A Verse Play in Four Scenes

CAST

Orpheus

Eurydice

Pluto

Hermes

Chorus, three men and three women

Antichorus, three men and three women

Scene I: On the way to Pluto’s kingdom

Orpheus. While I live she lives.

She belongs to me.

Chorus. She belongs to no one.

She is with Pluto now,

lord of eternal sleep.

Orpheus. She belongs to me.

In my breath she lives,

in my heart she sings,

in my eyes she walks

the earth still.

Chorus. She who was dear to you

is a ghost of memory —

memory, the stage

where the dead walk,

seeming to belong

to someome briefly —

responding to our words

and to our bidding,

greeting the light

that seeks them out

until we who need them —

frightened, yearning,

hungry, shining — slip off,

and memory goes down

the same dark hole with us.

Orpheus. She lives in me. She is not dead.

Chorus. Good — then she will live

in you a while.

Your striving now

will some day strangely help you

to relieve the pain of grief.

Orpheus. I cannot abide your words:

empty, careless customary words,

words of no feeling.

Chorus. Our words bring you

no personal balm.

Death’s custom does not change.

Words comfort the comforter.

The mourner goes uncomforted.

For him the death of one

becomes the death of all.

No one can break his grief

but the cherished one he seeks.

Orpheus. Grief? I do not grieve. She lives.

I’ll bring her back myself.

Chorus. How will you do it? Tell us.

Orpheus. With my full voice,

with my whole body’s voice.

(He begins a high vigorous chant as the scene shifts and the

dead appear: the Antichorus, male and female, half reclining

as if being embraced by an absent lover. They may move

slowly, though not mournfully, in response to his song.)

Orpheus. Life is the animal

of the world.

More than all

of us alive,

more than all

of us dead,

each of us

ever born

has only been

one eyeblink

of the animal

of the world.

(Chorus comes to the fore, dividing itself in half, male and female.)

Female Chorus. The end, the physical end:

the last days, beginning of absence.

Moving back to the last days you see

the tightening and loosening of body.

The body, the pressures, the hundred

delicate maneuverings, the sweat,

the pain, the flash and falling

of spirit, the failing.

Watching the body

fighting the self,

pressing, impressing

its own isolation.

Before the departure,

an absence already begun.

Male Chorus. Dogged by the need to rebound,

to measure, explain — some message

to lighten the brain — to tell

why the flagging body,

known to you for so long,

unravels, unhinges,

slips off its life,

to float away in the dark.

Female Chorus. Now her face finds your eyes

without moving her own;

sees you at last,

but sees you too steadily

to see you at all.

Behind the window of pain

you are left outside.

Male Chorus. Between living and dying

the gap slowly widens.

Female Chorus. Who comes between

to end the deceit?

Male Chorus. A dark shaping creature.

Female Chorus. The sole self moving,

unmoved, irreducible.

Male Chorus. Dark creature alone

each of us bears

from birth until death.

Female Chorus. Unclearly known,

barely acknowledged,

rarely engaged.

Chorus. The still steady mover

of life’s ongoingness.

Male Chorus. The end, and you see her

totally changed.

The end after hours

of furious breathing,

the color leaving her face,

a deep blood flush

creeping through her scalp,

the lowered breathing —

the animal rasp.

Female Chorus. One self-emptying gasp —

and you breathe in her mouth,

her mouth returning it twice

with breaths no longer her own,

before going still.

Male Chorus. Her thin loose arms

you try to rub.

They are cold.

Female Chorus. Her limp wet mouth,

her cheeks cold as meat,

the life pressed out.

Male Chorus. There is her head,

composed on the pillow:

your last look turning away

from the open door.

Female Chorus. No longer herself,

her quiet profile

strangely unchanged,

yet completely another.

Male Chorus. As someone asleep

who sleeps so fast

she is no longer herself.

Female Chorus. The delicate line

of the nose badly stretched,

making it seem almost hooked.

Male Chorus. Her wide mouth gaping

flabby, unbreathing.

Female Chorus. Her yellowing face.

