I think everyone who took a Classics course once or twice in university has a pet peeve about the modern reception of some myths. Most, the majority, have been misinterpreted or ripped from context. Which is normal, every generation reinvents a myth for a new application or purpose. But the one I can’t let go of, the one I personally need to destroy is that of Orpheus. Every instagram, pinterest or tumblr post about how Orpheus was simply ‘human’ and we all would have looked back are completely missing the point of the myth and what it says about our modern conception of love - and fear.
Orpheus did not look back out of love, he looked back out of fear.
I’ll die on this hill because I’ve been Orpheus and I’ve been Eurydice. And when I was Orpheus I was scared, and when I was Eurydice I was disappointed.
Orpheus was a figure in Greek mythology and was a legendary musician and poet, he travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in their pursuit of the golden fleece. But we all know Orpheus from his descent to the Hades to save his wife, Eurydice - and how famously, he could return with her under one condition: he was not allowed to look back. But he did, and Eurydice was lost to the underworld forever.
Although Orpheus was a figure of Greek mythology, our most well known retelling of his story comes from the Latin poets. He features in Vergil’s Georgics and Ovid’s Metamorphosis, and becomes our blueprint for telling the story going forward (I think, don’t hate me).
The original tumblr post by user tbosas posted “Jan 17” goes as following:
‘“If I was orpheus i would simply not turn around” yes you would. If you were orpheus and you loved eurydice, you would. To love someone is to turn around. To love someone is to look at them. Whichever version of the myth - he hears her stumble, he can’t hear her at all, he thinks he’s been tricked - her turns around because he loves her. That;s why it’s a tragedy. Because he loves her enough to save her. Because he loves her so much he can’t save. Because he will always, always turn around. “If i was orpheus i would simply --” you wouldn’t be orpheus. You wouldn’t be brave enough to walk into the underworld and save the person you love. Be serious.’
Honestly, I would not have a problem with this if it was about anyone other than Orpheus. Greek myth is full of tragic figures, but Orpheus is not a tragic hero. By our modern conception and our modern media, this take is completely valid. You don’t love someone if you’re not willing to sacrifice everything for them, you don’t love someone if you’re not consumed by them completely. It is our modern creation of love as the other half - love as a destination that will complete us. It is perpetuated by romance novels and rom-coms and dramas. But it is not a Greek tragedy, it is consumption, it is loss of self in the other and arguably, that is not always love. And in this case, Orpheus is more overwhelmed by his fear - than his love.
Stay with me, this take is not brand new, it is in fact, ancient. Plato himself says Orpheus was a coward, not a hero, in the Symposium:
“But Orpheus, son of Oeagrus, they sent back with failure from Hades, showing him only a wraith of the woman for whom he came; her real self they would not bestow, for he was accounted to have gone upon a coward's quest, too like the minstrel that he was, and to have lacked the spirit to die as Alcestis did for the sake of love, when he contrived the means of entering Hades alive (179d).”
Plato derides Orpheus for not having the courage to enter Hades honestly, and instead attempted to cheat death. Orpheus is compared with Alcestis, the daughter of King Pelias, and wife of Admetus who voluntarily took her husband’s place in Hades. Plato notes that after having cheated his way into Hades, Orpheus couldn’t even be victorious in returning with his wife - he still failed. To understand this better, we have to understand that to not look back was not simply a trick set by Persephone but an ancient precept that appears in other texts and stories.
The gesture of looking back exists not only in Orpheus’ stories but can find an interesting parallel with Lot’s wife in the Bible - famously while escaping the destruction of Sodom, she looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt (Genesis, 19). My favourite description of the event comes from Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five:
“And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.”
Vonnegut finds himself in line with tbosas, that yes, of course we would look back - it is human to look back. And I wholeheartedly agree with that, but I disagree that in the stories of Lot and Orpheus that is the point. The texts are not prescribing for our humanity, our innate fear, our innate love, these texts are prescribing against it. Orpheus and Lot are warnings, examples we are not meant to follow.
