Orpheus in the Underworld

It has been a while since I brought up Orpheus her.  I had been so into the myth last year when Anais Mitchell's folk opera Hadestown was released. And it is pretty clear that I love this story because of Persephone's role in the tale.

There is an often overlooked version of the story. Even though it is overlooked it might be the single most recognizable piece of music ever written.  It is a form of operetta written by composer Jacques Offenbach first performed in 1858.

In the second act, there is a song called The Infernal Gallop which has become associated with the French dance The Can-Can.  So much so that it is often called by the name Can-Can than by it's actual name.


I couldn't find too many actual performance videos (as opposed to orchestral versions) but this one is pretty good. 




There is, however, a version of the song used in the  Baz Luhrmann movie Moulin Rouge.  The movie is, in some ways, a descent into the underworld just like the journey of Orpheus.  In this instance, it is a naive young writer with stars in his eyes named Christian who finds himself in the seedy underworld of the Moulin Rouge and falls in love with the untouchable Satine. It remains one of my favorite movies. 

Over the Rainbow

There have been some great conversations over at The Juggler in regards to the Wizard of Oz and its connection to modern paganism.  Truth be told, I never really thought of it in those terms until I saw it as part of the Girls Underground paradigm. 

But I was just thinking about the myth of Persephone and how we are nearing the summer solstice - marking the halfway point of her stay in Olympos.  I can imagine her becoming restless and wanting to go home.  It brought to mind the song "Over the Rainbow".  What if Kansas is Olympos and Oz is the underworld?  Persephone dreams of returning to that magical land. 

And that, of course, made me think of a delightful song by Three Weird Sisters (a couple of the sisters are friends of mine, actually) called Dumb Dumb Dorothy.  Really - I had always wondered just *why* Dorothy would give up everything she found in Oz to get back to the black and white world of Kansas.  Truth be told, this seems to be an MGM fabrication as the Dorothy of L. Frank Baum's books seems quite content to return and to even make a home there.  I have often wondered why Persephone would continue to return to Olympos year after year when her real life is in the Underworld.  Sometimes, I'm not sure she does return. 

Finding Inspiration in the strangest places

Last night, I was watching the newest episode of Caprica on the Syfy channel.  If you haven't seen it and you liked the reimagining of Battlestar Galactica, check this out.  In last night's episode, which you can watch on line, Joseph Adama was encouraged to honor his late wife and daughter in a traditional ritual from his home world of Tauron.  I was very impressed with the ritual itself.  The theology of the 12 colonies from both Battlestar Galactica and Caprica is based heavily on the Olympian Gods.  And clearly in this episode, there is also a nod toward the entire Hellenic pantheon including the Chthonic gods of the underworld.  They never said the names of the gods there - which may be consistent with how the ancients viewed them as well. 

I think sometimes about funeral rites.  Not that I am rushing to have a funeral or anything, but I do think about how to incorporate my own spiritual traditions with something that most of my friends and family can also take comfort in even though most of them are not Hellenic.  The main problem with pre-planning your own funeral is that once you're dead you really don't have a say in it any more. 

The ritual that the Adamas participated in during lasts night's episode was lovely.  And even though it comes from a pop-culture TV show based on a fictitious world with a Hellenic-like state religion, I don't feel the least bit weird saying that I would like to incorporate something like that into a funeral. 

In the episode, friends and family gather at their home for the ritual.  As the ritual begins, Joe and Willie Adama (future Bill Adama of Galactica) approach a priest that appeared to be a symbolic Charon, the ferryman who allows passage of souls across the River Styx in the underworld.  The priest asked them if they had a coin for him and they each handed him one - one for Shannon Adama and one for Tamera Adama.  Joe and Willie then asked if they would be granted passage and the priest replied yes, but then asked if they (meaning Joe and Willie) would be willing to let them go.  They both said yes.  Then someone in the background began to sing a song, presumably in the Tauron language, and the priest gave Joe Adama a tattoo - which are very symbolic in their culture. 

I really like the core of this ritual; the approaching Charon, the offering of coins and the granting of passage to the underworld.  I would never ask someone to get a tattoo for me, unless then wanted to of course.  I have also always wanted the poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay to be read for me and I think it would incorporate nicely into the ritual.

Be to her, Persephone,
All the things I might not be:
Take her head upon your knee.
She that was so proud and wild,
Flippant, arrogant and free,
She that had no need of me,
Is a little lonely child
Lost in Hell,—Persephone,
Take her head upon your knee:
Say to her, "My dear, my dear,
It is not so dreadful here."

Percy Jackson and Persephone

I know you are all eagerly waiting to hear my review of Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightening Thief. I finally saw it last night. I have to say, I very much enjoyed the books by Rick Riordan but the movie left a lot to be desired in my own opinion. Read on to see what I thought.

***SPOILERS AHEAD: DO NOT READ IF YOU AREN’T PREPARED TO BE SPOILED***



As I mentioned in this post, I thought that Riordan had portrayed Persephone and the Underworld in a very respectful way. However, the screenwriters did their damage and plucked Persephone out of mythology, placed her in an abusive marriage and moved her into Hell. Persephone didn’t even appear in the first book, but the movie added an entirely new storyline that involved her prominently, and I thought poorly.

We meet Hades early in the film and he appears as a fiery hell demon – wings and horns and everything you might expect from “Evil”. I was disappointed in that depiction especially since Riordan didn’t give you that image of him at all. In fact, as the books progress the character of Hades becomes much more complex. Later, Hades appears as a Mick Jaggar-esque rock star but reminds us that he can just as easily transform into Tim Curry’s character from Ridley Scott’s Legend.