Male Chorus. Her life —

Female Chorus. — gone out.

Male Chorus. Gone out of life.

Female Chorus. What is the self, the sole self,

barely known, and rarely engaged?

Male Chorus. Our only being.

Without it we misunderstand

our love, our despair, our linked

belonging one to another.

Without it we miss knowing

we are who we are.

One life strikes up

in response to another’s,

like music.

A singular weight

impresses the stream

of all consciousness

passing now

into forever,

passing forever.

Without it we are nothing —

less than a carrot, a dog.

Female Chorus. Unburdened when known,

it moves freely,

touching all, of which

it is never a part.

Male Chorus. Subsisting in things

it has touched

as if saying, “I am

totally in but not of it.”

Female Chorus. While shaping the form

it is making in order to be.

Male Chorus. One form still forming,

unknown till the end,

coming clear briefly.

Female Chorus. Seen and felt by another,

watching in terror, in love.

Male Chorus. As a tide washes in, washes out.

Female Chorus. As a sigh of spirit achieved.

Male Chorus. As a life momentarily fixed,

glimmering clear,

beyond life’s urgencies.

Female Chorus. Finding its shape at last.

Male Chorus. Between living and dying,

the gap slowly widens.

Who comes between

to end the deceit?

Female Chorus. A dark shaping creature.

(The voice of Orpheus breaks out, repeating the song

“Life is the animal. “)

Life is the animal

of the world.

More than all

of us alive,

more than all

of us dead,

each of us

ever born

has only been

one eyeblink

of the animal

of the world.

I sing the animal

of the world.

(Chorus reassembles, as before, while Antichorus, comprising the
dead, comes together opposite.)

Antichorus. Art is his weapon

against immortal death.

Chorus. Art is his defense

of all life’s beauty.

Antichorus. Man wishes to forget

the life he lives.

So much of what he lives

is pain and groveling.

Chorus. Pain is beauty’s animal

and shares with him

all life’s changes.

Antichorus. If this were so,

death would not matter,

life would not matter.

Art would have no subject.

Chorus. There is only life,

the only subject for song.

Antichorus. His song denies the gods

and scorns eternal life.

Chorus. Eternally his song

honors the life of man.

Antichorus. A blasphemy that men

never will forgive him.

Chorus. All women need him.

There is the wife he trusts

his art to resurrect.

Antichorus. Through her his art is spent —

his final punishment.

Chorus. Through her we see all women

rise up to worship him.

Antichorus. Desiring him in body’s madness,

as their husband,

their one common god,

they will tear his flesh,

they will break his limbs,

they will crush his manhood,

they will devour him.

(Antichorus divides, male and female, to sing this ballad.)

Male Antichorus. Let me take you in my arms.

Death must make love bloom.

I can quiet all your qualms.

Death is life’s bridegroom.

Antichorus. Over and over the leaves of clover are plucked, again and again in vain.

Female Antichorus. I let you come in one night,

worm into my room.

Love died in the daily light.

Death bulged in my womb.

Antichorus. Over and over the leaves of clover are plucked, again and again in vain.

Male Antichorus. I drop you, your taste is gall.

Love has had its way.

Death dumps clutching lovers all

into the light of day.

Antichorus. Over and over the leaves of clover are plucked, again and again in vain.

(Enter Orpheus. Seeing Antichorus for the first time, he approaches them
curiously. As he addresses them, each successively turns away slowly.)

Orpheus. Who are you in that gown with drooping breasts,

like the painted mother of a woman I once knew?

She warned me against seduction of the senses

through music and poetry. Her daughter died.

The mother trailed me till she grew mad.

You’re silent now. Why do you turn away?

And this one here, grinning for his pay.

I can remember him. He served me once.

He holds up his two stumps of arms

to show me where the hands were lopped

for stealing something from me once.

Strange, I can’t remember what he stole.

Can this be the loose-lipped girl

with hollow eyes, the one who filled

my waking dreams when I was a boy,

who still trembles for her chastity?

She sways as though her great wet eyes

will drag her to the ground. She falls away.

