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Orpheus: The Song of Life
For at least two and a half millennia, the figure of Orpheus has haunted humanity. Half-man, half-god, musician, magician, theologian, poet, and lover, his story never leaves us. He may be myth, but his lyre still sounds, entrancing everything that hears it: animals, trees, water, stones, and men. In this extraordinary work, Ann Wroe goes in search of Orpheus, tracing the man and the power he represents through the myriad versions of a fantastical life: his birth in Thrace, his studies in Egypt, his voyage with the Argonauts to fetch the Golden Fleece, his love for Eurydice and the journey to Hades, and his terrible death. We see him tantalizing Cicero and Plato, and breathing new music into Gluck and Monteverdi; occupying the mind of Jung and the surreal dreams of Cocteau; scandalizing the Fathers of the early Church, and filling Rilke with poems like a whirlwind. He emerges as not simply another mythical figure but the force of creation itself, singing the song of light out of darkness and life out of death.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published July 14, 2011
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About the author
Ann Wroe
15 books90 followersAnn Wroe is a journalist and author - working as Briefings and Obituaries editor of The Economist. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Literature and the English Association.
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July 4, 2022This is as a blurb on the cover says 'a remarkable book'. I notice that some Goodreads reviews of it are very positive and some are very negative, having read it I feel that both are right, or that their views are entirely just.
Ann Wroe has written a remarkable book - it is a biography of Orpheus, and since that is an impossible thing you have perhaps a pre-taste of how this can be a divisive book.
The book is divided into seven strings, or chapters as they might be conventionally called, the first two it seemed to me covered the origins, the third the voyage of the Argo, the fourth Eurydike, the fifth the journey into the Underworld, the sixth life after Eurydice, the seventh the death of Orpheus. Within each 'String' Wroe discusses Orpheus and his 'life' by reference to those who have written about him so we move from Seneca to Rilke, to Virgil, to C.G. Jung, to Greek pottery, to Montiverdi, to Euripedes, to Glueck, but not to Offenbach.
Conceptually, it is bold, but also an understandable progression from Wroe's earlier books about sketchy figures, perhaps it is a slight twist on one of her day jobs as an obituaries editor. On the downside you don't get a picture of what Orpheus meant to Rilke, or how the Orpheus story developed in time - all the variants exist concurrently in Wroe's narrative. I am left with the impression that it is a book that it brave, impossible and fun.
Orpheus might be more significant in Roman writings than in Greek, he might have been a god, then demoted to demi-god (son of the muse Calliope) or just to plain human, he could be seen as a forerunner to Christ by early Christians and as both part of Dionsysian worship but also as an Apollonian figure. Eurydice (Wroe says her name can be translated in to English as deep knowledge) was not part of the earlier stories, she came later, and there seems to be some overlap between her names and attributes and those of Persephone, while in one version of the Argo story Orpheus is relatively young and in the other an old man.
The degree of variation in versions of the Orpheus stories put me in mind of Marina Warner's book Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale and that sense that the strength of the story is in its adaptability, if you try to strip away the later layers, you are not left with an original core, but with nothing at all.
Ann Wroe has written a remarkable book - it is a biography of Orpheus, and since that is an impossible thing you have perhaps a pre-taste of how this can be a divisive book.
The book is divided into seven strings, or chapters as they might be conventionally called, the first two it seemed to me covered the origins, the third the voyage of the Argo, the fourth Eurydike, the fifth the journey into the Underworld, the sixth life after Eurydice, the seventh the death of Orpheus. Within each 'String' Wroe discusses Orpheus and his 'life' by reference to those who have written about him so we move from Seneca to Rilke, to Virgil, to C.G. Jung, to Greek pottery, to Montiverdi, to Euripedes, to Glueck, but not to Offenbach.
Conceptually, it is bold, but also an understandable progression from Wroe's earlier books about sketchy figures, perhaps it is a slight twist on one of her day jobs as an obituaries editor. On the downside you don't get a picture of what Orpheus meant to Rilke, or how the Orpheus story developed in time - all the variants exist concurrently in Wroe's narrative. I am left with the impression that it is a book that it brave, impossible and fun.
