Sir Orfeo: The Myth Of Orpheus And Eurydice

The classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice tells a wondrous story about Orpheus’s unsurpassable harping and the love he felt for his wife Eurydice. It is a tale, which reveals the path to the other world, the connection with creatures not from our world and the success of a mere mortal to impress those creatures to such extent that he could ask for whatever his heart is craving for and they will give it to him. It is a story of gambling away that chance; of opening the vast gap between humans and Gods once more. It is a story of lament but of wisdom also, and as such, it has managed to survive through the centuries not only in its original form but dressed in new clothes as well. The classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is described by Ovid in his “Metamoprhoses” and one of the new readings of the myth, which I am going to examine, is the Breton lay “Sir Orfeo” by an unknown author. The two stories answer, in different ways, two of the most important questions: Have we, the humans, got only one life, the present life, to understand all the mysteries of the universe or it is more like a spinning wheel of incarnations; and could we reach the God(s) in such way that we, at some point, transform ourselves into God(s) as well, or in other words become God(s)-alike?
Although laying its roots on the classical myth, Sir Orfeo is a completely different reading of the well-known myth and even its genre reveals in the first place an important difference between the two stories,