1957) is set in Two Rivers County, Mississippi. The action takes place in the Torrance Mercantile Store, owned and run by Jabe and Lady Torrance. It is a two-story building with the store in the lower portion and the Torrance living quarters upstairs.

The time is late afternoon in late winter or early spring. Dog Hamma and Pee Wee Binnings are in the confectionery, playing pinball. Their wives, Dolly Hamma and Beulah Binnings, set up a buffet table in the store. Dolly and Beulah discuss the severity of Jabe Torrance’s illness. Beulah gossips (and directly addresses the audience) about Lady’s father, Papa Romano, who was a bootlegger during Prohibition. He owned a clandestine wine garden where lovers drank and made love during the dark summer nights. Beulah nostalgically recalls frequenting the wine garden, but she also remembers the night the Ku Klux Klan burned it down because Papa Romano also served African-American clientele. After the Klan set fire to the garden, the fire department refused to put out the flames. Papa Romano burned to death trying to fight the fire single-handedly. Beulah also relates the story of Lady’s wild courtship with David Cutrere. She was devastated when he left her to marry a “society girl,” and that is when she married Jabe, never knowing that he helped start the fire that destroyed the wine garden and killed her father.

Act 1, Scene 1

Carol Cutrere enters the store through the confectionery. She carries a gun and a pint of bourbon. Dolly and Beulah and two townswomen, Eva and Sister Temple, are scandalized by Carol’s presence. Carol’s brother, David, has paid her to stay away from Two Rivers County, and Carol is preparing for her departure. She helps herself to the store’s cash box and several bullet cartridges for her gun. The Conjure Man (Uncle Pleasant) enters. Carol asks to hear his Choctaw cry, and when the loud sound subsides, Valentine Xavier, a handsome young stranger, enters with Vee Talbot. Val is a musician who was passing through town when his car broke down, and Vee is a townsperson who paints her religious “visions.” Carol is immediately drawn to Val; she asks him for a date, but he ignores her offer. Carol recognizes Val from a nightclub in New Orleans; however, he adamantly denies that they were previously introduced.

Lady enters with Jabe, who has just been released from the hospital. He has undergone experimental surgery to remedy cancer. The townswomen converge on him with feigned joy and mock tears. Jabe immediately goes to bed. The women flock around Lady seeking details of Jabe’s impending death. Lady escapes upstairs while the women gossip about the “death sweat” on Jabe. Vee attacks Dolly and Beulah for being corrupt, hosting drinking parties, and playing cards on Sundays. Dolly responds by calling Vee a “professional hypocrite.” Carol tells Val about how she acquired a bad reputation by using her inheritance money on projects for the African-American population. She is forced to leave the store when the gossipers turn their attention to her.

Act 1, Scene 2

A few hours pass, and Val returns to the store in the hope of securing a job. Lady descends the stairs to find him in her store. She asks about his background, and Val asks her nationality. She tells him the story of her immigrant father and the wine garden. Val says that his most prized possession is his guitar. Signed by many famous people, it is the only thing important to him. Lady entertains the idea of hiring Val by quizzing him about shoe sales. Val and Lady have a lengthy exchange about the human condition: People are bought and sold as are cattle, and one is either the buyer or the bought. Lady gives Val money to have dinner at the diner and tells him to report to work the next morning.

Act 2, Scene 1

Several weeks later Lady receives a complaint from a female customer, who claims that Val “got familiar” with her. Lady confronts him, and he decides to quit. She begs him to stay because she has not yet had the chance to get to know him. Val believes no one ever truly knows another person. He talks about his severe loneliness, growing up in the solitary world of Witches Bayou. He was abandoned and forced to care of himself. When he finally made contact with another human being, a young beautiful woman, he thought he had found the meaning of life; however, after he made love to her, he became bored and ran away.