Orpheus might be more significant in Roman writings than in Greek, he might have been a god, then demoted to demi-god (son of the muse Calliope) or just to plain human, he could be seen as a forerunner to Christ by early Christians and as both part of Dionsysian worship but also as an Apollonian figure. Eurydice (Wroe says her name can be translated in to English as deep knowledge) was not part of the earlier stories, she came later, and there seems to be some overlap between her names and attributes and those of Persephone, while in one version of the Argo story Orpheus is relatively young and in the other an old man.
The degree of variation in versions of the Orpheus stories put me in mind of Marina Warner's book Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale and that sense that the strength of the story is in its adaptability, if you try to strip away the later layers, you are not left with an original core, but with nothing at all.
February 10, 2016
This is a poetic and accessible bio-mythography* of the mysterious and enduring figure of Orpheus, which effortlessly weaves strands of his legends ancient and modern, and the varied voices of many places and cultures, in a single diaphanous skein.
It is a rare conjuror who can wake the classical world and bring it to me lingering in a supermarket or crossing a field, who can make a spirit palpable in the faltering gestures of a passerby. A rare academic who can toil in the fields of research where cleared throats and rustling paper alone are heard, and harvest music.
Known by hearsay, yet remembered age after age. Shaman, singer of hymns, founder of mysteries, teacher of beauty and order (in opposition to Dionysus and devotees of his chaos), poet, magician who made the trees dance, vulnerable, sensitive human; one of us yet hovering on the margins, mortal yet ceaselessly reborn, patron of creativity.
If you want to know him, you can meet him here. But you might find at the end, after the hours you spent watching moonlight and candlelight tremble at his breath, at the moan of his lyre, at the sight of him all colours and ages... that in the silence of your quiet mind after... he's as elusive as he was before...
*this term was coined by Audre Lorde to describe her book Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
It is a rare conjuror who can wake the classical world and bring it to me lingering in a supermarket or crossing a field, who can make a spirit palpable in the faltering gestures of a passerby. A rare academic who can toil in the fields of research where cleared throats and rustling paper alone are heard, and harvest music.
Known by hearsay, yet remembered age after age. Shaman, singer of hymns, founder of mysteries, teacher of beauty and order (in opposition to Dionysus and devotees of his chaos), poet, magician who made the trees dance, vulnerable, sensitive human; one of us yet hovering on the margins, mortal yet ceaselessly reborn, patron of creativity.
If you want to know him, you can meet him here. But you might find at the end, after the hours you spent watching moonlight and candlelight tremble at his breath, at the moan of his lyre, at the sight of him all colours and ages... that in the silence of your quiet mind after... he's as elusive as he was before...
*this term was coined by Audre Lorde to describe her book Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
November 30, 2014
Reading this book made me understand what the rocks and trees must have felt when Orpheus walked by. Wroe is a model of erudition, a writer worth reading again and again. I fell under her spell in my reading of this book: amazed by her ability to synthesize two millenia of both myth and scholarship, while also mixing in her own observations from a trip to Bulgaria/Thrace.
Wroe organizes the book by the strings of the lyre/ the stages of Orpheus's life. The prose is dense, but it is worth the effort to uncover the rhythms and images that her scholarship has uncovered.
Reading this book made me want to write books of my own, such was the trance I was under. I have long thought that Orpheus and Eurydice's story was the greatest of stories--a battle with death, the fullest expression of beauty and music, a love that was true. It was the high point of Edith Hamilton's Mythology for me. But Wroe gets much more depth out of the story, interweaving it with modern interpretations (Rilke is a primary source as is Monteverdi's opera) and traditions.
One quibble I would have with Wroe's book is the lack of depth she found in Eurydice, the element of Orphesus's story that I found most entrancing. She never appears to be more than a shade--in life, or in death.
I'm looking forward to reading this book again--more carefully next time, more luxuriously. I had read Wroe's Pontius Pilate but had found myself bogged down in her biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley. This the best of all her books.
Wroe organizes the book by the strings of the lyre/ the stages of Orpheus's life. The prose is dense, but it is worth the effort to uncover the rhythms and images that her scholarship has uncovered.
Reading this book made me want to write books of my own, such was the trance I was under. I have long thought that Orpheus and Eurydice's story was the greatest of stories--a battle with death, the fullest expression of beauty and music, a love that was true. It was the high point of Edith Hamilton's Mythology for me. But Wroe gets much more depth out of the story, interweaving it with modern interpretations (Rilke is a primary source as is Monteverdi's opera) and traditions.
