Orpheus and Eurydice (Eustigneus Fomin melodrama)

The work is included in the Best Music of Russia. TAdviser list.

The Myth of Orpheus in Western European Music

In the theatrical culture of Western Europe, the myth of Orpheus attracted the attention of composers and librettists simultaneously with the emergence of the opera genre at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries. It is easy to explain the constant attraction of musicians and poets of that era to the plot, which in a dramatic collision collided with each other the concepts of "death" and "love." Moreover, she brought to the fore the figure of the legendary singer, whose lira according to legend was awarded to him by immortal gods in prehistoric times - even very, very distant for ancient Greece. This topic with complete naturalness was embodied among the creative like-minded people of the Florence Camerata, since the very idea of ​ ​ composing the opera was understood by them as an experience of reviving the principles of ancient tragedy^[1]

In Florence, already in 1600, Jacopo Peri's opera Eurydice was staged (in 6 scenes with a prologue), in 1602 - the opera of the same name by Giulio Caccini (in 3 paintings). Five years later (1607), the ingenious Claudio Monteverdi presents his masterpiece in Mantua to the public - "A musical fairy tale in 5 acts with a prologue - 'Orpheus'." And then almost every interpretation of the well-known plot either opens a new branch in the typology of the opera (such as the Paris performance of 1647 by composer Luigi Rossi "Musical performance in 3 acts with the prologue 'Orpheus'"), or even marks the reform of the opera genre openly proclaimed by the author of music, which directly refers to Orpheus and Eurydice by Christoph Willibald Gluck (Vienna, 1762; Paris, 1774).

In 1749, Giovanni Ristori's opera I lamenti d'Orfeo was staged in Dresden.

Stage phenomena associated with the names of major composers and choreographers of Western Europe were ballet performances with completely different artistic decisions, but invariably common headlines - "Orpheus and Eurydice," such as ballet with music by Heinrich Schütz (Dresden, 1638), productions by choreographers Franz Hilferding (Vienna, 1752) and Jean Nover (Stuttgart, 1763).

Libretto by Jacob Knyazhnina

In the second half of the 1770s, one of the brightest stars of the theatrical world of Russia was the gifted poet and outstanding playwright Yakov Borisovich Knyazhnin (1742-1791). He was familiar with almost all the authors of texts and music who then lived in St. Petersburg, knew the theater and theatergoers to the subtleties, he composed tragedies and comedies, as well as the libretto of those Russian comic operas that in Russia of the 18th century were successful in the capitals and opened the opera repertoire in many peripheral theaters - from Arkhangelsk to Astrakhan, from Brest-Litovsk to Irkutsk. "The Misfortune of the Carriage" (1779), "The Stingy" (1780) and the later staged "The Sbitenshchik" (1784) - all these operas on Knyazhnin's libretto turned out to be the most repertoire in that era in accordance with their dramatic and musical merits, but nowhere did they go beyond pure lyrics and sharp comedic.

Already when creating comic operas, Knyazhnin attached great importance to music and, unlike many authors of comic operas, did not provide for reliance on melodies (as "voices" were then said) of popular folk songs, offering composers a more difficult path in characterizing characters and situations. Just at this time, the first melodramas are staged in Russia, in which music is given even greater importance. Melodramas are musical performances in which the actors did not sing, but recited against the background of music.

At the turn of the 1770s and 1780s, when Knyazhnin decided to present on the stage of the St. Petersburg theater the myth of Orpheus in the form of a musical and poetic work using an opera orchestra, a male choir and a ballet troupe, he undoubtedly took into account the fact that important for the public and beneficial for him that this plot has never been embodied in the theatrical genre on the stage of Russia.

Being a European-educated writer and connoisseur of many languages, the "rewiring Knyazhnin" (as A.S. Pushkin later called him among the largest playwrights) could rely on a very wide range of Western interpretations, not only noted by us, but also unknown to us.

In 2021, Pavel Serbin expressed the opinion that the text of "Orpheus" Knyazhnin is a talented translation of Metastasio's libretto.