And you — who are you with that face

so empty and immense that only

to approach you makes me want to drown?

Your silence deafens, like the traffic

of a city vanishing in time.

Who or what are you? How you stand your ground!

(Antichorus fades away with his last words while Chorus replaces them at his side.)

Orpheus. Why are they here?

They steal my breath!

Chorus. Your memory wakens them

when you are in despair.

They thrive in misery,

flooding your mind.

Orpheus. I am done with ghosts.

My mind must light her image

till it sing Eurydice awake.

Chorus. You will have to go

where death walks endlessly.

He must let you enter freely.

No man has ever gone so far.

Orpheus. I am that man — my song will do it!

Chorus. How? Do you know the way?

Orpheus. Through me to her the way lies open.

This is what I know.

(On upper stage Eurydice appears, loosely veiled, as a kind of promise.
Light pours  down on her.)

Orpheus. See now, she lives! She’s here!

Where I am she is with me, living!

(Eurydice makes vague motions, as if to summon him; then in a burst of
menacing and erotic music, she vanishes.)

Chorus. We are amazed. You are mortal,

yet you open the way to death,

which only those who die can know

and know once only — on their death.

What is it in you makes you know?

Orpheus. I cannot tell you how I know.

Can I tell you how I breathe?

To sing I must know such things

and yet not know them overmuch.

Knowing the way is open, I

must bring her back, or I die.

Chorus. If she is not already dead,

then she will die. You too may die.

Orpheus. You buzz like flies around

a honeypot. Leave me.

Chorus. Leave you? You keep us here.

Unless you die,

we cannot leave you

nor can we go beyond you.

If you know the way lies free,

go beyond us,

and there, alone,

find the stranger in the dark.

(Chorus fades gradually away from Orpheus.)

Orpheus. In the dark I know him.

He is darkness

filling silence

till he owns it all.

A wide opening of nothing

that devours every thing.

Fear and joy together

lie down in his arms and die.

I alone am his undoing.

I shall be his undoing.

When he took Eurydice,

all night he breathed against my eyes.

His darkness almost swallowed me.

In his darkness I could drown.

He walled her off from me all night.

All night her cold sweat trickled

down my thighs.

I felt his weight move down on her,

I felt his black tongue move all night,

stoppering her mouth.

All night, all night

my body bruised, my bones were sore.

I turned to her, her breathing stopped.

The dark had swallowed her.

I alone am his undoing.

I shall be his undoing.

I awoke. Eurydice was gone.

I awoke alone. A welling up

of blood rocked my body still.

My sex became a stone.

I saw the door half open —

through the doorway

sunlight bursting.

Sunlight sang me back alive.

Whoever left the door ajar

had let the sunlight in.

Now the song the sunlight sang

is this song I sing.

It will be his undoing.

I alone am his undoing.

I shall be his undoing.

(In a dazzling light and at the same burst of erotic music as before,
Eurydice reappears, descending, smiling, toward Orpheus, who remains fixed, concentrated, his back toward her.)

Blackout

Scene II In Pluto’s kingdom

Pluto. I say put him through this thing the hard way.

Let him drag along on wounded legs,

his guts torn open like a crippled dog,

all the way downhill on his belly.

Hermes. Come on. He’s a magician: Orpheus,

poet-musician, darling of the gods.

For him it has to be a special lark.

Sweating’s only for heavyweights like Hercules.

Pluto. I don’t see it. If he doesn’t suffer,

what good is it to him — being in hell?

Tear him apart is what the thing must do.

Hermes. You’re fond of bloody messes. I’m not.

You’re talking of religion. Me, I love

the living; apparently you don’t or can’t.

Pluto. Somebody’s got to draw the line between

the living and the dead . . .

Hermes. Why? Why not

let souls spill over so the living can

come down and get to know the place they fear

or bring the dead back for a holiday?

Pluto. Blasphemer! Only gods are glorious

and powerful forever; man himself

is muck, up in a flash, out in a fizzle.

Only a god comes down here and gets back.

Hermes. It’s true, the gods delight to see men wriggle

like worms; it makes them feel superior.