One quibble I would have with Wroe's book is the lack of depth she found in Eurydice, the element of Orphesus's story that I found most entrancing. She never appears to be more than a shade--in life, or in death.
I'm looking forward to reading this book again--more carefully next time, more luxuriously. I had read Wroe's Pontius Pilate but had found myself bogged down in her biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley. This the best of all her books.
August 7, 2013
This is round two for me with Wroe's passionate, purposed, poised, naked, unadulterated mythological humaniograpy of Orpheus. Her language fears nothing, and because of that, each sentence is simple and is complex, like a plot and intercalary chapter from the Grapes of Wrath superimposed. What most strikes me or doesn't strike me is the the way information, data, ideas, references, descriptions thrust forward without a splashing of the verbal oars or any jerky moments from the syntactical keel -- the mind and the pen sculled in utter harmony the waters Ann Wroe traveled with this book. To bring the praise pretentiousness-o-meter down a notch or peg or two; this book is a hybrid that puts any Prius to shame -- it works on all elements -- water, fire, earth, and air. Bravo.
January 31, 2014
YES! First book to come close to Roberto Calasso's The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony in terms of imagination and depth.
January 18, 2015
An in-depth exploration of the origins of the myth of Orpheus told in lucid prose. Ann Wroe captures the elusiveness of her subject throughout history. A wonderful synthesis of myth, travel, art and music; just like Orpheus himself.
September 27, 2017
A lyrical, devotional, and beautifully poetic portrait of an enigmatic figure. Masterfully brings together many different interpretations and sources to paint a fuller picture.
December 23, 2017
High brow meditation on all things Orpheus.
November 27, 2025
i like stories about people being swallowed and overtaken by the strength of their own myth, but this went above my head. the writing was lovely and there is a lot to think about, but i don’t think i had enough background knowledge to really appreciate it
June 25, 2016
Meandering, indiscriminate, fey
I enjoyed Wroe's Perkin and Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man but really disliked this. Whether you will get on with it or not depends entirely on your expectations. If you're looking for a scholarly excavation of the various Orpheus myths, or a work organised by literary reception or intertextuality then I suspect you'll be severely disappointed.
This is a kind of 'biography' of Orpheus, but one which flits blithely between the multiple versions of Orpheus from his earliest Greek incarnations, via Rome, the medieval and renaissance periods, and into modern embodiments in Cocteau and Yeats. Part of the problem is that Wroe treats all these various myths, fragments and after-lives as if they're all parts of a single story, as if there's only one Orpheus, and that's the one recuperated here.
The other problem I had is with the fey, faux-poetic prose style: "Orpheus remained... edgy and abstracted: wrapped up in his music, following his own rules, so picky about food that he lived for days on wild plums and sorrel, grabbed from the stalk as he passed".
So I guess this is a kind of meditation on Wroe's Orpheus: melancholy, ethereal, misunderstood.
I enjoyed Wroe's Perkin and Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man but really disliked this. Whether you will get on with it or not depends entirely on your expectations. If you're looking for a scholarly excavation of the various Orpheus myths, or a work organised by literary reception or intertextuality then I suspect you'll be severely disappointed.
This is a kind of 'biography' of Orpheus, but one which flits blithely between the multiple versions of Orpheus from his earliest Greek incarnations, via Rome, the medieval and renaissance periods, and into modern embodiments in Cocteau and Yeats. Part of the problem is that Wroe treats all these various myths, fragments and after-lives as if they're all parts of a single story, as if there's only one Orpheus, and that's the one recuperated here.
The other problem I had is with the fey, faux-poetic prose style: "Orpheus remained... edgy and abstracted: wrapped up in his music, following his own rules, so picky about food that he lived for days on wild plums and sorrel, grabbed from the stalk as he passed".
So I guess this is a kind of meditation on Wroe's Orpheus: melancholy, ethereal, misunderstood.