Yakov Knyazhnin turned to the then relatively young genre of melodrama, understanding this type of theatrical performance is by no means in the tradition of the ironic characterization of "bourgeois-sentimental drama" (a much later definition of popular plays of the 19th century), but referring to the idea of ​ ​ Jean-Jacques Rousseau about organic synthesis - combining the game and speech recitation of drama theater actors with orchestral music, which either alternates with brief remarks from artists, or in climaxes, continuous sound accompanies their monologues and dialogues.

Actors and plot

• Orpheus, reader
• Eurydice, reader
• Prophetic voice, unison bass choir
• Furies, ballet

On the eve of hell, the legendary singer Orpheus came with a lyre in his hands. He is saddened by the death of his wife Euridice. Without it, he is "disgusted with all the light and hell is not afraid of places." Orpheus recalls with horror the death of his wife from a snake bite. The voice announces that the god of the underground kingdom Pluto will return Orpheus Euridice if the singer tames the evil forces of hell. Orpheus sang touchingly and beautifully. Furies appear on the sounds of his voice. The singer tells them about his suffering in separation from his beloved wife. The same Prophetic Voice is heard again: Eurydice will be returned to the wonderful singer, but in order not to lose her again and forever, Orpheus must not look at her until they come out into the sunlight.

Furies take Eurydice out of the opened doors of hell. However, the joy of the meeting is overshadowed - Orpheus turned away from his beloved wife. Eurydice begs her spouse to look at her. Orpheus rushes her. We must hurry forward to the sunlight, there they will be happiness. In a fit of passion, forgetting, Orpheus turns to Eurydice and hugs her. The vow is broken, the furies captivate Eurydice to hell. Orpheus prays to the Furies to take it with him. But the Voice announces that the hour has not yet come - the singer must live in order to be punished for disobeying the gods.

Left alone at the closed doors of hell, Orpheus, in despair, decides to commit suicide, but such an execution seems too easy for him: he will live and be tormented by the idea that he himself killed his beloved spouse.

Orpheus summons the Furies. In a wild and swift dance, they captivate the singer away from^[2]

First production with music by Federico Torelli

To stage the melodrama of J.B. Knyazhnina on the court stage, the Italian composer Federico Torelli wrote the music. A. L. Porfiryeva mentions that Torelli wrote only choirs to Knyazhnin's melodrama "Orpheus," performed at the Hermitage ^[3]. This score is lost. The St. Petersburg prime minister on November 24, 1781 (on the day of the namesake of Catherine II) was not successful.

The performance could be attended by a student of the Academy of Arts, 20-year-old Evstigney Ipatievich Fomin, who in a year will be sent to study at the famous Bologna Academy of Music in Italy, where he stayed for 5 years.

Probably after Fomin's departure in St. Petersburg, Gluck's opera Orpheus and Eurydice was shown on the stage of the court theater (the libretto was printed on November 24, 1782).

Music by Eustigneus Fomin

Catherine II's panicked fear of the terror of the French revolution and the possibilities of popular indignation in Russia fundamentally changed her attitude towards Yakov Knyazhnin, who was suspected of freethinking and summoned to the Secret Expedition by S. I. Sheshkovsky. Many memoirists associated the interrogation with the persecution of the tragedy "Vadim Novgorodsky," written by the playwright in 1789. By the way, it was never published in Russia until 1914.

According to a cursory entry by A.S. Pushkin, nobleman Yakov Borisovich "died under the rods," but - as historians clarify - Pushkin's words should not be taken literally: the playwright died on January 14, 1791, at home, without suffering moral and physical humiliation.

It is not known exactly when - before or after the death of Yakov Knyazhnin - the Russian composer Evstigney Fomin took up the composition of the new score on his text.

Fomin's creative path to his masterpiece cannot be called favorable. The first opera - "Novgorod Bogatyr Boeslavich" (1786) - was externally among the most honorable orders, because its text belonged to the Russian empress. However, the literary qualities of the "highest poetry" did not inspire the young musician, and the result was almost deplorable.