Why else would you have let the poet come

down here to take his wife back? Do you care?

Were you showing off? What if he makes it?

Pluto. Makes it? Isn’t that your job to see

he doesn’t?

Hermes. No, it’s yours. You’re boss. You asked him.

Pluto. His music got me. A weak moment. I still

can’t say just why I promised. — To stop his music!

Unbearable! It made me want to die!

Hermes. That’s amusing — so awfully human! You’re

undead —

I mean, Lord of the Dead, a god, eternal!

Just think, you’ve got to live with you forever!

Pluto. It gets a little fierce here — all the silence.

Then music filled my ears, I went weak,

I guess, and so my head nodded to him.

“Come take her, yes, but only stop the music!”

Silence again. I roared, “But if you look

at her before you reach the light — she’s gone!”

Hermes. Wanting to be alive — meaning undead.

When gods get bored they play at being human,

and right away the pleasure’s too much for them.

They call it weakness and impose the law.

You own the place and keep the score, so tell me,

landlord, isn’t that what hell’s about?

Pluto. Also, you must make sure that he stays put.

You’re responsible for him.

Hermes. But not for you!

Pluto. You’ve got to understand the way things are.

I can’t allow these madmen, poets, prophets,

to hop down here and back. It breaks the law,

and it could kill morale, starting them all

to dreaming the old dream — to live forever!

The dead exceed the living now something

like two million to one. Think of the mischief

if some little man like Orpheus should start

hauling them all back again to earth!

Give him an inch and there’s no stopping him.

Hermes. And who was it, tell me, gave him that inch?

Pluto. But I admit a little weakness. I’m only —

Hermes. Immortal, yes. Also a statistician,

a bigot, prude, and lowest lowdown member

of the establishment. Like me you’re cursed

enough with single-mindedness. At least

I know how huge one human wish can be.

I can perambulate among the spheres.

Pluto. Then you’ll take care of Orpheus for me?

Hermes. I like wild music and the passions. Listen.

(Music bursts through, and Orpheus descends; Pluto immediately retreats.)

No Curtain or Blackout

Scene III: The same as Scene II

(As Orpheus slowly descends, his way ahead is marked by a sharp
narrow blue light. This gradually gives just enough illumination to bring
the Chorus and the Antichorus out of the darkness on opposite
sides. Stage center the figure of Hermes emerges, waiting. Orpheus
stops when he becomes aware of Hermes.)

Hermes. Welcome to Death’s kingdom.

Orpheus. (beginning to approach)

I do not know you.

Hermes. I am Hermes. I come to guide you.

Orpheus. (confronting him)

I do not need you.

Hermes. Perhaps not. We’ll see.

Orpheus. (passing him)

I do not want you.

(The blue light dims and goes out. Orpheus stops.)

Hermes. Have you been here before?

You insist you know the way.

Consider, this is not earth,

no halfway place, but hell,

where everything is total.

Darkness is pitch darkness.

Death is stony death.

Orpheus. Until this point my way was lit.

A blue light led me like a hand.

Hermes. Yes, human consciousness

deserves to be displayed here.

You’re living and full-blooded,

a man carrying full tilt a mind,

a soul, and an immense idea.

These need to be lit up.

But you reach beyond a certain point,

and, as you see, that point is here.

Here’s where Pluto reigns,

fanatic keeper of the dead.

He rules beyond the limit

where life contains itself no more,

where breath and all the faculties

no longer function. Except in certain

special cases, they usually stop.

That’s why I’ve been sent to you,

to help you on the way from here,

and lead you living to your dream.

Orpheus. I do not need your guidance.

I go the way I am

through darkness and through death.

My song will give me breath.

(A female member of the Antichorus rushes to embrace Orpheus
excitedly. Again the erotic music. Orpheus looks closely, as if she
might be Eurydice, then turns away. Hermes has not noticed
the interruption. The blue light comes on and sharpens with the first word
of Hermes‘ reply.)

Hermes. Then go ahead, I’ll follow —

leading from behind.

Orpheus. My mouth wells up with song,

yet song won’t lead me to her.

