The Double Death of Eurydice: A Discussion of Browning and Mythology

Abstract

The scene of myth is public, in this case the underworld, a site identifying desire with rhetoric and rhetoric with death. Timeless, stateless, permanently abject, this new scene for the hero is the border of his magic and of his relations with the gods. The same passion that drove him underground will insure his failure, a failure that must insure the success of the myth in which, knowingly and unknowingly, he plays a part. The underworld is quiet and solemn, as befits the meeting of lovers, informed by mystery that the hero only identifies with death and violation. Orpheus must be stunned by Eurydice’s words: surely she would not undo the future they might yet have? Does Eurydice have her own set of laws for the encounter? Where in Orpheus there is only sexual loss, in his wife there is a clear demand for the blissful moment which she, in her timelessness, understands as perpetuating their passion. Her state makes literal the lovers’ desire for eternity; ironically, romantic union has its perfect rhetoric in the underworld. To explore the borders of this public scene, we must consider the inversions it makes possible. Lovers’ language, what the Greeks call krevata murmurata (bed murmurings), which elsewhere and in time would itself work like the hero’s magic, demands the perversion of magic, inaugurating the metamorphoses of will and passion.

But give them me, the mouth, the eyes, the brow! Let them once more absorb me! One look now Will lap me round for ever, not to pass Out of its light, though darkness lie beyond: Hold me but safe again within the bond Of one immortal look! All woe that was, Forgotten, and all terror that may be, Defied, -no past is mine, no future: look at me!¹