The second - "Coachmen on the Set" (1787) - was ordered by the head of the postal department, an outstanding architect, a famous collector of Russian folk songs and the author of the libretto N.A. Lvov. The overture on music came out extremely spectacular, being the earliest example of a program composition for an orchestra in Russia - a picture of a horse train setting off. But the plot, entirely tied to the journey of Catherine II to the Crimea, was not the slightest interest for performance on the stages of public theaters. For various reasons, subsequent opera works also did not cause public outcry: "Party or Gadai, guess the girl" (1788), "Americans" (written in 1788, staged after the death of Fomin), "Sorcerer, thief and matchmaker" (1791).

In the conditions of complete dependence of domestic composers on librettists, the coincidence of the tragic system of Knyazhnin's melodrama "Orpheus and Eurydice" and the strongest side of Fomin's musical talent should be called exceptional luck.

During his four-year stay abroad, Fomin was almost certainly introduced to the music of Gluck's illustrious opera "Orpheus and Eurydice." Although no documentary evidence has been found here, the facts of the widest popularity of the opera masterpiece and the circumstances of the aesthetic discussion between supporters of Gluck and his antagonist Niccolò Piccini, which lasted a long time and seized many countries, speak in favor of such an assumption. And most importantly, this is convinced by the dramatic analysis of the score of the melodrama "Orpheus and Eurydice," where Fomin's figurative decisions on the independence of thinking and the size of the artistic concept not only complement the poetic text, but also raise it to a qualitatively new level, remarkably corresponding to the emotional breath of the ancient myth and determined by the laws of musical art itself.

A. L. Porfiryeva noted that a certain influence on Fomin was exerted by the style and dramatic finds of the melodramas of the Czech composer Jiří Benda "Ariadna on Naxos" and "Medea," which had already been shown on stage in St. Petersburg.

The researcher Yevgeny Levashov likens the musical form of the melodrama "Orpheus and Eurydice" to the laconism of proportions and deep metaphoricity of symbols to the Greek temple. In the nine dramatic sections of Fomin's score, all odd parts (1-3-5-7-9) tell of the harsh truth of divine decisions and the immutable laws of rock, while all even parts (2-4-6-8) speak of the fates of heroes and call listeners to human compassion. Levashov so briefly characterized their content (noting the accompanying keys):

1. Ouverture - an overture summarizing in the traditions of the ancient prologue the themes of tragedy - the grief of the hero, the fury of the furies, the appearance of the heroine, the bitterness of loss (exposition: d-moll, F-dur; development episode: b-moll; reprise: d-moll, D-dur).

2. Orpheus' memories of Eurydice's death and expression of his firm determination to penetrate Hades (g-moll, c-moll).

3. Coro primo - the voices of the divine messengers "Have Hope" (d-moll).

4. Orpheus's lyre playing (pizzicato strings: A-dur/a-moll), his singing (clarinet solo: Es-dur), mournful plea (b-moll).

5. Coro secondo - the voices of the divine messengers "Pluto destroys the statutes of death, returns your spouse to you" (As-dur).

6. The meeting of Orpheus with Eurydice, the broken prohibition is only one abandoned look at the beloved and irrevocable separation (A-dur, D-dur).

7. Coro terzo - the voices of the divine messengers "Your last hour has not lowered, you must live a bitter life in the torment of pitati" (f-moll).

8. The monologue of Orpheus, who wants to die, but forced by the gods to life in the eternal torment of his soul (f-moll, D-dur)

9. Danza delle furie - Dance of furies (d-moll).

The desire to follow the style of ancient art prompted Fomin to abandon the composition of individualized melodies and, in many cases, turn to archaic methods of composition - the use of techniques of musical rhetoric, auditory associations with restrained-tragic genres of passacalia and sarabanda, as well as the introduction of an orchestra of copper horns, which with a soft and at the same time powerful sound accompanied the tirades of divine messengers and the dance of furies.