Beulah, Dolly, and a Woman rush into the store to telephone David. Carol is causing a scene after being denied service at the Red Crown Service Station. Beulah urges Lady to refuse to serve Carol if she enters the store. Dolly phones Mr. Dubinsky at the pharmacy, advising him to refuse to serve her as well. In the meantime, Carol has entered the store, and she overhears Dolly’s instructions. Wild-eyed and feverish, Carol sits down while Lady tries to help her. Beulah, Dolly, and the Woman whisper in the background. When Lady realizes that David is on his way to collect his sister, she angrily announces that she will not allow him in her store. Beulah happily gossips that David was Lady’s lover. Lady forces Dolly, Beulah, and the Woman to leave. Carol says she has arrived to deliver a private message to Val. Lady obliges her request for privacy, but she warns Carol that she will have to leave “like a shot from a pistol” when David arrives.

Carol expresses her need for affection to Val. She is wild with passion to touch him. Val responds by exclaiming that she is too fragile: She could not withstand a man’s body on top of her. Carol recognizes the Rolex watch Val is wearing as her cousin’s. Val confesses that he stole the watch, and that at that moment he decided to stop running with the wild nightclub crowd. He advises her to clean up her life as well. Carol warns Val that he is in danger if he remains in Two Rivers County. Carol’s brother arrives in his blue Cadillac, and Lady shouts for Carol, who has collapsed in tears at the table inside the confectionery. David enters, grabs his sister, and walks toward the door. Sharply, Lady orders David to wait. She asks Val for privacy while David tells Carol to wait in the car.

Lady reminds David that he is not welcome in the store. For the first time, she bitterly confesses that she was pregnant with his child the summer he left her to marry a rich, well-established young woman. She admits she had an abortion, and her heart was removed as well. This was also the summer Lady’s father died in a raging fire that consumed the wine garden. She says that they have both been bought and sold in marriage, and he is to blame for their mutually unhappy lives. Lady proudly declares that she was the best thing that ever happened to him. Stunned, David walks toward the door, admitting that she is right. Lady reiterates that under no circumstance is he to enter her store again.

Act 2, Scene 2

Several hours later and at sunset, Vee Talbot takes a painting to the store for Jabe. She discusses her art and her visions with Val. Her husband, Sheriff Talbot, catches Val kissing Vee’s hand, and he becomes suspicious.

Act 2, Scene 3

Val plays his guitar while he and Lady converse about the day’s explosive events: his encounter with Carol and her encounter with David. The sound of chain-gang dogs chasing a convict is heard, and one gunshot is fired. Lady does not want Val to leave, so she offers to let him use the store’s back room as living quarters. While she fetches linens from upstairs, Val takes money from the cash box and leaves with his guitar.

Imogen Stubbs as Lady Torrance/Jonathan Keenan

Act 2, Scene 4

Later that night, Val returns to the store and replaces the money from a large wad of cash. Lady walks down the stairs, accusing him of stealing. He explains that he took less than the amount she owes him and he was very lucky at blackjack. Lady says she left the money in the cash box to test Val’s integrity. Val accuses her of wanting him as her “stud.” Lady vehemently denies any sexual interest in Val but pleads, “No, no, don’t go . . . I need you!!! To live. . . . To go on living!!!” Val exits to the back room, and Lady follows.

Act 3, Scene 1

It is early morning, the Saturday before Easter and the opening of the Torrance confectionery. Lady rushes down the stairs to warn Val that Jabe is about to inspect the inventory. Val frantically dresses as Jabe does not know that Val lives with them. Accompanied by Nurse Porter, Jabe meets Val and peruses the new confectionery. With its trees, arbors, and lights, it reminds Jabe of the “Wop’s” wine garden he burned down. Lady is traumatized by the information that she married the man who killed her father. A Clown enters announcing the gala opening. The Nurse rushes to call Dr. Buchanan as Jabe has started to hemorrhage.

Act 3, Scene 2

At sunset, Vee Talbott enters the store dazed and fumbling. She has experienced a vision of her “Savior” and has been struck blind by the brilliance of his blazing eyes. Val places a compress to soothe her eyes, but at his touch, she is struck again with the eyes of Christ. Violently she falls to her knees, wrapping her arms around his legs. Sheriff Talbott rushes in to apprehend Vee, but she clings to Val. The Sheriff and his posse attack Val for accosting Vee. He demands that Val leave Two Rivers County by sunrise the following morning.

