Orpheus talks to trees

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the story in short –
Orpheus, having lost Eurydice twice: once at their wedding and once on a staircase, now takes himself off with his lyre into the countryside and the wild uninhabited places; to the rocks and the stones and plays his music to the trees.

Unusually for trees he finds that they come from far and near to hear him, gathering round in a circle on a patch of level turf as he tunes up his lyre and begins to play.

‘Jupiter’s Chaonian oak-tree came; and Phaethon’s sisters, the Heliades, the poplars; the durmast oak with its deep foliage; the soft lime-tree; the beech; the virgin sweet-bay, laurel; the hazel, frail; the ash-tree, used for spears; the sweeping silver-fir: holm-oak, heavy with acorns; pleasant plane-tree; the many-coloured maple; with the river-haunting willow; lotus, water-lover; boxwood ever-verdant; the slender tamarisk; the myrtle, with, over and under its leaves, the two shades of green; and the blue-berried wild-bay, laurus tinus. You came, also, twining ivy, together with shooting vines; the vine-supporting elms; the flowering ‘manna’ ash; the spruce; the strawberry tree, weighed down with its red fruit; the pliant palms, the winner’s prize; and you, the shaggy-topped pine tree, armed with needles, sacred to Cybele, mother of the gods, since Attis exchanged his human form for you, and hardened in your trunk.’

So – some are ordinary trees, some are sacred to the gods and one, the pine tree, actually contains a god but all are equally entranced by the music coming from his lyre. But of course he was the child of the King of Thrace and one or other of the muses. Or his father may have been Apollo. At least that is who he thought he was.

Anyway, among his audience was the cypress tree so Orpheus sang the story of how this tree had once been a boy and had been a favourite of Apollo. He had lived on the island of Ceos in the Cyclades and his name has been Cyparissus.

There was a stag on Ceos, sacred to the nymphs of the place, very beautiful and very tame and much loved by everybody but one day Cyparissus accidentally killed it with his spear. He was inconsolable at the loss of the creature which he had fed and ridden as if it were a horse..
Apollo told him to get over it as it was only an animal but the only thing Cyparissus wanted was to grieve and grieve forever so the god sighed and granted him his wish. His hair sprouted green and started pointing toward the heavens and slowly he became the cypress, the mourning tree.

This story which had started being about trees had got Orpheus onto the subject of gods and boys
… and so he told the story of Ganymede, the beautiful Trojan boy abducted by Jupiter in the shape of an eagle.
Having got him to Olympus, the king of the gods made Ganymede his companion and also the cupbearer of the gods; This was to the great annoyance of Juno as he was replacing their daughter Hebe in that role. Juno only finally managing to get rid of the boy by putting him in the stars as the constellation Aquarius, although even there he was still right next to Aquila, the eagle.

Getting into the flow of the subject now, Orpheus tells the story of Hyacinthus, another boy beloved of Apollo although not at the same time as the one in the Cyclades because Orpheus tells us that Apollo forsook his home in Delphi and even his lyre and his bow and arrows to go hunting with nets in the mountains with Hyacinthus behind where he lived in Sparta.

Their mountain life was idyllic until one day when they were practising throwing the discus and Hyacinthus was running after it. It rebounded from Apollo’s mighty throw and hit the boy on the head, crushing his skull like a beetle. There was nothing the god could do to staunch the injury that he himself had inadvertently caused but where the blood fell on the ground, the white flowers of the wild hyacinth turned purple and it now has marks that look like AI in Greek letters

