No One Ever Helped Me So I Will Never Help Anyone Else & Do Not Believe Anyone Should Be Helped Ever is one of thee most loser mindsets btw
the world has been unkind to you so you continue the cycle of unkindness by passing on hatred and indifference to others? Wow. groundbreaking. you’re so cool and tormented
got a folding fan and i think i might just be evil now
i can make violent gestures with it. i can flutter it in front of my face to hide a smile. i can fan myself during this fucking summer heat. god’s most beautiful invention and i can feel myself falling to the dark side
just killed a mosquito in one wicked strike. god will smite me for my hubris
I think a lot about how Canaan House had shitty little cavalier beds attached to the big proper necromancer beds, and how Gideon clocked immediately that the cav bed in the Sixth’s room was clearly being used for weapon storage, and how disgusted Palamedes would have been at the suggestion of Cam having worse accommodations in any way, and how the two of them were almost certainly quite comfortably sharing. what’s one bed when you’re already one flesh.
You are granted a time machine and the ability to prevent one birth (or commit a murder up to you), don’t worry about the butterfly effect, we want the butterfly effect that’s part of the point. Your actions will prevent them from ever rising to prominence. No he’s not here, because it’d be too much of a sweep, pick your second choice if you’re wondering where he is
Every kid in Massachusetts will get a free lunch, paid for by proceeds from a new state tax on millionaires.
A new 4% tax on the state’s wealthiest residents will account for $1 billion of the state’s $56 billion fiscal budget for 2024, according to state documents. A portion of those funds will be used to provide all public-school students with free weekday meals, according to State House News Service.
Researchers may have found an effective, green way to remove microplastics from our water using readily available plant materials. Their device was found to capture up to 99.9% of a wide variety of microplastics known to pose a health risk to humans.
Most recently, aquanauts on board a vessel from the Schmidt Ocean Institute used an underwater robot to turn over slabs of volcanic crust in the deep, dark Pacific. Underneath the seafloor of this well-studied site, the international team of researchers found veins of subsurface fluids swimming with life that has never been seen before.
Solar and storage companies have announced over $100 billion in private sector investments in the US since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) a year ago, according to a new analysis released today by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).
Since President Joe Biden signed the IRA in August 2022, 51 solar factories have been announced or expanded in the US.
A new pack of gray wolves has shown up in California’s Sierra Nevada, several hundred miles away from any other known population of the endangered species, wildlife officials announced Friday.
It’s a discovery to make researchers howl with delight, given that the native species was hunted to extinction in California in the 1920s. Only in the past decade or so have a few gray wolves wandered back into the state from out-of-state packs.
Ocean cleanup crews have fished out the most trash ever taken from one of the largest garbage patches in the world.
The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit environmental engineering organization, saw its largest extraction earlier this month by removing about 25,000 pounds of trash from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Alex Tobin, head of public relations and media for the organization
The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) aimed to promote clean energy investments in the U.S. and globally. In its first year, the IRA successfully spurred other nations to develop competitive climate plans.
Clean energy projects in 44 U.S. states driven by the IRA have generated over 170,600 jobs and $278 billion in investments, aligning with Paris Agreement goals.
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That’s it for this week :)
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In the past I’ve shared other people’s musings about the different interpretations of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Namely, why Orpheus looks back at Eurydice, even though he knows it means he’ll lose her forever. So many people seem to think they’ve found the one true explanation of the myth. But to me, the beauty of myths is that they have many possible meanings.
So I thought I would share a list of every interpretation I know, from every serious adaptation of the story and every analysis I’ve ever heard or read, of why Orpheus looks back.
One interpretation – advocated by Monteverdi’s opera, for example – is that the backward glance represents excessive passion and a fatal lack of self-control. Orpheus loves Eurydice to such excess that he tries to defy the laws of nature by bringing her back from the dead, yet that very same passion dooms his quest fo fail, because he can’t resist the temptation to look back at her.
He can also be seen as succumbing to that classic “tragic flaw” of hubris, excessive pride. Because his music and his love conquer the Underworld, it might be that he makes the mistake of thinking he’s entirely above divine law, and fatally allows himself to break the one rule that Hades and Persephone set for him.
Then there are the versions where his flaw is his lack of faith, because he looks back out of doubt that Eurydice is really there. I think there are three possible interpretations of this scenario, which can each work alone or else co-exist with each other. From what I’ve read about Hadestown, it sounds as if it combines all three.
In one interpretation, he doubts Hades and Persephone’s promise. Will they really give Eurydice back to him, or is it all a cruel trick? In this case, the message seems to be a warning to trust in the gods; if you doubt their blessings, you might lose them.
