Classical Mythology

CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IN LITERATURE AND ART 691

involving boys (Hyacinthus was included), and chose to emphasize manly
courage and violence, along with the most desiccated grammar. This approach
could, and did, lead only to the death of mythology as a living subject of study
and pleasure.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

In the twentieth century, the traditional tales took on vigorous new life. In part
this was the result of studies in comparative anthropology and psychology,
which led to new versions of the old legends. We can only mention here a few
examples from a vast number. Isamu Noguchi's sets for the ballet Orpheus (1948)
are one example (see p. 359); John Cheever's story "The Swimmer," a retelling
of the saga of Odysseus with a sardonic ending, is another. Several films de-
scribed in Chapter 28 are clearly indebted to the theories of Jung and Freud.
Among poets, Ezra Pound (1885-1972) used classical mythological allusions
throughout his poems. Like Pound, T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) spent his creative
years in Europe, having gained a classical education in America. His poetry and
plays are full of allusions to classical mythology, and his play The Family

POETRY AND MYTHOLOGY

In modern times the classical myths have constantly inspired poets, whether as sources

for Jungian archetypes, for political and moral allegory, or for discussion of social, re-

ligious, and psychological problems. At the gates of the twentieth century stands

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), whose New Poems (1907) include the profoundly mov-

ing Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes, in which the description of the upward path from the

Underworld rivals Vergil's evocation of the downward path in Aeneid 6 (see p. 340:

"they went, dim figures, in the shadows of the lonely night"). Eurydice already be-

longs to another world; she follows Orpheus uncertainly, "uncertainly, gently and

without patience," words repeated as Orpheus sees her descending once more, "her

steps hobbled by the long winding-sheets." In 1923 Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus explored

the nature of poetry and its fame: "only he who has lifted his lyre already among the

shades may have unending praise.... Only in the Double-realm are the voices eter-

nal and gentle" (1. 9).

Proto-feminist H. D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) constantly returned to classical

mythology for her images, nowhere more intensely than in Eurydice (1915), in which

Eurydice is the speaker and the focus: "So you have swept me back,/I who could have

walked with the live souls/above the earth.... So for your arrogance/and your ruth-

lessness/I have lost the earth ... before I am lost,/hell must open up like a red rose/for

the dead to pass."

From Rilke to Rita Dove, classical mythology lives in poetry, above all in the myth

of Orpheus—singer, musician, and poet immortal.