For the success of the performance, a change in public views on Greek mythology was crucial at that time. During the French Revolution and subsequent terror, the tragic motives of antiquity turned out to be in widespread demand. This was reflected even in various reinterpretations of the Orpheus myth, which took the form of either deepening the tragic beginning or a philosophical farewell to the art of the outgoing era - with the ideals of the opera seria. So, for example, Joseph Haydn in 1791 wrote a double-titled composition for the opera house: "Musical drama in 4 acts' The Soul of the Philosopher, or Orpheus and Eurydice '," where in the finale the main character drank a bowl of poison (the production did not take place then).

Eustigneus Fomin directed his efforts in the opposite direction, combining the enduring achievements of several genres in the score and rethinking them from the standpoint of the artistic direction that received the name "Storms and Onslaught." From the opera seria, he transferred to melodrama the methods of organizing form according to the laws of affect theory, as well as the art of recreating singing melodies bel canto (in imitation of human singing with a solo clarinet). From oratorios, he accepted the principles of building monumental architectonics in the ratio of choral and solo scenes. In the display of dance genres - from the gallant minuet when Eurydice appeared to the final Dance of the Furies - he flawlessly followed the requirements of both musical and choreographic art. Finally, as Levashov notes, he masterfully applied a whole arsenal of opera means of "accompanied recitative" in the genre of melodrama and achieved coordination of the sound of instruments with the recitation of the actors of the drama theater.

Statements

At the premiere performances, the role of Orpheus was played by outstanding dramatic artists: Ivan Afanasevich Dmitrevsky (St. Petersburg premiere - 1792) and Peter Alekseevich Plavilshchikov (Moscow premiere - 1795). They, together with Eustigneus Fomin, shared triumphal successes.

According to the author of the preface to the collected works of Knyazhnin (1817), the melodrama "Orpheus" "was presented several times at the theater and earned great praise. Mr. Dmitrevsky, in the role of Orpheus, crowned his extraordinary game. At first there was Torelli's music in this melodrama, and after our Russian city of Fomin, who had been in foreign lands for a long time, who darkened his former music with his excellent talent completely and although, to our universal regret, he ended his days, but left an unforgettable memory in Orpheus. "

In one of the ads of 1795, in the appendix to the Moskovskiye Vedomosti newspaper, the following words announced the prime minister expected by Muscovites:... "February 5, will be presented... a new melodrama 'Orpheus', with ballets and choirs of hellish furies belonging to it; the music of choirs in ancient Greek taste and in all melodrama, the compositions of Mr. Fomin, which was accepted in St. Petersburg with excellent favor. "

Later, when staging the melodrama on the stage of the Sheremetyevo Theater in Ostankino, it was decided that the play needed a happy ending, and someone added a prosperous ending in which Eurydice returned to Orpheus. This violated the whole plan of the playwright, and all the more strange it looked against the background of Fomin's alarming, gloomy music. In this form, the play was held several times, and then was withdrawn from the repertoire and forgotten for more than 80 years.

In 1903, the Moscow Society of Art and Writers put it on its stage (a copy of the melodrama with censorship permission dated January 17, 1903 is stored in the Leningrad Theater Library).

In 1947, the melodrama was staged in Moscow, in 1953 - in Leningrad.

Scores

The only copy of the score of the melodrama "Orpheus" by Evstigneus Fomin is stored in the library of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. By 2021, for many years now, access to the score for researchers is limited for reasons that are incomprehensible to anyone. As well as the score of Federico Torelli and many other works stored here.

The score of "Orpheus and Eurydice" (like another work by the composer of the opera "Boeslavich") was also in the Sheremetev Library in Moscow, but is considered burnt during the barbaric invasion of the French in 1812.

In Soviet times, the score of the melodrama was published in the editorial office of the researcher Dobrokhotov.

Records

The following records are known to TAdviser:

• 1966, Great Symphony Orchestra of the All-Union Radio and Central Television, conductor Vladimir Mikhailovich Esipov. Republican Russian choral chapel under the direction of Alexander Yurlov. Orpheus - actor of the Maly Theater Vitaly Konyaev, Eurydice - actress of the Mossovet Theater Nina Drobysheva.

