[Grunting]
Âª[lyre plays]
Or
pheus.
Âª[dog singing]
[Storyteller] Orpheus.
Orpheus! Don't go!
[Orpheus] Eurydice. Eurydice.
[Dog] What did he say?
Eurydice.
The woman orpheus loved.
Orpheus and eurydice,
2 names that will always belong together.
2 people who loved each other
even beyond the shadow of death itself.
Orpheus was the son of Calliope,
one of the nine muses who sang to the gods on mount Olympus.
She was the muse of poetry and music.
And her son became the greatest musician
the world had ever known.
For the sake of his music,
Jason took orpheus on the quest for the golden fleece.
His lyre could soothe the waves themselves.
His lyre?
This is a lyre.
The lyre of orpheus.
Huh.
Orpheus had a kingdom in thrace,
in the far north of Greece,
where the olive trees are bent by the wind.
When he came home from his travels,
and was once again among his people,
he sat upon the stones at the edge of the forest and played.
It was the beginning of spring.
[Storyteller] But there had been no rain for 2 months.
[Bells jingle]
[Goats bleating]
Âª[drums beating]
His people danced.
And as their bare feet hit the stones,
you would have said the stones were moving as they danced.
Not just the stones.
As the king played on, his music seemed to weave
into the sounds of the hillside
as if the birdsong, and the riverfall,
the goat's bells, and the wind in the grasses
had been brought into being by his playing.
Makes you want to move.
When orpheus played, the whole world wanted to move.
It seemed that the roots of the trees
would haul themselves up from the earth and dance to his rhythm.
His music gave them new life.
For as he played, the rain started to fall.
Children clung to their mother's arms
and whispered persephone, persephone, persephone.
For while they danced, the goddess who dances in the spring came among them.
His music stirred the natural world
and the earth's sounds spoke to him.
One day, he was walking in the wilderness beyond the farms,
listening to the sound of the wind in the trees.
[Birds chirping]
[Chirping]
And then it was one sound that drew him.
It came from an alder tree.
It was the wood nymph, eurydice.
And his music had brought her into the world of men.
I'm orpheus.
Or...pheus.
I've sung stones to sleep.
I've made the clashing rocks
move away from our ship.
I've been to the end of the world and seen things
more terrible,
more beautiful
than I thought could be.
But you...
Listen to the silence.
Is that what you hear?
Or...
Orpheus.
Say your name.
Say your name to me, and I'll pick it out of the air,
and I'll make a tune of it.
And I'll give it back to you more beautiful than you.
Eurydice.
Eurydice, eurydice,
eurydice, eurydice, eurydice.
And that was how he led her back to his people.
Walking before her in the wilderness,
playing as he went,
like a child with a new gift to show his parents.
And as he looked back at her, she smiled for happiness.
Oh, what a beautiful story.
I'm afraid it isn't over yet.
Sometimes a story doesn't end with 2 people falling in love.
It starts there.
So she went back into the tree?
No, no, no. They were married.
They lived together all that spring and summer.
Eurydice loved orpheus and he loved her,
as if they never had been loved before they met
and never would be loved afterwards.
[Men chattering]
Why are you looking over there?
You miss the forest?
No.
I'm--I'm looking towards the trees.
Sometimes,
the wind moves them and--
and I hear noises that call me.
The way you did once.
Orpheus wanted to keep her away from the untrimmed trees
and the ragged depths of the forest
because he knew who was there.
[Dog] Who was?
Centaurs, fawns, satyrs,
creatures given up to pleasure.
Hairy and unpredictable.
Like me.
[Chuckles]
Hairy, anyway.
And out there in the forest of thrace
was aristaeus himself.
Who lopes in and out of the deepest woods.
The corn was ripe,
the branches were heavy with fruit.
And the men and women of that country gathered in the harvest
and danced a grateful dance to the goddess demeter.
But eurydice was drawn to the wilderness.