The breath in silence leaving

and re-entering my body

yearns toward her body,

making a song of nothing,

making breath itself enough.

I am a stone against a tree

aching to be that tree —

to grow, to shed its leaves

and sleep, yet never dream

what was or what will be.

In sleep I am that girl I seek,

cradled in our bodies’ love.

Come, love, take away my breath!

(Another female member of the Antichorus breaks loose, as before,
and with a cry embraces Orpheus. The same music and wordless action
follow.)

Chorus. You are the harvest of the earth beginning.

Think that alone, in yearning and in growing,

and the fruit drops from the tree.

You are the hard ground over deep earth’s longings.

Be that alone, in sleep’s long burrowings,

till the fruit drops from the tree.

You are the seed through frozen winter burning

with root love, and with the worm still turning

when the fruit drops from the tree.

Antichorus. We taste the ripened pips,

and sweetness bursts our lips.

We crunch the crisp thighbone,

our teeth glinting like stone.

Chorus. What lives must feed on what’s alive.

What’s dead feeds on itself.

If the dead cannot live again,

the still-living may not die.

Yet they do — both things occur.

The dead live frozen in the mind.

The living, though still standing, die

feeding on grief, the dead belief,

bloated with wild memory,

in past beauty die.

Antichorus. Spend yourself, give self away

to death, then think no more, and die.

(echo) and die.

Living for you is past, praise death.

Becoming what you dread, so die.

(echo) so die.

The tree you were became a stone,

believing in stone, though standing, dead.

(echo) standing dead.

(Erotic music mounts, a crashing light, and Orpheus falls; Eurydice
appears at once behind him, glowing.)

Hermes. Orpheus, stand up, she is here.

You must lead her back.

This is what you came to do.

(Orpheus rises, lightly supported by Hermes, who faces
him sideways, where he can see Orpheus and also look toward, though
not at Eurydice.)

Poised behind you now,

she lights up emptiness

like the Venus star.

She is all you thought,

answering your thought,

telling how she came here.

(A silence, then an increasing, heaving, rolling — like waves of death.)

Eurydice. I rode the waves to shore

where I was deposited.

Then I saw the tide withdraw,

the beating roar subside.

I was alone again as when,

ripped from my mother’s blood,

I fell into the breathing world.

Why do I stand waiting again

to learn which way to go,

wondering how to go?

Does the body live or die?

Orpheus. You are all voices filling my mind

when it pleases and is pleased,

yet not one voice I yearn to hear.

Chorus. She is your nature mirrored in a gift.

She is your passion spent and hovering.

She returned herself faithfully to you.

Orpheus. She returns faithfully,

but not herself to me.

Her voice is all voices

cherished by memory,

but not one of them

comes alive to me.

Although I may not see her,

her speech denies her presence.

She is far away, though near.

Hermes. You must not question what

is different or the same.

In your way you have found her,

now lead her away.

Orpheus. What Eurydice is this,

speaking to what I was,

not to what I am?

Chorus. In asking for her

you asked for what

had died in you.

Antichorus. Now die with her.

This is what you sought.

This is why you came.

Chorus. Leave her now.

You no longer

need to have her back.

Hermes. You came for her.

Now lead her back.

Orpheus. First she must speak

in her own voice,

the voice I know as hers,

a voice I can recall.

Until I hear that voice

I sense her presence only,

not her life, behind me.

I did not come to find

a faithful loving ghost.

I came to bring her back,

my fully living wife.

Hermes. Until you speak to her

she has no present life.

Until you lead her back,

her voice is in the past,

remaining all it was

when you saw her last.

Orpheus. I do not want her ghost.

Hermes. Then win her back to life.

Move, and she follows you.

Speak, and she will answer.

(Orpheus moves and starts back, ascending, the blue light pointing
the way ahead. Behind him, slightly to the left, is Hermes, and last,
directly behind, is Eurydice.)

Orpheus. Eurydice, I feel your soundless steps,

your breathless mouth, behind me.

Eurydice. Yes, Orpheus. I follow where you go.