There is evidence (and you are going to have to trust me) that gestures of looking back, gestures of moving forward without regret, are part of ancient prescriptions for living life fully - it was apparently part of ancient witchcraft, to complete a spell or ritual ‘don’t look back’ or avert your gaze. It does appear again in the bible in Luke 9:62: “No one who puts his hand to plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” - it was about having courage to go forward, to change, to become new. Some scholars (again, trust me) speculate that in the early years of christianity it was meant to encourage those embarking on journeys to spread the word of the lord, to cross countries and vast distances, to leave their homes and not look back or hesitate.
I think our modern interpretation of Orpheus is inline with our modern ideas of love - definitely, our Twilight generation of love. When I read Twilight, at 12, I longed for a love like Edward and Bella’s. All consuming, it was about life or death. Bella would not live without Edward, Edward would not live without Bella. Edward had lived for years, waiting for Bella and Bella would want someone she could not have even imagined before she met him. But reader, we’re not 12 anymore and Edward and Bella were not in love; they were consumed by each other. A love that disregards your own life, that disregards your love for your loved ones (where platonic and other interpersonal relationships pale in comparison) is not love. It is our western fantasy of true and complete acceptance, of annihilation and entropy. To be loved so deeply we dissolve. That nothing else matters - not sickness, not death, not injustice, not inequality.
To quote Erich Fromm in the Art of Loving:
“Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty.”
Love that ignores our larger place in the world, our bigger connections, is not love - it is ego. And it is convenient for our Western Capitalist society (here I go) to be obsessed with a love that disregards equality and justice; we’re all too busy, obsessed with being consumed to know that love is between all of us. Between those suffering injustice, those suffering discrimination. Fromm’s idea of love aligns with the Jesus in the New Testament - as love as something we offer everyone, including ourselves. That love is meant to transform and uplift, not destroy.
So when we say, of course Orpheus would look back. Of course you’d look back if you were Orpheus, we ascribe to a love that is based on fear and loss. It’s love based on scarcity; if I lose this, if I lose this person, who will love me? Who will support me? Who will understand me? Not realizing we are interconnected organisms related to every other living thing. Held and supported by organisms we’ll never fully comprehend. I think you can be scared in love and still not look back. I think you cannot look back and you are still deeply in love and deeply consumed. I think love is more like air than a rare mineral, that we need to hoard and fear losing. I think we all lose something now and then that tells us death will eventually take everything we care about, and that rightfully scares us. No, it doesn’t make sense. Existence isn’t big on reasons.
But, we should not fear death - we should not fear loss. Our love isn’t doomed to be lost, we shouldn’t fear loving things, knowing eventually they’ll leave (leave us or leave into death). If Orpheus had mastered that, he wouldn’t have looked back - but Orpheus, like Lot, is human. And like I said in the beginning I’ve been Orpheus. I’ve been scared to lose - I’ve been consumed with fear. And I’ve looked back countless times, but as an Orpheus, I think we should take into mind the purpose of the text. The purpose of Lot. Which is to ascribe bravery. To tell us that even though we are human and fearful, we can hope for better and try for better. Ancient stories often acted as tales of what not to do, what not to be - not fates written in stone. They didn’t say well this is just what humanity is like - they said no, you can be better.
And like I said, I’ve been Eurydice - condemned by fear back into the depths of the underworld. Oh, to have a lover like Aclestis, who does not fear death - who only knows love. That is what Plato is saying when he calls Orpheus a coward. Also, lacking in our modern reception of Orpheus is Orpheus’ death. Orpheus dies, dismembered by followers of Dionysus for betraying Dionysus in favour of Helios. That is a different story for a different time, but it is interesting to note that Dionysiac cults were also strongly associated with the afterlife and having a good life in Hades and closely associated with cults of Persephone (Queen of Hades, who gave Orpheus his terms of ‘Don’t look back’). So Orpheus turned away from death to light - perhaps still in fear, perhaps in hope, still met a tragic end.
Bremmer, Jan N. Greek religion and culture, the Bible, and the ancient Near East. Vol. 8. Brill, 2008.
Lee, Yen-Fen. "Ovid Rewriting Virgil: Two Versions of" Orpheus and Eurydice"." 外國語文研究 7 (2008): 129-150.
Vergil, Georgics 4.453-527: Orpheus and Eurydice Translated by A. S. Kline
ovid metamorphoses 10 1-85
ovid metamorphoses 11 1-66
