A Review by Fr. Richard Cipolla
This review of David Lane’s The Tragedy of Orpheus and the Maenads, a play in five acts, was written by this writer as a response to Mr. Lane’s kind invitation to do so. What could have been the result of only sense of obligation became, in my reading of this work, a source of delight. And for that I am grateful to David Lane.
It so happened that my reading of this play was interrupted by a good friend’s strong request that I read something he found compelling and insisted that I read it at once. That book was C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces. I must confess that I have always had mixed feelings about Lewis” works, with the important exception of the Narnia series, which I hold in high regard. Till We have Faces is a retelling of the Cupid-Psyche myth from a singular viewpoint, that of Psyche’s much older sister whose most important attribute is the physical ugliness of her face and her tragic blindness to the meaning of Love I must admit that Lewis’ singular retelling of that myth is indeed striking and points to a Christian understanding of Beauty.
David Lane’s play is a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. But it does not center on the most famous part of the myth that has inspired Western literature, art and music for centuries, namely, Eurydice’s untimely death and Orpheus’ travels to the Underworld to bring her back to the land of the living. Mr. Lane retells the end of the story, namely Orpheus’ death at the hands of the Maenads. As Lewis does in his above mentioned work, Lane adds to Ovid’s account of this event a visit by Dionysus to the Underworld, in this case to emphasize what is really at stake.
In his introduction to the text of the play, Mr. Lane tells us:
I have retold the myth by way of addressing Imagism, the literary revolution...abandoning the rational aspect of poetry attempted to communicate subrational dream states conveying some...truth embodied in the interpersonal doings of men and women.
He goes on to say that the tragic love story does not depend on the reader’s having a scholarly understanding of Imagism. And that is how I read the play—as a singular retelling of the myth.
First a few comments on the poetry itself. It is, in Lane’s words, written in “traditional metrics and the traditional language of poetry.” We note that there is a glossary at the end of the play to explain the meaning of “cumberskull” and “tintamarre” and a number of other such words used deliberately in the text. This is not merely a display of a reactionary temperament that may be part of Lane’s dislike of Imagism. These words with their strangeness add to the poetry itself in the context of the subject of the play. There was a point when I decided to just read the poetry out-loud and listen to the meaning. It certainly is the true test of poetry not as to how it is silently read on the page but rather as to how it sounds vocally, for the sounds are part of the meaning. And I commend Mr. Lane on the quality of meter and word choice that makes for fine poetry.
I offer two examples of the fine poetry:
Now conquers Night, whose scepter see above
All crusted with glitt’ring diamonds
Set wondrous off with yonder glowing pearl!
They silent wheel until Aurora’s crown
Of crimson slowly rises radiant.
.................A lyric must descant
Upon the sense by many shared, who shun
Or stand indifferent to contrivèd shock,
The stranger of outward clime Touch not the wires
As they were verily thy taut-strung nerves.
But this also shows that Mr. Lane. a Catholic who loves the Traditional Roman Mass, understands something that has been forgotten especially with respect to Catholic worship: that the understanding of the words of an act of worship are not in the end necessary, for the act itself has no words. The act transcends mere words. In fact, the words that have intellectual meaning for the people at worship actually get in the way of the act of worship itself.
The heart of the matter of the play is the moral question of how Beauty is used. In the case of Orpheus, the question is how he is using the gift of Beauty, a gift from the gods, specifically in poetry and song and instrument. In one of the most important scenes in the play, the three Muses, in response to Apollo’s concern, speak to Orpheus to express their fear and displeasure that his grief over his loss of Eurydice has perverted his use of this gift of the gods. This seems to be the most important theme of the play: the question of the use of the gift of Beauty, as to whether it to be used for one’s personal taste or fixations, or whether it should be used as a gift for all, bringing joy and happiness to all those who hear the tales of the gods and of the heroes of yore sung beautifully and accompanied by the lyre. This is not romanticism. This concerns the moral duty to carry out one’s God-given vocation. But it is also about the perversion of beauty by fostering ecstatic states that have nothing to do with the apprehension of beauty but rather are the products of deliberately and artificially altered states induced by chemical forces in the brain.
Melpomene, one of the Muses, tries to reason with Orpheus, pointing out that he is not being true to the purpose for which the gods gave him his singular gifts because of his willful obsession with the death of Eurydice that has completely warped his sense of duty to his gift from the gods. When Orpheus cuttingly rejects her appeal to the gods, she warns him of a danger that he is bringing upon himself, a danger lurking in the woods, the Maenads, those followers of Dionysus whose false ecstasy is the product of an immoral use of the gift of wine that leads to destruction and murder. Orpheus refuses to listen to the Muses. His willful pride seals his fate
.
Mr. Lane adds something to the story not found in Ovid. Dionysus, the god of wine and master of the Maenads, is trashed by Orpheus in a conversation between them. Dionysus’ plan of revenge, a plan of horrible cruelty, demands a visit to the god of the Underworld, Dis, to persuade him to allow Eurydice to return to the land of the living. He does so by plying him with wine. The scene provides a bit of comedy in the darkness of what ensues. Eurydice, again in the land of the living is corrupted by the Maenads and joins in their wine induced states of dark ecstasy. In one of their frenzies, they come upon Orpheus and brutally kill him and rip his body in pieces. Eurydice kills him whom she loves so deeply: she now “alive”, he dead.
The play ends with a scene that reminds me of the “postscript” of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, when the leading characters offer a moral commentary on the wickedness of Don Giovanni and an exhortation to the audience to live a moral life lest they share the same fate as Don Giovanni. Even Theope, one of the Maenads, realizes the amoral horror of what has transpired.
It shall be needs the God of lights far yond
Olympian air and orbits. Fetch we down
His care by pious suppliance. He shall
All answerable aid speak instant out
To salve and save the wounded world and raw.
Pray let us make from now our wiser way,
That every wight we chance upon our tale
Of tears we’ll sing and sweep the quivering wires
And gold across. How can we else, dear sibs?
And that is the question: “How can we else, dear sibs?”
For this contribution to fine literature, Mr. Land has earned a well-deserved bravo.
The Rev. Richard G. Cipolla, Ph.D, D. Phil.(Oxon)