On their way to the underworld to complete the quest, the children in the movie end up in Nashville Tennessee at the Parthenon there. At first I was very excited that the filmmakers decided to place part of the movie at this scale reproduction in the American South. However, once the children entered the building I was quickly disappointed. They were supposedly inside the Nashville Parthenon, but the statue of Athena there was not authentic. I was sure they were going to destroy the Parthenon in an action sequence, but why put a statue that doesn’t match the statue in the real building? It said to me that the filmmakers didn’t even do the research.

Eventually the heroes of the story reach the entrance of the Underworld. Once they were in the Underworld, the imagery turned to fire and brimstone. I really bristle when people take biblical images to describe the Greek Underworld. I do understand that they were making a movie for American kids that probably do not have a deep love or understanding of Greek Mythology. But I don’t think it gave the moviegoers a fair perspective on the stories of the ancients. In the movie, the story of Persephone is described at its very base – Persephone was stolen by Hades and kept in the underworld as a prisoner. She despises her husband and only wants to spend her time on Olympos. I was also confused by the filmmakers’ understanding of the myth. If they wanted to portray Persephone as the victim, why in the world was she still in the underworld the day before the Summer Solstice? Based on the general understanding of the myth, Persephone should be with her mother from the Spring to the Fall before returning again to her husband. If they are going to go cliché, they don’t even manage to get that entirely accurate.

Overall, I also had a big problem with the random aging of the main characters. In the book, Percy and his friends start out the series at the age of 11. In the movie Percy is somewhere around 15, 16, or 17 – they never specify. To me, the unexplained aging of the characters kind of ruined the integrity of the story. It didn’t make much sense to me why they were all at summer camp as older teenagers. I thought the plot was overly simplified (and rewritten for the most part) to reduce the story to the lowest common denominator. This is not a feeling I had from the books. Yes, they start out simple from the point of view of a very confused 11 year old, but as he ages throughout the series the story, the mythology and Percy’s own perception mature right along with him.

The Underworld in Recent Fiction

You may recall the basics of The Underworld from Classics classes in High school. You know that souls will cross the river Styx on the ferry run by Charon. The Titans were banished to Tartarus after the war against the Olympians. You may also be familiar with several of it’s most famous residents – Sisyphus, endlessly pushing the rock up the hill only to have it tumble down again, and Tantalus who is always wish for the food and drink just out of his reach. Recently, two very different authors have included amazing descriptions of the Underworld in all of its splendor, or lack there of.

To give you a little refresher, feel free to check out one of my favorite sites on the subject is Myth Man’s Homework Help Center page on The Underworld.

I particular love the map of the underworld there:

In the popular young adult series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, author Rick Riordan provides a very colorful description of The Underworld, and of Persephone herself, in the final book of the series, The Last Olympian.

“We emerged at the base of a cliff, on a plain of black volcanic sand. To our right, the river Styx gushed from the rocks and roared off in a cascade of rapids. To our left, away in the gloom, fires burned on the ramparts of Erebos, the great black walls of Hades’s kingdom.” (pages 116, 117)

About the palace gardens, Riordan writes:

“It was beautiful in a creepy way. Skeletal white trees grew from marble basins. Flower beds overflowed with golden plants and gemstones. A pair of thrones, one bone and one silver, sat on the balcony with a view of the Fields of Asphodel. It would have been a nice place to spend a Saturday morning except for the sulfurous smell and the cries of tortured souls in the distance.” (page 120)

And, I do so love his description of Persephone herself.

“Queen Persephone studied me curiously. I’d seen her once before in the winter, but now in the summer she looked like a totally different goddess. She had lustrous black hair and warm brown eyes. Her dress shimmered with colors. Flower patterns in the fabric changed and blossomed – roses, tulips, honeysuckle.” (page 121)

The Percy Jackson books are a fantastic Young Adult introduction to Greek Mythology. Riordan really does his mythological homework and has woven a delightful tale. I hope that perhaps you might be interested in checking them out for yourself if you haven’t already.

That brings me, however, to my favorite underworld description. This comes from Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad. Written for the Canongate Myth series, it is a tale of the Iliad and Odyssey from the perspective of Odysseus’s faithful wife, Penelope. In order to share this description, I have to give a little of the story away: it is told by Penelope after her own death when she is living in the underworld herself.

“It is dark here, as many have remarked: ‘Dark Death’, they used to say. ‘The gloomy halls of Hades’, and so forth. Well, yes, it is dark, but there are advantages – for instance, if you see someone you’d rather not speak to you can always pretend you haven’t recognized them.

"There are of course the fields of asphodel. You can walk around in them if you want. It’s brighter there, and a certain amount of vapid dancing goes on, though the region sounds better than it is – the fields of asphodel has a poetic lilt to it. But just consider. Asphodel, asphodel, asphodel – pretty enough white flowers, but a person gets tired of them after a while. It would have been better to supply some variety – an assortment of colours, a few winding paths and vistas and stone benches and fountains. I would have preferred a few hyacinths, at least and would a sprinkling of crocuses have been too much to expect? Though we never get spring here, or any other season. You do have to wonder who designed the place.” (Pages 15, 16)

If you have not read this story yet, please take the time to do so. And while you’re at it, read everything else Margaret Atwood has ever written – you won’t be disappointed.

A little bit of Persephone can be found in some of the most random places.