The 1966 recording was published on a double vinyl album by Melody Studio

1982 reissue

• 1979, Moscow Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Recording in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on December 20, 1979

• (?) Suite Ensemble "Baroque."

• 2000, European Festival Orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Keitel. the male choir of Baden-Württemberg. Anatoly Kot - Orpheus, Lyudmila Sidarkevich - Euridice.

• 2001, suite. Ensemble "Concertino": Andrei Korsakov - thin. hands., Violin; Mikhail Moshkunov - violin; Andrey Sazonov - viola; Victor Kozodov - cello; Pavel Sablin - double bass; Victor Ponomarev - flute; Gregory Katz - oboe; Dmitry Shvedov - harpsichord.

• 2008, Pratum Integrum, conductor: Pavel Serbin. Accompanist: Sergey Filchenko. The Horn Orchestra of Russia is Sergey Polyanichko. Orpheus - Alexey Ivashchenko, Eurydice - Maria Shorstova, Basy - Nikolai Alifanov, Artem Volkov, Vitaly Zhdanov, Daniil Kuchma, Mikhail Kopchenkov, Stanislav Maisky, Maxim Popov, Nikolai Khondzinsky.

How to understand. Interpretations of myth

Myths, said Sallust, tell about "what never happened, but always is." Myth is wisdom expressed in the language of symbols, and already therefore excludes any unambiguous interpretation. He, like an oracle in Delphi, does not explain, does not indicate, but marks.

The motive of incest in the origin of the world

One of the signs of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is associated with cosmogony, for the archetypal core of the myth is always a certain cosmogonic event. "Cosmogony," wrote M. Eliade, "is an exemplary model of all creation." The chthonic mythology of the Greeks confirms the validity of this remark, it begins with cosmogony, where the origin of the gods and the cosmos is associated with the emergence of four primates: Chaos, Gaia, Eros and Tartar. All of them are directly related to the topic of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. But even more important for understanding this myth, its ontologies are the motive of incest in the origin of the world ^[4]

According to Hesiod's "Theogony," Mother Earth gives birth to Heaven from itself. From the incestuous marriage of Uranus and Gay, titans and gods are born. Such a marriage can be traced at a later stage in the development of Greek mythology: Zeus becomes the husband of his sister Hera. This leads to ontological instability, but Zeus' struggle with the titans ends with the formation of the antichtonic Olympic order. The birth of Athena from the head of Zeus symbolizes the final separation of the heavenly beginning from the chthonic. As a result, the cosmogonic process is perceived as the evolution of increasing dechtonization.

As a result of evolution, the chthonic principle is neutralized, isolated and, finally, lies in Tartar as anti-structural and destructive. It is separated from the supreme deity of the Olympic religion, interpreted as dark and dangerous, while it is marked as female, since the Olympic pantheon is of a pronounced patrifocal character.

In light of such a cosmogonic process, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice symbolizes an attempt to interrupt this process, in other words, delay dechtonization. For the sake of retardation, Orpheus descends to Hades. At the same time, the snake bite indicates the chthonic nature of Eurydice, in this case, well-received, for the mythological snake is associated with the "lower world," with chaos that antagonizes itself to the cosmic order.

Eurydice's sexual pursuit, when she was stung by a snake, is also connoted with chthonism. This is evidenced by the name of the pursuer - Aristeus. He manifested "a widespread and variously colored personification of the fruiting force of the underground (as it is evident from the euphemistic name) Pra-Dionysus." Being the hypostasis of Hades, Aristeus tried to take possession of the wife of Orpheus. M. Detyen, based on the associations that caused bees in the ancient peoples (associations of sexual purity and innocence), noted the connection between Aristeus's guilt in persecuting Eurydice and his loss of his bees. As a result, we can conclude that Orpheus's beloved died on a "honeymoon."

