Why Orpheus looked back
Orpheus looks back, he cannot hear Eurydice follow him out of Hades. He had lost her once to the underworld, moved the gods by his deep song of grief, and was given leave to retrieve his wife. Without thinking too much about it, one can say that he looks back out of impatience, or that he looks back out of mistrust, or that he looks back just because he's an idiot. Whichever of these three you choose, it certainly can be argued that Orpheus was given a chance, a second one, to be with his beloved, a rare gift and a rarer actuality. That Eurydice dies shortly after their wedding is this myth's first tragedy, that Orpheus lost her again, after being given permission by the gods to get her back, is its second. Briefly, again without thinking too much about it, this myth has two tragedies, both involving loss, the second one more poignant than the first because of the chance at retrieval lost. It is one thing to lose something precious; and it is quite another, heavier, realer thing to lose the same thing twice. Second chances and second promises give a pain more exquisite this way, because and only because they were repeated. Or from the other end, loss is always painful this way, because it is repeatable. What is not repeatable, however, is Orpheus' entry to Hades, as long as he remains alive.
Again, without thinking too much about it, Orpheus loses Eurydice twice, literally. Furthermore, a superficial deconstruction would show that he had already lost her: what was following him in Hades was the ghost of Eurydice, for she cannot exist in mortal form in the land of the dead. He did not lose the same thing twice; he lost her the first time (in the same manner that we do not experience loss twice, each loss is singular, regardless of the thing). Like Derrida's sign, she in Hades is an uncapturable trace, always already lost to him, the loss only reaffirmed by him looking back. It is a reaffirmation of loss only because he first hoped that he will negate this loss. That is why he looked back. What he hoped for was a whole, and looking back what he sees is a trace. It is not in looking back that he loses Eurydice; it is in the moment before looking back, the moment where he hopes, this hope fueled by not hearing her footsteps follow his.
Orpheus affirmed that he cannot get her back precisely because he hoped he would, and then sealed that possibility unto impossibility by looking back. He cannot retrieve her no matter what he did - not because she would not return to life had he been successful in his quest, but because of the very act of hoping. This is because, necessarily, every hope harbors a forgetfulness. He forgets that he is in the land of shadows, being of the land of men. He forgets that only he has footsteps in the land of the dead, having solid feet. He forgets what was unrepeatable: the allowance of the gods, being mortal himself. He cannot enter Hades twice, no man alive can. In hoping for presence, like every man does, he rendered final an absence by reaffirmation of this very absence. You can argue all these and say that this myth is a motherfucker of a tragedy.
But what is more tragic, perhaps, is that you can turn this argument around on its head: it is forgetfulness that allows for hope. "I am, intermittently," Barthes writes, "unfaithful. This is the condition of my survival; for if I did not forget, I should die. The lover who doesn't forget sometimes dies of excess, and tension of memory." Orpheus can love, and grieve, and hope, only because he has always already, necessarily, forgotten Eurydice. As in Marion's amorous autism and in Barthes' Image-repertoire, we forget the other necessarily because we love the other and hope for their presence and desire it, making the other, as in Barthes again, oscillate as "a colorless object... placed in the center of of the stage and there adored, idolized, taken to task, covered with discourse [or songs, in Orpheus' case], with prayers (and perhaps, surreptitiously, with invectives)... [I]t is my desire I desire, and the loved being is no more than its tool... And if a day comes when I must bring myself to renounce the other, the violent mourning which then grips me is the mourning of the Image-repertoire itself; it was a beloved structure, and I weep for the loss of love, not of him or her." We have to intermittently forget what we love and erect language in the other's stead, otherwise the other would be too much to bear, otherwise we could not hope for any sort of consummation, otherwise we could not mourn loss.
In one version of the myth, we see Orpheus live forever as a dismembered head, kept by the Muses. Orpheus is now immortal in the world of men, fated to sing and entrance everything in this world except the one he loves, who is forever in the world of the dead. It is in this fate that he finally loves what he loves, for he cannot now forget: what is a head that sings, if not a thing that laments in remembrance unto infinity? That is perhaps the greatest tragedy in this myth - we remember what we lose so much more keenly than what we keep. This is why Orpheus looked back: because he has forgotten that which he loves. That is, after all, the only reason why we need to look back at all.
Again, without thinking too much about it, Orpheus loses Eurydice twice, literally. Furthermore, a superficial deconstruction would show that he had already lost her: what was following him in Hades was the ghost of Eurydice, for she cannot exist in mortal form in the land of the dead. He did not lose the same thing twice; he lost her the first time (in the same manner that we do not experience loss twice, each loss is singular, regardless of the thing). Like Derrida's sign, she in Hades is an uncapturable trace, always already lost to him, the loss only reaffirmed by him looking back. It is a reaffirmation of loss only because he first hoped that he will negate this loss. That is why he looked back. What he hoped for was a whole, and looking back what he sees is a trace. It is not in looking back that he loses Eurydice; it is in the moment before looking back, the moment where he hopes, this hope fueled by not hearing her footsteps follow his.
Orpheus affirmed that he cannot get her back precisely because he hoped he would, and then sealed that possibility unto impossibility by looking back. He cannot retrieve her no matter what he did - not because she would not return to life had he been successful in his quest, but because of the very act of hoping. This is because, necessarily, every hope harbors a forgetfulness. He forgets that he is in the land of shadows, being of the land of men. He forgets that only he has footsteps in the land of the dead, having solid feet. He forgets what was unrepeatable: the allowance of the gods, being mortal himself. He cannot enter Hades twice, no man alive can. In hoping for presence, like every man does, he rendered final an absence by reaffirmation of this very absence. You can argue all these and say that this myth is a motherfucker of a tragedy.
But what is more tragic, perhaps, is that you can turn this argument around on its head: it is forgetfulness that allows for hope. "I am, intermittently," Barthes writes, "unfaithful. This is the condition of my survival; for if I did not forget, I should die. The lover who doesn't forget sometimes dies of excess, and tension of memory." Orpheus can love, and grieve, and hope, only because he has always already, necessarily, forgotten Eurydice. As in Marion's amorous autism and in Barthes' Image-repertoire, we forget the other necessarily because we love the other and hope for their presence and desire it, making the other, as in Barthes again, oscillate as "a colorless object... placed in the center of of the stage and there adored, idolized, taken to task, covered with discourse [or songs, in Orpheus' case], with prayers (and perhaps, surreptitiously, with invectives)... [I]t is my desire I desire, and the loved being is no more than its tool... And if a day comes when I must bring myself to renounce the other, the violent mourning which then grips me is the mourning of the Image-repertoire itself; it was a beloved structure, and I weep for the loss of love, not of him or her." We have to intermittently forget what we love and erect language in the other's stead, otherwise the other would be too much to bear, otherwise we could not hope for any sort of consummation, otherwise we could not mourn loss.
In one version of the myth, we see Orpheus live forever as a dismembered head, kept by the Muses. Orpheus is now immortal in the world of men, fated to sing and entrance everything in this world except the one he loves, who is forever in the world of the dead. It is in this fate that he finally loves what he loves, for he cannot now forget: what is a head that sings, if not a thing that laments in remembrance unto infinity? That is perhaps the greatest tragedy in this myth - we remember what we lose so much more keenly than what we keep. This is why Orpheus looked back: because he has forgotten that which he loves. That is, after all, the only reason why we need to look back at all.
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