ऑर्फियस आणि यूरिडिसी ...Inspiration for Artists, Writers and Composers for Centuries

ऑर्फियस आणि यूरिडिसी म्हटल्यावर अनेक मराठी वाचकांना पहिल्यांदा काय आठवते ते जी ए कुलकर्णी यांची 'ऑर्फियस' नावाची रूपक कथा. 

पहिल्यांदा 'सत्यकथा' मध्ये १९७३ साली प्रकाशित झालेली आणि नंतर 'पिंगळावेळ' या १९७७ सालच्या कथासंग्रहात समाविष्ट केलेली. 

'Orpheus and Eurydice' या नावाचा लेख हिस्टरी टुडे या माझ्या आवडत्या नियतकालिकात ऑगस्ट २०१९ मध्ये प्रकाशित  झाला. त्याची सुरवात अशी केलेली आहे :

"A Classical myth of enduring love that has inspired artists, writers and composers for centuries."

जीए त्या परंपरेतील एक. 

"... In Peter Paul Rubens’ painting, Orpheus is depicted struggling to look ahead soon after the deities have consented to her return. On leaving the underworld, the lovers ascended a steep and misty path and, as they neared the earth’s rim, an anxious Orpheus looked behind for his bride, who fell and murmured a final farewell before dying again. ‘No reproach passed her lips’, according to Ovid in his Metamorphoses, because Eurydice now knew for certain that Orpheus loved her unconditionally.

The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice has inspired numerous works of art: in literature, a cast as diverse as Boethius, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Pynchon and Carol Anne Duffy have created variants on its themes, while the filmmakers Jean Cocteau, in his trilogy – The Blood of a Poet (1930), Orphée (1950) and Testament of Orpheus (1959) – and Marcel Camus, with Black Orpheus (1959), have captured its resonant tragedy. Fittingly, it is in music that the myth’s greatest legacy lies. L’Orfeo, Claudio Monteverdi’s opera, the form’s earliest surviving masterpiece, composed in 1607, became the first of many musical dramas to tackle the story: Christoph Willibald Gluck (Orfeo ed Euridice, 1774), Jacques Offenbach (Orpheus in the Underworld, 1858), Harrison Birtwistle (The Mask of Orpheus, 1986) and Anaïs Mitchell’s current Broadway hit Hadestown, set in America’s Deep South, are among those to have added to a canon that continues to expand."

जीए ह्यांनी Rainer Maria Rilke (The Sonnets to Orpheus, 1922) किंवा Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow, 1973) यांचे संबंधित साहित्य वाचले असायची शक्यता खूप आहे तसेच Peter Paul Rubens ह्यांचे चित्र तर त्यांनी नक्कीच पहिले असणार. 

Orpheus, by Peter Paul Rubens, 1636-38