To be continued

BACK – Orpheus and Euridice NEXT- Pygmalion

Bk X:86-105 The gathering of the trees

There was a hill, and, on the hill, a wide area of level ground, turfed with fresh blades of grass: shade was absent there: but when the poet, born of the god, sounded the strings of his lyre, shade gathered there. Jupiter’s Chaonian oak-tree came; and Phaethon’s sisters, the Heliades, the poplars; the durmast oak with its deep foliage; the soft lime-tree; the beech; the virgin sweet-bay, laurel; the hazel, frail; the ash-tree, used for spears; the sweeping silver-fir: holm-oak, heavy with acorns; pleasant plane-tree; the many-coloured maple; with the river-haunting willow; lotus, water-lover; boxwood ever-verdant; the slender tamarisk; the myrtle, with, over and under its leaves, the two shades of green; and the blue-berried wild-bay, laurus tinus. You came, also, twining ivy, together with shooting vines; the vine-supporting elms; the flowering ‘manna’ ash; the spruce; the strawberry tree, weighed down with its red fruit; the pliant palms, the winner’s prize; and you, the shaggy-topped pine tree, armed with needles, sacred to Cybele, mother of the gods, since Attis exchanged his human form for you, and hardened in your trunk.

Bk X:106-142 The death of Cyparissus

Among the crowd came the cypress, formed like the cone-shaped meta, that marks the turning point in the race-course: once a boy, but now a tree: loved by the god who tunes the lyre, and strings the bow.

There was a giant stag, sacred to the nymphs that haunt the Carthaean country, which cast deep shadows, around its head, from his wide-branching antlers. The antlers shone with gold, and the gems of a jewelled collar, around his polished neck, hung down onto his shoulders. A bulla, a silver charm, fastened with small strips of leather, quivered on his forehead, and on either side of his hollow temples matching pearls of bronze gleamed from both ears. Free from fear, and forgetting his natural shyness, he used to visit people’s houses, and offer his neck to be stroked by strangers’ hands. Yet, above all others, he was dear to you, Cyparissus, loveliest of the Cean boys. You led the stag to fresh pastures, and the waters of the clear spring. Now you would weave diverse flowers through his horns, and then, astride his back like a horseman, delight in tugging his soft mouth one way or the other by means of a purple muzzle.

It was noon of a summer’s day, when the curving claws of shore-loving Cancer were burning in the hot sun. Tired, the stag had settled its body on the grassy turf and was enjoying the cool of the woodland shade. The boy, without intention, transfixed it with his sharp spear, and when he saw it dying from the cruel wound, he wished to die himself. What was there Phoebus did not say, in solace, advising a moderate grief matching the cause! He only sighed, and begged, as the last gift of the gods, that he might mourn forever. Then, his blood discharged among endless tears, his limbs began to turn to a shade of green, and his hair that a moment ago hung over his pale forehead, became a bristling crown, and he stiffened to a graceful point gazing at the starry heavens. The god sighed for him, and said, sadly: ‘I will mourn for you: you will mourn for others, and enter into sorrows’.

Bk X:143-219 Orpheus sings: Ganymede; Hyacinthus

Such was the grove of trees the poet gathered round him, and he sat in the midst of a crowd, of animals and birds. When he had tried a few chords, stroking the lyre with his thumb, and felt that the various notes were in tune, regardless of their pitch, he raised his voice to sing: ‘Begin my song with Jupiter, Calliope, O Muse, my mother (all things bow to Jupiter’s might)! I have often sung the power of Jove before: I have sung of the Giants, in an epic strain, and the victorious lightning bolts, hurled at the Phlegraean field. Now there is gentler work for the lyre, and I sing of boys loved by the gods, and girls stricken with forbidden fires, deserving punishment for their lust.

The king of the gods once burned with love for Phrygian Ganymede, and to win him Jupiter chose to be something other than he was. Yet he did not deign to transform himself into any other bird, than that eagle, that could carry his lightning bolts. Straightaway, he beat the air with deceitful wings, and stole the Trojan boy, who still handles the mixing cups, and against Juno’s will pours out Jove’s nectar.

You too, Hyacinthus, of Amyclae, Phoebus would have placed in heaven, if sad fate had given him time to do so. Still, as it is, you are immortal, and whenever spring drives winter away, and Aries follows watery Pisces, you also rise, and flower in the green turf. My father, Phoebus, loved you above all others: and Delphi, at the centre of the world, lost its presiding deity, while the god frequented Eurotas, and Sparta without its walls, doing no honour to the zither or the bow. Forgetting his usual pursuits, he did not object to carrying the nets, handling the dogs, or travelling as a companion, over the rough mountain ridges, and by constant partnership feeding the flames.

