The last song of Orpheus

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

Finally. After all of the conflicting information we get from the numerous myths, legends, writings, and operas about Orpheus, we have the true story told by Orpheus himself as he writes his life story for Musaeus (with some help from Robert Silverberg).

In The Last Song of Orpheus, all the bits and pieces of Orpheus's life are tied together into a single chronological narrative and Orpheus tells his own version of how he obtained his famous lyre and used it to charm Pharaoh, the Furies, Persephone, Charon the Styx ferryman, and Cerberus the three-headed dog. He also tells the tale of his disastrous voyage with Jason and the Argonauts when they set out to recover the Golden Fleece and he relates some juicy tidbits about other heroes of legend such as Heracles and (my favorite) Odysseus. Some things he's kept to himself, “neither confirming nor denying” popular rumor, but he does take the chance to explain why he turned back and looked at Eurydice as they were leaving the Underworld.

There's not much new in The Last Song of Orpheus ??? you've likely heard these stories before. But there is much beauty here:

There is no sound like the sound of the lyre. It does not pierce one's ears like the sound of the flute, nor does it shake the hills like a properly struck drum, nor set the heart atremble with warlike impulses like the cry of the trumpet. But it achieves other things, and they are great things, for it is perfect for the accompaniment of the human voice, fitting the contours of the singing tone the way a woman's body fits a man's.

I especially enjoyed listening to Orpheus explain how “music is the divine mathematics” and that the universe, with its planets and moons in perfect relation to each other, like the chromatic scale, is really an infinitely large “harmonious mathematical structure.” He implies also that the inner workings of a single cell are likewise arranged, and these ideas, I think, are truly beautiful.