Another perspective is that he doubts Eurydice. Does she love him enough to follow him? In this case, the warning is that romantic love can’t survive unless the lovers trust each other. I’m thinking of Moulin Rouge!, which is ostensibly based on the Orpheus myth, and which uses Christian’s jealousy as its equivalent of Orpheus’s fatal doubt and explicitly states “Where there is no trust, there is no love.”
The third variation is that he doubts himself. Could his music really have the power to sway the Underworld? The message in this version would be that self-doubt can sabotage all our best efforts.
But all of the above interpretations revolve around the concept that Orpheus looks back because of a tragic flaw, which wasn’t necessarily the view of Virgil, the earliest known recorder of the myth. Virgil wrote that Orpheus’s backward glance was “A pardonable offense, if the spirits knew how to pardon.”
In some versions, when the upper world comes into Orpheus’s view, he thinks his journey is over. In this moment, he’s so ecstatic and so eager to finally see Eurydice that he unthinkingly turns around an instant too soon, either just before he reaches the threshold or when he’s already crossed it but Eurydice is still a few steps behind him. In this scenario, it isn’t a personal flaw that makes him look back, but just a moment of passion-fueled carelessness, and the fact that it costs him Eurydice shows the pitilessness of the Underworld.
In other versions, concern for Eurydice makes him look back. Sometimes he looks back because the upward path is steep and rocky, and Eurydice is still limping from her snakebite, so he knows she must be struggling, in some versions he even hears her stumble, and he finally can’t resist turning around to help her. Or more cruelly, in other versions – for example, in Gluck’s opera – Eurydice doesn’t know that Orpheus is forbidden to look back at her, and Orpheus is also forbidden to tell her. So she’s distraught that her husband seems to be coldly ignoring her and begs him to look at her until he can’t bear her anguish anymore.
These versions highlight the harshness of the Underworld’s law, and Orpheus’s failure to comply with it seems natural and even inevitable. The message here seems to be that death is pitiless and irreversible: a demigod hero might come close to conquering it, but through little or no fault of his own, he’s bound to fail in the end.
Another interpretation I’ve read is that Orpheus’s backward glance represents the nature of grief. We can’t help but look back on our memories of our dead loved ones, even though it means feeling the pain of loss all over again.
Then there’s the interpretation that Orpheus chooses his memory of Eurydice, represented by the backward glance, rather than a future with a living Eurydice. “The poet’s choice,” as Portrait of a Lady on Fire puts it. In this reading, Orpheus looks back because he realizes he would rather preserve his memory of their youthful, blissful love, just as it was when she died, than face a future of growing older, the difficulties of married life, and the possibility that their love will fade. That’s the slightly more sympathetic version. In the version that makes Orpheus more egotistical, he prefers the idealized memory to the real woman because the memory is entirely his possession, in a way that a living wife with her own will could never be, and will never distract him from his music, but can only inspire it.
Then there are the modern feminist interpretations, also alluded to in Portrait of a Lady on Fire but seen in several female-authored adaptations of the myth too, where Eurydice provokes Orpheus into looking back because she wants to stay in the Underworld. The viewpoint kinder to Orpheus is that Eurydice also wants to preserve their love just as it was, youthful, passionate, and blissful, rather than subject it to the ravages of time and the hardships of life. The variation less sympathetic to Orpheus is that Euyridice was at peace in death, in some versions she drank from the river Lethe and doesn’t even remember Orpheus, his attempt to take her back is selfish, and she prefers to be her own free woman than be bound to him forever and literally only live for his sake.
With that interpretation in mind, I’m surprised I’ve never read yet another variation. I can imagine a version where, as Orpheus walks up the path toward the living world, he realizes he’s being selfish: Eurydice was happy and at peace in the Elysian Fields, she doesn’t even remember him because she drank from Lethe, and she’s only following him now because Hades and Persephone have forced her to do so. So he finally looks back out of selfless love, to let her go. Maybe I should write this retelling myself.
Are any of these interpretations – or any others – the “true” or “definitive” reason why Orpheus looks back? I don’t think so at all. The fact that they all exist and can all ring true says something valuable about the nature of mythology.
worth noting that in Orphée aux enfers, an 1858 opera by Jacques Offenbach, the reason he looks back is because *squint* Jupiter throws a bolt of thunder at the musician’s feet (because he wants to keep Eurydice for himself) just before he reaches the surface
mind you, OAE is a parody of Gluck’s interpretation and of serious opera in general, so Eurydice is a faithless, bored woman who jumped at the opportunity to sleep with Pluto, and Orpheus is a similarly faithless violin teacher who only goes down to rescue her because a physical manifestation of the conscience named Public Opinion threatens his career. so maybe he looks back because he was startled, or maybe he does so because he wants to leave his wife behind and thinks that being startled is enough of an excuse for Public Opinion to get off of his case