Now, the sun was midway between the vanished and the future night, equally far from either extreme: they stripped off their clothes, and gleaming with the rich olive oil, they had rubbed themselves with, they began a contest with the broad discus. Phoebus went first, balancing it, and hurling it high into the air, scattering the clouds with its weight. Its mass took a long time to fall back to the hard ground, showing strength and skill combined. Immediately the Taenarian boy, without thinking, ran forward to pick up the disc, prompted by his eagerness to throw, but the solid earth threw it back, hitting you in the face, with the rebound, Hyacinthus.

The god is as white as the boy, and cradles the fallen body. Now he tries to revive you, now to staunch your dreadful wound, and now applies herbs to hold back your departing spirit. His arts are useless: the wound is incurable. Just as if, when someone, in a garden, breaks violets, stiff poppies, or the lilies with their bristling yellow stamens, and, suddenly, they droop, bowing their weakened heads, unable to support themselves, and their tops gaze at the soil: so his dying head drops, and, with failing strength, the neck is overburdened, and sinks onto the shoulder.

‘You slip away, Spartan, robbed of the flower of youth’ Phoebus sighed, ‘and I see my guilt, in your wound. You are my grief and my reproach: your death must be ascribed to my hand. I am the agent of your destruction. Yet, how was it my fault, unless taking part in a game can be called a fault, unless it can be called a fault to have loved you? If only I might die with you, and pay with my life! But since the laws of fate bind us, you shall always be with me, and cling to my remembering lips. My songs; the lyre my hand touches; will celebrate you. As a new-formed flower, you shall denote my woe, by your markings. And the time will come, when Ajax, bravest of heroes, will associate himself with this same flower, and be identified by its petals.

While the truthful mouth of Apollo uttered these words, look, the blood that had spilt on the ground staining the grass was no longer blood, and a flower sprang up, brighter than Tyrian dye, and took the shape of a lily, though it was purple in colour, where the other is silvery white. Not satisfied with this alone, Phoebus (he, indeed, was the giver of the honour) himself marked his grief on the petals, and the flower bore the letters AI AI, the letters of woe traced there. Nor was Sparta ashamed of producing Hyacinthus: his honour has lasted to this day, and by ancient custom the Hyacinthia is celebrated, at its annual return, by displaying the flower in procession.’

Bk X:220-242 Orpheus sings: The Propoetides

‘But if you should ask the Cyprian city of Amathus, rich in mines, whether it would have wished to have produced those girls, the Propoetides, it would repudiate them, and equally those men, whose foreheads were once marred by two horns, from which they took their name, Cerastae. An altar, to Jove the Hospitable, used to stand in front of the gates: if any stranger, ignorant of their wickedness, had seen it, stained with blood, they would have thought that calves or sheep, from Amathus, were sacrificed there: it was their guests they killed! Kindly Venus was preparing to abandon her cities, and the Cyprian fields, outraged by their abominable rites, but ‘How,’ she said, ‘have my cities, or this dear place, sinned? What is their crime? Instead, let this impious race pay the penalty of death or exile, or some punishment between execution and banishment, and what might that be but the penalty of being transformed?’ While she is deciding how to alter them, she turns her eyes towards their horns, and this suggests that she might leave them those, and she changed them into wild bullocks.

Nevertheless, the immoral Propoetides dared to deny that Venus was the goddess. For this, because of her divine anger, they are said to have been the first to prostitute their bodies and their reputations in public, and, losing all sense of shame, they lost the power to blush, as the blood hardened in their cheeks, and only a small change turned them into hard flints.’

Orpheus

The mythical musician of Thrace, son of Oeagrus and Calliope the Muse. His lyre, given to him by Apollo, and invented by Hermes-Mercury, is the constellation Lyra containing the star Vega.