Act 3, Scene 3

Half an hour later, Dolly, Beulah, Eva, and Sister gather in the store to discuss Jabe’s sudden turn for the worse and Lady’s indifferent absence. Lady returns from the beauty salon ready for the gala opening of the confectionery. Carol Cutrere enters looking for Val, followed by the Conjure Man. Dolly and Beulah run out of the store in fear. Dog and Pee Wee remove the Conjure Man from the store. When Val enters, Lady asks him to wear a white waiter’s jacket for the opening, as a means of reinventing the wine garden while Jabe is alive. Val puts on his snakeskin jacket. He has returned to tell Lady that he loves her and will wait for her at the edge of the county. She does not want to leave until Jabe dies, but he has to escape Sheriff Talbot. Nurse Porter argues with Lady, and Lady admits that she is pregnant with Val’s baby. The Nurse leaves to report this news. Fearing for Val’s life, Lady urges him to leave; she will follow him. Now that he knows she is carrying his child, Val refuses to leave her behind.

Jabe descends the stairs with a revolver. Lady shields Val as Jabe fires the gun and shoots her twice. Jabe then runs out of the store calling for help and claiming that Val shot Lady and robbed the store. Lady dies in the confectionery. As Val tries to escape through the confectionery, Sheriff Talbott’s posse rushes into the store. Val is caught (the action happens offstage), and grabbing a blowtorch from the store’s shelf, the posse directs its flames toward Val and the confectionery. Screams are heard, and finally Carol and the Conjure Man enter from the confectionery. The Conjure Man finds Val’s snakeskin jacket and gives it to Carol. Sheriff Talbot tries to prevent Carol from leaving the store. She brushes past him triumphantly, wearing Val’s snakeskin jacket.

Orpheus Descending is a revision of Williams’s earlier, first professionally produced work, Battle of Angels . Over a period of 17 years Williams revised this tale of sexual liberation and repression in abigoted rural Southern town. Although much of the play remains the same, this version of the events in Two Rivers County is significantly pared down and the drama is more focused. The most significant alteration is the shift in the principal female character. Myra Torrance transforms from a “retiring Southern housewife” (Brustein, 25) into Lady Torrance, passionate daughter of an Italian immigrant. This change adds dimension to Lady’s isolation and otherness and heightens the sense that she is caught between the “bright angels of sexual freedom and the dark angels of Southern repression” (Brustein, 25). As is Val, she is an outcast in a strange land. She is here more clearly a Eurydicean figure in need of a liberating Orpheus.

In Battle , there is no wine garden, and Myra allows herself to be taken advantage of by the townswomen. Carol Cutrere was Cassandra Whiteside in Battle of Angels , where Williams focuses on her wealth and her mythological namesake. Carol retains Cassandra-like qualities: She prophesies disaster to Val, who ignores her warnings.

Williams cleverly uses the Orpheus myth to depict the South of the 1950s. He changes Val from a poet to a musician, following the story of the ancient lyre player who could charm the gods with his performance. Orpheus’s beloved Eurydice dies of a snakebite soon after their wedding. He is so brokenhearted that he pursues her in the underworld. His lyre playing is so entrancing that Hades and Persephone release Eurydice on the condition that Orpheus not look back at Eurydice until they have left the underworld. Nearing the end of their journey back to the world above, Orpheus accidentally turns and faces his wife. In that moment, she dies a second time. Orpheus withdraws to the mountains, where he lives as a recluse for three years. He shuns the love of women. Bacchic women discover Orpheus in the woods. Enraged by his rejection of women, they tear his body to shreds in their trance.

As does Orpheus, Val encounters death in the character of Jabe, as he holds the key to release Lady from her death/marriage. Orpheus journeys through the underworld for the chance to regain Eurydice, and he makes a simple mistake that costs him everything. Val’s descent is his entrance into the world of this volatile town, which ostracizes prophets and ridicules mystics. Nurse Porter serves as a catalyst similar to the serpent that bit Eurydice: Without her, Lady and Val could have escaped without harm. Lady is ultimately lost in the underworld of the Torrance Mercantile Store, and Val suffers a hideous, violent death in the name of love. He is destroyed by the mob of townspeople who function as the Bacchic women in the Orpheus myth.

Binnings, Beulah

Beulah is one of a collection of gossiping, spiteful townswomen who frequent Jabe and Lady Torrance’s store. She is married to Pee Wee Binnings and is Dolly Hamma’s best friend.

