Eurydice
The table next to my recliner is literally overflowing with books - several volumes of poetry, two nonfiction reads about comedy, Eugenides and Pynchon*, and various books about symbolism. The pile has become unwieldy. I’m about halfway through half of them, and desperately need to finish and shelve the majority.**
Last night, as Cory watched a docuseries about the history of comedy, I picked up Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky With Exit Wounds. I reached “Eurydice”, pausing to read through my references on mythology.
In my school system, mythology was taught in ninth grade, the same year my Lit & Language Arts teacher was diagnosed with stage four cancer. We had a series of inept substitutes and ended up not learning much of anything - not mythology, not grammar, and not poetry, all meant to be part of our freshman studies. I still feel the deficit created by the lack of instruction in all three subjects, but I feel it most in relation to mythology. This is something I've been working to rectify.
I started by reading about Eurydice in D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, - a great jumping off point, nicely illustrated, but lacking depth. I then read about her in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, finishing with Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. It was the Ovid that was most illuminating.
Here’s the thing: Sure, Orpheus literally sang her way out of hell, which is terribly romantic, but his lack of faith and patience ultimately condemned her to return. Maybe it’s for the best she died on her wedding day, rather than somewhere down line. Maybe Eurydice dodged a bullet. Not to mention, after Orpheus was forced to leave her behind in the underworld, “his love was given /to young boys only”***. Yikes.
As for Vuong’s “Eurydice”, I’m not sure how much the mythological deep dive informed my reading of the poem, but it is one of my favorite poems (so far) in the book.
It’s not / about the light - but how dark / it makes you depending / on where you stand.
Also!
Silly me! I thought love was real
& the body imaginary.
I thought a little chord
was all it took. But here we are -
standing in the cold field
again. Him calling for the girl.
The girl beside him.
Frosted grass snapping
beneath her hooves.
*in order to represent myself honestly, I must confess that the majority of my reading is done via e-reader, usually an easy mix contemporary and women’s fiction, consumed at an embarrassing rate.
**to make room for more books, of course
*** While the other two volumes skip over it, the footnotes in Metamorphoses confirm that Orpheus is “represented as introducing paiderastia”. He died after a band of Maenads tore him limb from limb and threw his head into the river Hebrus. I hope that, when he reached the underworld a second time, Eurydice paid him no mind.
11:36 a.m. - 2024-03-17