Orpheus. I lead you back to life.

Eurydice. Yes, Orpheus, I know.

Orpheus. Do you want to live?

Eurydice. I do not know how to want.

Orpheus. Do not be afraid.

I will teach you how to want

and how to live again.

Eurydice. If I had fear, it would be for you.

If I had love, it would be for you.

I do not know what feelings are.

I have no sense of pain or sorrow.

Only some memory of knowledge.

I know you called me and I follow.

Orpheus. First and last learn joy again

for all things living in their being.

I bring them back — the taste

of fruit, the leap of animals,

bird-glide and fish-turn,

where water is deep fire,

where all the air embraces earth.

I praise man and the creatures,

I praise the trees, the plants,

I praise the stones,

I praise the farthest star

pulsing in the eye.

Now the night listening

to the word is shriveling.

Eurydice. Won’t the day shrivel too?

Won’t the day, listening

to the word, shrivel back

into the night already shriveling into day?

Orpheus. As I listen, a silence dies

and the word rises, rising

out of my hand to speak.

Where is the silence that lives

on this world, listening?

What listens beyond me?

Eurydice, come follow me!

(As they continue to move, the blue light intensifies.)

Eurydice. I follow you, Orpheus.

Orpheus. (half turning)

Eurydice, I know your voice,

it is your own voice I hear again.

Hermes. Orpheus, take care; turn like that

again, and she is lost to you.

(Shadows begin to appear, moving.)

Orpheus. Eurydice, I know the way

is past these shadows

moving here beyond us.

They are and they are not,

and yet move endlessly.

Eurydice. It is the moving of other people

thinking beyond you,

creating and destroying,

doing the people-things.

You cannot even watch them.

They walk through you.

To them you are invisible.

To them only they move,

they who without knowing it

are invisible too.

Orpheus. Tomorrow we will appear.

Tomorrow for the first time

there will be the sequence

of the living and the dead united.

Together there will be

only the instant meeting

of thought with thought.

Living and dead will be one.

Nothingness will disappear.

Eurydice. Yesterday I remember I was yours.

Orpheus. So you will be again tomorrow

when we rise from this cold night.

Eurydice. Will I remember what I was today

tomorrow? Will this sense

of being nothing, which is all

I am now, except the voice you give me,

return to cover up my mouth?

Orpheus. Eurydice, the voice you say

I give you is yours, not mine.

You will know that in your blood

before you face the light again.

Chorus. Her blood is sluggish, scarcely moves.

Her limbs follow his but only

as if wired to his words.

He knows this well but is too fond

of the remembered flesh she gave his words

to go back to doubting her again.

Orpheus. The light falters. I cannot see.

(Blue light dims.)

Hermes. It is still your light, remember —

your own, to bring you and return.

Chorus. Her new fatigue has wearied him.

Look how his arms fall to his sides.

His drooping head searches the ground

for signs. Sink! say his halted feet.

Orpheus. (straining not to turn)

Eurydice, my wife,

take on my present life!

Eurydice. My body yearns to be dissolved.

Now held together only by

your wish, it washes on my mind

and tugs it down like crumbled stone.

Believe me, Orpheus, each fiber in me

cries out to my blood to stop,

be still, become invisible!

(Female Antichorus moves in a group to block Orpheus, in
attitudes half appealing and half menacing, as if he were their glittering
prey. Orpheus turns away from them.)

Orpheus. I must free her of the past.

Eurydice, my wife,

I give you all my breath!

(Turning back completely, he lunges past Hermes to embrace Eurydice,
and comes away holding her shroudlike garment, empty, in his hand.)

Eurydice’s Voice. Orpheus, rejoice, for I am dead.

I no longer need to rest in you.

Voiceless now I am myself,

the emptiness held in your hand

no longer burdens memory.

Orpheus, you are free to be

the voice you sought in me.

Thank you for my life, my death.

(As Orpheus begins to tear her garment to shreds, female Antichorus
surrounds him, singing.)

Female Antichorus. Life is the animal

of the world.

More than all

of us dead,

each of us

ever born

has only been

one eyeblink

of the animal

of the world.

