Orpheus Sings III

I look back at Virgil’s Georgics IV, the passage where Orpheus looks back at Eurydice, sending her back to the gloom:

... terque fragor stagnis auditus Avernis.
illa ‘quis et me’ inquit ‘miseram et te perdidit, Orpheus,
quis tantus furor?
(... three loud crashes are heard in the stagnant pools of Avernus. Eurydice cries: what madness, Orpheus, what madness has condemned both you and my miserable self, what dreadful madness?)

I look back and ask, may such an impoverished view be called poesy? Calling something madness (furor) is a vulgar way to elbow away difficult questions, and when I hear that suicidal thoughts must be caused by some mental sickness or deficiency, I get furious, no helping it.

I look back at a question already asked, the question about Orpheus looking back at Eurydice before they both have got safely to the starry world. I asked, is it truly a question of belief? Is it a question of love? I asked and got as far as this conjecture: a surfeit of presence calls for a breathing space, a yawn, and looking back is to seek a refuge from the oppressive and imperial presence of the Now.

Already in his early verses, twenty-year-old Heinrich Heine sings in those Orphic keys: the surfeit of presence, the relief of looking back. Now, looking back on my early encounters with Heine, I recall my wonder at this line from Junge Leiden (Young Sorrows, 1817–21):

Mir träumte einst von wildem Liebesglühn.
(I dreamt once of wild love glow.)

Here three ...