Binnings, Pee Wee

Pee Wee is a local townsman in Two Rivers County, Mississippi. He is married to Beulah Binnings and is a member of Sheriff Talbot’s posse.

He is hired by Lady Torrance to announce the gala opening of her confectionery.

Conjure Man

He is an old African-American man who sells magic charms and serves as a supernatural force in the play. Also known as Uncle Pleasant, the Conjure Man is a reworking of the character the Conjure Man in the play Battle of Angels .

Cutrere, Carol

She is the daughter of the oldest, wealthiest, and most distinguished family in the Delta. Described as “an odd, fugitive beauty,” Carol is a reckless, eccentric aristocrat. Although she has been banned from the town of Two Rivers County, she returns to warn Valentine Xavier that he is in danger. She is a reworking of the character Cassandra Whiteside in the play Battle of Angels.

Cutrere, David

He is Carol Cutrere’s brother and Lady Torrance’s former lover. David abandoned Lady to marry a wealthy socialite. He encounters Lady for the first time in several years when he arrives to collect Carol at the Torrance Mercantile Store. David learns that Lady was pregnant with his child the summer he abandoned her.

Dubinsky, Mr.

Mr. Dubinsky is the pharmacist in Two Rivers County. He takes Lady Torrance sleeping pills in the middle of the night after she phones him.

Hamma, Dolly

Dolly is Dog Hamma’s wife. She is one of the gossiping, spiteful townswomen in Two Rivers County. This gaggle of women includes Vee Talbot, Eva, Sister Temple, and her best friend, Beulah Binnings.

Dog is a member of Sheriff Talbot’s posse and is married to Dolly Hamma. He is a reworking of the character Pee Wee Bland in the play Battle of Angels .

Nurse Porter

Nurse Porter cares for the dying Jabe Torrance in his convalescence after unsuccessful surgery. She is shocked by what she perceives as cold indifference from Jabe’s wife, Lady Torrance. Nurse Porter suspects that Lady is having an affair with the Torrances’ handsome shop clerk, Valentine Xavier. She confirms that Lady has become pregnant, informs Jabe, and serves as the catalyst for the violent ending of the play.

Talbot, Sheriff

Sheriff Talbot is married to Vee Talbot and is a close associate of Jabe Torrance’s. He attacks the Torrances’ shop clerk Valentine Xavier and accuses him of accosting his wife. He is a revision of the character Sheriff Talbot in the play Battle of Angels .

Talbot, Vee

Vee is the tormented wife of Sheriff Talbot. She is a member of a group of gossiping townswomen who frequent Jabe and Lady Torrance’s store. Vee is quite unlike the other women in her circle as she is a passionate painter of some local renown. Vee Talbot is a reworking of the character Vee Talbot in the play Battle of Angels .

Temple, Eva

Eva is Jabe Torrance’s cousin and Sister Temple’s sister. Eva and Sister are two of a group of gossiping, spiteful townswomen who frequent Jabe and Lady Torrance’s store.

Temple, Sister

Sister is Jabe Torrance’s cousin and Eva Temple’s sister. Sister and Eva are two of a collection of gossiping, spiteful townswomen who frequent Jabe and Lady Torrance’s store.

Torrance, Jabe

Jabe is married to Lady and is the owner of the Torrance Mercantile Store in Two Rivers County, Mississippi. A mean and spiteful man, Jabe led the Klu Klux Klan on a raid of Lady’s father’s wine garden. Lady’s father died in the fires they set that night. Jabe is dying of cancer.

Torrance, Lady

An elegant Italian woman, Lady is a troubled beauty who has suffered tragic events in her past. She witnessed the death of her father during a Ku Klux Klan raid when she was a teenager. Unknowingly, she marries the wretched man, Jabe Torrance, who instigated the raid. Lady finds life, passion, and release with her lover, Valentine Xavier. Her character is a reworking of the character Myra Torrance in the play Battle of Angels .

Uncle Pleasant

Uncle Pleasant is an elderly African-American man who sells magic charms and tokens. He is also known as the Conjure Man. Woman She is one of a collection of gossiping, spiteful townswomen in Two Rivers County. She heads the crusade to ostracize Carol Cutrere.