(See John William Waterhouse’s painting – Nymphs finding the head of Orpheus – Private Collection, and Gustave Moreau’s painting – Orpheus – in the Gustave Moreau Museum, Paris: See Peter Vischer the Younger’s Bronze relief – Orpheus and Eurydice – Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg: and the bas-relief – Hermes, Eurydice and Orpheus – a copy of a votive stele attributed to Callimachus or the school of Phidias, Naples, National Archaeological Museum: Note also Rilke’s – Sonnets to Orpheus – and his Poem – Orpheus, Eurydice and Hermes.)

Bk X:1-85. He summons Hymen to his wedding with Eurydice. After she is stung by a snake and dies he travels to Hades, to ask for her life to be renewed. Granted it, on condition he does not look back at her till she reaches the upper world, he falters, and she is lost. He mourns her, and turns from the love of women to that of young men.

Bk X:106-142. He sings the stories of: Ganymede, Hyacinthus, the Cerastae, the Propoetides, Pygmalion, Myrrha, Venus and Adonis, and through Venus’s ‘tale within a tale’ Atalanta and Hippomenes.

Bk XI:1-66. He is killed by the Maenads of Thrace and dismembered, his head and lyre floating down the river Hebrus to the sea, being washed to Lesbos. (This head had powers of prophetic utterance) His ghost sinks to the fields of the Blessed where he is reunited with Eurydice.

Bk XI:85-145. He taught Midas and Eumolpus the Bacchic rites.

Note:-

BACK – Orpheus and Eurydice NEXT-

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Bk X:243-297 Orpheus sings: Pygmalion and the statue

‘Pygmalion had seen them, spending their lives in wickedness, and, offended by the failings that nature gave the female heart, he lived as a bachelor, without a wife or partner for his bed. But, with wonderful skill, he carved a figure, brilliantly, out of snow-white ivory, no mortal woman, and fell in love with his own creation. The features are those of a real girl, who, you might think, lived, and wished to move, if modesty did not forbid it. Indeed, art hides his art. He marvels: and passion, for this bodily image, consumes his heart. Often, he runs his hands over the work, tempted as to whether it is flesh or ivory, not admitting it to be ivory. He kisses it and thinks his kisses are returned; and speaks to it; and holds it, and imagines that his fingers press into the limbs, and is afraid lest bruises appear from the pressure. Now he addresses it with compliments, now brings it gifts that please girls, shells and polished pebbles, little birds, and many-coloured flowers, lilies and tinted beads, and the Heliades’s amber tears, that drip from the trees. He dresses the body, also, in clothing; places rings on the fingers; places a long necklace round its neck; pearls hang from the ears, and cinctures round the breasts. All are fitting: but it appears no less lovely, naked. He arranges the statue on a bed on which cloths dyed with Tyrian murex are spread, and calls it his bedfellow, and rests its neck against soft down, as if it could feel.

The day of Venus’s festival came, celebrated throughout Cyprus, and heifers, their curved horns gilded, fell, to the blow on their snowy neck. The incense was smoking, when Pygmalion, having made his offering, stood by the altar, and said, shyly: “If you can grant all things, you gods, I wish as a bride to have…” and not daring to say “the girl of ivory” he said “one like my ivory girl.” Golden Venus, for she herself was present at the festival, knew what the prayer meant, and as a sign of the gods’ fondness for him, the flame flared three times, and shook its crown in the air. When he returned, he sought out the image of his girl, and leaning over the couch, kissed her. She felt warm: he pressed his lips to her again, and also touched her breast with his hand. The ivory yielded to his touch, and lost its hardness, altering under his fingers, as the bees’ wax of Hymettus softens in the sun, and is moulded, under the thumb, into many forms, made usable by use. The lover is stupefied, and joyful, but uncertain, and afraid he is wrong, reaffirms the fulfilment of his wishes, with his hand, again, and again.

It was flesh! The pulse throbbed under his thumb. Then the hero, of Paphos, was indeed overfull of words with which to thank Venus, and still pressed his mouth against a mouth that was not merely a likeness. The girl felt the kisses he gave, blushed, and, raising her bashful eyes to the light, saw both her lover and the sky. The goddess attended the marriage that she had brought about, and when the moon’s horns had nine times met at the full, the woman bore a son, Paphos, from whom the island takes its name.’

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