(Orpheus manages to break loose from them, going upward, where
the light pours forth, but they follow intently, already holding in their
hands parts of his dress: a sandal, his belt, and so forth.)

Blackout

Scene IV: The same as Scene II

Pluto. You think he escaped?

Hermes. You mean she didn’t.

Pluto. Who ever said she would?

Hermes. You pretend,

now that it’s over, you weren’t scared

she would — with your permission too.

Pluto. I swear it won’t happen again.

Hermes. I don’t know. Mortals have a way

of coming back for more once they

have tasted the impossible.

Pluto. Ah, just plain greediness. What else?

Hermes. Pluto, it’s passion leading them astray,

but passion brings on something more

abiding: a growing itch to transcend

empty time and circumstance.

Pluto. Ach, there you go again, blaspheming.

Only the gods transcend. Everyone

knows that. Men are flies. They live

and die between a yawn and sleep.

They just don’t have the grip we do.

Hermes. Pluto, tell me, what brought him here?

— Yes, Orpheus. To this hell hole?

Pluto. Some insane notion that he was

better than the gods, I guess.

Hermes. Oh, use your head. The impulsion’s

got to be a lot more personal

to drive a man down here. Think again.

Pluto. All right: the gods themselves, his music.

You said he was their darling. Well,

it was a trick to put me down.

Hermes. Come, come, Pluto. We all know you’re

tone-deaf. Besides, since when have men

needed the gods except as means

toward a special end? You think

he’d go through hell just to put down

a minor deity like you?

For God’s sake, try to see it his way!

Pluto. What are you getting at? I think

I see your meaning — a woman! You mean

the woman, Eurydice? For her sake?

The maddest thing I ever heard!

Sure, men have got to procreate —

that’s how they keep alive enough

to not mind dying. But with a dead one?

Aren’t there enough live women

up there he could jump on without

killing himself to get a dead one?

Hermes. All right, you’re getting warm — if I

dare use the word about you. Hasn’t

it ever struck you that love and sex

are man’s way to transcend himself?

Pluto. You must be joking. Love and sex?

For bulls and horses! (laughing) No? Yes!

Hermes. Yes, laugh yourself sick over it.

Most gods do. They have no choice.

Thinking yourself immortal you find

the urge to love is just the fault

that makes man mortal, like an animal,

or else the sadly childish way

he has of finding comfort in the dark.

But there’s more to it than that.

Pluto. (still laughing)

More to it than what? What else

but lovely sex? Or sex and love!

Hermes. It’s the end of the gods. Orpheus

will ring the curtain on the gods

because even if he failed to take

his wife back from the dead, he has

opened the way to conquer death.

With love. With art. With life itself.

He’s shown men what’s inside them, what they

can be through what they feel and think,

despite the gods. Men following him

displace the gods, become eternal.

Pluto. (stops laughing, though still shaking)

Displace the gods, will he? And where

d’ye think your little man is now?

(Displaying long swatches of Orpheus‘ torn-out hair, with bloody skin still attached.)

Hermes. Pluto, where did that come from?

Pluto. The women chasing him. They did

a job on him — tore him apart!

You know, and some who missed out on

his feel while he was still alive,

they got to eating him — his rump,

his face, his big male thing, even

his eyes and nails taste good to them.

Hermes. Just sound and fury, a new religion!

Still, how disagreeable!

Devour him, then puff his image

up, and raise him to the skies!

They’ll forget he was a man who used

his brain to undermine the static

hell of dying gods. Now women

make him a god — an antihuman

floating abstract thing, an iceberg

stuck way up in some heaven they

must go down on their knees to worship,

guiltily, of course, since they’ve thrown

their brains away to do it. Sinful,

agh! Do you suppose men love death

more than they love their own lives?

Pluto. Well, he’s dead anyway. You know from what?

(laughing) What did you call it? Lovely sex?

Oh, love and sex! Well, what does that

lead to, tell me, if not to death?

(Hermes turns away; Pluto goes down on all fours, laughing
uncontrollably.)

Blackout