Xavier, Valentine

Val is a handsome young guitar player who drifts into Two Rivers County, Mississippi. Vee Talbot helps him find a job in the Torrance Mercantile Store, which is owned by Jabe and Lady Torrance. The presence of this sexy young stranger creates an uproar in the small repressed community. Val has an affair with Lady, who becomes pregnant. Val is a reworking of the character Valentine Xavier in the play Battle of Angels .

FURTHER READING

Brown, Dennis. Shoptalk: Conversations about Theatre and Film with Twelve Writers, One Producer—and Tennessee Williams’s Mother. New York: Newmarket Press, 1992. Brustein, Robert. “Robert Brustein on Theatre: Orpheus Condescending.” The New Republic, 30 October 1998, 25–27. Wallace, Jack E. “The Image of Theatre in Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending.” Modern Drama 27, no. 3 (September 1984): 324–353.

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Tags: American Literature , Analysis of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending , Bibliography of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending , Character Study of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending , Criticism of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending , Essays of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending , Literary Criticism , Notes of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending , Orpheus Descending , Orpheus Descending Analysis , Orpheus Descending Critical Reading , Orpheus Descending Criticism , Orpheus Descending Essay , Orpheus Descending Guide , Orpheus Descending Lecture , Orpheus Descending PDF , Orpheus Descending Summary , Orpheus Descending Themes , Plot of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending , Simple Analysis of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending , Study Guides of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending , Summary of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending , Synopsis of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending , Tennessee Williams , Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending , Theatre Studies , Themes of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending

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Archaeological Review from Cambridge Issue 40.1 – Call for Papers

By hguellar

On August 13, 2024

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Call for Papers: ARC 40.1

The Archaeological Review from Cambridge is pleased to invite submissions for their next issue (40.1), exploring the role of food in ritual and religious contexts – specifically in the offering of food and commensality with gods and ancestors. This volume brings together global perspectives for a comparative view on the current status of research in the realm of food, gods and ancestors.

Please see the attached Call for Papers for more details. Potential contributors are encouraged to register interest by submitting an abstract of up to 250 words or by contacting the editors directly to discuss their ideas before August 31st 2024  ( foodgodsandancestor [email protected] ).  

They welcome contributions from researchers at any stage of their academic career and from all related disciplines. Papers for accepted abstracts of no more than 4000 words should be submitted by 15th November 2024 for publication in May 2025. 

The Archaeological Review from Cambridge (ARC) is a full peer-reviewed biannual academic journal of archaeology. It is managed and published on a non-profit, voluntary basis by postgraduate researchers in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. Rooted primarily in archaeological theory and practice, ARC invites a wide range of perspectives aiming at interdisciplinary research of interest to those engaged in a variety of fields. All papers are published Open Access. Further information on the Archaeological Review from Cambridge, including submission guidelines, may be found at  http://arc.soc.srcf.net

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Announcing the NeurIPS 2024 Workshops

Communications Chairs 2024 2024 Conference

by Adil Salim, Bo Han, Manuel Gomez Rodriguez, and Rose Yu

We are excited to announce the list of NeurIPS 2024 workshops! We received 204 total submissions — a significant increase from last year. From this great batch of submissions, we have accepted 56 workshops that will take place on Dec. 14 & 15. 

Given the exceptional quality of submissions this year, we wish we could have accepted many more, but we could not due to logistical constraints. We want to thank everyone who put in tremendous effort in submitting a workshop proposal.

Review Process

We continue to use OpenReview as our submission platform this year, which is aligned with other NeurIPS submission tracks due to the success of OpenReview in matching reviewers well to proposals. Additional details about the selection process are provided below.

The requested items for the proposals have not changed much this year. We kept the length of the main proposal limited to three pages and the organizer information limited to two pages, along with unlimited references. We specifically let reviewers know that they need not read beyond those pages. With respect to last year, we have further increased the reviewer pool. We sent out over 418 invitations and managed to recruit 189 reviewers. This resulted in at least two reviews per proposal for (almost) all 204 proposals. We thank all the reviewers for their timely and professional efforts to provide quality reviews that greatly assisted our decision-making and facilitated an exciting and well-informed workshop program this year.