[Aristaeus] Aristaeus.
Who's there?
Aristaeus.
[Laughing]
I can see you.
Hello.
Ooh, I'm a mass of an unscratchable itch.
Oh, shake a leg. Oh.
If there was a wall I could get up against,
if there was a rough place I could rub up against,
I could have a really good itch.
Ooh! Oh, yes. C-C-Can you scratch my itch? Come here. Come here.
Oh, yes, great. Over here.
Let go.I shan't.
[Chuckling]
Who are you?
I'm a goat.
I'm a man.
I'm the brother of pan.
Oh, let go!
Oh! Orpheus!
[Aristaeus laughing]
Orpheus!
[Storyteller] Aristaeus meant her no harm.
But as she ran through the forest a snake bit her heel.
[Screaming]
Eurydice.
Satyrs understand only pleasure.
In the face of pain, they're like children
alone in the dark.
I'm a goat. I'm a man.
It wasn't me. It wasn't me. Just a snake. Just a snake!
Eurydice.
Speak to me. Eurydice!
[Orpheus crying]
Don't leave me!
But her eyes just stared past him
and her mouth gaped as wide as a grave.
He took his wife in his arms
and carried her out of the forest
to where his people were still dancing.
And his words chilled their hearts.
Eurydice is dead.
[All exclaiming]
We will give her body to the woods
laid out for harvest fires.
And when we have done with our lament,
[women lamenting]
I will break my lyre.
For since she is dead, there will be no more music.
[Aristaeus] Bring her back!
Don't let her die.
Help me. Please, help me.
You. You can do it. Your music can do anything, can't it?
Make it bring her back.
Use this to bring her back.
Please, please, you must.
You must help me.
Zeus and the immortals, hear me!
I, who have calmed the seas
and made rocks move with my music,
I will charm death himself.
I'll go down to Hades and bring her back.
Do you hear me?
I will bring her back from the arms of death himself!
So armed only with his music,
orpheus went down into the underworld.
A land from which no one has ever returned.
There is almost no sound in Hades.
They have a dog there, don't they?
They have a 3-headed dog, Cerberus, if you must know.
But this isn't a story about dogs.
This is the story of orpheus,
who went down into Hades itself to bring back his loved one.
He picked his way down towards the river styx,
the river he must cross to reach the underworld.
And there below he saw his wife
walking towards charon,
the ferryman of Hades.
One obol.
Drink.
Eurydice! Don't drink.
This is the water of lethe.
The water that makes you forget.
Everyone must drink it.
It's sweet.
[Orpheus] Eurydice!
Don't you feel all those painful things
going,
[water rippling]
Going.
Eurydice didn't turn
as the boat drifted off through the mists.
Orpheus could only wait for the ferry to return,
knowing there was no other way across.
One obol.
The crossing is one obol.
No obol, no crossing.
Âª charon âª
âª charon âª
the boat, it moved.
I know.
The souls of the dead have no weight.
Your hands, they're warm.
I'm alive.Yes.
Your lips, your skin.
Âª charon âª
âª charon âª
I haven't heard music
for, I don't know, so long.
Doesn't it soothe you, eh, sir?
Huh?
[Storyteller] Reaching the far side of the river,
orpheus stumbled on through the cold marshes
with eurydice riding ahead of him.
Always just out of reach.
He called to her but as he did so,
the mists swirled back before his eyes.
And there in front of him was Hades,
the king of the underworld,
with persephone, his queen, by his side.
Who comes uninvited to my kingdom?
I'm orpheus,
king of thrace, son of Calliope.
And what does king orpheus seek from Hades?
A soul now before you in judgment,
eurydice, my wife.
No soul returns from my kingdom.
Love is stronger than death.
[Hades laughing]
Nothing is stronger than death, little musician.
Fear me.
I am the bored audience at the theater.
A knock at the door when you least expect it.
I am the one whose name must not be spoken
for fear I hear it and sit next to you.