Thus, if Eurydice returned, it would mean the destructurization of space. But during the period of approval of the Olympic world order, Orpheus's attempt is doomed to failure. Gay, who, with her monstrous creatures - Gorgons, Typhon, Titans - resisted Olympic manhood and became Mother Death, can no longer enter into another incestuous marriage with Uranus, and this means that incestuous relations, like those that were previously inherent in the Earth and Heaven, impossible between Orpheus, whose name according to one version means "healing light," and Eurydice, who has become chthonic, that is, assigned by Mother Death... - and this for all the power of Eros.

Hades tries to warn Orpheus against looking at Eurydice

In line with cosmogonic drama, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice takes on another meaning. Usually focus on the selflessness of Orpheus, who was not afraid to go down to Hades. But if you remember that Medusa was once a beauty, and in a winged monster, with snakes instead of hair, she is turned through chthonization, or moving from the world of the living to the world of the dead, then the prohibition of Orpheus to turn around will appear as the desire of Hades to prevent a fatal turn for the poet, for seeing the dead face of Eurydice is the same as meeting the look of Gorgon-Medusa. (Wed.: "The image of the deceased is the scarier, What was the mile for us in life..." - F. Tyutchev). Perhaps the "last writer of antiquity" Boethius had something similar in mind when, recalling in the treatise "Consolation by Philosophy" about Orpheus, he instructed:

Passionately want the mind

Brought you to the light, but there will be

Gloom is ruined, who will look

In the abyss of him, and will lose

Supreme happiness forever ^[5]

Changing ideas about time: the "golden age" is transferred from the past to the future. You can't turn around

Joseph Brodsky, reflecting on the poems, wonders who determines the tragic fate of the lovers. He believes that the ancients knew the answer and would surely say: "Chronos." This judgment seems indisputable to us, but why exactly is Chronos to blame for Orpheus' attempt to save Eurydice ending in failure? Such a task refers us to ancient Greek ideas about time. Naturally, the oldest, for Orpheus, according to legend, was born eleven generations before the Trojan War and lived nine tribes.

Archaic ideas about time are associated in the history of Greek culture with the names of Homer and Hesiod. There is a legend about the poetic rivalry of the great Aed. It is significant that the victory in this competition is attributed to Hesiod, although tradition believes that Homer has no equal. There is one reason for sympathy for Hesiod: compared to Homer, he turned out to be more sensitive to the idea of ​ ​ time. Hesiod the first of the Hellenes introduced a moment of progressiveness and stadiality into the idea of ​ ​ the cyclical nature of being. Hesiod's "Theogony" is designed to reveal the genesis-dynamic nature of being.

There is no such dynamic in Homer's world. A regular cyclic rhythm reigns here; in the "Iliad" it is described in verse:

Similar to the fate of generations of people with generations of leaves:

Leaves - some on the ground scattered by the wind, others

Greens are again dressed in the woods with the spring that came.

(V1, 146-149, per. V. Veresaev).

In the cycle of nature, in a cyclic time rhythm that provokes the idea of ​ ​ "eternal return," the past and future are identical to the present. The myth of the "eternal return," characteristic of the Homeric picture of the world, serves as a "tool for the destruction of time." As a result, Homer's world initially excludes chronology, that world BEING, not BECOMING. It is not CHRONOLOGY that is relevant for him, but TOPOLOGY. Here reigns a fundamentally ahistoric being.

But what does this have to do with the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice? The fact is that the idea of ​ ​ "eternal return" entails the idea of ​ ​ the "golden age" as the prerogative of the past; he always thinks behind him. The myth of "eternal return" is opposed to the idea of ​ ​ linear development, the idea of ​ ​ progress, while the "golden age" is interpreted as an attribute of the future. Orpheus is a man of the Homeric world, he is a lyricist, like Apollo, and through him is associated with the celestial religion of the Olympians, which for the first time in its integral form is given in Homer's Iliad. The reason for Orpheus's tragedy is a turn of the head back, and semiotically into the past.

