Orfejeva smrt

Besedilo

Orfejeva smrt

While with such a song the Thracian bard drew the woods, the hearts of wild beasts, and the very rocks to follow him, behold, the women of the Cicones, their frenzied breasts clothed in the skins of beasts, caught sight from a hilltop of Orpheus joining his song to the strings he struck. One of them, tossing her hair in the light breeze, cried, “Look! There he is, the man who scorns us!” and hurled a spear at the singing mouth of Apollo’s bard; but, tipped with leaves, it left a mark without a wound.

Another’s weapon was a stone, which, hurled through the air, was overcome in mid-flight by the harmony of voice and lyre and, as though begging pardon for so mad an assault, fell at his feet. Yet the reckless onslaught gathered force, all restraint was gone, and the raging Fury reigned. His song would have softened every weapon, but a mighty clamour, the Berecyntian pipe with its curved horn, drums, clapping hands, and Bacchic howls drowned the music of his lyre. Only then did the stones grow red with the blood of the bard whose song went unheard.

First the Maenads seized the countless birds, the snakes, and the throng of beasts still spellbound by his singing— the audience that was Orpheus’ glory—and tore them apart. Then, with bloodstained hands, they turned on Orpheus and flocked together like birds that catch sight of a bird of night abroad by day. As a doomed stag in the morning arena, with tiers of spectators on either side, falls prey to hounds, so they assailed the bard, hurling their leaf-green thyrsi, fashioned for no such use.

Some flung clods, others branches torn from trees, and some hurled flints. And lest their fury lack weapons, oxen happened to be turning the earth beneath the driven plough, and nearby, winning their harvest with much sweat, strong-armed farmers were digging the stubborn fields. At the sight of the troop they fled, leaving behind the weapons of their labour, scattered over the empty fields: hoes, heavy rakes, and long mattocks.

The savage women snatched these up, tore apart the oxen with their threatening horns, then rushed back to seal the bard’s fate. He stretched out his hands, and for the first time his words were powerless, his voice moved nothing; the impious women killed him. Through that mouth—O Jupiter!— which rocks had heard and the senses of wild beasts had understood, his spirit breathed its last and passed into the winds.

For you, Orpheus, the sorrowing birds, the throngs of beasts, the unyielding flints, and the woods that had so often followed your songs all wept; for you the trees shed their leaves and mourned with shorn tresses. They say the rivers, too, swelled with their own tears, while the Naiads and Dryads veiled their robes in black and let their hair hang loose. His limbs lay scattered in different places. You, Hebrus, received his head and lyre; and—wonder of wonders!—as they drifted down your stream, the lyre uttered some mournful lament, the lifeless tongue murmured mournfully, and the banks replied in mourning.

Now, borne out to sea, they left their native river and reached the shore of Methymnaean Lesbos. Here a savage serpent attacked the head cast up on foreign sands, and the flowing hair still dripping with spray. At last Phoebus appeared and checked it as it readied its bite, freezing the serpent’s gaping jaws to stone and hardening its mouth wide open as it was. His shade descended beneath the earth, and all the places he had seen before he knew again; searching the fields of the blessed, he found Eurydice and clasped her in his eager arms.

Here the two now stroll together, keeping step; now he follows as she leads, now he walks ahead, and Orpheus can safely look back at his Eurydice at last. Yet Lyaeus would not let this crime go unpunished. Grieving for the loss of the bard who had sung his sacred rites, he at once bound with twisting roots all the Edonian women in the woods who had witnessed the outrage.

For he stretched out their toes, just where each had pursued Orpheus, and drove their pointed tips into the solid earth. As a bird, once its leg is caught in a snare hidden by a cunning fowler, feels itself held fast, beats its wings and tightens the bonds with its frantic struggles, so each woman, finding herself rooted to the ground, tried in terror to escape, but all in vain: a pliant root held her fast and checked her leaps.

And as she looked for her toes, her foot, her nails, she saw wood creeping up her rounded calves; and when in grief she tried to beat her thigh with her hand, she struck oak. Her breast too became oak, her shoulders were oak, and her outstretched arms you would think were real branches—and in thinking so you would not be mistaken.