I am the pain in your arm at 4:00 in the morning,
the headache that will not shift,
the sour taste in your mouth
of everything you ever did.
I'm waiting, little musician.
And one day, I shall come for you also.
Then you'll see your wife once more.
[Sighs]
[Storyteller] But orpheus would not give up eurydice.
He played again, this time to the queen.
He will not listen.
Or if he pretends to listen, he is lying.
Oh, death cheats, too.
Each year, mankind endures the winter while I stay here
because he tricked me long ago.
Even Zeus was powerless to change it.
He'll trick you, too, musician.
Still orpheus played on,
but the king of the underworld
was deaf to the beauty of his music.
Persephone was moved by an unbearable sadness.
Everything must die, orpheus.
The people we love most have to die.
Even the rocks, the earth itself is eaten away by time.
Everything must die, orpheus.
To live again.
People think of death like absence.
But absence isn't forever.
Not while there is any life left at all in the world.
It's only cold on the earth for 6 months.
Death is unimpressed.
Husband, I pray to you.
I am begging you,
give up this soul to orpheus.
[Laughing]
Very well,
little musician.
Take your bride.
Take her to the upper world.
But always walk ahead of her.
And do not once look back to see if she is following.
For if you turn to look at her,
she will be mine once more.
You hear me?
Imagine the love of his life behind him,
and yet he must not look at her.
With every step that he took, he listened.
But the shades of the dead make no sound.
And he could not hear her tread behind him.
He walked, grim as death itself,
on and on through the wastes of the underworld
towards the 9-looped river styx.
By the time he reached charon's boat,
he had started to doubt that eurydice was behind him.
Don't ask me questions and don't sing.
They remind me of the world.
I have my duty, that's enough.
Eurydice.
Give me a sign.
Just breathe,
I can't hear you.
Don't look around!
Oh, how he longed to. How he longed to.
As he started up the steep track that leads back to the world's light,
he kept his eyes on the ground.
He clenched his fists hard,
and willed himself not to think of her. It wasn't far.
Ahead of him, he could see the daylight.
If only he could believe that she was behind him.
That silence of her death was not a real silence,
but had been redeemed by music.
He was almost at the entrance of the cave that leads to Hades
and he could hear the birds singing outside.
And they walked out into the sunlight and were happy ever after.
They didn't. They didn't.
[Sighs]
They didn't.
It's always just when you think you have things in your grasp
that you close your fingers and find they've gone.
Because when we're in love,
it's our hearts that guide us and betray us all the time.
Orpheus could bear it no longer.
He turned.
And her soul fled back to Hades.
He had lost eurydice forever.
[Dog howling]
Orpheus went out alone.
He went back to the land of his people
and sat like a man who was dead already.
And the women gathered around him.
They felt his pain,
but they begged him to play.
For his music brought rain,
made crops grow.
No
more
music,
ever.
[Jarring]
What happened?
If you could have heard that sound,
a hateful, ugly sound,
a sound that could make women barren,
stop love before it started,
on and on and on,
day after day.
And the women came to him from the fields
knowing they must end this deathly noise.
They circled around him and beat their tools on the ground.
They're really wild those women. What are they doing?
[Dog] Stop! What're they doing to him?
They tore his body limb from limb.
They cast his fragments onto the river.
And his head floated out to sea
to the island of lesbos.
And his head still sang her name
and will always sing her name.
Eurydice.
And some people say that the wild women were turned into trees
where they stood.
That was the last time the trees had souls.
And from that day,
there was nothing in oaks, or limes, or silver birch
but Woody silence.
But orpheus' head spoke prophecies.
And the love that he'd had for eurydice was never forgotten.
Never will be forgotten
as long as there is love.
So maybe love is stronger than death.
And we've got his lyre. It's here.
My lyre must always play.
For without music, we're nothing.
We need the shapes out of nothing.
Tunes out of silence.
Love out of hate.
Music that lasts forever.