June 6, 2017
An excellent book about Orpheus throughout the history, a kind of biography! The book is rich with information - in addition to poems and quotations- written in a poetic language. I enjoyed the book very much, although in some places I felt it needed to show the sources (i.e. In-text citation) more clearly, so one may turn the original text for more.I particularly loved the chapter on Orpheus' journey to the underworld, in an attempt to bring back his deceased wife. Finally, the description of his death was so moving, though beautiful. I
January 30, 2013
Such a beautifully written book - so many places identified as fruitful avenues to explore vis a vis the Orpheus myth.
July 29, 2016
Ann Wroe does an excellent job of weaving together the many conflicting references to Orpheus in antiquity, and interpretations by scholars, into a gorgeously written and highly readable biography.
September 27, 2019
Sumptuous.
If you arrive at this book as I did from Rilke’s sonnets you’ll appreciate the inspiration that Rilke and so many others found in Orpheus.
A few of her other sources are: Aristotle, Ovid, Virgil, Gluck, Henryson, Milton, Rumi, Apollinaire, Anouilh, Cocteau, Graves, Frazer, Jung, Tagore and Yeats. She has absorbed them all but this is no dry academic text. She loves her subject and her love is a joy to read. After the loss of Eurydice she writes:
“... It was still true that Love controlled everything. But ‘dreadful Necessity’ or Fate, was stronger.
Slowly he detached himself from all he saw and heard, retreating into the dry, calcified shell. This was another sort of death. He lay on the shore face down in the gritty sand, emptied utterly. Picked up in a curious hand he would weigh nothing, could give nothing, would sing nothing into the ear, but would be cast away to clink across the rocks and be rolled in spume, worthless. At night the stars no longer shone on him, but sea and sky in a black undifferentiated wall blocked everything that might be light, or opening, or hope.
Monteverdi gave him Echo as a companion, the far faint double of his grieving. But Echo, like a mirror threw back the truth of his sad self-delusions. ‘I haven’t mourned her enough,’ he whispered; Echo sighed, ‘Enough.’”
Orpheus stood beside Rilke as he wrote his Sonnets. He became Orpheus. Anne Wroe has been an exciting guide at the beginning of my journey.
If you arrive at this book as I did from Rilke’s sonnets you’ll appreciate the inspiration that Rilke and so many others found in Orpheus.
A few of her other sources are: Aristotle, Ovid, Virgil, Gluck, Henryson, Milton, Rumi, Apollinaire, Anouilh, Cocteau, Graves, Frazer, Jung, Tagore and Yeats. She has absorbed them all but this is no dry academic text. She loves her subject and her love is a joy to read. After the loss of Eurydice she writes:
“... It was still true that Love controlled everything. But ‘dreadful Necessity’ or Fate, was stronger.
Slowly he detached himself from all he saw and heard, retreating into the dry, calcified shell. This was another sort of death. He lay on the shore face down in the gritty sand, emptied utterly. Picked up in a curious hand he would weigh nothing, could give nothing, would sing nothing into the ear, but would be cast away to clink across the rocks and be rolled in spume, worthless. At night the stars no longer shone on him, but sea and sky in a black undifferentiated wall blocked everything that might be light, or opening, or hope.
Monteverdi gave him Echo as a companion, the far faint double of his grieving. But Echo, like a mirror threw back the truth of his sad self-delusions. ‘I haven’t mourned her enough,’ he whispered; Echo sighed, ‘Enough.’”
Orpheus stood beside Rilke as he wrote his Sonnets. He became Orpheus. Anne Wroe has been an exciting guide at the beginning of my journey.
August 4, 2025
This book contains so many of my favorite subject matter (Greek mythology, classical literature, the poetry of Rilke, lyrical nature writing, etc.) that it feels like it was especially designed to appeal to me in particular. The writing is utterly beautiful and the diversity of approaches it takes to its subject, considering Orpheus as a historical, literary and religious figure, feels appropriate to a character who has been so influential across so many domains. While reading this I found myself thinking that one of the reasons I find the story of Orpheus so compelling is that it implies a world without separation between humanity and nature—a world where even the birds and rivers and trees can be moved by human art. In this modern world where the mechanistic view of nature is so dominant, I find this alternative somehow refreshing. I do wish that the author had indicated the sources for particular passages, rather than having all the sources lumped together in the bibliography.
February 3, 2024
This is a very polarizing book. Based on the reviews here, you either love it or hate it. I was hoping to do the former. Sadly, it’s a difficult task to write a biography about someone you’ve never met or someone who may never have existed. This book is well written, but overall I felt let down by it. I love the story of Orpheus & Eurydice… but this wasn’t for me.