Selection Process

In making our selections, we asked the reviewers to closely follow our Guidance for Workshop Proposals , which was also shared with the proposal authors. Workshop proposals must be reviewed somewhat differently from academic papers, and hence we asked the reviewers to consider both scientific merits and broader impacts in their assessments. We recognize that workshop reviews might be somewhat more subjective than academic paper reviews. To offer feedback to the proposal authors, we have decided to release the review comments.

Individual evaluations of proposals by reviewers were important for the decision process, but they were not the only considerations in the decision process. For example, we also strived for a good balance between research areas, and between applications and theory. As interest across a variety of  research areas is not uniform, some areas were more competitive than others. For example, there were many strong proposals surrounding large language models this year and we could not accept all. We attempted some balance of topics to cover both mainstream and emerging topics.

The next step is your contributions! Several workshops have begun soliciting submissions, many using our suggested submission date of Aug 30, 2024. We typically let each workshop advertise its own call for papers (if they plan to include workshop papers). We will communicate with the workshop organizers some additional deadlines to facilitate the successful planning of 56 exciting workshops. Stay tuned for more technical and contextual information coming soon!

NeurIPS 2024 Accepted Workshops

On to the best part: the preliminary list of accepted workshops for 2024!

• Intrinsically Motivated Open-ended Learning (IMOL)
• ML with New Compute Paradigms
• Federated Foundation Models
• Foundation Model Interventions
• Bayesian Decision-making and Uncertainty: from probabilistic and spatiotemporal modeling to sequential experiment design
• Open-World Agents: Synergizing Reasoning and Decision-Making in Open and Interactive Environments
• Audio Imagination: AI-Driven Speech, Music, and Sound Generation
• Foundation Models for Science: Progress, Opportunities, and Challenges
• AI for New Drug Modalities
• Statistical Frontiers in LLMs and Foundation Models
• Machine Learning in Structural Biology
• Table Representation and Generative Learning 
• Data-driven and Differentiable Simulations, Surrogates, and Solvers
• Mathematical Reasoning and AI
• Red Teaming GenAI: What Can We Learn from Adversaries?
• Advancements In Medical Foundation Models: Explainability, Robustness, Security, and Beyond
• Causality and Large Models
• Large Foundation Models for Educational Assessment
• Machine Learning and Compression
• Machine Learning for Systems
• Scientific Methods for Understanding Neural Networks: Discovering, Validating, and Falsifying Theories of Deep Learning with Experiments
• Pluralistic Alignment
• Responsibly Building Next Generation of Multimodal Foundation Models
• Touch Processing: From Data to Knowledge
• GenAI for Health: Potential, Trust and Policy Compliance
• Symmetry and Geometry in Neural Representations
• Mathematics of Modern Machine Learning
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How China Built Tech Prowess: Chemistry Classes and Research Labs

Stressing science education, China is outpacing other countries in research fields like battery chemistry, crucial to its lead in electric vehicles.

By Keith Bradsher

Reporting from Changsha, Beijing and Fuzhou, China

China’s domination of electric cars, which is threatening to start a trade war, was born decades ago in university laboratories in Texas, when researchers discovered how to make batteries with minerals that were abundant and cheap.

Companies from China have recently built on those early discoveries, figuring out how to make the batteries hold a powerful charge and endure more than a decade of daily recharges. They are inexpensively and reliably manufacturing vast numbers of these batteries, producing most of the world’s electric cars and many other clean energy systems.

Batteries are just one example of how China is catching up with — or passing — advanced industrial democracies in its technological and manufacturing sophistication. It is achieving many breakthroughs in a long list of sectors, from pharmaceuticals to drones to high-efficiency solar panels.

Beijing’s challenge to the technological leadership that the United States has held since World War II is evidenced in China’s classrooms and corporate budgets, as well as in directives from the highest levels of the Communist Party.

A considerably larger share of Chinese students major in science, math and engineering than students in other big countries do. That share is rising further, even as overall higher education enrollment has increased more than tenfold since 2000.

Spending on research and development has surged, tripling in the past decade and moving China into second place after the United States. Researchers in China lead the world in publishing widely cited papers in 52 of 64 critical technologies, recent calculations by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute reveal.

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