#libraryofjoy

Look. Here’s the thing.

My sister baked a crumb cake the other day. It was exquisite, filled the whole house with curling notes of cinnamon and vanilla. The top a crystalline wonderland of sugar and cinnamon crusted over moist ivory cake like the sweetest ice crust over the first snow. Beneath that, a delightfully contrasting inch of vibrant violet…utterly tasteless blueberries.

The thing abt these fuckers is that they’re nature’s cruelest liar. The perfectly round, poppable shape, the ashy layer that washes away to reveal such a distinct and lovely blue, and then—nothing. Worse than nothing! They taste of the essence of ‘meh.’ They burst open to reveal ‘it was fine, I guess.’ Peel away their beautiful lying skin and what do you get? The emotional and taste equivalent of stepping on wet cardboard with bare feet.

OH, WORM. YOU'RE RIGHT.

ahh I love it so much it’s one of my favorite paintings of all time! I wrote my first ever real paper on it (specifically on its engagement with Ovid) and to this day I don’t know how I did on that paper, but writing it was transformative for my understanding of the myth. This past summer I finally got to see the painting in person at the Leighton House and discovered there’s a Robert Browning poem affixed to the frame that definitely would have been helpful to know about while writing about it. It somewhat supports my points anyway though, so that’s okay.

long post: Ovid, Leighton, and my 2016 and 2020 takes on the two of them

First of all: his eyes. Obscured and shadowed and leaving it ambiguous whether or not his gaze has fallen on Eurydice yet. Is this the moment before he gives in and looks at her? Is it the split second after he sees her and before she disappears? YES. (I did finally get to confirm that the eyes are just as shadowy and ambiguous in person as in all the pictures on the internet.)

Secondly, something a lot of paintings of Orpheus leading Eurydice out of the underworld do, but which is particularly brought to the forefront here: Orpheus is touching Eurydice. He should clearly know that she’s there, since he can feel her, so why would he doubt her presence and need to see her to confirm that she’s there? Many other painters show him leading her by the hand (Corot, Feuerbach, Rubens, Poynter, Cervelli, Vignali, Raoux), creating a paradox where you’re just not supposed to think too hard about what it means for the story that they’re holding hands. But what’s going on here is much more than that. She seems to be actively urging him to turn around (a point in which I was vindicated by the Browning poem, which ends “look at me!”). Leighton’s drawing attention to their physical contact and the impossibility of Orpheus NOT knowing that she’s there. He must know, she’s clinging to him so tightly, and look at his hand, he acknowledges her presence by pushing her away, actively trying to avoid looking at her.

So from there I go back to Ovid (metamorphoses 10.44-52)

… Nec regia coniunx sustinet oranti nec qui regit ima negare, Eurydicenque vocant. Umbras erat illa recentes inter et incessit passu de vulnere tardo. Hanc simul et legem Rhodopeius accipit Orpheus, ne flectat retro sua lumina, donec Avernas exierit valles: aut inrita dona futura.

Neither the royal consort nor he who reigns below can bear to deny the beggar what he asks. They call for Eurydice. She was among the recently deceased, and she walked with a stride slowed by her wound. Rhodopeian (Thracian) Orpheus received her and a rule at the same time OR At the same time, Rhodopeian (Thracian) Orpheus also received this rule: that he not turn his eyes behind him until he had left the valleys of Avernus, or else the gift would be in vain

The pains Ovid takes here to note that Orpheus gets Eurydice and the rule “simul,” at the same time— specifically, that he does not get Eurydice before the condition is named. Eurydice is not present when they specify that he is not allowed to turn around. She doesn’t know that he’s not allowed to look at her. That’s what I think Leighton’s working with.

Eurydice is begging Orpheus to look at her and he won’t and she has no idea why. She’s confused, she’s distraught, the man she loves, the man who just descended to the underworld for her, refuses to look at her. She’s desperately begging him to look at her and acknowledge her and speak to her and confirm he loves her, her as a person, not just the idea of being the man who could sing someone back from the dead.

He doesn’t turn because he doubts she’s there. He knows. He can feel her arms around him and hear her pleas. He turns because he cannot bear her thinking that he doesn’t love her. He needs her to know that he loves her, even if it means losing her. His resolve to not look at her is defeated by the strength of his love, not his doubt. He turns knowing she is there and knowing he will lose her, because he cannot face the alternative, that she thinks he does not love her and that he raised her from the dead out of pride, not love.

Now, why on earth he can’t just use his voice and tell her he’s not allowed to look at her, I have no idea. That youtube comment asking why the two of them don’t just marco-polo their way out? Yeah, that. Oh also throughout the paper I referred to Ovid’s version of the character as “Eurydice” and Leighton’s version as “Euridice” with the Italian spelling because for some reason the internet often gives the painting’s title in Italian, but actually that was a really helpful way of dealing with two portrayals of the same figure.

In the last few years I’ve moved toward a much less romantic perspective on the myth. I talked somewhat recently about my take on Eurydice, and last year I got something close to it. I think these poems and this art capture a lot of my thoughts right now. But still, like Leighton, I adore the idea of her asking him, even begging him, to turn around. Like in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, when Heloise says “perhaps she was the one who said, ‘turn around.’” But in Portrait of a Lady on Fire I think the implications are that Eurydice would be urging him to make the artist’s choice rather than the lover’s choice, telling him that art is more important than love, that the memory of love is enough (which is, incidentally, I think exactly what the Browning poem is saying). 

Literature: Top 3 books you want to read this year. 

“Return of the Thief” by Megan Whalen Turner “By Force Alone” by Lavie Tidhar Fullmetal Alchemist manga

Autobiography: Who is the protagonist you most relate to?