Wrapping is an important symptom. The ritual of werewolf is associated with totemism, the religion of the archaic collective. At the same time, wrapping is also a reminder of the "golden age" that is behind. That is why, in the "impatience of the heart," Orpheus turns back but reaps grief. The tragic outcome of Orpheus's enterprise, again semiotically, means that the idea of ​ ​ "eternal return," and with it the idea of ​ ​ the "golden age" as the prerogative of the past, has already outlived itself. In other words, the idea of ​ ​ BECOMING all that exists squeezed the myth of "eternal return." The Homeric picture of the world was replaced by the picture of the world according to Hesiod, younger, and most importantly - different.

The myth of "eternal return" does not think of the final moment of being. Ideally, he does not know death. The world of linear development is first aware of its greatness. That is why the prohibition of turning around comes from Hades, the god of the dead. For each Hades, Hades is the emblem of the future; no wonder his place on Olympus, where nothing becomes, but only stays, is disputed.

Abandoning the idea of ​ ​ metempsychosis or rebirth of the soul

The idea of ​ ​ "eternal return," which in one of the orphic hymns to Kronos is expressed in the words "You melt everything to the ground and return it again," is connected with the belief of orphics in metempsychosis, in the cycle of births. Their stay in the kingdom of Persephone was understood by them as a time of purification from the sins of earthly life; for most people, the abode of Hades was a kind of Purgatory. The one who has spent earthly life respecting the will of the gods and the customs of the ancestors also gains bliss in the kingdom of Persephone "until the voice of necessity calls him back to earth for new trials." In this regard, there is an interesting episode in the "Thebaid" Station. Pluto, talking about Orpheus descending into Hades, observes that at the sounds of his lyre, Parkey has ANEW begun to weave the thread of Eurydice's life in the hope of her return to the sun: � I saw this shame myself, as if to the sound of an enchanting song

tears flowed Eumenides and the Sisters repeated the lesson.

So did I... But it is better to keep the law merciless.

"The law is merciless" is nothing more than the irreversibility of death, and already a contemporary of the Orphics, the poet Alkey did not believe in metempsychosis, which is why he believed that "Orpheus raped fate" when he convinced "people born into the world to flee death." Pluto's reference to the "law" and Alcaeus's rejection of Orpheus' act open another veil over the semiotics of myth: the Orpheus fiasco can be seen as overcoming in this myth the idea of ​ ​ metempsychosis and generic consciousness, for it is the genus that does not know, in essence, death. A person whose fate is not separated from the birth life, no matter how he has not yet become an individual and does not have personal self-awareness, and therefore is not aware of the fatal abyss that looms on the horizon of individual existence, when a person is itself the only substance.

The correlation of Orpheus's failure with the elimination of the clan mentality in Greek culture is already confirmed by the fact that the case of violation of the ban appears only in later versions of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

As a phenomenon of the Greek world, the irreversibility of death is stated in the 5th century BC. e., that is, at the time of the emergence and heyday of the classical tragedy. It appears as the focus of Hellenic culture and marks a turning point in human self-knowledge. In this genre, human, or rather, heroic self-awareness reveals its tragic nature and can no longer be identified with either maternal (chthonic) or paternal (Olympic) principles. Superhuman forces collide in the mind of the hero, bringing him to his own consciousness, to himself, so is born in contrast to the generic personal consciousness, which begins to think time as the "father of all things."

Eurydice doesn't care. She's dead

"Eurydice," notes E. Rabinovich, "does not suffer and does not bliss, she is simply dead" ^[6]

In the poem "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes "poet Rilke wrote:

Even now she was no longer the same blonde woman,

whose image once responded in the poet's poems,

no longer a fragrance and an island of wide stock,

no longer the property of the man in front.

It was already loose, like long hair,

and distributed to all sides, like the rain that spilled,

and wasted like abundant supplies.

It has already become the root.

And when suddenly God stopped her and,

exclaiming sufferingly, he said the words:

"He turned around!" -

She did not understand anything and quietly asked: "Who?"

CD with music of the XVIII century

Three Russian composers: Nikolai Leontyev, Ivan Yunkin, Ignatius Dubrovsky - Soloists of Catherine the Great

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Three Russian composers: Nikolai Leontyev, Ivan Yunkin, Ignatius Dubrovsky - Soloists of Catherine the Great

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Notes