February 15, 2024
Poetic, beautiful, an inspired mythical biography of an eternal muse that might have never existed but still lingers in tree clearings and playing softly in subway tunnels. Had a blast, even when it rambles it speaks to me - as I definitely sound like this when I'm drunkenly rambling about Orpheus and his song.
May 21, 2024
I think great for the general reader. The prose’s a bit syrupy, but the relish she must’ve felt in writing does get across in reading. I would’ve liked a bit more engagement with what must’ve been the Chaldean influence on Orpheus, but given the difficulty of Chaldean sources that might’ve made the book a different book. Her references and sources list is great.
December 28, 2024
I find myself not sure what to make of this book.
Maybe because I didn’t really know much about it before I went into it, but I’m not entirely sure what I ended up taking from it.
On the one hand, I can appreciate how well researched it is and the writing style is very accessible, but on the other hand it almost felt a little wishy washy to me. I don’t really know why.
Maybe because I didn’t really know much about it before I went into it, but I’m not entirely sure what I ended up taking from it.
On the one hand, I can appreciate how well researched it is and the writing style is very accessible, but on the other hand it almost felt a little wishy washy to me. I don’t really know why.
dnf
March 25, 2020This is a very dreamy book and not at all what I expected. Not what I’m looking for.
May 13, 2020
A great source for anyone studying Orpheus/Orpheus & Eurydice, or anyone using them as inspiration for their own writing. Ann Wroe writes informatively but her prose is also stunning.
January 5, 2023
This book was amazing. Creatively written but informative with a wide range of references to literature from ancient to modern.
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March 7, 2023Got a copy thru inter library loan in July 2022. Had to return it before I finished. May try finishing it this year.
April 21, 2024
As much as I liked the way it was written (particularly the way it wove the different accounts of Orpheus' life), I didn't feel as though I'd got much out of it.
November 24, 2024
It's an interesting little analysis of the (potential) life and afterlives of one of the most enigmatic of Greek heroes.
May 13, 2025
It was text book style but none the less soooo good. I took lots of notes.
July 29, 2024
Calderón's conflation in 1634 of singing Orpheus with creating God, hanging sun and moon in the hevaenly vault and breathing forth the winds
El divino Orfeo. Auto sacramental alegórico—Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld—Corot
Strigilated sarcophagus with Orpheus and a fisherman.
Barthes analogy.
March 27, 2016
Orpheus; mortal, musician, master of beasts has a new book about him. Drawing on sources as diverse as two versions of the Greek Argonautica, a Medieval play about Sir Orfeo and Lady Heurydice, Rilke's Sonnets and Cocteau's Orpheus, "The Economist" writer Ann Wroe attempts to explore the character of Orpheus.
His tale is told in an unusual way. The book is divided into seven chapters, one for each of the strings of his lyre, representing each stage of Orpheus' life. Ambitiously, Wroe has decided to tell each contradictory version together, with the upshot that the plot becomes exceedingly difficult to follow. In some versions of the tale Orpheus' love for his wife Eurydice enables him to lead her out of the Underworld to safety, in others he looks back for a fatal glance and loses her forever. In some stories Orpheus' tragedy is an allegory, in others in a myth. He stands on the border between man and the divine, between mystic and madness. Interspersed with tales of Orpheus are pointless anecdotes from the author's life, for example a musician in Green Park tube station, or two drunks staggering on a beach in America, which the book could really have done without.
His tale is told in an unusual way. The book is divided into seven chapters, one for each of the strings of his lyre, representing each stage of Orpheus' life. Ambitiously, Wroe has decided to tell each contradictory version together, with the upshot that the plot becomes exceedingly difficult to follow. In some versions of the tale Orpheus' love for his wife Eurydice enables him to lead her out of the Underworld to safety, in others he looks back for a fatal glance and loses her forever. In some stories Orpheus' tragedy is an allegory, in others in a myth. He stands on the border between man and the divine, between mystic and madness. Interspersed with tales of Orpheus are pointless anecdotes from the author's life, for example a musician in Green Park tube station, or two drunks staggering on a beach in America, which the book could really have done without.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews